10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 52: what you’re looking at

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

90—————————-10-STORY DETECTIVE—————-———+ his own false hunch which had made him suspect Diirer as the murderer. Now the mystery of the Tarantula seemed more impenetrable than ever. But suddenly he bent forward, eyes narrowing. On the asphalt beside Direr’s head and shoulders was a faint streak of whitish powder. It was fresh, lying on the very surface of the walk. Hart set his flashlight beside it. Then, with delicate care, he scraped the powder onto a piece of paper which he took from his pocket. He had just finished the job when the first detective arrived. He told his story then, told it briefly, and felt almost like a suspect himself, so fantastic were the details of the killing. “Which way did the Tarantula go?” asked the detective, Hart shrugged. “I couldn’t tell. One moment I saw it against the as- phalt. The next it was gone.” “Tt’s a hell of a note,” said the dick. “Two murders in one night on the same case. The inspector himself will want to look into this.” Y DAYLIGHT, with Inspector Thompson at his side, Hart went over the square again. The grizzled head of the city homicide bureau, who at first had taken the Tarantula case as a joke, was now deeply troubled. “Any theories, Hart?” “Not yet, chief—none worth men- tioning. Let’s go call on Jack Baron. His radio apparatus interests me.” “Are we studying radio or making a murder investigation?” “Both.” Hart spoke quietly. He didn’t tell Thompson about the white powder. He wasn’t sure how it fitted in himself, and it was his habit not to give voice to a theory till he had some facts to bolster it. The pow- _ der puzzled him. He had had it ana- lyzed, established the fact that it was magnesia. But the idea that it sug- gested seemed too far-fetched to be real. He had nothing to back it up, no subsidiary theories to prop the main one. He stared up at the high, slender masts of Baron’s radio sta- tion as they crossed the square. But Baron was out, and the serv- ant couldn’t tell them when he would get back, Thompson seemed dissatisfied; but there was a gleam in Phil Hart’s eyes. That afternoon he rented a room on the south side of the square; in the only rooming house left in a row of high-class apartments. It overlooked the square, and from his windows he could see the shadows of the Baron radio masts on the grassplots below. The shadows lengthened as eve- ning came, seeming to stretch over the square like long and sinister fin- gers. Then they dimmed as the sky darkened. Hart went for a stroll in the square, every sense alert. He crossed it and met a party of stage people from the murder house on their way to dinner. Manricki, Lucille Roberts, Thelmo, the clown, Bowers and Bender, and the two girls who had been near Miss Tashman’s room were in the party. The platinum blonde greeted him. “We’re all going to move out at the end of the week,” she said. “It gives me the heebee-jeebies to think of what happened to Marko and Faith. The rest feel the same way.” “And I’ve just taken a room across the square,” said Hart. “The second floor front of the brownstone house. I'll be nearby then if anything else breaks.” The blonde shuddered. “Let’s hope it doesn’t. I didn’t sleep a wink last night, and I won’t tonight either.” Hart nodded. He didn’t expect to get much sleep himself. T was another warm night. He left the window of his room wide open and turned the light out. He had a deeper reason than merely wanting to watch the square in taking a’ place so close to the scene of the murders. Alert, Hart waited in his room, waited for something he was not sure COMMICOOOkKS (C@