Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 30, No. 2 — July 1947)
- Автор: Голт Уильям Кэмпбелл, Rischer Bruno
- Год: 1947
- Язык: английский
- Год: Fictioneers / Popular Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 30, No. 2 — July 1947)». Краткое содержание книги:
Lee was grappling with an idea — something growing so rapidly in his mind that he scarcely heard the girl say: “You’re a filthy liar, Ray. You know I despise you, don’t you? That I’d never have said I’d marry you except Uncle John wanted me to so bad? Now I’d rather die!”
“You’ve got a good chance,” said Connor.
Fogarty said: “The cute part is, neither one of you needed to be here. You simply leave the back door unlocked, and tell Bassler here the time you want that switch rigged up. He can pop in and do it, and nobody’d give it a second thought. Repair trucks, mailmen, milk drivers — they come and go and nobody notices.”
“That’s right, officer,” Phillips said. “And I still think nobody but an electrician would be sure of the killing power of the set-up. And if it failed to kill, it’d be an awful boomerang!”
“Hey. that’s right!” Lee said suddenly. “I just happened to think. This same transformer was burned out a few months ago by an electrocution!”
Fogarty said: “So what?”
“So what Fatso was saying here,” Lee said, and jerked a thumb at Phillips, “Nobody that hadn’t had some experience would know enough to use the 220-volt line and put a ground plate down.”
“You tryin’ to hang yourself?” Fogarty asked.
“Listen,” said Lee. “Anybody that went through that first electrocution — a woman in a bathtub — would know how to rig another. And he’d know the transformer’d go out!”
“I still don’t get it.”
“When we fixed that transformer, I went to the Phillips house next door. He had a kerosene lamp burning — didn’t even have a light switch on so that the light would come on when the current came back.”
Fogarty looked suddenly interested in Bassler’s remarks.
“If the lights went off in your house, where would you find a kerosene lamp?” Bassler demanded. “Hell, like the girl here, most people can’t even find a candle or a flashlight. So who knew the lights were going out? Who rigged McCready’s electrocution?”
“You trying to say I came over here and killed my next door neighbor?” demanded Phillips.
“I’m saying nothing,” Lee said. “But I’m going to call the company and find out if it wasn’t your wife that got electrocuted in the bathtub. Then I’m going to call the paper and see if she didn’t have quite a lot of money.”
Phillips broke then, turning swiftly to the door only to face a broad, blue-clad chest. The chubby little man hid his face in his hands and sank slowly to his knees...
“Sure we found motive,” Fogarty told Lee next day. “You can always find motive when you know who the killer is. Phillips’d lost most of his wife’s money in a lumber deal with McCready, but all McCready had was his verbal agreement. He figured to save several thousand dollars with McCready dead. But you spotted him without knowing that. Too bad there was no reward!”
Lee thought about a girl in a silver evening gown.
“I’ll get my reward,” he said.
Concerto for Guns
by Michael Sutton
Johnny Dillon was just looking for a bite to eat at the Blue Valley Inn — and never guessed that murder topped the menu. Not that he disapproved the killing of Harvey Costain, for compared to the notorious mouthpiece a rat was the King of Beasts. But he did think the killer showed very poor taste in using Johnny’s rod for the job.
Chapter One
Soft Lights and Sweet Murder
A gusty wind boomed bleakly against the courthouse windows. When I got outside, trees were thrashing about in it and raindrops were pelting away the last dry patches on the sidewalk.
At the Ventura city limits, the sky opened up. Heavy sheet rain slogged the car and sluiced flatly down the windshield for over an hour. By the time it slacked off, I was still twenty miles from Los Angeles and half starved. My strap-watch said seven-thirty.
I yawned, just to break the monotony, and fished for a cigarette. Suddenly, a pair of oncoming headlights appeared to be swerving over the centerline at me.
I hit my brakes. My tires agonized on the wet pavement. The heap skidded until a rear wheel caught on rough shoulder gravel. It slewed the other way. A front wheel grabbed. I bounced and jolted and ground to a stop. A blinding glare raked my windshield and a sleek block-long convertible with a snugly fitted light-colored top swooshed through a puddle a few yards ahead of my front bumper, and careened up a side road towards the foothills.
I cursed its vanishing tail-lights at the top of my lungs. After a while, I stopped that and got a cigarette lit and kicked my stalled motor alive. The windshield wipers began to function again.
Two fat whitewashed adobe pillars guarded the side road. A rustic sign, arched between these, said Blue Valley Inn. I backed up, shifted, crawled ahead and swung in beneath the arch.
The road twisted, dipped and climbed through a grove of gnarled live oak trees, for about a quarter of a mile, to a narrow mesa, close against the foothills. In the middle of a lot of neglected garden stood a rambling old frame hotel with white scrolled porches, tricky little balconies above and red shingled turrets. A single light on a high pole shone dimly on the wet tops of a cluster of parked cars. I found a slot, next to a long black convertible with a light-colored top, and tooled into it.
The rain was little more than a drifting mist now. I got out of the heap. There was nobody in the convertible. Its radiator shell was still warm to my hand. I opened the door on the driver’s side. The name in the registration holder on the steering-shaft was Harvey L. Costain. It had a faintly familiar ring — and a Brentwood Heights address. I clicked the convertible door shut.
A graveled path led past rows of empty tennis courts and the dark ripple of water in a deserted swimming pool. I went up steps to a wide veranda. Draped windows leaked light on porch furniture stacked along the inner edge of the veranda out of the rain. A pair of tall double doors, in from the steps, had long ovals of etched glass in them and light behind the glass. One of the doors was opened from the inside by a tall Negro in a white mess jacket and gloves.
Soft lights and muted rumba music filled the lobby. It had solid old beams overhead and dark paneled walls. Logs blazed in a huge stone fireplace on the left. Across the room, beside a desk with its switchboard and mailboxes, wide carpeted stairs went up into darkness. Here and there on the polished oak floor were white bear rugs in front of tapestried lounges. About half of the customers wore evening clothes.
The tall Negro flashed teeth at me, nodded and closed the door with a delicate flourish. A sloe-eyed check girl with beautiful naked shoulders took my hat and gave me a slip of pasteboard for it and a look that froze the leer on my face. I fumbled out a dollar bill and dropped it on a plate. The music seemed to be coming from a shadowy room beyond a draped arch.
I ambled that way.
A hard-faced captain of waiters placed a fistful of leather-bound menus against my chest and said: “No tables. Sorry.”
“I’m hungry enough to eat off the floor,” I told him. “In fact, I could almost eat the floor, with a little mustard on it.”
He was not amused. “Others are waiting,” he sneered, and pawed the lobby with his eyes, crooked a finger at someone behind me.
“Will there be a table later?” I asked politely.
“Perhaps,” he shrugged, and wheeled back into the blue shadows. Some people drifted past me, trailing him. I followed for a step or two and watched them get seated.
A gold light slashed the deep blue of the dining room and a guitar player in a green velvet suit got up from his place with the orchestra. Several couples were struggling around on a small space of floor in front of the band platform. The guitar player let his instrument hang by its silk tasseled neck cord and grabbed the floor microphone for some solo work. The gold spotlight gave him an embalmed appearance.