10-Story Detective, November 1942 — page 81: what you’re looking at

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

— CRIME AINT I had stepped toward the gas stove. Now I spun around, surprised. She was admitting she would pay. Then I noticed the red fingernail polish on the fingers that were still holding the bill. It came to me suddenly that I’d seen something red like that around the handles of the gas stove. I took the bill from her. “You’ll have to have some money by ten in the morning,” I said flatly. I didr’t realize then that she could be thinking of a different kind of payment than I was think- ing of. She sat down and I kept looking at her. There was a strange expression in her eyes that made me feel creepy. I kept thinking of that red fingernail polish and the red stuff I’d seen on the stove. Also I was thinking of a first class railroad ticket to L. A. and a guy who does my kind of work uses every straw he can clutch at. “If you have the money when | come at ten in the morning I won’t tell,” I said. When her faded blue eyes met mine they were fillec with terror. “Tell what?” She just breathed the words. “You were clumsy,” I said. “You just got away with it because the police are too smart to be dumb. They expect suicides in dumps like this. They can’t understand people doing things as clumsy as you did so they didn’t even look. I pointed to the hand- writing on the wall. “That’s your handwriting,” I said, “not the dead man’s. You love your husband but you were willing to put that there and hope you could make him believe some wild story rather than let him learn the truth.” I walked to the window where some rags still were stuffed in the cracks, “and your fingerprints will be found all over these rags.” I was just bluffing. I stooped over to pick up a strip of red cloth near the window. I didn’t even realize she had stood up. Then the flatiron hit me right back of the ear. F you ever did much fighting, you know about being out on your feet. Your body keeps going after your MY BUSINESS 79 mind’s gone blank. But there’s also something just the opposite—a coma. You know what goes on but you’re helpless, you can’t move. I hit the floor, not out cold, but like you are in a coma. Mrs. Jugvale got hysterical. She stood over me shout- ing, “Didn’t Milty Petrott blackmail me enough, the drunken little slob? Sure, I killed him; I’m glad I killed him. I had to keep him from telling Bill I’d been mixed up with racketeers and gunmen.” She was sobbing, in anguish and sheer desperation. “When I met Archie Carpit, I didn’t know he was a gangster. I’d had too much to drink, I made a mistake. And now that Car- pit’s in jail all you little hoodlums that can’t make a living without him follow each other up and try to steal what littie happiness a girl might find. I never saw you, I don’t know how you found out I killed Milty. But I paid Milty plenty. I’ll never pay you a cent. 1’l] kill you too.” The room swayed about me crazily. Her words sounded like soup boiling in some distant kettle. They made a sound that had meaning. But, in my mind, it wasn’t in any definite form. I tried to move my little finger. I put my entire mental and physical force into the effort. But it wouldn’t move. I stopped listening to the wom- an’s crazy ranting. But I kept hear- ing it. I found myself feeling sorry for her, then, realizing, damn it, it was my business to collect ten-eighty. Then I was realizing she had taken me for some second member of some racketeer’s gang. Me, Bo Walker, I was to be the second dead man. These things all got in my mind at one time, each thought separate from the others, and at the same time all jumbled up with them. Then I passed out entirely. I came to lying on the floor. I hadn’t been out long because I could smell the gas. I was too scared at first to realize the gas hadn’t been on !ong enough to do any harm or I wouldn’t have woke up at all. I raised on my DOOLK C©