5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 69: what you’re looking at

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

THIS WILL “We’ve got the guilty party—Fencer has proved that to my satisfaction. And I must say I consider he made a darned good job of it, too.” Fencer looked pleased, pushed out his lower lip modestly, and disclaimed, “Oh, it was nothing.” O’Hanna ignored the agency dick. “Meaning you don’t like my methods?” he asked Endicott. The assistant manager smiled thinly. “I didn’t say that—yet.” He paused, let the last word sink in. “But, after all, Fencer’s been on duty since six o’clock, and he’s responsible to the management. You’re not, Mike. So if you insist on interfering, if you make a mess of things, I’ll have to explain to the owners that it wasn’t his fault. A word to the wise, Mike.” O’Hanna’s Irish-blue stare peered straight down into Endicott’s single- track mind. “You’d be in favor of firing me and hiring him.” He got up and strode to the door. “Thanks for the ad- vice,” he said. “Now I'll tell you ex- actly what you can do with the job,” and he did. Endicott’s face took fire. “You don’t have to be vulgar!” “I didn’t have to,” O’Hanna said, “but it was a pleasure.” He slammed the door. He was sore as hell. It wasn’t the job, altogether, al- though O’Hanna liked the job well enough. He’d called San Alpa a chromi- um-fitted bird cage, true, but he hap- pened to regard it as his own personal bird cage, and he’d grown used to car- rying its master pass-key around in his pocket. What he didn’t like was Endicott’s attitude. Or Fencer’s. In fact, he didn’t like Fencer. He decided Fencer was a so-and-so. “I only stayed around as a favor to the guy, and here he’s trying to show me up, trying to muscle me off the pay-roll! The nerve of the son!” It made O’Han- na’s black Irish temper boil. Steaming over the injustice, he de- scended to the lobby desk and inquired about Kitty Beale. She had registered as Miss Catherine Beale of Indian Prairie, Iowa, and she had been as- signed Room 637. O’Hanna said, “Well, try long-dis- SLAY YOU 69 tance—get hold of her family or her friends.” He added over his shoulder, going away, “If you get them, I’ll take the call in her room.” O’Hanna didn’t push around easily. “We'll see,” he brooded, “who’s the house dick around here.” He still had the pass-key, anyway. Using it, he entered Room 637. “Hell on wheels!” he choked. It was as if a panzer division had laid down a perfume barrage, and then played blitz games in here. The cloying reek of perfume came from an over- turned bottle, saturating a confusion of spilled silk scanties and similar inti- mate lingerie. Byreau drawers had been jerked out and overturned. That for a beginning. The’ vandal had shucked the pillows out of their cases, slashed the ticking, and scattered goose feathers and down over the scene. The mattress, in shreds, showed its coil- springed anatomy. 7 O’Hanna hurried to open a window. That started a young blizzard of feath- ers blowing, scudding about his ankles as he crossed to the far side of the room. Something about one of the overturned bureau drawers caught his eye. Two white daubs that looked like thin paint from a distance, but clearly weren’t he saw as he drew closer. He stabbed a finger at one of them, testing the fresh, gummy touch of the white substance. “Adhesive,” he murmured. He won- dered what Kitty Beale could have kept taped to the underside of this drawer. HE creak of tip-toeing shoe leather cut through his puzzlement. O’Hanna whirled—a man was emerging from Kitty Beale’s bathroom. A hell of a big man, pointing a gun that looked big enough to mount on a battleship. O’Hanna dived, crashing into bone- and-muscle so solid it didn’t yield an inch, yet managing to snare the gun and twist it floorward. They _ locked, strained, struggled over the weapon. The big man’s blue-complexioned face turned purple with effort, but he went to the wall, backed against it by O’Han- na’s sinewy strength. Wrestling there, he must have rubbed up against the wall switch. For the lights clicked out. Like that. Go JOO nn S @) (C(O) mM