“I do not regret what I have done. As I said before, if I had to go through it again I would not hesitate to shoot him. Perhaps it is because I have lived so much with death while I was at the front that human life does not seem to me a sacred thing. These two men deserved death if ever men did.”
“You believe that no jury would convict you?” said Crewe.
“I do not see how a jury of patriotic Englishmen could do so. But I do not care about that. I have finished with my life; I do not care what becomes of me. When I recall what I have been through over there in France, when I think of the thousands of brave men who have died agonized deaths, when I see again the shattered mutilated bodies of my men in the shell-hole with me—I want to forget that I have ever lived. All that remains to be done is that you should hand me over to the police.”
“That is a responsibility which I should like to be spared,” said Crewe gravely. “I think we may leave it to Brett.”
“To Brett!” exclaimed Marsland, springing to his feet again in renewed excitement. “Do you think he has escaped death; do you think he has got away?”
“I feel sure he was killed. But if his body is recovered the police will learn from it that it was you who shot Lumsden.”
“How will they find that out?”
“The girl Maynard has told them that he had an important paper in his possession when he was drowned and that is why they are so anxious to recover the body. They do not know the contents of the document but it is an easy matter to divine them. Let us look at this matter in the way in which Brett must have looked at it after thinking it over carefully. He knew that you had shot Lumsden; he knew that if he met you his life would not be worth a moment’s purchase. The shot you fired at him when he was breaking into your room at Staveley was an emphatic warning on that point, if he needed any warning.
“Do you think that he would not take steps to bring his death and Lumsden’s death home to you in the event of his being shot down? If he had got out of the country, as no doubt he had hoped to do, he would have put the police on your track for shooting Lumsden. If the police recover Brett’s body, they will find on it a document setting forth Brett’s account of how Lumsden met his death. No doubt his and Lumsden’s treachery will be glossed over, but your share in the tragedy will be plainly put.”
“I overlooked all this,” said Marsland quietly. “Let us walk across to the cliffs and see what they are doing.”
They left the farm and walked slowly towards the cliffs, each immersed in his own thoughts. There were a few groups of people on the road, and another group at the top of the hill. Suddenly there arose a shout, and the people on the road started running towards the cliffs.
“They’ve found it!” The cry of the people on the beach below was carried up to the cliffs, and Crewe and Marsland, looking down, saw the fishermen in one of the boats close to the cliff lift from the water the dripping, stiffened figure of a man which had been brought to the surface by the grappling irons.
TOO MANY SPIES, by Joseph J. Millard
Originally published in Whiz Comics #35, October 1942.
The feeling was too strong to be ignored. Call it a hunch or a premonition—but I was positive tonight would be the night. Tonight there would be treachery, violence—and maybe…death!
Overhead, the night wind whistled quietly among the pine trees. Down in the lake a fish leaped. There was a sharp splash and ripples spread out, shivering the reflection of the moonlight across the water beyond my beached canoe.
Somewhere outside the range of my campfire, there was a steady, furtive rusting in the darkness. It didn’t sound like a prowling night animal. It sounded more like a prowling human trying to sound like a prowling animal. I bent closer to the fire, and my fingers, slicing bacon in among the frying fish, were rock-steady. But there were icebergs playing tag up and down my spine, and it was the hardest job in the world to keep my breathing deep and even.
“It’s coming,” I thought. “It’s coming out of the darkness back there and there’s not a thing I can do about it.”
But how would it come? Would it be a bullet in the back—or would I meet Death face to face for a few moments?
There was a cold sweat on my face and a sick longing in my heart. Why hadn’t I chosen my part in the war on a battlefield, meeting death with death and violence with violence—not crouching here, along in the immensity of the north woods, feeling the stealthy approach of Death?
