10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 47: what you’re looking at

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

DISASTER SNARE Radios were quickly snapped off. Men and women looked fearfully at each other, then gazed down into the square where the darkness made ev- erything indistinct. The cop on the beat running paral- lel with the square heard the shrieks, too. He whirled and dashed forward, vaulting over the low iron fence onto the grass, his nightstick clutched in his hand. Swift footsteps sounded ahead of him. Then a figure burst from the end of one of the walks. It was a girl, running till her breath came in la- bored, sobbing gasps. Her face had the deathly whiteness of parchment. Her eyes were wide and staring. Strands of loosened hair whipped be- hind her, and a gleaming white shoulder showed where one side of her dress had been torn away. Her steps quickened when she saw the policeman. With a last burst of energy that made her high heels click over the asphalt, she ran toward him and collapsed at his feet, moaning hysterically. Then words came from her lips. “T saw him,” she gasped. “The Ta- rantula! He’s back there—in the square. Don’t let him get me— please!’ The cop bent down, but the girl had wilted suddenly, falling into a dead faint. Figures began to slip out of door- ways and move toward the spot. A small crowd was gathering. They pressed around the unconscious girl, turning to stare uneasily into the shadows of the square. The cop growled at them : back—give her some air.’ He stooped, gathered the girl in his arms and carried her into the lobby of the nearest apartment, Then he called headquarters, his voice hoarse and low. Five minutes later the French type telephone in Phil Hart’s bachelor apartment jangled. Hart picked the instrument up. His gaunt, bronzed ane 45 face with its pencil-thin moustache line tightened as he heard the excited voice of the desk sergeant at the other end. “Tt’s the Tarantula again, Hart. The boys are on their way now. The square’s only a few blocks from your place. Better run over and take a look. Something funny is up.” Hart replaced the instrument in its bed and slipped out of his tasseled lounging robe. Funny was no name for it. The first “Tarantula” scare had startled the city a few nights before. A man crossing Hamilton Square claimed that he’d seen a great, black, eight-legged creature moving over the grass, moving like the spirit of death itself. The thing, he said, was seven feet in diameter—and for want of a better name he called it a tarantula. It was too fantastic to be believed. But it made good newspaper copy. The tabloids had played it up. Now the Tarantula had been seen by a girl. Hart smiled grimly as he got into his coat. He was too hard-headed to take stock in such a thing. He won- dered what new kind of a racket some one was trying to put over. Men from the tenth precinct were beating through the shrubbery of the square when he arrived. Their flash- lights gleamed everywhere, They had almost finished their search and nothing had been found. A burly detective whom Hart knew approached and spoke: “She musta been cuckoo,” he said. “There ain’t nothing here, no tracks even. Better go in and talk to her, Hart. The sergeant’s there now.” Hart took the advice. He found the girl on a leather lounge in the apart- ment lobby. A negro janitress had put a screen in front of her so that curious people in the street couldn’t stare in. A sergeant of detectives was bending over her, getting ready to shoot questions, and the girl was just coming to. COMmMiCcoooks CO