15 Story Detective, April 1950 — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

Two’s Company—Three’s a Shroud been fired out. of a cannon. I came back about the same way. I caromed into Moore, and nearly fell to the floor. I guess movie doors are thinner. With both of us working, it finally cracked, I went in fast, and stopped short. The bright horseshoe of lights around the dressing table mirror glared unwinkingly at me—and Dawn Layne. From where she lay sprawled on the floor, her sight- less eyes glared back at them. Behind me, Joe Moore gasped, “Good Lord!” There was a tiny hole, so small that only the thin, erratic string of blood en- abled me to find it, right between her cold blue eyes. I straightened, trying to con- trol my voice. “Tell the manager no one’s to leave. I'll call the cops.” _ His face was pale and his legs rubbery as he hurried out. I closed the splintered door, and stepped to the pay phone beside it. I got Mike Sheil, in the Homicide Bureau, It was almost like old times. I had called him often, when I was working for the Gazette. “Maybe you'll want to send someone out, Mike—maybe you'll want to come yourself. I’ve got a murder for you.” “Who?” where ?” “It’s the Prince Club. The singer, Dawn Layne. Dead in her dressing room, with a hole in her head.” “Lock the joint up,” he ordered. “T’ll have a prowl car there right away. And don’t fool around!” I hung up, and felt a little sick. Death by violence has always done that to me. I might have stayed on a police beat until I was walking on my beard, but I’d still have felt that way. It never settles any- thing. I had been hired to protect her. The failure was a miserable knot in my stomach and I felt a dull, growing anger at something I might identify later. I was in it, now, up to my neck, There would he asked calmly, “and 19 be no rest until I had pulled myself out. There wasn’t much point in tramping back in there. Dawn would wait for Mike Sheil. But I went, anyway. CHAPTER THREE A Red-hot Clue twelve feet square, with the dressing table on the side opposite the door. A long, curtained closet, filled with costumes, ranged along one side. In one corner was a wash-bowl. There were a couple of chairs, and a screen at the left. The key still was in the lock—from the inside. That’s when I first realized how tough this one could be. There was no other entrance. And unless Dawn had swallowed the weapon, it couldn’t have been suicide. I stared down at the dressing table, littered with jars and makeup stuff and trinkets—and a bare-faced envelope. I didn’t touch it, but I didn’t have to, to guess it was empty. I looked under the table, and saw the fountain pen. I could add that one up without an abacus. She either had been writing, or intending to write. There was a chance the note was under her body. I was toying with the forbidden idea of trying to find out when I heard people coming down the hall. I stepped outside as Joe Moore arrived with a troop of everything but cavalry. There were chorus girls, the Norris Twins, Countess Von Berolberg, two guys who looked like genteel bouncers, a few other people and a fat man who said he was Portola, the manager. They were making so much racket it sounded like bargain day in a basement. I could hardly understand Portola—but he wasn’t making good sense, anyway. He kept wiping his pudgy hands across the front of his dinner jacket like a baker [ WAS a box-like room, perhaps EOPMICLOOO KS) (E@)