10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 76: what you’re looking at

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

74————___—_——_————__10-STORY DETECTIVE dow. I was standing on the veranda outside.” “Keep away from that desk.” “George, you fool. Don’t pull a gun on me.” : “Keep away, I tell you.” “To hell with you. I’ve stood your cheating long enough, you thief. Now I’m going to take what’s—” The muffled report of a gun came through the door. Then there was silence, Slade slowly turned the. knob, pressing his shoulder against the oak panel, The door was locked. His hand tightened around the butt of his gun as he leveled its nose even with the lock. “Listen,” Dale whispered. “The back steps. You can get the drop on him that way. They lead up from the pantry we came through, at the end of the hall below.” Slade pointed at a dark doorway behind him. “Duck in there,” he said. “T’ll sneak around that other way.” Before she could answer, Slade was gone. He glided down the stairs and along the lower hall silently. He cat- footed across the pantry and found the back steps. There he paused. From above came the sound of heavy falter- ing footsteps. Slade swung onto the bottom step and waited, gun cocked. The shuffling steps came nearer. Then he saw the glowing bones of a skeleton on the landing above. A blue flame shot from Slade’s gun. It revealed for a split-second a black mass hurtling through the air. As Slade ducked, the full force of a hu- man body struck him. He was thrown back violently on the floor. He lay for a moment stunned. A lifeless body sprawled across his chest. The lights flashed on. He shoved the dead weight of the corpse off him, and got to his feet. GUN was aimed at Slade’s head. %. Before him stood a man clothed in skin-tight black jersey. On it was sewn lustrous metallic eloth, smeared with radium paint. Even in the full glare of the light there was the weird delusion of a luminous skeleton. But the face that stared at him from be- hind the gun was even more unearth- ly than the phantom skeleton. Color- less eyes glistened at him diabolically. ‘So, so, it’s you,’ Slade heard a voice saying, although the creature’s lips didn’t seem to move. “Stupid. Yes, stupid of me. You didn’t breathe quite enough of the putrescine gas earlier this evening. Oh well, it’s little more trouble to cremate two than one, since the furnace is of ample size to accommodate both of you.” The man laughed insanely as he ad- vanced toward Slade. “In fact,” he cackled, “it will be less trouble, for you will carry John’s body down to the boiler room. Quite. Quite so. Now pick up the baggage and start.” Slade stood motionless, staring into the eyes of the man before him who held a gun aimed with deadly accuracy at his head. “Go on,” the man snarled, “or I’ll bore a hole through your skull.” Slade glanced at his gun lying on the floor six feet away. He was gauging the chances of lunging for it. “You move toward that gun,” said the voice, “and you’re dead. You pick up that body or I blow a piece out of your head right here.”’ Slade was looking into the barrel of the gun when the crack of an auto- matic split the silence. Blood spurted from the man’s wrist as his gun clat- tered to the floor. With a yell of rage he wheeled and bounded up the stairs. In the doorway stood Dale Markham, white-faced, a smoking pistol in her hand. Slade snatched his gun from the floor and scaled the steps, three at a stride. He raced along the upper hall, following the fleeting form. There was _a streak of flame ahead and a bullet scorched his cheek. Slade’s gun flashed and was an- swered by a scream of pain, The door at the end of the hall splintered with Gomichooksreom