10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 59: what you’re looking at

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

JAILBIRD JUSTICE——————_—————3 He was only a few yards from the veranda steps when, out of the tail of his eye, he saw a movement beneath the windows of the study. He whirled, darting his right arm toward the shoulder clip that held his automatic. “Who is it?” he barked. Scarlet flame stabbed at him out of a leafy bush. Lead sang waspishly close to his ear. Hurling himself aside, Gore slipped, fell heavily. He lay as he had fallen, very still, but with the pistol in his fist and his eyes watchful in the faint light. Jeanne’s panicky voice reached him. ‘Pete—are you hurt?” He saw the blur of her face and dress coming nearer. He swore silently, forcefully. The leafy bush stirred. Light glinted dully on a revolver barrel. The weapon bore ominously on the fallen investigator. Gore’s right wrist jerked. His auto- matic thundered. A cry of pain or fear arose, and the revolver dropped with- out firing a second time. The bush shuddered. Behind it footsteps pound- ed, diminishing, rounding the corner of the house. Gore yelled: “Halt!” He lunged erect and raced forward, spraying the narrow beam of a pencil flash ahead of him. He could see nothing. “Pete!” Jeanne wailed. ‘Wait for me.” She came panting up to him, flung her arms about him. ‘‘Who was it? He thought he knew the answer, but he only shrugged wearily. “I couldn’t see. I may have hit him.” “We've got to find dad,” she whis- pered in terror. They hurried together up the steps, into the house, through the entrance hall. Light streamed to meet them from the open door of the study. A man was talking loudly, rapidly in the room. On the threshold Gore froze, ap- palled by the sight that met his eyes. He tried to block Jeanne’s view, but she had already seen. She uttered a little moan and fainted in his arms. He stood there for a long moment, torn by emotion, unable to look away from the body of Judge Madden, who had been his friend and the father of the girl he loved. The old man was sprawled on his back in the center of the book-lined room, before a fire- place in which scattered embers hissed. The wide-open eyes still held a look of incredulous horror, and the silver hair was stained with crimson around a bullet hole close to the right ear. Arthur Denning crouched by the desk, shouting into a telephone. His blunt-featured face was distorted’ by what seemed to be a mixture of grief and anger; his big body trembled, his blond hair was disheveled. se . After I got downstairs, I looked out the window and saw young Madden running toward the back of the house. He’d fired another shot out in front. Maybe one of your squad cars can pick him up. For heaven’s sake—hurry !” KTECTIVE Sergeant Samuel Link’s beefy face wore a look of fierce triumph as he barged into the study—a look that was dampened not at all by the appearance of the dead man and became tinged only slightly with chagrin upon his recog- nition of Peter Gore. “Damned if I know how you got here,” Link growled, “but you might as well go home, I got it all cleared up.” Gore was sitting by Jeanne, whose slim form he had stretched on a sofa, so placed that the massive desk con- cealed the corpse. She had regained consciousness and was weeping softly. “So what?” Gore asked coldly. Or- dinarily he ignored the feeling of rivalry that persisted between the po- lice detectives and the D. A.’s inves- tigation staff, but he was not fond of Sergeant Link. They had clashed fre- quently before this night. Link thrust his hands into the pants CONNIE HOO! S. com = Vv oe feo, oo i ES i i ee ee ee Bo ieee a7 een