10-Story Detective, March 1941 — page 11: what you’re looking at

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

this time with Robert Tiere. He took the news of Tiere’s murder with the polite lifting of an eyebrow. Nisbet seemed well acquainted with the slight, blond Harvey Logan, and with Tiere’s secretary, Betty Dunbar. He said he operated an investment consul’s office. Captain Pearson didn’t understand that any better than Mc- Kenna did. Nisbet elucidated to the extent of explaining that he guided the stock and bond transactions of cer- tain persons, his clients, for a fee. Logan said he owned a small tea and spice importing company. | McKenna was the storm center of Captain Pearson’s attack. He hotly resented this, but had the common sense to realize that Pearson had rea- son to suspect him. “Tiere told me he thought there was oil on my land,’ McKenna told Pearson. “Tiere gave me five hundred dollars for an option. It was mine if he didn’t buy the farm. If he did buy, I was to get the rest of the ten thou- sand dollars today.” Pearson examined him with hard bright eyes. Turning away, Pearson grilled James Nisbet, then Harvey Logan. Both admitted that their busi- ness with Tiere had been to decide if they ought to go in with Tiere on buying Steve McKenna’s land. Tiere had told them to come this morning, and get a look at McKenna. “T don’t see what a look at me would have to do with oil on my land,” Mc- Kenna blurted. Captain Pearson nearly broke into a smile at that. | “Miss Dunbar,” Pearson demand- ed, “what do you know about this? Why should Tiere have asked others in, if there was money to be made? Couldn’t he buy McKenna out him- self?” “Mr. Tiere was usually in so many things all at once that he couldn’t finance anything alone. At least he never did,” the girl explained. “Anyone else supposed to be here this morning?” | Betty Dunbar considered for a mo- BULLETS ON BLUE MONDAY———— —__—__—9 ment. It was Harvey Logan who spoke up quickly and declared that Wesley Allen should also be there. Betty Dun- bar nodded confirmation. Pearson told her to get Allen on the phone. Miss Dunbar obliged. “His office says Mr. Allen is at home with a bad cold teday,” she in- formed Captain Pearson. “Get his home number, and phone him there.” McKenna watched the play of light and shadow on Betty Dunbar’s rosy- cheeked face while she did. She was beautiful. He wished he could look into her gray eyes, without having her catch him at it all the time. Wesley answered the phone, from bed. Captain Pearson nodded. | “Just make an excuse and hang up. We'll get round to him, and tell him what he needs to know.” Pearson signaled a burly man in a dirty brown suit. And before McKen- na knew it, one loop of handcuffs was snapped about his right wrist. Captain Pearson stared down at Betty Dunbar, his freckled face heavy with a scowl. “Miss Dunbar, I thought it was a secretary’s job to announce a person, not just tell him to walk in on her boss?” “Mr. Tiere had been out here only three minutes before Mr. McKenna came. He told me to send Mr. McKen- na in immediately he arrived.” - Captain Pearson grunted again, and eaught sight of McKenna. “Get him out of here,’ Pearson bawled at the detective. CHAPTER II CKENNA was taken down to a big black automobile and driven with a speed for which he could see no excuse, to a gray, grim police build- ing. They asked him some perfunctory questions, and a uniformed man with chevrons wrote the facts in a big book. They hauled him into another room, unlocked the handcuffs, and made him strip while they searched him. They weighed and measured him. The mo- cComicbook CO