The Shadow - 318 - The Television Murders by Maxwell Grant

Author:Maxwell Grant
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Street & Smith
Published: 1948-02-29T23:00:00+00:00

man who had been behind Depper looked down at the body stupidly. Then he looked

at the front of his overcoat. It was all wet. He felt it. He looked at his fingers. They were all red.

A little rivulet of blood seeped out of Depper’s back into the interstices

of the wooded strips that cover the floor of a subway car.

So Danny Depper died unmourned and without ever knowing that his was the important murder; that the other, the death of Charters had just been a prelude to this killing.

The report of Depper’s death reached H.Q. as Cranston was reading over some evening papers. Cardona had come into work looking tired out. He had gone about his work paying no attention to his friend who sat with his nose buried in the papers.

He picked up the phone and snapped his fingers for Cranston’s attention.

Cranston lowered the paper and looked up. He heard Cardona say, “On the subway?

I see… go ahead. Uh huh…” He hung the phone up.

He grimaced, “Depper got his in the subway.”

“How?” Cranston asked.

“Knife in the back,” Cardona said. “Died instantly. No outcry. No one knew

he was dead till the crush thinned out and he fell to the floor.”

“Eye witnesses?”

“Nah… nobody realized anything was wrong! The killer stabbed him and beat it out of the train, I’ll bet. I’ll bet too that the killer wasn’t on the train when the corpse hit the deck.”

“Mmmm.” Cranston thought, then said, “From what I heard this afternoon: Depper has knifed enough people on his own.”

“Literally?”

“No. Cheating, bad business… that kind of thing,” said Cranston. Then he

said, “Got Depper’s address?”

“Sure. I got all their addresses last night.”

“Shall we go?”

“Sure.”

In the police car, Cranston made conversation. “Read the papers, Joe?”

“Some.”

” ‘Constant Reader’ has had time to take pen in hand and express himself.”

“Yeah, I read some of them. Dillies, aren’t they?”

“The general tenor seems to be that they saw the murder and when they saw it they knew the detective in the playlet was wrong… that it wasn’t Homer Elwood at all.”

“What’s his real name again?”

“Eric Jamison.”

The driver of the car turned the siren on. Cardona snapped, “Turn that damn thing off!”

“Yeah, sure. Sorry.” The driver didn’t look sorry, but puzzled. Cardona must be having trouble.

“Everyone, including Johnny Brokaw, seems to have the idea they’d be better detectives than the police force,” Cardona said, irritably.

“Brokaw has been bothering you?”

“He’s been on the phone with some screwy idea or other about fifteen times

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