10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 83: what you’re looking at

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

TSD in its shawl there in the big wheel- chair. David stepped swiftly out on the porch. Aaron never lifted his brood- ing gaze from the road, not even when Dave stood directly beside his chair. “A beautiful view, is it not, beloved brother?” Dave asked mockingly. “Trees, rocks, hills, grass—bah, not a spark of real life in a thousand miles of it! But you seem to like it. All right—I’ll leave you here while I go on to Paris.” Aaron turned his head then and looked up into Dave’s face. There was no trace of fear in the invalid’s eyes, only a slight astonishment and a great hatred. Even the hatred failed to warm those somber eyes, for when hate persists through the years it loses its fire and becomes a cold dead- ly thing of ice. Dave laughed at the expression in Aaron’s face. “You do not seem to understand me yet, dear brother,” he mocked. “I am leaving—for Paris— very soon. But you—ah, you are stay- ing here—forever. For in a very few minutes now I am going to kill you, Aaron.” Even then there was no fear in the invalid’s weary eyes, only a faint con- tempt. “You don’t dare,” Aaron whis- pered hoarsely. The recent months of his illness had reduced his voice to that harsh, croaking whisper. “Kveryone would know that it was you who killed me. You would only put a noose around your own neck.” Dave laughed. There was such an unmistakable note of triumph in that mocking laugh that a shadow of fear for the first time lurked in Aaron’s eyes. AVE swung the invalid’s chair abruptly around until it faced the front door of the house, then stepped quickly into the room. An instant later he reappeared in the doorway with a gray shawl in one hand and a curious masque in the SATAN’S SHACKLES S1 other. He held the masgue up for Aaron’s inspection and laughed again at the invalid’s amazement. “A fairly good likeness, is it not?” he jeered. “Good enough for an art- ist of my ability anyway, consider- ing the ugly model I had and the secrecy with which I’ve had to work. Only a bit of painted silk and a few gray hairs, but from the road any- one would swear that it was your face. “And this shawl, exactly like the one in which you are forever bundled, even down to the soiled places and the frayed fringe. When I sit in your place on the porch there, with this masque on and this shawl wrapped over my head and around my shoul- ders, anyone from the road there would swear it was you. “No, Aaron, there will be no noose around my neck when you die,” Dave continued, “When Jed Turner drives past here about twenty minutes from now, you'll be lying at the bottom of the old well with every bone in your miserable body broken. But Jed will see me sitting here in masque and shawl, and he’ll wave as he always waves to you. Then when Jed turns the bend Ill fling my masquerade aside alld cut across the field and join him. “T’ll stay with him till old Eli finds your body and gives the alarm. And my alibi will be perfect—because Jed Turner will swear that you were sit- ting here alive only a minute or so before I left the house. I couldn’t possibly have had time to kill you and remove all traces, as I’m going to.” Fear shone forth naked then in Aaron’s eyes, the terrible fear of the utterly helpless. Dave flung the masque and shawl aside and advanced swiftly upon the invalid. The time for gloating was past. The minutes were rapidly passing and much re- mained yet to be done. Aaron fought with all his puny strength as Dave lifted him from the wheel-chair, but in the younger man’s Gomichbooks (C@