10-Story Detective, June 1945 — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

14—__——_—__—_—_—_—_—_—__10-STORY DETECTIVE the signal, like the song over the radio.” “That's right,” Eben said. “When they were under Markin’ 8 hypnotic spell, they were instructed that sight of a red iob- ster was the sign for them to carry out the post-hypnotic suggestion. I sup- pose he used it because there was a lobster tattooed on his arm and his subjects were acutely aware of it while he was hypno- tizing them. . “Anyway, the lobster was hard luck for him, I could vaguely connect the tob- ster Dorothy Gibson had received with the three other Boiled Lobsters of my col- lege days. Later events made me sure, but it was a tossup between Dr. Finch and Frank Markin until I found that Finch had been murdered.” Eben drew deeply on the cigar and then studied the tip. “Markin’s second bad break was that Dorothy Gibson hap- pened to be a patient of Dr. Finch. I’ve heard that sometimes nerve patients are ° otism. Probably Finch hypnotized her. ile under the spell she spoke about Markin. We’ll never really know, but it’s sure that Finch got the idea that Markin was up to no good, That’s ‘ what he wanted to discuss with George Priddy after lunch. “Chances are that Finch questioned Markin before seeing Priddy. And then my visit to his book store told Markin cured through hy that I knew something as well, The basic idea of his murder business was to keep the crimes as far from him as possible. Markin picked his executioners from chance visitors to his store. He probably drew them into discussion there, then tricked them into hypnotism. The other three Boiled Lobsters could connect the celluloid lobsters with the tattooed lob- sters on our arms. He’d be suspected and investigated. “Markin was desperate and in a hurry. He saw a good chance to eliminate the three of us at one time, though he didn’t think he had time to rig up an explosion. So he sent Art Yard to use his gun. I killed Yard before he could finish more than a third of the job.” oe why did Finch run away?” Swick ked., “He didn’t run away. He had no evi- dence against Markin. He ran to get his gun and maybe scare the truth out of him, Markin lured him up to the nurse’s apartment and stabbed him. That left me. He was afraid to handle me himself because I was better at that kind of thing than he was. So he went back to his re- mote-control method of- murder. “It seemed likely that sooner or later I would go up to Dr. Finch’s office. So he went up there and hypnotized the nurse to take me up to her place whenever she saw me.” There was a silence, Swick rolled a pen- cil between his palms and then looked up at Eben with a crooked smile. “So you killed Frank Markin, and before that Art Yard, with a weapon you possessed ille- gally.” His smile broadened into a fat grin. “Though why should i kick?” Eben Hunt puffed his cigar and rubbed his sleeve over the tattooed fobster. There had been four Boiled Lobsters, he was thinking wearily—four carefree col- lege boys who eighteen years ago drank more than was good for them, And now there was one, (E(o)[Anyicel oeye) (E@)