10-Story Detective, March 1941 — page 89: what you’re looking at

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

PHANTOM HIDEOUT————_————————87 Or did it come from Seaside Inn? High up on the landside, Phelps could barely see the half-invisible frame structure of the Seaside Inn, with its tall lighthouse tower pointed like a darkened finger against the sky. No woman would be there—no one but Clem Daly, the watchman. The glassed windows of the rambling dance hall were closed now and boarded up. The summer season was over. Like a crusted, empty shell the Seaside Inn would loom there through the coming autumn and winter. The first warm days of spring brought back again the rhythm of dance mu- sic, the elink of liquor glasses, the laughter of gay couples. But tonight it was black and empty, except for the drowsing watchman and the tiny glow of his lamp in the distant kitchen. Suddenly Phelps swore uneasily. The light—it wasn’t there. Not a sion of Clem Daly’s lamp. The coast guardsman turned sharp- ly toward the deserted dance pavilion. But his rubber boots had hardly scuffed the sand when he stopped short, mouth agape. “Help! Help, help!’ A woman’s voice. It was wailing with shuddering terror from the open beach ahead of Phelps. Like a tall rubber-sheathed ghost himself, Phelps rushed up the beach, kicking the sand in dark, soggy spurts. His eyes, shielded by the stiff visor of his water-proofed hat, peered grimly ahead. There was no further cry to guide him, but he knew in- stinctively where the woman would be. She must be huddled under the bathing sheds in a feeble effort to get away from the wild lash of the storm. With swinging haste he threw the - yellow flare of his lantern on the dry sand under the tight flooring of the bathing shed. A girl—he saw her. Phelps recog- nized her with a groan of deep con- cern. It was Rita Daly, the sister of the watchman of the Seaside Inn. He dropped to one knee in the sand and pillowed her slack head in his dripping lap. “Rita! Are you all right? Rita!” She lay there limp, speechless, like a corpse. Her tangled golden hair was like a wet halo; her soaked dress clung to her inert body. She was alive. But what had happened to her? Why was she out here in the midnight darkness of a storm-drenched beach? As Phelps bent toward her face his nostrils quivered suddenly. He could smell the faint reek of liquor on her lovely red lips. He shook his head with dull puzzlement. He had known Rita from childhood. He knew that she never touched the stuff. What did it all mean? The thought of Clem Daly, her brother, crossed his mind and made his face darken with a grim anger. Was Clem kehind this? Clem, her sul- len and erratic brother, whom she had mothered and cared for and de- fended almost as long as Phelps could remember? Gently the coast guardsman began chafing the ice-cold cheeks. The pale eyelids quivered; stark eyes stared up at him with glazed incomprehension. “Rita!” he whispered. “What hap- pened ?” “Dave!”” Weakly her arms crept around his neck. “Oh, Dave, Dave! I don’t know what I—I—” Suddenly she pushed him away from her. Per eyes went stony with a look of blind horror. “Blood,” she whispered. “I saw Clem’s dead face—covered with blood. Have I been dreaming it?” Lightning streaked the sand with a sudden flare. It lit up for an in- stant the driving sheets of rain and the white tumble of roaring surf, smashing itself in wild spray on the beach. “How did you get here?’ Phelps asked with gentle insistence. “I—I don’t know. I woke up in the sand under the timbers here. I was all alone and terribly frightened. CORNICLOOOLKK (C@