The Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK ™: 15 Classic Crime & Mystery Stories by Richard Deming

Author:Richard Deming [Deming, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: mystery, detective, crime, short stories, sleuth
ISBN: 9781479406159
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2015-06-18T16:00:00+00:00

She nodded. “Thank you, dear. You are very understanding.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Good night.” Actually I was more understanding than she imagined. I could easily have killed her simply by telling her she had lost my love. I am quite sure I would have found her dead in the morning.

DAN AND THE DEATH-CELL BLUFF

Originally published in New Detective Magazine, October 1952.

The little sad-faced man in the worn seersucker suit arrived in Lake City on the nine-thirty a.m. train. He shook his head at the redcap who tried to relieve him of his bag, shook it again at the ring of eager taxi drivers, found his way to the waiting room and hunched his meager frame onto a bench in the farthest corner. For an hour and a half he sat there quietly, staring sadly at his folded hands, and he was such an insignificant little man, no one gave him a second glance.

The big, heavy-shouldered man with the perennial lopsided grin arrived in Lake City on the eleven A.M. train. He, too, shook his head at the redcap, but he grinned when he did it, as though amused at the thought of hiring a youngster half his size to carry his heavy bag. He grinned again at the eager taxi drivers, said, “Later, maybe,” and went on to the waiting room.

He was an enormous man, probably six feet four and two hundred and seventy pounds, but he moved with the controlled grace of a ballet dancer. His square, craggy face, lined by weather and seamed with laughter lines, looked forty; his iron-gray hair looked fifty. Actually he was thirty-six.

The little man barely glanced up when the big man entered, then returned his sad eyes to his hands. But suddenly the hands were clenched tautly together.

With his huge suitcase hanging as easily at his side as though it were a bag of cream puffs, the big man scanned the benches of the waiting room. His eyes touched the little man without interest, moved over the assorted dozen other people in the room and settled on a black-haired girl reading a magazine. She looked up at the same moment.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.