10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 108: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

106 -_—_______10-STORY DETECTIVE as rotten as wet tissue paper. Then—” Volner crushed the test tube in his fingers, eyes gleaming from the depths of their dark sockets “—I find the vitamin! And you think you will name it—steal it.” Dr, Klausman smiled generously, unmoved, albeit he squeezed the bar- rel of the hypodermic syringe in his pocket. ““My dear Isaac—your nerves. Go home and rest until you know what you are saying.” “T know now, doctor. I know you— a pig, a fat, gluttonous pig—a pig for the spotlight. You do not care how much disease my vitamin eliminates. You only want to strut here and there like some god,*bestowing alms on the rest of the doctors. But you shall not do this.” The gaseous air pinched Dr. Klaus- man’s lungs as it sent his assistant into another spasm, He saturated his handkerchief with water and held it to his mouth and nose. Volner sub- sided presently, his voice under con- trol, but the words still acrid. “Go back to your office, Dr. Klaus- man. I’m nauseated easily now. And I’m afraid this chlorinate will eat your tissues away as it has mine. Thank goodness it has not eaten my brain. Go back to your nice sterilized office—with this to remember: you are going to be cheated out of your stolen glory—this in spite of the fact that you have every advantage. You can not see how I could possibly get any of the credit due me, yet I will, doctor. I have a plan you would never perceive—you are not big enough to understand it. But very soon you will find I have taken for my own the Vol- ner Vitamin.” The heavy features of the medical man melted into a patronizing smile. In indecision he touched the hypo- dermic again and then drew out his pinkish hand without the instrument. He had just thought of a much wiser course. Without retaliation he nodded his way graciously to the door and loeked it behind him trudging back | down the corridor, N the privacy of his own office he replaced the syringe and took down instead the sausage-shaped tank of chlorinated gas, the same gas which Isaac Volner had been breathing for months in the laboratory with such disastrous results to his body. It hissed out ominously as the doctor tested the little valve. Harmfless to a normal system perhaps, he thought, but to Volner’s this amount foreed into his lungs would unquestionably be fatal. And who would ever guess that death had been due to other than the natural causes of slow asphyxia- tion? The telephone bell jangled raucous- ly, and elearing his threat to moisten it and bring himself back te common things, the dector lifted the hook. The voice was sharply questioning. “Dr. Albert Klausman? This is the ; News. Do you employ a laboratory man by the name of Isaac Volner? That’s all, docter — thanks. Just cheeking up.” As abruptly as the voice had left, Dr. Klausman turned again to the corridor door and then hesitated, puz- zled. It occurred to him that the news- paper query was very odd. Perhaps Volner with his childishly gullible mind, had given the story of the new vitamin to the News—this way to win eternal glory for himself, a plan so big apparently that no one could un- derstand it. At once, the newspaper had doubted, as would every one else. No one would believe the truth com- ing from such an unknown. The Vol- ner Vitamim—Dr. Klausman sighed sardonically and tightened his fingers around the steel tube of gas. At the door of the laboratory he thought he detected dull moans from within, and he fticked the key quickly. Open-mouthed, he saw writhing on the floor the constricted bedy of his assistant. Without delaying to won- der, instantly fixing the answer as an acute lung attack due to the action of the gas in the room, he swooped down beside the man. With all its intense (Continued on page 108) comichook (E(e)