"If That Don't Yell Murder Out Loud Then I Don't Belong in the Detective Division"

"The Phony Alarm."
By Richard Howells Watkins (1895-1980).
Short short story (7 pages).
Found in Argosy Weekly, May 4, 1935.
Online HERE.

There's no fooling this flatfoot when he's on the beat:

. . . "Clues, problems, mysteries—you look for 'em like—"

"Like you do pay, promotion an' ham and egg sandwiches," Francis X. Muldoon retorted.  . . .

~ ~ ~

. . . "A properly executed confession, all right," he said dryly, moving toward the telephone. "Executed is right."  . . .

. . . "He wasn't so tough with the chair facing him."  . . .

Resources:
- Here's the most we could find of our author's background [from the Online Archive of California HERE]: "Richard Howells Watkins was an author in the adventure/detective genre, a World War I veteran, an inveterate traveler, and an auto racing, aviation, and maritime enthusiast. He was born in New York City on May 26, 1895, later residing in Riverside, Connecticut, and finally moving to Santa Barbara in 1956."
- The FictionMags list of Watkins's voluminous short fiction, the first of three pages, begins HERE.

Category: Hardboiled Oirish crime fiction, begorrah