Beside, me, the little portable radio stopped playing music and an announcer said suddenly, “WTCN, Minneapolis-St. Paul. The hunt is still going on for the fugitive Nazi agent who yesterday hurled a dynamite bomb into the iron ore loading docks at Duluth, killing or seriously wounding eighteen stevedores and military guards. Latest reports say that a dragnet is tightening around the killer’s hideout in the north woods. Ludwig Scheer, Nazi espionage agent responsible for the bombing, has less than a thousand-to-one chance of escaping his hunters, according to agents of the FBI…”
I looked sideways at the little radio, nestled in the sand, and my heart skipped. It wasn’t the radio that froze my blood, but the two booted feet firmly planted in the sand beside it. He was standing there. He might have come quietly up out of the woods, the noise of his feet covered by the announcer’s voice.
My gaze slid up over rough woodsman’s clothing, paused a moment midway up at the blued steel automatic pointing menacingly at me, and then went on to his face. It was a thin, dark, cold face, with thin lips and cold blue eyes.
“Hell,” I managed. “You don’t make much noise drifting around, do you? Sit down and relax. I’ll slice some more bacon and—”
“Don’t move.”
The whiplash crackle of the words froze my hands in the act of reaching for the slab of bacon. He angled around to face me, and firelight winked on a silver star pinned to his shirt. I could see the word SHERIFF emblazoned across that star, and a sick horror came to claw at my middle.
“Keep your hands still,” he growled. “One quick move and I’ll shoot.”
“Say,” I protested. “What is this? I’m sitting here peacefully…” I broke off, staring at the badge, my eyes widening. “Sheriff! You don’t think I’m this—this Nazi spy, do you?”
He made no answer.
“You’re crazy if you think that,” I babbled. “I’m a businessman from Minneapolis, up here on a fishing trip. Take a look at all my credentials and identification…”
I had them, too—papers so good they’d fool an expert, proclaiming I was one James R. Rambling, an advertising agent.
His barked oath stopped my hands as I was reaching toward my pocket to produce the evidence.
“Keep those hands in sight, I said! Where are your weapons?”
“Weapons?” I gaped at him. “Oh, my guns. They’re in the tent. Say, listen…”
He edged around, keeping his cold eyes on me, to where he could reach my little tent. One jerk slipped it off the poles, collapsing it into a heap. Squatting, he rummaged under the canvas until he found my .22 rifle, my shotgun, and my .32 target pistol. Working awkwardly, one-handed, be broke and unloaded the weapons. They he sidled behind me and his hands slapped at my pockets. Finding nothing, he edged back.
The frying pan was still edged over a corner of the fire, and suddenly the fish in it began to burn. Pungent smoke drifted up, and a sharp glitter came into his eyes. It was then I realized the meaning of his strange expression. He was hungry—starving hungry.
I said, “Shoot and be hanged, confound you, but I’m not letting these fish burn for anybody. I’m hungry.”
I snatched the smoking pan off the fire and shook it to keep the golden segments of fish from smoking. His gun came up sharply, and my flesh crawled, but he lowered it again. His tongue slid out and across his lips, and suddenly my mind cleared of its clogging, frozen stupor.
“Look,” I growled, “you’re all wet on this thing, but I suppose you’ll have to haul me into town and ruin my vacation. But, by jum
ping catfish, you’ll have to shoot me here and now to spoil my last camp supper. I’m hungry and I’m going to eat or get shot trying. If you want to act your age, I’ll cook up some more fish and bacon and we’ll bake some eggs and have a feast. After that, you’re the boss.”
“All right.” He voice was hoarse and shaky. “But you try one little trick—just one, you see—and I’ll shoot you down like a dog.”
“I won’t, buddy. I imagine that affair at Duluth has you pretty well worked up. Personally, the way everyone talks about those poor stevedores and guards, I’ll bet when you catch the guy he never lives to stand trial.”
His eyes glimmered at me, and his lips drew back from his teeth. For a second I thought I’d walked myself into a slug right there. Then his lids drooped and I started to breathe again.
I fixed a pan of fish and bacon, then dug into the damp beach sand and brought out my last four eggs where I’d cached them to keep cool.
“There’s nothing,” I remarked conspiratorially, “better than baked eggs with fish and bacon. Boy, oh boy…” I stopped, holding the eggs. “How about it, chum. Can I walk over there and get wet clay to pack them in for baking, or is that a suspicious move?”
