5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 45: what you’re looking at

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

DANCE, PRETTY MAIDEN “Can hear,” Azul said. ‘Police an- nounce they broadcast: it at nine. Is a little past nine now, bot—” he hes- itated—” bot maybe thees music make you crazy again, and you try to keel me. So I warn you, I shoot.” He stepped to the small radio and snapped a button. A low throb of drums began to fill the shadowy room. Instantly Kern felt a chill run through his nerves. It was as if the drumbeats were seeping through the pores of his skin, numbing him to all human feeling, while some giant hand lifted him com- pletely out of the present and set him down in the death.room where he had been last night. Time itself seemed to dissolve as the music breathed on, mounting from an agony of grief to a wild yearning for the release of violence; and while he waited for memory to evoke Liria’s cry, a nameless hate was rising in him, too. The flutes were speaking now, the drums beginning to sound like dry bones rattling against each other. Once, be- hind him, Kern thought he heard the sound of a door being opened, but he did not turn. The music was nearing its end; he seemed suspended in the - very heart of a tornado. Then the ten- sion snapped, and he was turning. So many things happend, all at once that he was never sure just which came first. But there was a shot, sudden dark- ness, and a shrill cry which still echoed in his ears as he raced, knife in hand, through the darkness. It was Azul’s voice, and it sounded very much like, “Shee-pay! Don’t—”’ At any rate, its effect on Kern was like the touch of a charged wire, dis- solving all his hesitancy and uncertainty in a savage singleness of purpose. He remembered last night, knew what he must do. The overturned table tripped him. Lurching forward, he lashed blindly with the knife, heard a groan blend with his own wordless cries. Then his head struck something hard, and utter black- ness enfolded him. He came out of it with the feel of a body under his, with the stickiness of blood on his hands and face. He ran his hands over the dead face of Fausto Azul with complete indifference. His teeth 45 were gritted, his mind a steel cold in- strument without feeling now. He fum- _ bled for the knife he had dropped, found it, and stood up. Striking a match, he located the door. Seconds later he was slinking into an alley with the stealth of a jungle cat, getting his bearings by the glow of dis- tant lights, heading in the direction of the river. VI Wi any people heard the Ochpaniztlt Chant that night—in homes, in taverns and night clubs, in cruising automobiles. Due perhaps as much to its evil associa- tions as to the music itself, a sort of universal shudder ran through Fron- tera, Monteverde, and the neighboring countryside. Then it subsided, and there was an interval of quiet. Inspector Ollin had waited hopefully in his office, but no witnesses had come forward to admit having heard the strange music before. Ollin was in a bad temper, troubled and uneasy. It was ten-thirty, an hour and a half after the broadcast, when the first re- port came in. In the industrial section of Frontera, near the river, a young girl, Guadalupe Hernandez, a laundry employee, had been lured or dragged into an alley near her home and brutally murdered. Her throat, in fact, had been neatly and swiftly cut. No one had seen the killer. Ollin hurried to the place, but there was little to be done beyond setting in motion the routine of questioning the whole neighborhood. All available detec- tives were on this Job when the second alarm flashed. In the smelter section, Marguerita Puig, a waitress, had left her place of employment after receiving a telephone call. She had been dragged into the salt cedars only a few hundred yards distant and butchered in the same swift and efficient way. Like the other victim, she had not been assaulted, and a ring on her finger and money in her purse proved that robbery had not been the motive, either. The first murder had chilled Inspector Ollin to the bone; now he began to feel real panic. Detectives were pulled out CoOnniclooo S (S| QO) mM