10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

S 'e———_——__—__——_——10- STORY DETECTIVE ing a very mysterious murder uptown. The rub-out was good for the authorities as it took place in Woodlawn where a big cemetery was handy. We were both in back of Joe’s Cigar Store on Lafayette St. trying to find out if the dice games there. was crooked, when we get a call from headquarters. Hambone answers the phone, then hangs up and says: “Somebody would git murdered just when I’m behind seven bucks.” We go uptown to Woodlawn, and final- ly arrive at a big frame house with lots ef trees around it. There are some cops already there stealing grapes off a vine. They say the corpus delicti has not been moved an inch and is like they first found it. “Now, Alvin,” Hambone says to me, “Here is the chance to observe how a veal murder investigation should be in- vestigated, as after all you are just a beginner. I’ll explain the fine points as I go along. Let’s go inside, huh?” “IT imagine it is necessary,” I says. “Even I know that much.” We go in and meet a widow and the D,.A.’s appraiser of the defunct. A pooch walks out into the hall, looks at us funny, walks around in a circle, and then goes back into the living room again. It is an English bulldog, big enough to be saddled and used for a horse. “How did anybody git in an’ murder somebody with that around?” Hambone asks the widow who was the wife of the late Sylvanus Fritchy. “That is what I would like to know, among other things,” the bereft helpmate says between sniffs. “Won’t you come in?” We enter the Fritchy living room, which is quite gloomy as the furniture al- most came over on The Mayflower. There is the victim in a big chair. On the floor, at his feet, is a bronze statue about three feet high. It is of a mythical character named Mercury, who was a messenger for the gods and has wings on his feet. It is plain to see he brought Sylvanus bad news. “Don’t touch nothin’, Alvin,” Hambone says quickly. ‘How long has he been de- parted?” he asks the expert on such things. “Practically a whole day,” the M.D. says. “Some person tapped him with the statue.” “How come you just found him?” Ham- _ bone asks Mrs, Fritchy. “Or wasn’t you two speakin’ or somethin’? Didn’t the dog even let out a peep?” : Mrs. Fritchy says she’ was visiting friends in Tenafly, N. J., over the week end, and just got back that very morning to discover she was a beneficiary. Maybe the neighbors heard Mr. Deeds bark and we could ask them. Mr. Deeds, she ex- plains, is the pedigreed bone punisher. He and Sylvanus were inseparable. “Mr. Deeds always accompanied Syl when my husband went out into the coun- try to capture lepidoptera,” the widow says. “Lep—leopardop—” Hambone scratch- es his head and looks at me. “You hear what she said, Alvin? There ain’t no leopards in this country.” “I forgot I was conversing with police- men,” Mrs. Fritchy says, looking down her nose of which she had plenty. “They are butterflies. Sylvanus pursued them as a hobby and has quite a collection. He even appeared on a radio program. His Citheronia regalis is definitely out of this world, yet he trapped it on a bush in Yon- kers. And his Apantesis virgo—”’ “Alvin,” Hambone says. ‘You bring the aspirin ?” Mrs. Fritchy goes on and says Sylvan- us was retired and living off royalties on a rattle-proof window blind. Hambone tells her he has enough of the corpse’s back- ground and to let us all find out who knocked him off. “Maybe somebody else also chased them leppy—what you said—and maybe wanted that parenthesis vertigo of Fritchy’s.” “Why, Sylvanus did have a competi- tor,” the widow says, her eyes popping. “Herman Zelch had been pestering Syl- vanus for weeks to swap him the Cither- onia rvegalis for a Uthesia bella and an Actias luma. But Herman would not kill even a butterfly without feeling bad.” “Okay,” Hambone says. “But Sylvan- us was not a butterfly. I knew a guy once who cried every time he found a robin’s egg that fell out of a tree, but it was me who arrested him for cuttin’ the throats of three citizens from ear to ear and emptying their pocketbooks. We’ll case the joint now, Alvin, snap pitchers, and dust for prints. First off, we'll look for marks of human paws on the bronze skull-buster.” . : “Wouldn’t the criminal wear gloves?” —