“Go ahead.” His voice was no more than a croak.
Covered by the gun, I dug down at the edge of the lake, brought up handfuls of wet clay, and molded great balls of the stuff around each egg. Then I came back, used a stick to poke holes in the hot embers of the fire, and rolled the four clay-packed eggs down into the heat. The wet clay steamed for a second, then began to harden like cement as the hot embers baked out the moisture.
I hunkered back on my heels, turned my face away from the fire, and gripped the long handle of the sizzling frying pan, shaking it occasionally to prevent burning. My nerves were wire-taut with the tension of waiting. It was hard to behave naturally. Sweat came out on my face and ran into my eyes but I didn’t dare mop at it for fear he’d guess.
It seemed an eternity that I sat there. Across the low fire, he sat like a rock, automatic always pointing rigidly at my middle. Never for a moment did he relax that wolfish watching. Was my whole crazy stunt a failure?
It came without warning. In the heat of the fire, the four eggs in their shells of rock-hard baked clay had gotten hotter and hotter. Inside, whites and yolks had turned to vapor, expanding by the terrific head until the pressure was too great.
Then, like hand grenades, they exploded. The whole campfire mushroomed up in a roaring, spreading umbrella of burning embers and flaming logs. My face was turned away so that, though I was showered with fire, my eyes were undamaged.
He had been hunched over, facing directly into the flames, when the super-heated eggs burst their shells of clay. He got the full fury of the blast in his face.
It bowled him over backward, yelling and slapping at his face with one hand while his other blindly jerked the trigger of the automatic. Lead zinged around my head. I ducked low, sailed across the scattered fire in a headlong plunge, and landed on him with slamming fists.
Even blinded and burned as he was, he fought like a mad tiger. Time after time a wild blast of his gun seared my flesh with its nearness. We were rolling in and out of the scattered embers, our clothes on fire in a dozen places.
At last I got hold of his gun hand, twisted it aside, and drove my right fist squarely to his jaw. His eyes closed and his grip weakened. I struck again and again, and he went completely limp.
* * * *
I’d beaten out the flames, bound him hand and foot, and was applying a soothing poultice of oatmeal to his burns when his eyes finally opened. He glared around like a cornered animal, tugged at his hands, and then burst into stream of German profanity.
“Shut up,” I told him cheerfully. “You haven’t anybody to blame but yourself. Nobody but a fat-headed Nazi would be dumb enough to think you can wrap eggs in clay and bake them without their blowing up. And nobody but the great spy, Ludwig Scheer, would be so helpless he couldn’t even cook himself a meal in the woods.
“That was your downfall. I suppose you shot the sheriff in the back before you stole his badge and clothing. Then you got so hungry you had to risk leaving me alive long enough to cook a meal for you. Well, you poor dope, I’m not a Nazi so I’ll go ahead and feed you before I haul you back to town. At least food will stop that foul mouth of yours for a few minutes.”
* * * *
The newspapers were full of it a couple of days later. You may remember the glaring headlines:
KILLER CAUGHT IN WOODS BY U.S. COUNTER-ESPIONAGE AGENT IN DARING SINGLE-HANDED COUP. SURPRISED BEFORE HE COULD PREPARE HIS OWN TRAP FOR THE NAZI SPY, U.S. AGENT GAINS UPPER HAND BY TRICK.
It was quite a story, and the newspapers made me sound like a doggone hero. Which is screwy, because I’m telling you, when I heard those footsteps in the woods, I was almost too scared to breathe.
WHO KILLED GILBERT FOSTER?, By E. Hoffmann Price & Ralph Milne Farley
Originally published in Five-Novels Monthly, January 1936.
Chapter 1
The Missing Manuscript
Raymond Landon drove Eloise Foster’s tan roadster down the dimly lit New Orleans street and stopped in front of her uncle’s palm-shrouded mansion. As he eased his rangy, broad-shouldered frame out of the little car. Landon somewhat bitterly reflected that it was quite a come-down for a soldier of fortune, late of the army of Ibn Saud, to be translating Arabic manuscripts and running errands for a crack-brained old professor.
