10-Story Detective, November 1942 — page 41: what you’re looking at

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

BIG TOP KILL-RIDE—— laughed. Carny people stick together all right—and Fiero didn’t think I be- longed. Well, that was my fault. Shame at the knowledge that I would never dive again had sealed my lips. I hadn’t talked about my past. But now I came closer and I called up to him. “You better come down, Fiero, or I’m coming up after you. Those cops will figure out sooner or later that it was murder, and someone will take the rap.” “Nobody knows nothing,” said Fiero said. “Go about your business.” “All right,” I told him grimly. “All right—I’ll go about my business.” After all, it had been my business once. I reached for the rungs of the high ladder. IERO stood there above me and watched. I was looking up as I climbed and I saw the mocking ex- pression on his face change. Suddenly, he, too, started to climb. With that quick, graceful, hand-over-hand mo- tion of the professional high-diver’s running ascent, Fiero raced up the high ladder until he reached that tiny platform near the top. There he waited, and I am sure that he thought that my nerve would crack before I ever reached the top of that slender, swaying framework. Each rung that passed under me as I made that running ascent was like a milestone; and the thing that kept me going was the simple thought: “TZ can come down the same way I went I was only ten feet from Fiero when I saw him straighten and tilt his head, there on the little platform. It hadn’t oceurred to me that Fiero would attempt a dive. He was in sports shirt and slacks, not ir tights; and yet I knew from the position of his body that he was going over. I froze on the ladder, not daring to jump him or to make the ladder sway. Only sec- onds later he was gone, a curving flash in empty space. —39 As I gained the platform myself I saw him strike, saw the white flash of spraying water. It would take many precious min- utes to slide and scramble back down that ladder. Fiero would break for the open, run into that cordon of cops outside the show lot. I closed my eyes for a minute. I got the feel of evening air against my face. I made my brain a blank, for thinking terrified me. One minute— one second—there was the good, solid feel of the platform under me. The next second the white ladder was a spinning blur as I curved in the air. I struck the water sprayed and still I had no time to feel relief. I struck out for the side of the tank and opened my eyes, and there was Fiero, half in and half out of the tank of water. His fish eyes goggled and his mouth hung open and for the first time since I had left the hospital I laughed. I spit water out of my mouth and said, “So I’m not carny people, huh?” And I grabbed at Fiero and we fell over the rim together and struck the ground. “Who?” I said to Fiero, and sat on his chest and grabbed a handful of hair on his head and banged his skull to the ground, “who framed Dan Hop- ping? Who helped Stetter frame him? Was it Gus? Was it LaVerne?” He said, “Let us up, will you? I know you now. That was Gabriel’s dive—”’ I said, “All right, I’m Gabriel. You know the whole story. Who put the pinhead on that ride?” “It was LaVerne,” he said. “Stetter made her do it, sure—but it was La- Verne,” he said. “Stetter made her do it, sure—but it was LaVerne. I would- n’t have told nobody but you. You was twelve weeks in the hospital and only a damn fool would have dived in that wind that night—” “Only eleven weeks,” I said. ““Hop- ping didn’t have insurance, did he?” “No,” said Fiero, “but he has now, I'll bet. Only he hasn’t any ride. That would be Stetter’s price for covering Conn 1IOOOLK C©