5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 122: what you’re looking at

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

122 “Capture sorrow,” the stranger had advised. Sulkas had bettered the instructions. Here was sorrow, blended with surprise, fear, and entreaty. A little, life-starved child was pleading for the return and the life of the thing which she loved most dearly. Here was something real at last. His feet were on the ladder. He was climbing to success and recognition. With the squirming, mewling cat wedged underneath his arm, he headed down the steep street toward St. Mary’s Park. Behind him he could hear the child’s thin, piping wail. Once he looked back. The little girl had thrown herself face-downward on the grass. With her head cupped in her folded hands she was crying in a strangled plaint of anguish. ey kitty! O my little, little kit- ty i" |; HE IDIOT stood in his front yard, grinning fatuously at passers-by. Sulkas noticed him as he went past—a giant’s bulk of body, fat but not soft, with vacant, lack-luster eves and a mouth that sagged and drooled. His head was hideously deformed as if it had been molded in wax and squeezed out of align- ment while still warm. His whole body was massive and grotesque as the mon- ster of an insane artist’s drawing. An animal he was, a thing that knew the world only because of its impact on his five senses. As Sulkas reached the little iron fence that shut the idiot’s play yard from the street, the uncouth creature bobbed and grinned at him. Once or twice, as he might have tossed peanuts to the bears in Bronx Park, Sulkas had thrown the imbecile a bit of candy. Now the oaf came shambling toward the fence, both hands outstretched, a _half-apologetic, half-ingratiating leer upon his mal- formed features. Sulkas paused in mid- step, almost in midbreath. He swung his camera into position. “Here, catch!” he called peremptorily, and tossed the little cat into the idiot’s outstretched paws. The fat cheeks creased and wrinkled as the grin grew deeper. Laughter bub- bled up between the thick, slack lips with a noise like the gurgling of a spate of un- clean water in a waste pipe. FIVE DETECTIVE NOVELS MAGAZINE “Purty, purty!” cried the idiot as he ran hands trembling with delight along the terrified kitten’s sleek back. His voice was high and thin and childish. Somehow it was horrifying, that weak treble coming from that monstrous bulk. “Purty, purty pussy !” - Sulkas’ finger was upon the camera trigger, but some inward warning bade him hold the pressure. The kitten, terri- fied by the great fingers fumbling over it, had writhed and struggled to get free. Failing that, it had lashed out with its claws, etching a bright trail of blood across the hand that held it like a vise. It was amazing how quickly the laugh- ter died in the big, malformed face. The pendulous lips drew inward as if they were a purse whose string was tightened suddenly. The puffy lids came down across the senseless eyes and veiled them till they were mere lines of pale color. The huge fists knotted. The kitten had no time to scream its dying agony. The soft ball of fur lay still where it had been thrown on the grass. There was a rising roar of laughter. It churned and boiled as if its force were so great that the idiot’s gaping mouth and open throat could not provide enough room for its escape. Rolling like the thunder of a beaten kettledrum, it be- trayed no joy, no merriment, no glad- ness, only the amusement of a senseless devil watching the antics of the tortured damned. 66 Now eh The command seemed to come from somewhere in Sulkas’ inner conscious- ness, yet from an outside source as well. He clicked the trigger of his camera. Then he hurried down the street with his spine cold, the waves of demoniac laugh- ter rolling after him... . N mauve paper, almost as thick and heavy as a blotter, the letter was written in violet ink in a great sprawling hand that took a line for each six words. Brief to the point of curtness, it was like a royal command. Come to see me at your earliest con- venience and bring negatives of the two pictures published in today’s Times-Mail That was all, no punctuation, no salu- COMmicloo S (C(O)