5 Detective Novels Magazine — page 101: what you’re looking at

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

COMPLIMENTS OF A FIEND “Skip it,” I told him. “I’ll go.” I’d told him I’d go, before I’d learned where the job was, and I wouldn’t back out just because—because I’d intended never to go back to Haverton. After all, I told myself, there wasn’t any real rea- son why I shouldn’t. Seven years is a long time. Riding on the train, I tried to remem- ber everything I knew about Walter Reeder. Up to seven years ago, he hadn’t been an out-and-out nut. A little eccentric, smart, and with a whale of a temper that let go only once in a long while, but made him into a completely different person when it did let go. Ordinarily, a mild and meek little chap. Even smaller than I am, and I’m pint-size for an operative. He’d lived in a big house that he owned about two miles out of town. He’d been somewhere in the upper forties when I’d known him. That meant he’d be in the fifties now. IS HOUSE was a farmhouse, but he didn’t farm. He’d sold off his land to the farmers on either side of him. He didn’t even raise chickens. Come to think of it, he didn’t have any visible occupation except puttering around with radio and electrical appara- tus. He was supposed to have a small but regular income from royalties on a couple of things he’d made quite a while back. One had something to do with the method of exhausting the air from a vacuum tube and the other with the mechanism of a repeating shotgun. Since he was an inventor, with the notorious lack of business sense of most inventors, probably he had little income from royalties on those articles, but by now he would have other irons in the fire. I wondered how I could find out. Such information would be part of the picture. Mr. Ambers would know, of course. Howard Jerome Ambers, Attorney. He handled Reeder’s business affairs for him. But I didn’t want to go to Ambers, if I could avoid it. He was Mary Am- bers’ father for one thing. Only she wouldn’t be Mary Ambers by now; she’d be Mrs. Nick Eklund. I didn’t want to see her, either. Well, in a town the size of Haverton, 101 everybody knew everybody else’s busi- ness, and probably anyone I talked to could tell me what Walter Reeder had invented lately—besides Martian radio- receivers. “Haverton!” called the conductor. I got my overnight case from the rack and when the train stopped, I got down. I seemed to be the only passenger get- ting off. There were a few people on the plat- form; I didn’t know any of them. Not too surprising, I realized. After all, there were five thousand people in Hav- erton. I hadn’t known more than a fraction of them, even when I’d lived here. . It was early dusk. I walked around the little station and I was on the main stem. The buildings hadn’t changed much. Haverton wasn’t an industrial town; just a shopping center for a farm district. There was the same sign on the I[Ili- nois Hotel across the street. I crossed over and went in. Joe Brophy was behind the desk. I’d been in high school with him, but he didn’t recognize me until I said: “Hello, Joe. Got a room?” “Tommy Lederer! Sure, I got a room. In town for long?” “Day or two,” I told him. I put my name on the register and got a key. He started asking questions, but I stalled him off. Told him the truth— that I wanted to see a man that evening. I’d have plenty of time to talk when I got back. I went to my room and cleaned up a bit, then went out. It was only seven- thirty. I could get out to Reeder’s farm not much after eight, which would be early enough. As I recalled him, he wasn’t an early-tobedder; often worked half the night. It would be dark when I came back, though, so I stopped at a drug store and bought a plastic-cased flashlight. The druggist was still Hank Foy. Well, I couldn’t get out without talking to Hank a while, nor did I want to. I’d liked Hank, and found I still did. I had to tell him what I’d been doing since I’d left Haverton, including Korea, and when I mentioned the detective agency and told him to keep that part of it MICLOOOKS (C(O)