10-Story Detective, March 1941 — page 35: what you’re looking at

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

PASS-KEY TO THE MORGUE TSD heavy, dark-browed man, the brim of his felt hat drawn down over his keen, hard eyes. The visitors paused in the midst of their drinking, looked at the in- truder warily. The stranger closed the door behind him, strode into the middle of the room, eyed the gather- ing speculatively. Kane placed the empty tray on a side table, and began to edge toward the front door. The stranger was a detective, Kane was sure. It was written all over the man’s features. Suddenly the “Where’s Quinn?” Members of the _ skiing party looked at each other questioningly. Then they made a series of amazed gasping sounds as there came a sharp scream from another room. Every hight went out. : Kane, sliding by the skis ranged along the wall, heard the detective shout: “The safe! Someone’s at the safe! Closing it! The lights go off when it’s closed.” In that awful moment of darkness, followed by the terrified scream of a woman; Kane’s fingers closed about a pair of skis by the door. He was tip- toeing forward when the lights flashed on again, just as suddenly as they had winked out. The detective exclaimed: “Now the safe door’s closed again.” There came a sound of running steps, @ woman’s voice crying hys- intruder barked: terically: “It’s gone. The necklace!” The room became a bedlam. Men and women jumped up, ran about shouting questions in utter confusion. But despite the commotion there were two in the room who were utterly calm—Kane and the detective. The detective, looking very hard at Kane, thundered: ‘Quiet. Every- body quiet.” The noise subsided somewhat; the room became partly still. Then from the landing on the stairs came the sound of someone furiously dialing the telephone. A woman’s 33 voice shouted: ‘‘Police! Mr. Sanford’s house has been robbed.” Silently Kane cursed the woman for a prowling, meddling fool. The detective, his keen, hard eyes darting about the room, said: “Sit down—all of you.” Then as his eyes rested on Kane: “You, too!” Kane’s lips twisted in a thin smile. His thoughts turned swiftly to the neck- lace in his: pocket, the bodies on the kitchen floor. In that moment, stand- ing there by the door with the detec- tive’s hard glare upon him, he knew he would have to kill the man. And the fingers of his hand flexed involun- tarily. There was no other way out. Some- thing in the detective’s manner told him plainer than any words that could be said that the detective was fully apprized of the situation. No doubt the detective had been sent there to watch Quinn—to do the very thing that Kane had told the visitors that Kane was there for. The twisted smile still on his lips, Kane’s fingers plucked at the butt of his automatic in his eoat pocket. All he had to do was to turn his wrist ever so lightly downward and the gun barrel would point directly at the detective’s heart. And his fingers were slowly, surely closing about the gun butt when an- other scream was heard, this time from the back of the house—the kitchen. Again members of the skiing party were thrown into a shocked silence. A voice, startled, high-pitched, said: “‘What’s happened ?” Kane’s eyes, now filled with a mur- derous gleam, slid toward the kitchen door. He cursed the red-haired girl for prying as she ran shoeless into the room, her blue eyes wide, staring. ‘“He’s dead! Quinn! Somebody else, too!” The detective never turned, but kept his eyes glued on Kane. Sudden- ly there was the sound of three swift reports—from Kane’s gun. And the murderous gleam in Kane’s reddish COMICLOO S CO