Detective Tales April 1943 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Pulp
Publisher: Detective Tales
Published: 1943-04-14T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3

Death in the Dimout

As I ran along the hall to the girl’s room Tim Thatcher passed me and pushed in. The room was black. Somewhere in the darkness the girl sobbed. Tim snapped the wall-switch and we found her on the floor beside the bed, tangled up in a sheet, her widened eyes full of fear. A table lamp lay beside her, smashed. Across the room a window stood open, its blinds flapping in the warm sea breeze.

While Townsend Chester helped Tim to get the girl back into bed, I stuck my head out the window and howled at the guards. Two of them were skirting about the lawn, looking startled and confused, their revolvers drawn. Obviously they hadn’t even seen the prowler who’d sneaked in through the night. I roared, “Find that guy!” and they loped off aimlessly. Two other cops, who’d been stationed at other points on the property, also scurried into the general search.

“She’s not hurt.” Tim came to me with the details. “She heard a noise at the window. It was already halfway open, and she saw a man’s head and shoulders. He had a handkerchief tied over his face. She screamed, slammed the lamp over and dove out of bed in the dark.”

“Can’t she give me a better picture of him than that?” I snapped. “No, she can’t—being a dizzy college kid! Keep an eye on her!”

I ran outside and prodded the guards into a deeper search. A fine chance we stood! The dim-out made the whole shore blacker than hell’s cellar. The nearest houses on both sides stood half a mile away. In between lay rolling dunes overgrown in patches with rank grass and rushes. The men’s flashlights beaming off across the hummocks created baffling shadows that lured them into one wild goose chase after another. I could hunt around out there all night, with ten times as many men, and still find nothing but grass, sand and a steady inshore wind.

Finally I posted two men right outside the girl’s window, and the others close around the house, and went in. After making sure she couldn’t tell us anything more, we got her to swallow a sleeping tablet. When her eyelids drooped we left her. She seemed reasonably safe now, but it still burned me up to think the killer had managed to sneak in on her and then dodge away untouched.

“He’ll try it again,” I said, feeling a chill in my bones. “He’s desperate and I’m damn’ sure he’ll try it again. Isn’t she able to remember anything yet?”

Tim Thatcher’s lips quirked. ‘Not yet—and she still doesn’t feel anything toward me, either. There was a reason why I tried to get that sort of response from her, Lieutenant. You see—though Susan was still fancy-free—Sally and I were informally engaged.”

“Engaged to be married? You and Sally, the one who didn’t play detective? That girl in there’s not wearing a ring. If you’d only given her one, we’d know—”

“The ring was coming soon, Lieutenant.” Tim gazed at me with deep, perplexed concern.

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