5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 118: what you’re looking at

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

118 And who had “found” Irene Steiner but the man who had sent me to that haunted house? I went quickly over to Jan’s place. He was still asleep, but I dragged him out of bed. He listened. “Pollock?” he asked. “Could be. I’ve heard his stores have been running in the red lately. But how would he get money from Waldo?” “Not directly, of course. He would work through some shady stockbroker or get him interested in a promotion scheme. Look, Waldo’s a natural-born sucker for spooks. Once he had faith in & medium again, she could lead him around by the nose. Especially if she had what this Steiner dame has got.” “Um,” said Jan. “Will you play that record once more—and slowly ?” I SAT DOWN on the edge of his bed and went over my idea while he dressed. “Pollock introduces Waldo to a me- dium named Irene Steiner,” I said, “for the purpose of victimizing him through the medium’s advice. But it has to be a slow build-up and with no spectacular phenomena, because if she starts throw- ing ectoplasm around, Scollini will be on her like a ton of bricks. “Anyway, Waldo’s wavering. That gives Pollock an idea. Suppose a duly- hired skeptical investigator for the so- ciety sees a bona fide ghost—that fulfills Irene’s prediction and will have a pro- found effect on Waldo, all right. It’d be the turning point for him. Probably the society had been discussing investigating that house. “You recommend me to him for work, and he sends me there. But meanwhile, earlier in the evening, he went there himself and he’s upstairs in the attic stairway. Around midnight, when a train’s going by, he carries the corpse to the head of the stairs, and when the noise of the train has died down, he lets it tumble down the steps.” Jan nodded slowly. “Do you think he killed some tramp just for that pur- pose?” “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Scollini evidently figured it that way. It’s pos- sible that he obtained a corpse some other way, but Scollini might have been FIVE DETECTIVE NOVELS MAGAZINE right. What’s a tramp’s life compared with a crack at a million bucks or so? Anyway, Scollini was near enough right to get himself killed for his pains.” Jan drew in his breath slowly. “If Scollini hadn’t been so dramatic about his method of revealing what he knew, he’d be alive, all right.” “Look, Jan,” I said. I handed him an evening paper I had " bought on the way from my place to his. I pointed out a boxed item in the middle of the story about the Scollini murder. The heading was: MILLIONAIRE OFFERS REWARD The article under it, only a paragraph long, told that Stanton Waldo had of- fered a reward of five thousand dollars for proof that would result in the con- viction of the murderer of Scollini. “Funny wording,” Jan‘said when he had read it. “Not so funny,” I told him, “when you consider what worries Waldo the most— not who killed Scollini but whether or not Scollini was killed by a human being. He offered me five hundred dollars for proof, one way or the other, whether or not it was a ghost I saw at the Greene Street house.” “Uh,” said Jan. “Yes, he honestly thinks there’s a possibility that spirits may have resented Scollini’s mocking of them and taken him for a ride. And he’d give five grand—which means less to him than five bucks to us—to be sure about it.” “Jan,” I said, “how’d you like to split that reward with me? Are you wg to take a wild chance?” His eyes brightened. “Take a clerics? Why, for half of five grand, I’d take a chance on shooting Niagara Falls in a canoe with a leaky bottom.” “Do you know where Scollini kept his props? That dummy and the portable phonograph he used night before last at the Green Street house?” Jan nodded. “At a stage props ware- house downtown.” “Could you get them?” “Sure. I know the man who runs the place. He’d lend them to me.” “Swell. Here’s what I want you to do, Jan. Be in the Greene Street house, hid- GOmMiGcdoo SS (CO) mM