5 Detective Novels Magazine — page 55: what you’re looking at

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

ANGELS DIE HARD- rying for her nearly blinded me, it was 3) bright. Sulking all by myself at the cocktail bar didn’t help a bit. A wet sulk, I soon found out, is just as bad as a dry one, maybe worse. I began to feel sorry for myself, wondering if maybe I wasn’t thick and if my secret notion of marry- ing Vara wasn’t just about as crazy as her talk of killing people. I drank, but I didn’t get tight or even high. I just got soggy sad and lost track of time. When Vara wasn’t around, time didn’t mean much anyway. The: only time that counted was when I was with her. After a while somebody dimmed the lights in the ballroom and the band played a slow Argentine number that 55 4 aes WAS a loveseat against the far side of the room, and a man was sitting alone on it. He sat there like a bag of cement, his legs spread apart, his shoulders bowed back, his face turned up to the ceiling and his mouth wide open. He wasn’t pretty any way you looked at him. He made me think of a singer who’s gone to sleep right in the middle of his highest note. An empty cocktail glass had tipped over on the seat beside him and was balanced so near the edge that it looked as if it might roll off any minute. I got closer still and saw his face. It was Ron Withersteen, all right, the “angel” whose money was backing The Other Man. I could tell by the stringy WATCH FOR T()P DETECTIVE ANNUAL ON SALE SOON! made me sadder still. It was the sort of music Vara and I were always at our best in, and now she wasn’t with me. She was most likely in the arms of “one of her own kind.” I drank and I felt terrible, and when > the music stopped and the lights went up again, I wasn’t in a mood for any sort of drama, real or imaginary. I was all set to call it a day and head for home. But a woman over at the far side of the room made a noise in her nose. It was half squeal, half whinny, not very loud but startling. A hum of men’s voices followed it. Then everybody be- gan moving in one direction. I moved, too. It’s funny how the herd instinct hits you. My feet were on their way even as I gulped the last of my highball. All I could see were the backs of peo- ple; the white backs of women and the black backs of men. They reminded me of a lot of penguins all headed the same way. “It’s Mr. Withersteen,” a woman up front said. “Soemthing awful has happened to him.” I pushed through the other penguins, close enough to see what the excitement was all about. blond hair, the high forehead and the long thin nose. But his complexion was white and waxy and mottled. His eyes were wide open and staring, and his lips were bluish. One corner of his mouth seemed to droop. Then I saw that it wasn’t his mouth at all, but a colored froth that was spilling over. My mind flashed “poison,” just as a man beside me said in a flat, scared voice: “He’s dead!” We all stood silent and embarrassed, looking at Withersteen, till Doc Tanner squeezed his way through the crowd. He didn’t have any black bag with him, but you’d have known him for what he was anyhow by the fussy, authoritative way he moved. I’d never had much use for his kind of medic, the rich, party-loving, clothes- horse type. But he didn’t waste time now. Cool as an ice cube, he bent his round pink face over Ron Withersteen, felt Ron’s pulse, rolled back an eyelid and said almost matter-of-factly : “This man is dead. He’s swallowed a lethal dose of some sort of quick-acting, corrosive poison. It’s a case of suicide or murder. We’d better call the police at, once.” MICLOO ”) (CO) KS)