10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 63: what you’re looking at

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

ual rowdy at parties, was unusually quiet. Timmy passed around among the tables, and now and then got a cus- tomer for his trade with the shoe- shine box. The kid walked by the plainclothes man at a little before ten o'clock, throwing a smile over his shoulder. Phillips called him to the table. “Keepin’ your hands clean tonight, Timmy?” he asked. “Don’t get care- less about usin’ a rag for the polish.” Timmy set his shoe-shine box down beside the detective’s table and spread his hands out for inspection. They were clean. “That’s a good boy,” Phillips ap- proved. “On your way home by ten, Timmy.” The kid said: “Okay, Jim. Just been told there’s a phone call for me. May- be it’s important. I’ll go home right afterward. I'll leave my shine box here with you.” The orchestra blared on and on with its loud syncopations. Finally it stopped for intermission, and the comparative quiet was a relief to Phillips—but not for long. The thin, shrill shriek of a gir] cut the air from the direction of the tele- phone booths in an alcove off one cor- ner of the dance floor. Big Jim Phillips’ legs worked like steel springs, and in a second he was racing across the floor. Then he was pushing people out of his way right and left. It didn’t take him long to find out what had been the cause of the scream. It lay behind the closed door of one of the phone booths; be- hind a door not quite closed, so that the light inside was not turned on. But there was enough light to show the tragedy crumpled inside. Big Jim opened the door. Thin litthe Timmy lay in a limp heap at the bottom of the booth. His dark eyes were fixed in a glazed stare that seemed to be focused on some- thing far away. His white lips were twisted in the expression that sudden sed bad peer weer: them. FINGER OF poom- The carsishad heart of Jim pa lips was sending the blood racing — angrily through his big body. He wanted to bend down and pick up the frail figure in his arms; but, accord- ing to regulations, the body could not = be moved until after medical exam- | ination. Phillips suddenly bent down, eyes narrowing. On each wing of Timmy’s collar were fingerprints—black, clear, plain. Phillips saw that they had been made with shoe polish. And the kid had been bugs about fingerprints. Big Jim knew that, even as he died, the kid had done this to try to tell some- thing. The prints were not smudged; — they. had obviously been carefully made by Timmy. Jim Phillips rose, sighed. Poor lit- tle Timmy had done too much detec- = tive playing. Done too much spying and running with tips to Captain O’Brien’s office. “Nobody’s to leave here!’’ Phillips snapped, whirling on the encircling = __ crowd. Then, raising his voice: “You mugs in the River Street gang are all here, an’ you’d better all be here when the boys from headquarters arrive.” = : : O ONE said anything. The River Street gang stood or walked about, sneering, Spike Dugan the most sneerful of them all. - Big Jim Phillips called headquar- ters and then gloomily visualized poor littl Timmy’s death. The kid had been lured into the phone booth. Even with the loud dance music drowning sound, the killer had pressed his gun close to Timmy’s bedy, to muffle the = noise. For powder marks showed over Timmy’s heart. Then the youngster, dying, had slid to the bottom of the booth. But before he had gone out completely, he had managed to make those shoe-polish fingerprints on his collar. Fingerprints, fingerprints— Timmy meant something definite by ree eS, them. . After the usual fingerprinting bend Pee Spears were ices =