10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 80: what you’re looking at

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

78 hate to flame forth naked, in a grim climax that would bring death to Aaron Fenton. Aaron could not plau- sibly be expected to wheel his chair down to his favorite place beside the old abandoned well unless the weath- er was reasonably warm and pleas- ant. Consequently, for weeks Dave Fen- ton had been impatiently awaiting the arrival of a clear sunshiny Thurs- day. Clear skies on other days of the week meant nothing. Thursday was the day when old Eli, the aged man-servant of the Fenton house- hold, went to the village on his week- ly marketing trip. The brothers Fenton were an oddly assorted pair. Dave at thirty-three could easily have passed for a youth of twenty-five. Large of body and darkly handsome, he was of that vital, full-blooded type which ages little until middle life. Aaron Fenton at forty-three looked sixty. His slight body was twisted and wasted from years of semi-in- validism, while the deep lines etched in his sallow saturnine face were those of an old, old man. It was small wonder that strangers often took the brothers Fenton to be father and son. As a matter of fact, they were not even blood brothers. Dave’s father had late in life married a cousin of the same family name. Aaron, even then an invalid, had been added to the small household. The marriage lasted but a few months before it was tragically terminated by a railroad accident which killed both Dave’s father and Aaron’s mother. The stepbrothers found their des- tinies locked together by the terms of the will that was left to them, a will that practically made Aaron, Dave’s keeper. Aaron could not will the considerable property to anyone except his stepbrother. But Dave could not hope to come into its pos- session before Aaron’s death. The younger man was given a bare living allowance. Even that dole was rigidly dependent upon his remaining 10-STORY DETECTIVE constantly with Aaron. This dole was created only so that Dave could look after and care for the invalid. It was am arrangement which could have bred nothing but hatred, and its promise was more than fulfilled. Aaron moved to the gloomy gray house on the extreme outskirts of a stodgy little Middle Western village because he knew that Dave would in- stinctively hate such surroundings. To Dave the warm, mad pleasures of a cosmopolitan setting were life itself. He had spent one blazing year as an art student in Paris. He lacked the moral fiber to ever be a genuine artist. But his natural talent was great enough to give him a logical place among the riotous activities of the art colony’s younger set. Since then he had lived only for the day when his legacy would again make Paris possible. Aaron, embittered by his own sorry gift from the hands of Fate, took a greedy and vindictive pleasure in be- ing the barrier that barred Dave from any realization of his Bohemian dreams. The two men made no effort to veil the naked hatred they held for each other. Life in the grim gray house of hate settled down to a long nightmare ordeal. At first, Dave had waited patiently for Aaron to die. But the years passed and the invalid clung to life with a grim tenacity that was maddening. Dave had waited for ten years now in that dreary gray house—ten wasted, empty years! UT at last the day of release was at hand. It was the climax of long months of planning and prepara- tion. Perfect murders are not com- mitted in a day. And the murder of Aaron had to be absolutely and fiaw- lessly perfect if Dave were to remain free to enjoy the fruits of his labors. The curious terms of the will, to- gether with the fact that the intense hatred between the two stepbrothers had loug been common knowledge in the village, would have been more Gomicbooks (C@