Of course the job had its compensations—for example, Eloise. But now that Landon had finally gotten her to the point of attending a Vieux Carré party with him, damned if old Foster didn’t have to send a telephone message over from the Hotel Roosevelt, where he was to address a gathering of archeologists, asking Landon to run out to the house and fetch the manuscript, which the professor had absent-mindedly left behind.
Why hadn’t Bert Collins, the professor’s secretary, reminded his employer of the manuscript? That was his job, not Landon’s. And why hadn’t the old buzzard sent Collins after it, instead of him?
Meanwhile, the sappy blond Collins was probably at that moment hanging around Eloise. He might, in fact, have engineered the whole performance, just so as to break Landon’s monopoly. Not such a sap, Collins, after all!
Landon shrugged and glanced up at the unlit house, bulking large in the shadows. The street was deserted. It might have been midnight or early morning, rather than slightly past ten.
Landon shuddered. He had not been in New Orleans long enough to accustom himself to the musty, somber old residential quarters of the city. Then he swung open the creaking cast-iron gate, wound his way along the stone-paved path between swaying broad-leaved plantains and clusters of rustling bamboos flanked by tall palms and white-blossomed magnolias, and mounted the steps to the broad piazza. He applied Eloise’s key to the massive door.
The door swung, noiselessly back, almost as though aided by some unseen hand. Landon groped a moment, found and snapped the switch. The ancient Napoleonic chandelier, with its scores of glass prisms, blazed to life.
The mahogany newel post and balusters gleamed dully as he soundlessly ascended the richly carpeted stairs. The thick, velvety silence made him unconsciously tiptoe.
At the top of the stairs he stumbled. The baluster creaked as he caught it for support, but the sound was swallowed by the stillness of the house.
He crossed the hall, opened the door to the library and jabbed the switch.
Instinctively his gray eyes swept around the room. The three desks—his and Collins’ and the professor’s—littered with papers as they had left them when they had knocked off work that afternoon; but the chromium plated circular door of the little wall safe stood ajar! Landon, sidestepping the central desk, bounded toward the safe. But he halted abruptly, in mid-stride.
Professor Foster, in full evening dress, lay sprawled grotesquely on his back, his eyes staring sightlessly upward, his mouth open and distorted, hi
s arms outflung, his fingers clawed, and the carved hands of an Oriental dagger protruding from a red splotch in the middle of the left side of his starched shirt front.
Robbery and murder!
Landon’s first reaction was sheer horror. His next was pity for Eloise. Then he began to attempt to reconstruct the crime.
For several weeks, Professor Foster had been bargaining with Alcide Dumaine, a local dealer in antiques, for the purchase of Shah Ismail’s prayer rug from one of Dumaine’s unnamed clients. Finally the price of twenty-five thousand dollars had almost been agreed upon, and the professor that very day had sent Collins, his secretary, down to his safe-deposit box at the Hibemia Bank to get and sell Liberty bonds to that amount. The proceeds had been put in the wall safe. Professor Foster alone knew the combination.
Someone who knew that the purchase price of the rug was in the wall safe had either tricked or forced the old professor into opening the safe. That the dagger was one of those which formed a collection of antique weapons on the tapestried wall of the room indicated that the murder had been unpremeditated.
Suddenly Landon thought of his own situation. Lord, what a jam!
He was a stranger in New Orleans. Foster had picked him up on one of his archeological expeditions to the Arabian desert. Who would vouch for him? Who would believe that he hadn’t robbed and murdered his employer?
A frame-up from the start! Landon understood now the phone call from the bell captain at the Roosevelt, telling Landon that his employer wanted him to rush out to the house and fetch the missing lecture manuscript!
Wrath wiped the dismay from his features. His lips straightened into a thin grim line, and his eyes became cold as sword-points. The only way to clear himself was to stay and cut the web of treachery which, centering about Shah-Ismail’s prayer rug, had brought death to Gilbert Foster.
Landon glanced about the spacious library.
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