New Detective, September 1950 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pulp, Crime, Mystery
Publisher: New Detective Magazine
Published: 1950-09-06T05:00:00+00:00

TIM GILRYMPLE pushed his hat back on his dark head with a gloved hand. He pulled the brim down again. His big, impassive face was pale, it sweated. He made a move of his cornered king.

“Your move,” he said briefly, “Charlie,”

“I suppose you know that the detectives, your brother officers, are just outside,” Charlie Wintringham said sadly.

“For a while I was afraid I might have lost them. But one of them assured me, when I stopped and spoke to him, that they were always there. At any moment—My white queen takes your last black rook. I moved the white queen. Gil. Don’t try to shift it over while I’m not looking, because this time I’m looking. Check with the white queen. Gil. And checkmate. …”

The little radio was still playing. At the chessboard the two of them with their quiet voices like the sound of rain with a hushed thunder and a hidden lightning in it, like tears and weeping at the grave. With their quiet moves on the board of the wooden pieces. The sad, pale man, the lunatic from the asylum. Charlie. The big, strong, darkly good looking man with his impassive face, his rare quiet smile, whom she had met on that night of bewilderment and terror.

Like a paralyzed bird. From the beginning she had known it. From the beginning. Only the one end to the nightmare. Death in this cave-like place.

“We interrupt out musical broadcast for a special bulletin from the New York city police! Homicide Detectives Blair and Solomon, assigned to guard and follow the lunatic Charles Wintringham, who was released from the asylum in police custody under court order to locate the hideout of the maniac killer of Mrs. Ordway in Brooklyn three weeks ago, of Mrs. Fanya Durik in the Bronx last night, and of other women, have reported that—”

“Stop that God damned thing!” snarled Tim Gilrymple,

He was on his feet. He had smashed his gloved fist down on the satinwood inlay game-table with its delicate legs, sending the chessmen hurtling, flying. Splitting the board. With his hip and shoulder hurling the small sad man crouched on the couch arm over backwards to the floor. He had picked up the chair he had been sitting on. With distorted face he hurled it.

“Don’t. Tim!” she got her voice and screamed.

The crashing chair knocked the little radio from the table. It went over with the table and chair to the floor, its voice faded to a whimper and a whisper. Tim Gilrymple had out his gun.

“Don’t. Tim!”

There was a great brass hammering on the chained and bolted door.

Tim Gilrymple wheeled to face it, with his lips drawn back, gums bare.

“Hello. Bill Blair! How are you. Bill?” Tim Gilrymple said.

And he fired his gun twice through the thick panels of the door.

He wheeled, gun muzzle sweeping, the echoes thundering and shrieking, his eyes dark red, towards the black, bare square of window in the rear. Out there a faint clattering, the over-setting of a board amidst the cluttered junk and boxes of the backyard.

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