10-Story Detective, March 1941 — page 83: what you’re looking at

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

———_—_—_—__—_—_————_-CASE OF THE LIVING CORPSE——————————1 TSD “This is it,” he said. The window lock was broken, and it occurred to Kendall that these two had been here before. Ed Garvey banged the window open noisily. Kendall jumped and said: “Hey, you don’t have to wake up the whole neighborhood.” “Carthers’ son ain’t home,” retort- ed Garvey. “‘He’s on the West coast, looking for his old man. Get inside and let me do the worrying.” Kendall had the satchel of “work- ers” in his hand when he climbed over the sill into the dark, musty room. His every nerve was taut. It was bad enough to be here with a gun at his back—but Garvey, living all these months under dread of being discov- ered alive, was a dozen times more dangerous. Kendall wondered if he had taken the wrong way to handle this. He didn’t like to think of what probably would take place in the house. He reached in his back pocket for the flashlight he habitually carried there, but changed his mind when he saw that Garvey and the girl had en- tered the room. Garvey had a flash- light in his hand and was playing it on the south wall. HE wall was paneled. Garvey slid his pudgy finger to a spot along a molding. There was a whirring sound as a panel slid back, revealing the face of a wall safe. Garvey spoke sharply: “Get going, Mister.” Kendall licked his lips, striving to recall some of the things he had heard about safe-cracking. He ran his sweaty fingers over the cool, smooth face of the safe. The box looked im- pregnable as a bank vault, so he turned to Garvey, who was behind the glare of the flashlight. “Better put this off until you can get Sweeny,” he suggested. “He’s more hep to these up-to-date jobs.” “Cribs are cribs,” growled Garvey, “and I’m not a guy to be trifled with. Blow the box or have me blow your gut. Take your choice.” Kendall shrugged heavily. “I only thought I’d put you wise to what we’re up against. What do you want out of the safe anyhow?” “A dead man’s face. Get going.” “A dead man’s—what?’ Kendall felt the back of his neck prickle. “Quit horsing around,” Garvey snapped impatiently. “If you hadn’t shoved Sweeny around, you wouldn’t be in this spot.” Kendall sucked in a quivering breath. It was incredible that the em- balmed face of a dead man could be in the safe. Yet Garvey seemed sure of what he was doing. It brought that fluttering back to Kendall’s stomach as he bent down and opened the bag of ‘‘workers.”’ Sheila Fox was in the shard of light, watching him, her face strained with worry. Kendall studied her a second, wondering, then he took a Diamond Special drill from the bag and turned back to the safe. The safe was a bleak wall in front of him. From the moment he had left Sweeny’s shack, he had been trying to work out a stunt to trap Ed Garvey. Now, it seemed, it was too late for anything. He paused in his drilling and glanced at the bit. Garvey rasped: stalling for now?” “The drill isn’t biting right,” said Kendall, and began again. This time he felt the bit grip into the steel. It began grinding in hun- grily, and he strove to hold the drill back. He didn’t know the correct move after the drill got all the way through. Garvey, with a knowledge of such things, would catch on and— Loosening his grip on the drill, Ken- dall stopped to turn to him. “T’ll have to try again, over a little. A rivet’s stopping the drill.” “What are you “Oh,” sneered Garvey, “so that’s. the way it is.” Kendall’s eyes tried to penetrate the light. “I don’t get you.” EO PMIE OOOL< (E@)