5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 79: what you’re looking at

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

HE’S IN THE DEATH HOUSE been in the Near East five years, playing nursemaid to some Iranian oil wells. I’d seen a lot over there and I was lucky to get back. There were fifteen hundred on board a ship which had accommoda- tions for nine hundred, but no one cared. All of us were as tickled as Punch when the Statue of Liberty finally hove into sight. Vd left the U. S. because every place I went I’d somehow managed to get tang'ed up with death. It had haunted my footsteps through Texas, Oklahoma, and California until the various sheriffs kind of asked me to move on. Maybe it was my curiosity, or maybe I should have been a detective, but whenever there was a killing around an oil field, I always managed to poke my snoot into the crime. It didn’t matter that I’d helped to solve a dozen of them. The local law still didn’t like my inter- ference. I knew that when I got back I’d be smart to stay away from my old stamp- ing grounds, but the one thing I knew was oil, and all my friends followed the trail of the black gold. So I bought a copy of the Oil News and took a look at the headlines. Then I started for Templeton. The headlines said that Templeton was the biggest oil town since Smack- over, East Texas, and Signal Hill, and where there is oil I’ll have friends, and I can get a job. I can do everything with an oil well save drink out of it. I was broke, so I hung my thumb up on the highway and hitch-hiked. I got a food salesman as far as Cleveland, a furniture transfer to Chicago. Going west, I wasn’t having so much luck un- til a big coupé pulled up. There was a black-haired girl in it. I was surprised. Girls alone don’t usually stop for hitch- hikers. She opened the door and said: “Get in, partner.” I got in, and we rolled along the high- way ‘Where you headed?” she asked pias ter-of-factly. “Templeton,” I told her. “The name is Mike Foster, of Texas, Southern Cal, and Iran.” “I’m Judy Garron,” she said. heard of you, Mike Foster.” “T’ve 79 STARTED at that. Then she told me that she was from Templeton, and I wasn’t so surprised. Oil workers talk. They like to tell stories about their friends, and there were plenty that could be told about me. All morning I sensed that the girl was studying me, and when we pulled up at noon, she asked: “Solve any good murders lately 7 ae I grinned. “They don’t have murders where I was—yjust liquidations. No one tries to solve them, because everyone knows who’s responsible. Tell me about Templeton.” According to her story, the town was a little red wagon on wheels. It had been a nice little city of a hundred thou- sand, a little tough because of the distil- leries and big foundry, but still pretty much under control—until oil came. Now it was hog wild, with a half mil- lion people living in tents, trailers, any- thing to keep out the rain. It sounded like my kind of burg, my oyster. I could smell it before we came over the hill and saw the forrest of derricks. The main street was full of people. They were putting down a well in the middle of the boulevard and another on the court-house lawn. They’d be drilling in the basements and the cemetery next. When oil comes, nothing else matters. The air had a greasy feel, and the smell of burnt oil was thick around us. It put a film on the windshield that wouldn’t come off, and I knew that I was home. The girl didn’t share my excitement. She was quiet as she edged the coupé through the slow-moving traffic. “Want to make a hundred dollars, Mike?” she asked suddenly. I stared at her suspiciously. “You’re not just trying to give mea lift? I don’t take money from women.” She shook her head. “No. I’ve got some papers I want delivered to A. G. Peytéan at the Palace Hotel. He’ll be in his room at eight tonight. I don’t want the town to know they came from me.” She parked the car, drew out a pack- age, scribbled a note, then got five new twenties which she handed to me. “Thanks, Mike.” I told her that she didn’t need to give me the money, that I’d deliver the note DOO iG QO) MIG S (C(O) im