5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 106: what you’re looking at

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

106 staircase were doorways opening to rooms on either side. The doorway on the left was a double one, with an old-fashioned sliding door, now shoved back into the wall. I took a look around that room first, because that was the one in which I was to spend the night. It was just an empty room as far as I could see. I looked around the rest of the house and didn’t see anything out of the way. Just eight empty rooms. There was a door that looked as if it might lead up to an attic, but it was locked, and my key didn’t fit. Well, my instructions hadn’t been to search the house, anyway —just to spend the night in it, down- stairs. I went back down and got set for my vigil. I’d had sense enough to bring a newspaper to sit on, so I spread it out on the bare floor and sat down. I turned off my flashlight, because the batteries wouldn’t last if I kept it going all night. I sat there for an hour, and nothing happened. VERY once in a while a train went by along the tracks just beyond the alley, and the whole house shook. . Another hour went by, and I was al- most beginning to hope something would happen. This was an easy way to earn twenty bucks, but if I ever took another assignment like this, I thought, I would bring a thermos bottle of java, extra flashlight batteries, and a good book. Or a blonde. I stood up and yawned. Then, with startling suddenness: there was a sound as if the house were falling down. It wasn’t a train this time. It was a noise that came from the stairs. Yanking the flashlight out of my pock- et, I flicked it on and threw its beam through the big double doorway. I must have been pretty quick, because the guy — still falling when I got the light on im. He ended up with his head on the floor of the hallway and his feet still on the bottom step of the stairs and lay there, limp and quiet, as though he were dead. He was dead, all right, because when I got there and put my hand where his heart ought to be beating, it wasn’t. If FIVE DETECTIVE NOVELS MAGAZINE that final crack I’d heard had been his head hitting against the floor, there wasn’t any wonder about that. There was a strong smell of cheap whiskey, the kind that’s peddled around the jungles for two bits a pint. And the jungles was where he’d come from— there wasn’t much doubt about that. His clothes were worn and dirty misfits, and his grayish hair was matted and un- kempt. One side of his face was ugly and swollen with a bruise that couldn’t have come from this fall. Aside from that, his face was pasty gray. Obviously, a bum. But a corpse is a corpse, the law being no respecter of persons, and I’d have to notify the police about this one. I wasn’t feeling any too cheerful as I went out and walked to the drugstore that I’d passed on my way to the house. Death is death, even if it’s only a drunken bum who’s killed himself. Anyway, I thought, maybe I’d found the answer to the haunted house angle. If tramps used it as a boarding house, that might account for the noises and lights—if it was on a basis of noises and lights that this house had got its reputa- tion. Pollock hadn’t told me. “I’d rather, Rice,” he’d said, “that you went there without any preconcep- tions. Imaginative people sometimes see what is not there.” “I’m not imaginative, Mr. Pollock,” I’d cut in. He had smiled. “Even unimaginative people sometimes tend to see and hear - things they expect to see and hear—you understand?” “I see what you mean,” I told him, “but I don’t agree. In my own ease, I mean. A private detective doesn’t do any dreaming.” “Even a private detective, Rice. I’ve talked this over with Mr. Wegs, our chairman, and he agrees. Anyway, what have you to gain by knowing what to expect tonight in the way of—uh— manifestations ?” “Nothing,” I’d admitted. The drugstore was just closing as I got there, but the druggist let me in to use the phone. After I’d made the call, I started back the six or seven blocks to the house. The nearest squad car would be noti- CoOnniclooo <S) (C(O) mM