Pulp Fiction, 1938 · page 79 of 116
10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 79: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Analysis This is an interior story page from a pulp fiction magazine featuring "Murder Ice" by S. J. Bailey. The page includes a dramatic woodcut-style illustration showing a man standing over a body lying on the floor, with what appears to be an execution chair visible in the background. The visible prose describes a man named Brockton measuring how long an ice cube takes to melt—apparently planning to use this knowledge to create an alibi for murdering someone named John Pendleton, while his landlady Mrs. Forman threatens to discover his scheme.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Murder Ice : It was real ice, melting coldly away in that grim room of death. But that ice was hot—hot enough to fry Brockton in the electric chair. | «By S. J. Bailey HE thundering assault on Brockton’s door sent cold fin- gers of fear clutching at his already thumping heart. He knew instinctively that it was Mrs. For- man, his landlady, and his occupation at the moment was such that he could not afford to be discovered. He was standing in the middle of his room, watch in hand, measuring with chro- noscopic exactitude the melting time of one lone ice cube, lately from the 7% freezing tray of Mrs. Forman’s re- frigerator. To have the old hawk-nose enter now and find the chair up on the trunk and the books up on the chair, would not be'so bad. But to have her discover the odd position of the ice cube he had stolen would be disas- trous. He would then be unable to use the ¢lever stunt he had devised for providing himself with a perfect alibi when he killed John Pendleton. com boo