5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 65: what you’re looking at

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

HEADS—IT’S MURDER vator operators came to his assistance. “Say, Mr. Prentiss! I took a girl like that up to the top floor. I remember now. She got on at your floor just before that.” Prentiss swung around. “Watch the stairway,” he instructed the manager. Then he jumped into the ear. “Take me to the top floor.” They shot skyward. Getting out, he went along the corridor. The fire door which led to the roof was open. The roof of the adjoining building was the same height. It would have been a simple matter for the girl to step over the parapet, go down the stairs in the next building, and take the elevator to the street. Prentiss didn’t trouble to follow. He knew it was no use, that she had escaped. He went back, called off the men watch- ing the stairways, and returned to his office. He got the original head from where he had hidden it in the bottom of his steel file, carried it back to the artist’s studio. His friend stared at him when he asked for another duplicate. “Are you going screwy? What do you want another head made for?” Prentiss didn’t tell him about the girl nor much of what had happened. He set the artist to work and returned to his office. There he paced back and forth several times, thinking. Suddenly he stopped and looked down. A cardboard folder of matches was ly- ing at his feet on the green carpet. He touched it with his toe, turning it over slowly, then stooped and picked it up. There was nothing remarkable about it. It was an ordinary folder from which a couple of matches had been torn. But Prentiss had a lighter and never used safety matches. Besides himself, no one but the girl had been in his office all day. Carefully he turned the folder over in his blunt, powerful fingers. The back -earried a bright advertisement for the Borneo, a nightclub in the southwest part of the city. Prentiss had never been there but he meant to look at the place. The folder might mean nothing or it might mean that the girl worked at the Borneo or at least frequented it. He dropped the folder into his pocket and waited impatiently for the artist 65 to deliver the fake head. T WAS well after dark when Sam was finished. Prentiss wrapped the head in a package, carried it and the real one down to the basement garage where he stored his coupé. The original head he put up on a high window sill behind some water pipes. The plaster cast he took with him. It was beginning to rain a little as he turned the coupé east and drove toward the intersection of Valley Boulevard. By the time he reached it, the rain was com- ing down so hard that his windshield wiper couldn’t keep the glass clear. Prentiss swore and shook his head ‘defeatedly. If he left the package behind the sign as he had been directed, the paint would run on the fresh plaster. The glue that fastened the hair to the skull would be loosened and the whole thing would be spoiled. Angrily he turned the coupé around and drove back toward the city. He knew he should report the whole thing to the police. If they found out what he had done, he would probably lose his license as a detective. But he also loved a mys- tery, and this was no transparent setup. Al Prentiss was no ordinary private detective. He had spent five years in South America before being called home by the death of his father. In that time, he had acquired a zest for adventure. His father’s estate was ample to pro- vide him with all the money he needed. But he had to remain in Los Angeles to take care of it. Deliberately he had taken out a license as a private detective, hoping that in helping other people with their troubles, he would find some excitement for him- self. But until now, little business had come his way, and that little had been routine cases, which he farmed out to another agency. He had practically decided that he had made a mistake, that being a detective offered no excitement. Then all at once, from the restaurant window, he had seen the little man murdered and taken the package from the girl. When Prentiss reached the business district, he turned and drove south on Alameda toward Long Beach. Four or CoOMmiclooo S (C@)