10-Story Detective, September 1941 — page 104: what you’re looking at

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

102 Then he started to whirl. Started to duck back toward the drug store. ANCHEH’S knees seemed to give, even before he completed the turn. He went down slowly, still twist- ed around. There was no sound. Just Lance, crumpling up slowly, as if he had suddenly grown very tired. But Steve, pulled half out of his seat, a strange sound rasping in his throat, saw, before the headlights beam of the swinging sedan flicked off him, that Lance’s face was shocked and drawn. Steve was out of the car before it had stopped skidding under locked brakes. He pounded across the street to the huddled figure on the curb, bucking the stinging snow that bit into his hard face. His right hand was jammed in his coat pocket, tight about the cold butt of his Luger, and his eyes were shiny and hot with the urge to kill. But he saw no one about; the inter- . section was dark, deserted. The driv- ing snow glinted coldly in the pale light from the drug store windows. Steve reached the huddled figure, bent over him. Lance was lying on his side, his legs drawn up in front of him. His crumpled felt lay a foot away: His coat flapped open in the driving wind, and Steve saw the dark bloodstains that spoiled the stripes of his blue shirt. He lifted Lance’s head up in his arms, his gaze moving from the empty street, the dark building fronts, to Lance’s gray, pinched face. He said: “Lance—” His voice was choked up, ragged. “Lance—” The thin figure stirred in his arms, made a convulsive movement. Gray eyes opened, stared with glazed ex- pression into Steve’s knotted face. A faint light finally penetrated the murkiness of them. “Steve—” Lance murmured, his head lolling. “Steve—Redtop cab— Jan—Jand—” He died without finishing, without a tremor to show life was gone. His 10-STORY DETECTIVE mouth remained parted, and his eyes stared up at Steve, gray and cold— and without depth. Steve looked down at that thin, pinched face, a lump raw and harsh in his throat. He didn’t glance up as Keene pounded up to them. The dap- per D.A. man stood on the balls of his feet, his right hand in his pocket, his eyes swiveling from the deserted in- tersection down to the dead man in Steve’s arms. His voice was quick, sharp, with a strange rasp to it. “That memo of Kelzeck’s, Steve? Has he got it?” Steve shrugged. He seemed to pull himself out of a cold, deep pit. “I don’t know.” He let Lance down, searched through his pockets, with fingers that were numb, unfeeling. Keene stood over them, on his toes, his hands deep in his coat pocket. From inside the drug store a radio ecrooned softly. A girl’s young voice lifted in quick, unreserved laughter. Steve’s jaw went rock hard. Evi- dently no one in the drug store had heard anything, either. somewhere out of the stormy night death had struck silently and vicious- ly, at Lance Boardman, private detec- tive. HEY had been kids together, in Fairhaven, a small coast town in Massachusetts. They had grown up on the same street. Steve had always been bigger, heavier than Lance. He had sort of looked out for him, taken his side in school scraps and gang fights. They had left the small town together, two restless youngsters with an itch for the brighter lights of the City. Lance, restless always, had drift- ed from reporting for the Hvening Times to advertising, finally to run- ning a one-man private detective agency. a ; Steve had joined the Force, after a year knocking about at odd jobs. That had been six years back. He had worked his way up the hard way. He had seen less of Lance, during those years. But the bond between CONNMUG NOOK Yet from. (©