"He Unwittingly Seemed to Have Brought Danger Down Upon His Own Head"

"Murder Wears a Muffler."
By Giff Cheshire (1905-?).
First appearance: Short Stories, April 10, 1948.
Reprinted in Short Stories (Canada), September 1948.
Short story (14 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

     "You run quite an organization. Hard-looking mugs—beautiful dames—swanky little tuck-aways. What's it all about?"

At first it looks like a simple holdup that's escalated to a panicked killing, but Andy Bow senses there's more to it than that; eventually it'll come down to discrediting a dead man, earning the ire of the deceased's girlfriend; trying to deceive a closed circle of cold-blooded killers; and, most puzzling of all, figuring out how this vicious coterie manages to make a string of murders look like accidents . . .

World War II honorable discharge button.

Resources:
- When FictionMags describes Gifford Paul Cheshire as a "prolific writer of westerns," they're not kidding.
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