10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 103: what you’re looking at

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

—PHANTOM LOOTER—————_ the silence of the night, as the driver crouched over the big wheel. Keith and Gilmardy seemed buried in retrospective thought, oblivious to the weather and the road alike. Si- lence reigned as the car slipped rap- idly through the streets of the Me- tropolis, drawing to a stop, finally, in front of Keith’s Grosvenor Square house. “Eh t+—what’s this?” Keith grunted as he looked out to the glistening pave- ments. “Oh, home, eh? Won’t you come in, Martyn, and have a little spot before you go to the Yard?” Gilmardy shook his head in the negative, smiling wryly. “Not tonight, old fellow,” he smiled feebly, “I might have a hard time con- vineing the chief as it is. See you some other time.” And with that the police car streaked away from the curb, leaving Keith standing alone. A moment later Keith let himself in with his latch-key. A smile of sat- isfaction illumined his thin features as he noticed that Quirt had every- thing all set for a light lunch. N A SMALL chair-table was waiting coffee service and a plate of sandwiches. On a small smok- ing stand was a neat sheaf of papers eontaining the condensed account of the latest crime news, all written in Quirt’s bold scrawl. Beside the papers was a pipe and a humidor of tobacco. Keith had deposited his coat and hat, and was standing by the center table when Quirt entered noiselessly from the tiny kitchen. He smiled a silent greeting, connected up the cof- fee percolator and retired to fetch Keith’s dressing gown. With a sharp wrench Mr. Winston Keith removed the head from his stick. He turned it upside down and shook it gently. A quizzical smile flickered at the corners of his lips as a tiny phial of Belladonna slipped out, a drug, by the use of which gray eyes could be made to appear snapping black, harmless in the hands of its masters. Keith shook the stick some 104 more. A tube of whitening cream and a pair of drooping, black moustaches fell beside the phial of Belladonna. Something else trickled out of the hollow stick, and the top of the table gleamed and glittered with the scintil- lating red, white and blue flames as a long string of costly diamonds caught and reflected light. Beside them flashed myriad, dark, green pools of iridescent fires, alluringly provoc- ative, yet cold and hard. On the table reposed both the Gray Ghost and the Cranther jewels. Keith smiled with amusement as Quirt reentered the room. “Oh, I say, Quirt,” drawled Keith as he fingered a small blue lump on his forehead, “did you ever strike your- self on the head to purposely raise a bump ?—Rather a painful procedure, Quirt.” Keith regarded the blue smoke that curled from his pipe bowl thought- fully. “H’mm, yes, Quirt. You are right. The police are dumb, but—they are amusing too and—and quite harm- less.” Keith smiled whimsically. “And that brings us back to the en- trancing problem of the painless self- affliction of bumps on one’s own fore- head, what?—That’s an interesting problem, Quirt. Interesting, but, un- ‘fortunately, quite hopeless. However it might be worth a bit of cogitation.” “Thank you for your. reports, Quirt.” Keith picked the little sheaf of papers.—*“And good-night, Quirt.” Mr. Winston Keith stretched out luxuriously in the deep, old chair, preparatory to enjoying a cup of Quirt’s incomparable coffee. He smiled softly as he thought of Gilmardy hold. ing his hat and stick while he lit his cigar in the vestibule of the Cranther residence. Keith’s smile changed to a chuckle of interest, as his eye encountered a report of a large robbery of an im- porting house’s offices in Piccadilly. A sigh of content escaved him as: he sipped his coffee. Mr. Winston Keith was at peace with the world. CORMMICLOOOKS (C©@)