10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

48 iz ART remembered then. A few weeks back he had read about Baron’s amateur radio station on the roof of his apartment, the station where he experimented in a haphaz- ard way. The slender antennae masts of his transmission set, duly licensed by the radio board, thrust steel fin- gers upward into the sky above Ham- ilton Square. So this was Bases. heir to mil- lions, dilettante, inventor and expert ladies’ man! Hart looked at him close- ly. The thing was getting complicat- ed. Marko, the magician—and Baron. They both seemed strangely interest- ed in the dead girl. “What happened?’ Baron repeat- ed, his voice shrill with fear. “She saw the Tarantula,” said Hart. ‘“She’s been murdered. Look at her throat.” Young Baron did so, and the color left his face. He said: at my place—most of the stage people who live here, and a lot of others. We were expecting Miss Tashman. I phoned, and the janitress told me there’d been an accident.” As though to prove his words, some of his guests who had hurried around the square after him came up. Hart recognized a few. There was Lucille Roberts, the blues singer, Bert Thel- mo, vaudeville clown. Bowers and Bender, the trapeze team, and Man- ricki, the contortionist, who had played six years on the Keith Circuit. They pressed in, staring curiously. The strident clanging of an ambu- lance sounded, and the crowd parted to let the white-clad attendants reach the girl. But Hart wasn’t interested. He knew without being told that Faith Tashman was dead, beyond hu- man aid. He was looking at the faces around him, trying to read the subile emotions hidden behind the masks of fear. Bert Thelmo’s expression was, as always, faintly idiotic; his lips twist- ed by years of professional grimac- ing. Manricki was a thin, emaciated “We were having a party . 10-STORY DETECTIVE man. The trapeze artists were con- trasting types; Bowers, powerful and stolid; Bender thin and weakly. Then Hart raised his eyes and stared again into the face of Marko Diirer. The man had followed them down into the street. He stood there, aloof, brooding, staring at the dead girl with an in- scrutable look. But Hart sensed some deep emotion behind his unfathom- able expression. He was glad when he saw Sergeant Stix questioning the man closely. Durer would bear watching, though the police would be up against a blanix wall when it came to connecting the Tarantula scare down in the square with the murder of Miss Tashman in her third-floor room. Hart listened while the police in- quiry went on. Then the ambulance bore its pitiful burden away, and the crowd began to thin. Jack Baron did not offer to take his guests back to his apartment. He drove off, looking drawn and shaken. The guests wandered away as though shunning the murder house. Hart slipped into the square, feel- ing that in its eerie shadows lay the solution of the ghastly mystery. He found a bench partially hidden by shrubbery, yet giving him a view of the building where Miss Tashman had met her terrible end. T WAS getting on toward eleven when he suddenly leaned forward, staring up at the roof of the building across the way. A faint flicker of light showed for a moment, then winked off. It came again as he stared. Some one was up there, but who? He slipped out of the shadows of the square, crossed the street, and entered the building next to the one where Miss Tashman had been killed. He showed his special investigator’s ecard bearing the signature of the police commissioner himself, then climbed to the top ficor. Cautiously he opened the door lead- ing to the roof and stepped out. He COMMICLOOKS (C@