10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 85: what you’re looking at

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

—BETTER THAN BULLETS————— - the empty pottle in his lap. I made shut accidentally. A breeze would do -__- gure, though, that none of my finger- __ prints was on it. Then I slid out. The ~—s motor was making a soft purring == noise. It would run for a pretty long _—s time, all night, I guess, because the tank was about half full. _~—~——s "Fhe garage doors worked on pulleys ——s and I fixed it to look as if they had that. ’'d made sure of it before I de- _--_—s eded._ on this little idea. aE Carbon monoxide. As effective as a .45 aes through a man’s ticker and a whole lot more subtie. I went into the house through the back door. Cherry was waiting for ‘Mme in the kitchen. “It’s done,” I said. “Max, Max.” She. gave a little squeal and came into my arms. “Is he —is he—” “Not yet. Soon.” She was trembling and it wasn’t from fear. I held her close. She wasn’t a large girl; she reached only to my chin. I put my mouth against her soft, dark hair. Her body was smooth, pli- ant, electric, to my touch. My head began to swim from her perfume. It had been this way from that very = first night at the Yacht Club dance — when we found ourselves out of sight = under the dock piling. That was when eS it had started. _ I had kissed Cherry shen and it knocked me with the impact of a _--~----s demolition bomb. Her, too. She went for me, big. The sea spray was like a _ damp caress against our faces and she hung onto me. I kissed her again, es She giggled, a short nervous sound, and looked up at me. “Max, I never _ thought you cared. And you Ned’s _ friend all the time.” ~ Zee always liked you, Cherry,” I said roughly. “hen what are we waiting for?” : She ‘stood up on her toes and her oe oe ee curled around my neck and her slender fingers played with my hair. ee ao Bon 5 it what you ao meptrictic at ? “yy Oi i aS WG traction, chemistry, anything. I = couldn’t figure it out. I stopped trying after the first few days. F COURSE it couldn’t go on like that forever. Ned was in the : way. I had to get rid of him. It would = have been easy enough just to run a eh why) 7 ies ad away, the two of us, Cherry and I, - but then there was that little item of a Ned’s insurance. A twenty-five thou- sand dollar policy. Fully paid up. You can’t sneeze at a stack of hay like that. I spoke to Cherry about it. We looked at all the angles. That was part of our relationship, no pretense. Well, we decided to cash in on that policy. That’s why Ned Oliver was out in his car now, filling his lungs with car- bon monoxide. I unwound Cherry’s arm from my neck, saying: “There’ll be plenty of time later, honey. I’ve got to get out of here now. You got a good grip on yourself? You know what you’ve got to do.” | She nodded and her dark eyes were wide and round. She went over to the tap and got a glass of water and took a smal] box of tablets from the cab- inet and swallowed one. Cherry was subject to headaches. I had a suspi- cion she took those tablets because there was a drop of snow in them. She came back and repeated my in- structions. She knew what she had to do all right. She was letter perfect. In the morning, worried because Ned hadn’t returned all night, she would go to the garage and discover his dead — body. She would call the doctor, no cops, just the doctor. And he would do the rest. I kissed her again and ducked out the kitchen door and walked a mile across the wooded fields where I caught a bus back to town. That night = I slept like a rock. Well, it worked out fine. Just like we planned. The doctor called the police and the police called the coroner and he called it death by iae idental means. The in- ompany sent Cherry a check