Pulp Fiction, 1941 · page 88 of 116
10-Story Detective, March 1941 — page 88: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "Phantom Hideout" by Stanley King This page is an illustrated story opening from a pulp magazine. The dramatic black-and-white illustration (credited to James A. Cernst) depicts a coast guardsman named Dave Phelps during a violent storm, apparently struggling with or pursuing a caped figure on a dark beach. The prose beneath describes Phelps investigating an eerie nighttime cry on a gale-swept beach, uncertain whether he heard a woman's terrified scream or merely the wind. The story promises a "macabre mystery" involving cryptic clues.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Coast guardsman Dave Phelps had discovered many of the sea’s strange secrets. But now he was grappling with a macabre mystery— in which crimson clues spattered the trailtoa... By Stanley King N THE howling blackness of the I gale-swept beach the faint cry sounded eerie, ghostlike. Dave Phelps held his lantern high and tried to peer through black sheets of rain. peeAMES A.LKNGT His long slicker whipped like a sail against his high-booted legs. The beach was a_ pitch-black smear. For an instant a jagged streak of lightning hung like a forked branch in the midnight sky. Then it was gone, leaving the coast guards- man’s eyes dazed and blinking. He listened for the cry again. It had sounded like the terrified wail of a woman. Was it only his imagina- tion, a trick of the screaming wind? COMmiclboo S CO