Pulp Fiction, 1938 · page 57 of 116
10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 57: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Analysis This is an interior page of story prose from a pulp fiction magazine titled "Satan's Showdown" (visible in the header). The page contains two columns of text with an illustration inserted between them. The story concerns Everett Belden, whose wife Alice has apparently drowned in a canoe accident near Lake Mahoga. The town of Haynesville mourns what appears to be a tragedy. However, the illustration and text reveal Belden's true nature: sitting alone with his wife's casket, he privately reveals himself as her murderer, deliberately causing the capsizing. He anticipates escaping with another woman once the funeral concludes and society accepts the "accident." The illustration depicts Death (as a skeletal figure) hovering over Belden's seated form, suggesting the supernatural or darkly ironic dimensions of his crime.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
den was thorough. “See you Monday, old timer,” he flung over his shoulder as the car sped away. Thirty-six hours later Haynesville was stunned by a terrible tragedy. The news came over the wires from Stirl- ing, two miles above Lake Mahoga. liverett Belden’s wife, Alice, had been crowned when the canoe in which the couple had been paddling had capsized. Belden himself had been pulled ashore exhausted after a futile attempt to save his wife, who, unable to swim a stroke, had been carried over the falls. Everett Belden drove into town behind the undertaker’s grim vehicle, to all appearances a broken man. Until early aif morn he had helped in the search for his wife’s body, which had been found at last wedged against a fallen tree that bridged the stream. Haynesville came in a_ steady stream to the home of the bereaved man offering deepest sympathies. A pall of gloom hung over the town. Everyone was of the opinion that the Beldens had been an ideal couple. The injustice of it all. A second honey- moon converted into stark tragedy. Floral pieces filled to overflowing the Belden living room, in which the body lay. And through it all, Everett Bel- den walked with shoulders stooped to sorrow, accepting like a man in a trance the regrets coming from deep down in the heart of Haynesville. SATAN’S SHOWDOWN ATE in the evening preceding the funeral Belden was left alone with his dead. The pungent, sickening- ly sweet odor of the heterogeneous heaps of fiowers piled high about the casket in the adjoining room perme- ated every crevice of the house. In a big chair near the massive table in the library Belden sat staring into space, a thin smile on his lips. He ad- mitted to himself that it had been much harder than he had expected it would be. The shriek of terror as the canoe capsized, the frantic threshing about in the water as she strove to keep afloat, her strangulated cries, and then the white hand above the water, its fingers clawing convulsively until they sank beneath the surface. He had acted his part well. He knew that the people of Haynesville were convinced. He laughed softly, but it sounded like a bellow in that house stilled by the presence of death. He did not care to laugh again, not until that still form in the room beyond was taken away forever. Then he would be free to own that vision of yoluptu- ous beauty for whom he had done this. The thought of her deadened the last twinge of conscience in his soul. They would go away when the time was opportune, to Switzerland, Vienna, Cairo. Nothing else in the world would matter. Everett Belden rose from his chair and on steady legs Sal : ; Se at ae me = ; . —— >> Septet te Fe ee aes So an ™ 4 a - se es a a2 : —— = ee ei “ Tee vos ile nee x = Ey ee < — —o zs <P hn se. yen Ses “