10-Story Detective Magazine Cover — page 72: what you’re looking at

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

be Ae Pere ey Ky { fag tN a Phen he saw the feet. They stuck out from behind the workbench, toes up. A pair of feet that didn’t match. One of them was a club foot in a great black leather shoe built around the lump of warped bones and flesh. Two steps took Flax around the cor- ner of the bench. He bent over Henske. The old man’s worn face was pallid be- neath a green eyeshade. His breathing barely stirred the blood-soaked denim of his jacket. Flax took Henske’s head im his hand and turned it up toward the light. The dying man’s fiesh was cold as ice. “Henske!” snapped Flax. The eyelids trembled. A glitter showed beneath. “Henske! Who did it?” asked Flax sharply, trying to reach across the wid- ening void between them. The locksmith’s pallid lips moved, He gurgled. The eyelids came up. His gray eyes looked wonderingly at the yellow- haired man bending over him. He lifted the long forefinger of the hand that lay across his chest. “See Hen- ry...” he gasped. “Dust...” FEEBLE forefinger waggled at Flax. Henske’s eyeballs rolled up into his head. He choked on the scarlet arterial blood gushing from his white lips. The heel of his normal foot beat a convulsive tattoo on the floor. The heavy élub foot only rollea a little. Then both feet were still. On the floor under the bench lay a rat- tail file with a wooden handle. It was gummy with blood. Scattered over the floor was a layer of zine filings. Flax stood up. More zinc fil- ings on top of the bench—finger marks through the pile as if Henske had clutched at his work table in falling. The soup frothed up in the pot. Flax turned off the gas. Through the rain- spattered window a white spotlight played suddenly. Flax hit the floor with a curse as it touched the wall behind the dead man’s bench. | Outside he heard a woman’s excited gabble. Flax made the back door on his hands and knees. In the darkness he had to fum- ble with the lateh for an agonizing min- ute that seemed like an hour, before he got it open. Even as he swung out into the damp San Diego winter night, he heard the police crash into the front door of the shop. He dashed across the soggy Bermuda grass in Henske’s backyard and ran headlong into a chicken wire fence try- ing to find the alley. A beam from a police flashlight pricked the darkness. “Hey!” bellowed the cop from the baek doorstep. “Halt!” Flax, cursing himself for a buffoon and a bungler, leaped the fence and ran for it. A hand gun cracked. The slug breezed by his ear and thudded into a telephone pole. Flax didn’t stop. He ran down the alley, doubled back through a neighboring yard and hit the street in front of Hen- ske’s shop while the police whistles shrilled in the alley behind. | He slid in behind ‘ae wheel of his bat- tered coupe and kicked the starter. The motor coughed once and began to purr. He was half a block away before the po- lice car roared from the curb in pursuit. The blinding white stab of the squad car’s spot danced in his rear vision mir- ror for a moment, but he shook it by ducking ahead of a lumbering furniture van and shuttling in and out of a maze of suburban streets. By the time he straightened out and headed for Kandelin’s hotel, he had lost the squad car for good. He chewed the bitter cud of facts. A two grand fee and 1 murder rap hung on a dying locksmith’s mumbled words. “See Henry. Dust,” he grunted aloud. “Now what the hell does that mean?” Flax needed that two grand the way a horse needs oats. And he didn’t need a murder rap. A six-weeks-old baby left at the door of a church. A rich girl’s baby. And a brass key in the baby’s basket that led straight to the bench of a dying lock- smith... | Maybe by playing dumb he eould squeeze a fact or two out of Kandelin. He was the kind of guy who handed over a fat retaining fee and then shut up like a clam, expecting you to read minds right and left. Flax eased in to the curb at the side door of Kandelin’s hotel. Before he got out he took a good look for cops. This was no time to be falling over harness men. Comicbooks (E(0)