5 Detective Novels Magazine — page 52: what you’re looking at

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

ANGELS DIE HARD A Novel by PAUL CHADWICK Y HANDS get cold and my stom- ach does a sort of flip-flop every time I think back on the talk that night. Sometimes I feel like smacking Vara Dean and sometimes I feel like kissing her. You know how it is when the dame you’re nuts about suddenly goes hay- wire. At the time, of course, I didn’t take it too seriously. Nobody would have. Vara was only a kid anyway and the night we were introduced she was drawing her first pay on an Equity card. When she spoke her little piece about murder, I supposed she was just trying to be funny. The people at Ron Wither- steen’s party—Ed Lasker, the leading man; Joy Marlow, the star; and Doctor Lucius Tanner, the rich society medic who liked to pal around with actors—all seemed to take it in their stride. They smiled indulgently when Vara said in her gooiest stage voice: “Tf only I could kill somebody—really commit a murder, I mean—I’d be able to feel my part a whole lot better.” Joy Marlow preened her Grecian hair- do prettily. EO lOOOLK