5 Detective Novels Magazine — page 103: what you’re looking at

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

COMPLIMENTS OF A FIEND The growl] must have done it. Men don’t growl; not like that sound —a bestial, vicious, murderous growl. A sound that would never come from the throat of a sane human being, except from the throat of a sound-effects man on a horror program. Then the shadow and the lighter oval weren’t there any more, nor the sound. It wasn’t a disappearing trick that would have rated high in the annals of magic—he need merely have taken one step backward into the cornfield to have vanished that way. But I didn’t chase after him. Or it. I kept right on walking. Right then I didn’t want anything to do with people or things that growled in cornfields after dark. I was on my way to See Walter Reeder on a purely business proposition. I kept walking and tried to whistle. Me, Tommy Lederer, who’d once been the toughest operative Walsh ever had, trying to whistle because I was scared. What’s worse, not succeeding; the whistle just wouldn’t come. Just be- cause of a shadow in a cornfield and a growl, I was too scared to run. I just kept walking. ° Around the bend in the road, and I saw something lying half in the road, half in the ditch between the road and the fields. It looked like a man. It was a man, lying face-down. I spoke, then shook his shoulder, and he didn’t move. I took hold of myself first, then him, and rolled him over. It was a man I didn’t know, that I’d never seen before. His throat had been torn out. It wasn’t nice to look at, but for what seemed like seconds, I couldn’t look away. When I did manage to straighten up, my first thought was defense. Who- ever or whatever had done this wasn’t far away, and I didn’t have a gun nearer than Chicago. I wasn’t in any mood to tackle, bare-handed, whatever or who- ever had done that to a man. The best thing to do was to keep on to Reeder’s place and phone the authori- ties from there. It was only a quarter of a mile further on, but it was a mile and a half back to town. There were lights at Walter Reeder’s 103 place. I went up on the porch and knocked. Footsteps shuffled to the door and it was opened. Walter Reeder had aged a lot in seven years. He was, as I have said, a mild- looking little man, the kind you’d not look at twice unless you happened to notice his eyes. They were bright shoe- button little eyes, with unusually small irises. And they were as keen as they tae: He’d never worn glasses in his ife. They were sizing me up now and he got as far as, “Aren’t you Tom—” be- fore I cut in. “Yes, I’m Tommy Lederer, Mr. Reed- er. I’ve got to use your phone right away to phone the sheriff. There’s a dead man a quarter of a mile back along the road.” TLJE OPENED the door wider and said, “Come on in,” as casually as though dead men were an every-night occur- rence on the road outside. He chuckled. “Ed Magnus’ll be mad. This is his poker game evening.” I thought, “Ed Magnus is still sheriff.” Well, there wasn’t anything I could do about that now. 5 A door down the hallway opened and Jeff Pogue looked out. “Who is it, Walter?” “Hello, Jeff,” I said. “It’s me, Tommy Lederer.” I’d reached the phone by then and had the receiver off. “Get me Sheriff Magnus, please.” Jeff came on out into the hallway. He was a big man with thick black hair and one of those blue-black beards that make a man seem to need a shave the moment he’s through with the razor. He had on old overalls with a once-white sweat shirt under them, and carpet slippers. He made a strange contrast to the dap- per Reeder, who always wore a white collar, a vest and suit coat. Reeder was the type of man who'd wear full dress on a desert island. “Something wrong, Lederer?” Jeff Pogue asked. Then Ed Magnus’ raspy voice was on the wire asking what I wanted. “Tommy Lederer, Magnus, talking from Walter Reeder’s place. There’s a dead man on the road, toward town, a GomiilGeboo (Cc S