5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 117: what you’re looking at

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

THE GHOST BREAKERS which the imagination pictured features. “And at the top of the stairs, blamed if he don’t—” Then the shimmer wasn’t there any more, and the voice had stopped. My eyes strained into the darkness, and I saw, or thought I.saw, a white horizontal line. A chair creaked. Then silence and blackness again. A minute or two; maybe three or four. Then Jan’s voice said, “Scollini?” quietly. Then, “Scollini, if you don’t answer me, I’m going to turn on the lights.” There wasn’t any answer. I heard Jan’s chair scrape the carpet softly, and then, as Jan walked toward the switch, Waldo, Pollock, and Wegs seemingly all started to talk at the same time. The light clicked on, blinding us for a second. Then I could see again. Scollini was in the chair, all right, but he was dead. Strankled. A strip of white cheesecloth was pulled tightly around his throat, the ends hanging down over the back of the chair. The piece of cheesecloth, probably slightly impregnated with some luminous dye- stuff, which had been the ectoplasm of a moment ago, had been snatched out of his hand and used to garrote him. I was the first to reach him and to snatch it away. But his breath and his heart had already stopped. V Tus REST of that night was police and questioning. It was almost dawn when they re- leased us. Released us only because they could find no cause to suspect one of us more than they suspected another. Six of us, besides Scollini, had been sealed in that room. Each of the six had had equal opportunity to walk behind Scol- lini in the dark and strangle him with that cheesecloth, easy to see in the dark, jerked from his hand. We were released with strict orders not to leave town. But we were not placed under bond, and I gathered that the police would be only too happy to have someone confess guilt by trying to run away. Jan and I had breakfast together and read the morning papers. WwW “Jan,” I said, “I’m through in this _town, anyway. My best friend wouldn’t hire me to find a lost dog. I won’t be able to earn enough as a detective to buy red ink to keep my accounts with.” “It isn’t as bad as that, George.” “It’s worse,” I said. “It’s worse be- cause they’re right. I’m supposed to be a detective, and what do I detect? I ought to get a job as a dishwasher or a street cleaner and do some good in the world.” “Don’t be a dope, George. You're too tired to think straight. Go home and get some sleep.” I went home and went to sleep. I awoke at four in the afternoon and when I had taken a shower and shaved, I felt better. Something, too, was knocking at the door of my mind—something that made a noise like an idea. I sat quietly so that I wouldn’t frighten it away. It was a million-dollar idea, maybe. The million dollars was Stanton Waldo’s. “George,” I told myself, “when there’s a crime, it’s because of money or women, and there aren’t any women in this case. But there’s money. Waldo’s millions, and ‘he has several of them. Somebody might take a lot of trouble to separate him from one of them.” : With that idea, things began to make some sense. Assume that my little experience of night before last, with the vanishing corpse, had accomplished its object. What had been its results? Stanton Waldo had told me that he had been victimized by mystics until he wasn’t sure any more what was true in spiritualism and what wasn’t. Also, my apparent encounter with an authenti- cated. ghost had had a profound effect upon him. I had been sent as an impar- tial and skeptical observer by the im- partial and skeptical Society for Psychic Research, Why wouldn’t that little play have been a fattening of the fatted calf for another slaughter? Too, a medium—one Irene Steiner, a curvaceous number with an inviting eye, as I had found out— had predicted to Waldo that something of the sort would happen. So another effect was the increase of his faith in the eyesome Irene Steiner. AMICLOOOLKS ©) (C(O) (C©) mM