10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 85: what you’re looking at

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

en es stopped his horse momentarily and waved a hand in his usual greeting. “How're ye, Aaron? Nice day, ain’t it?” Turner’s booming voice came up to the motionless Dave. Dave merely nodded his head. He knew that Turner expected no verbal answer. <Aaron’s throat affliction was well known. Then Dave did his final bit of act- ing. He lifted a shawl-wrapped arm in the gesture of signal that Aaron and Jed Turner had worked out months before. Aaron never carried a watch, and the signal gesture was merely a pre-arranged way of asking Turner for the time. Turner fished out a large silver timepiece from his pocket. “Jest one- thutty, Aaron,” he announced. AVE waved his shawl-wrapped arm in brief thanks and dis- missal. Turner clucked to his horse and drove on. The instant that Turner was out of sight of the front porch, Dave sprang to his feet. Returning the chair to its usual place in the front room, he ripped the false “wings” from its back. These he dropped into the small heavily-weighted tin box, together with the masque, the gray shawl, and the hook and cord. He clamped the lid of the box se- curely shut and, snatching up his coat and hat as he went, he sped to the back of the house. There he lifted the board covering the cistern and hurled the box down into it, to rest safely there under twenty feet of water until he could later fish it out and destroy its contents at his leisure. Then he hurried around to the side porch. The road swung sharply to the left just after it passed the front of the house, and when it passed the side ‘porch it was again only a hundred feet or so distant. It was barely half a minute before Jed Turner’s rig again came into sight. Dave promptly hailed him. “Just a minute, Jed,” he called, SATAN’S SHACKLES-—————_—_——_ an Co “and Ill ride over home with you and visit a while.” “Sure thing, Dave,’ beomed Jed, stopping the buggy as Dave came running down to the road. “Come right ahead. Glad to have ye!” Dave was unusually talkative as they jogged along on the short drive to the Turner farm. He found it hard to keep from singing aloud. Every- thing had gone with such perfect smoothness. Aaron was dead. And yet here was honest Jed Turner ready to swear that he had seen Aaron alive less than two minutes before Dave had left the house. Dave’s alibi was absolutely airtight. No ten men could have hurled Aaron down into the pit and removed all traces of the crime in two minutes. Now Dave had only to remain with Jed Turner until old Eli came home and found Aaron’s body. The sheriff might be suspicious. He probably would be, remembering that incrim- inating arsenic incident of several months before. But no man in his senses could seriously suspect Dave in the face of the testimony that Jed Turner would give. Sitting in the cozy living-room of the Turner home, Dave talked bril- liantly and steadily of life in New York and Paris, and Jed listened with the avid curiosity of one to whom those places have never been more than magic names. Jed was too in- terested in his guest’s vivid narra- tives to notice that Dave’s eyes were forever wandering to the big clock over the mantel. Once Jed excused himself with a sly wink and came back into the room bearing a jug of home-made wine. Knowing Jed’s weakness, Dave’s heart sank. If Jed became drunk, of what good then would be all the care- fully planned fabric based upon his testimony ? But the vigilant and sharp-tongued Mrs. Turner swooped down and re- moved the jug before more than a small glass apiece had been drunk, Gomichdooks (C@