5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 28: what you’re looking at

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

28 noting there were four separate cate- gories of disbursements listed, the four being given no designations other than A, B, C and D. A random check of some of the expenses listed showed under A such items as “folding chairs,” “ten- thousand markers,” “five hundred num- ber cards” and “piano repair,” under B such things as “turf news” and “tele- phone service,” under C almost entirely purcnaee of liquors and beer and under “three-dozen decks cards,” “five- dozen dice” and “five-hundred chips.” All four categories contained a number of disbursements to persons listed by name, most of them appearing at reg- ular intervals for the same amount each time. These Tony guessed to be salaries. Rapidly he glanced over the names listed, hoping to find that of Mayor Ainslie or Chief Ward Murphy, but none were names he had ever seen be- fore. He closed the ledger and went on to the bottom drawer. The lower drawer disclosed a half- carton of cigarettes, two bottles of Bourbon and a small wooden rack with several round slots in its which held three shot cups and three hi-ball glasses. Tony uncorked and sniffed at each bottle of whisky. Then he poured a drop from each into his palm and tasted it. He frowned, replaced both bottles, lifted out the glass rack and peered into each glass. All seemed to be clean. Abandoning the filing cabinet, he went to work on the desk. He found what he was looking for at the rear of the second drawer he examined. The small box bore no label, but it contained five papers of crystalline powder. Shoving the box into his pocket, Tony crossed the room and was just reaching for the light switch when the door sud- denly opened. “T thought I heard breaking glass up here,” Harry Short said in a conversa- tional tone over the .45 automatic in his hand. “T’ll have to learn to be more quiet,” Tony said politely. VII Harry SHORT moved into the room and circled toward the desk with- FIVE DETECTIVE NOVELS MAGAZINE out allowing his gun muzzle to waver from its bead on Tony’s nose. Jack, the red-haired cashier, followed the yellow- faced man through the door. “Have a chair,” invited Short, indi- cating one of the straight-backs with his gun. : peeieiey the little man seated him- self. His eyes still on Tony, Short reached down with his left hand and drew all the way open the drawer in which Tony had found the box of powders. Momentarily he dropped his eyes to it, immediately raised them again and pushed the draw- er shut. He smiled slightly. “Heard they had an autopsy on that bandit,” he said. Tony said, “You must have an in with the police.” The bookmaker raised one eyebrow. “A councilman can find out most every- thing, if he goes to the bother.” His pleasant expression faded and his voice became ominous. “Hand it over.” “What?” Tony asked, then decided pretended ignorance would only delay the inevitable, and started to reach for his pocket. “The box, Shorty,” Harry said. The little man’s movement toward his pocket stopped and his face flushed at the nickname. “Come and get it, you yellow-faced ape.” The red-headed Jack casually stepped behind Tony’s chair. The little man’s head turned to follow him warily, then snapped back toward Short when the bookmaker rasped, “Eyes front, or I'll blow your head off.” At the same moment a gun barrel crashed down on Tony’s head.... A surging, then diminishing roar, such as the breaking of surf against a cliff, awakened Tony. For nearly a min- ute he lay in throbbing pain, dully try- ing to figure out how the ocean could have moved itself to southern Missouri. Then he realized the noise was all with- in his head. He waited with closed eyes until the pain subsided to a persistent ache, then opened them to equal dark- ness. He lay on the rear floor of a speeding sedan, he discovered, and his hands were bound behind him so tightly they were numb to the shoulders. His legs were connicboo SS (CO)