10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 54: what you’re looking at

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

:) " . he NAST ry dick nay ih Os eg WG) ) Vib edd A a1) | : ae ; ec Pies i . Ay Pe Fan te Ws? Crea Aree lee DN W ae ra, | iv TaN ote BA AEOAG Me ne BF ia Fy om. p ' : A } Wit years and knew every corner and shadow of the place. He especially disliked the Aztec Room. There were too many life-size statues; too many of those once blood-soaked sacrificial altars. He usually took time to brand his employers as wacks because they assembled these assorted horrors. He entered the Aztec Room and, as usual, hurried toward the call box at the far end of it. Gorman glanced apprehensively at some of the huge stone gods. Halfway across the room he stopped and stared. There was a feeble light in the center of the room, It cast more shadows than light, but he noticed that something had changed. The Aztec god known by some fan- tastic, unpronounceable name, was one of Gorman’s pet hates. It was a weird thing, seated cross-legged upon a block of stone. Its hands were out- stretched, palms cupped upwards as if in supplication. Usually those palms were empty, but there seemed to be some foreign object nestled in them now. Gorman walked closer and gulped. The giant stone god seemed to be leering down at him, He stepped up to it, reached into his pocket and drew. out a flashlight. Its beam cen- tered on the cupped hands and the object they held. It seemed to be some kind of miniature statue. Gor- man had never noticed that before. He reached out and touched the thing. It was rounded and moved slightly. Gorman gave a low ery of surprise. It was a statue. A small, cleverly sculptured head. A man’s head. What made Gorman gasp was the fact that the work was so care- fully done that he instantly recog- nized the original of this stone head. T WAS an exact copy of the fea- tures of. Felix Kent, one of the . five men° who maintained this mu- seum. He brought the beam of his flash closer and tilted the head so that it rested on the neck. Gorman removed his cap, ran fingers through ? his coarse grey hair and won why the devil anyone should have — taken the pains to sculpture a head like this and then deliberately make a hole directly between the eyes. ~ He picked the thing up to study it at still closer range. That hole be-— < tween the eyes was discolored. It — seemed to have a small. halo of red i and inside this were darker marks. “Why,” Gorman said aloud and : jumped at the sound of his own voice, - “it looks like somebody shot the statue right through the head.” He knew the thing didn’t belong there so he carried it with him and after putting in his duty call, walked — slowly toward the office, Maybe he ought to tell someone about this; Felix Kent, most of all. Gorman sat down to think. Men like Felix Kent, and the others who owned this mu- seum, were wealthy and important people. They had little time to fool around with such things as a report from their watchman. What, Gorman asked himself, was the thing doing in the hands of that Aztec god anyhow? His mind clicked suddenly. His lower jaw dropped a notch and slow fear began to burn in his eyes. The Aztec god’s history was a pe- culiar one. Gorman knew all about most of the objects in the museum, but this god had the most terrible background of them all. Centuries be- fore, it was worshiped by men who had advanced far beyond the civiliza- tion of their day. They regarded this stone image as the representative of vengeance. It was their ants and jury. When one of the tribe Karate a crime, a small image of the malefac- tor was created, placed in the hands of this god and left there. If the man was guilty, he committed suicide. There was no escape. It was suicide | —or the more terrible vengeance of the god. Gorman jumped up and seized the telephone. His fingers shook so badly that he spent twice as much time as pe Le a Fibula on AER da pO Dee UP eh ee |