"The Murderer Is Here in This Room!"

"Murder on the Mike."
By Arthur B. Reeve (1880-1936).
Short story (12 pages).
Found in Argosy Weekly, December 3, 1932.
Online HERE.

"Craig Kennedy, scientific detective, planned a radio third degree for the suspects in the broadcasting studio murder . . ."

Walter Jameson has written himself an exciting thriller that's going to be performed live in 
a radio studio—if, that is, his good friend Craig Kennedy can solve a real murder first. Of course Kennedy does, this time with the invaluable help of a circular paraboloid.

Some passages:

. . . "That interchange was like the dotted lines which cartoonists draw to carry dagger looks."

~ ~ ~

. . . At that instant a shot shattered through the plate glass picture window of the control room, and a steel-jacketed bullet pinged into the plaster over the head of the technician inside.

I started. That shot had been in this studio! It was not one of those revolver shots for the mike—a fingernail snapped against a piece of stiff cardboard. This one had been real.

~ ~ ~

. . . She had pitched forward, and he bent over her. A thin trickle of blood was slowly spreading upon the shiny cork floor of the studio, from the beautiful blond head now motionless against a shapely white arm. Wildly outstretched fingers seemed to grasp for something spectral in the thin air.

. . . Here was a real mystery, right in the midst of my own fiction drama mystery!

. . . I TELEPHONED in a story with plenty of color—but I studiously left the deductions to Kennedy.

. . . The saxes wailed the finale of a rollicking ditty that should have romped allegro vivace, but they literally crept along, adagio lamentoso. That was the spirit of the occasion. It was more like an unusually dispirited wake than the liveliest mirth emporium that had so far escaped a padlock. How could it have been otherwise . . .

Resources:
- On his megasite HERE Mike Grost has a great deal of info about Arthur B. Reeve.
- As complete a listing of all of the Craig Kennedy short stories as you're likely to find is HERE.

Category: The plants have ears