10-Story Detective, March 1941 — page 94: what you’re looking at

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

92 “That’s what Clem Daly must have meant,” he muttered, “when he told Rita that he was going to make money—heaps and heaps of it. The filthy swine! He took advantage of his job here as watchman in order to store the stolen silk until he could dispose of it. Never did like Daly.” “But who killed him?” Craig asked. “If Rita didn’t— Could Tim have done it? Was all his terror and ghost talk a clever stunt to—” “Listen!” Phelps whispered sud- denly. A queer scream echoed shrilly high over their heads. It sounded like the high-pitched wail of a woman. Masked by the drum of the rain and the howls of the wind, it whimpered unevenly, horribly. “The tower!” Craig gasped. “The roof of the tower!’ Together they rushed to the closed door set flush in the slanting eaves. Phelps’ hand threw it swiftly open. It was pitch-dark inside the steep tower. But their eyes, accustomed to the gloom, could make out the shadowy wooden steps that wound aloft in a dusty spiral to the unseen top of the tower, forty feet above their heads. High above the sound of the gale they could still hear that shrill, screaming wall. It stopped suddenly as Phelps raced up the steps, closely followed by the panting form of the bulky Craig. A closed door barred their way at the top. “Stay here,” Phelps whispered. “If he gets by me and tries to blast his way down the stairs—blow him apart!” | His own gun jutted grimly in his grasp. With a quick wrench he threw the door open and sprang outside on the open roof of the tower. “Did you get him, Dave?” Craig roared. “Is he out there?” “No!” Phelps’ puzzled voice shout- ed thinly. The wind whipped the 10-STORY DETECTIVE——_—————___——— sound away and made it hardly audible. “Come on out here for a second.”’ RAIG ducked his head to the wind and sprang out on the parapet. Rain slanted at him in blind- ing sheets that stung like hail. The wind was a great clutching hand that buffeted at the sheriff. It slapped him dizzily sideways, whirled him so that he could scarcely breathe on the exposed platform of the tower. To his amazement, he could see — only the tall figure of the coast guardsman. Except for Phelps and himself, there was nothing living or dead on the tower top. Air and beach —even the foaming surge of the dis- tant surf—were completely blotted out Jy the driving fury of the storm. “Could—could he have thrown the body off—and jumped ?” Craig asked, his face streaming with rain. “This thing is madness.” He fought his way back to the shelter of the doorway. His voice roared indistinctly. “Only an angel—or a sailor—could get away from a tower like this, without break- ing his neck.” “Eh? What’s that?” Phelps whirled in the blackness, his face a peering blur. “A sailor? Of course! We’ve been blind fools!” He was staring upward over his head at the steel rigging that held the metal stanchions of the search- light housing. A wolfish gleam came into his wide eyes. He whirled and dashed for the doorway, almost hurl- ing Craig down the winding stairs in his fierce eagerness. “Quick! We’ve got to get down- stairs and out—out on the beach!” “Huh? Did—did you see him?” “I saw the block,” Phelps howled, his voice a mere thread in the roaring wind. “That scream we heard a min- ute ago was the squeak of a pulley in a block! It’s fastened to the brace-rods of the searchlight housing. The mur- derer lowered himself and the corpse with a block and tackle. Then he must have shaken his damned sailor knot comiicboook CO