5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 47: what you’re looking at

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

KILLER COP “Turn around,” he ordered. “Put your fingertips on that fence and back away from it as far as you can.” With his muscles still trembling, he frisked the stranger thoroughly, and found him unarmed, while the flabby householder in the undershirt watched. “What’s going on?” he asked once, and Ed told him, “Nothing that concerns you, buddy.” Then he marched his prisoner back 47 “I thought you was stick-ups,” he told them. “Naw, I never seen them other two before. I met them in a beer joint tonight.” So it was just a routine pinch. They took him in and turned him over to a detective. He’d be freed by morning at the latest because they had nothing on him in the way of proof, nothing but the certainty that he was a wrong one. Routine. Things like that happen a THE PASSACE OF CRIME MAGINE being sentenced to death for eating your dinner in a restaurant! That’s exactly what would happen if you were a Mongol and lived under the rule of Genghis Khan, whose famous judicial code, the Yasa, explicitly forbade one person to eat in the presence of another sharing his food on a free-of-charge basis. Another law that would be extremely inconvenient today, if upheld, can be found on the books of anc‘ent Athens. It punishes people who cut down their own olive trees. The sentence is a heavy 200 drachma fine. half of which is turned over to the informer. But this penalty is light compared to the one that would have been imposed upon George Washington, if he had eut down his famous cherry tree in England. This country, in the 18th eentury, chastised such offenders with imprisonment, then death. As a matter of fact, there were so many punishable-by-hanging crimes in the Isles up to the 19th century that anybody who walked anywhere was liable to meet up with a swinging, recently-expired corpse. They were left there as a warning to all as-yet innocents. But England wasn’t the only country where the extreme penalty was meted out for minor offenses. In one of our own states, for example, there’s still an ignored law on record that inflicts the death penalty on residents of a neighboring state who are found within state limits! —Bess Ritter to the squad car, still parked at the curb. Bland was still sitting in it. “Where’s the other car?” McGinley . asked. Bland shrugged his big, loose shoul- ders. “This ain’t no dual-control job. He got away before I could take the wheel. Who you got?” They flashed their lights on the prison- er. He was a little man, with a tanned, weather-beaten face and a light sear on one cheek, a man they’d never seen be- fore, perhaps thirty, perhaps forty, named Frank Enright he said. He was on the wrong side of the law unques- tionably and gave the lawbreaker’s ready and smooth story. dozen times a night in a big city. A dozen times a night Ed McGinley would face this crisis, until, finally, those running footsteps became too real, the compulsion too strong, and once more he would shoot, and kill. Until that happened, he would ride the streets of the sticks with his quiet, loose-lipped partner, waiting and living a dull routine. They got a call that night—a suspect- ed house prowler—and they investi- gated and found no one and no evidence. They tagged a car that was following a lone girl along a dark street, and they watched the car speed up and disappear when they were recognized. They picked CoOMmniclooo S (C@)