10-Story Detective, March 1941 — page 93: what you’re looking at

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

PHANTOM HIDEOUT——————————————91 of Clem Daly is hidden in the attic— and his murderer is hidden up there with him. There’s no possible chance that he could have escaped down- stairs again.” “Couldn’t he have sneaked out the back door?” the sheriff asked. “Impossible,” Phelps said. “He went up the stairs—but he never came down again. He’s up im that attic right now.” HE trapdoor in the seeond floor ceiling was directly above the last visible stain in the smeared trail that the killer had left. Phelps blessed the mischance that had caused the cunning murderer to smear his in- attentive shoe in the blood of his victim. The height of the trapdoor puzzled the eager coast guardsman. It was fully twelve feet above the floor. How could the vanishing murderer have scaled that height and carried a dead man with him? There was no sign of chair, table, anything on which he could have climbed. Craig steadied the ladder that Tim had found on the lower floor. Phelps went swiftly up the shaky rungs. The trapdoor was fastened on its upper surface. But a couple of well-aimed shots from Phelps’ gun shattered the light wood and he was able to rip a board away. Reaching up, he un- hooked the fastening and the trap- door swung open. No pistol shot roared in the dark attic as Phelps’ head lifted cautiously through the square opening. His long legs snaked upward out of sight. The faint rasp of a match sounded and there was a yellow gleam of lhght above the opening. “See anything?” Craig called. Phelps’ muffled voice sounded queerly triumphant. “Come on up, Craig! Hurry it up! There’s more than murder to this.” His hands eaught the arms of the ascending sheriff and yanked him in one strong heave through the opening. “Look!” he called. “See here!” The flame of his match showed a dark, wet patch on the bare dusty boards of the attic flooring. “Blood,” Craig muttered. “Fresh blood.” “Right. And there’s the ladder he used. See it? Over there alongside the chimney wall. See how he managed it? He came down from the attic to make his kill. He left the ladder standing under the open trapdoor while he sneaked downstairs. That’s how he was able to get himself and : the eorpse back so neatly.” ‘Where the devil could he have gone?” Craig whispered, his eyes stabbing alertly through the gloomy light from the burning match. “He went through that little door at the end of the eaves,” Phelps said softly. “He couldn’t have gone any- where else. He’s hiding up there in the inn’s tower—that tall lighthouse tower that Ridley built for his fool searchlight display every summer.” The match in Phelps’ fingers sput- tered out and he lit another. Craig struck one and held the flame for- ward. He was tiptoeing toward the small door in the eaves when the sharp whisper of Phelps recalled him. “Look at those piled bales in the corner, sheriff. I ripped one of ’em open. Do you see now what may be behind all this mystery ?” The’ sheriff looked. gasped im a low voice. He stared at the gaping bale that Phelps’ knife had shit open. The name ef the silk mill was plainly decipher- able: Patterson Raw Silk Corpo- ration. The bales were piled four deep almost up to the roof. “Stolen silk,” Craig breathed. “Four truckloads of it stolen on the roads of this county in the last month. Vanished into thin air—stolen and no trace of it ever found. And hidden here all the while, every last ounce of it.’ Phelps’ face looked pale in the yellow glow of the matches that he kept striking with monotoneus regu- larity. “Silk!” he cComiicbook CO