5 Detective Novels Magazine — page 64: what you’re looking at

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

64 something. Then it stopped registering for a few minutes. For just as I. ran into the shop and glimpsed Scott, face down on the floor, giving the last feeble twitches of a dying man, a bullet nicked the top of my head. It knocked me into a well of darkness lighted only by a few shooting rockets. M* HAIR was soggy with blood when I came to. I was lying on the floor near Scott. The front door was still open. I reached over, made sure Scott was dead, then got dizzily to my feet. and stumbled out into the street. There was nobody in sight, of course, nothing to hear. The whole city seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Back in Scott’s little shop I picked up the phone. My hands were shaking and so was my voice. I felt like a fool, but, along with my chagrin at having muffed things, I was excited. Someone, the same person who had killed Ron Withersteen, of course, had murdered poor old Scott as a cover up. “Hello, Rich,” I said. Nicolas Thatcher.” “Where you at, punk? Why did you work so hard shaking off my boys?” “Because’”—I tried to keep my voice as calm as though we were just having a friendly chit-chat—“I had to look up the chap who gave Vara those poison sticks. I’ve found him, Rich. I didn’t learn any- thing from him, though. He’s just been murdered.” There was a dead silence at the other end of the wire. Into the phone I fed the details of what had happened. I could begin to hear Rich breathing hard. “You lousy, no-good so-and-so!” he exploded when I finished. “Hold on,” I said. “It means, of course, that Vara Dean isn’t guilty.” Then I gave him Scott’s address. I want- ed to be as helpful as I could. “Stay right there till I come,” he or- dered. “Don’t move. Don’t touch any- thing. Don’t try to sneak out.” “Listen, Rich—be broad-minded. Would I be calling you up if—” “This 1s me, FIVE DETECTIVE NOVELS MAGAZINE But he had cut me off. I knew that in a few seconds messages would be flash- ing out to squad cars. I knew that the cruisers and Rich himself would be there in a very few minutes. Even if I didn’t have a gun, they could make it tough for me, say I’d hidden it, and snarl me up in so much red tape I couldn’t move. I want- ed to move fast, too. I had a lot of work to do. With a lump in my throat as well as the lump on my head, where the blood was beginning to dry, I left old Scott. I left the door open, knowing that no prowler could hurt him now. I stopped only long enough, in a door- way, to tie a handkerchief around my head and settle my hat over it. Then, after I’d put as many blocks as I could between me and Scott’s shop, I hopped a taxi and went to the News Building. Rich wouldn’t be expecting me to turn up there just yet. Halfway up in the elevator I got off and went into the photo studio. Louie Claus was inside with one of the dark- room men. He waved something at me. “Just got your picture printed. It ain’t bad for a copy. But we got some better pictures of Withersteen, if that’s what you want, down in the morgue, taken | last year.”’ “Tt’s that old picture that’s the best scoop, Louie. I’m going to phone Fair- field College and get the dope on him.” “We'll enlarge this,” said Louie, “so you can really see him.” In the original photo I had recognized Withersteen, all right, but he was really clear in the blown-up print that Louie handed me, wet from the fixing bath. I stared hard. It was funny to think that here was the face of a college kid who was destined to be murdered. It made me realize that none of us can ever be sure what’s around the corner. I looked at the other young faces in the picture, and suddenly one of them seemed to hit me right between the eyes. “This other guy, Louie,” I yelled, “here in the third row, second from the left—ever see him?” CORANICLOO® <=) @)