Four More for EQ and One That Didn't Make It

"What a Pal!"
By Hugh MacNair Kahler (1883-1969).
Found in Collier’s Weekly, April 18, 1931.
Short short short story (1 page).
Reprinted in EQMM: Overseas Edition for the Armed Forces, May 1946 and EQMM (Australia), May 1949.
Online HERE.

If you plan to doublecross somebody, be sure to think it through first:

. . . "What a pal you turned out to be, Butch! What a pal!"

"Goldfish."
Found in Collier’s Weekly, July 8, 1933.
Short short short story (1 page).
Reprinted in EQMM: Overseas Edition for the Armed Forces, January 1946, EQMM, January 1947, and EQMM (Australia), May 1949.
Online HERE.

People who can't carry a tune should never commit murder:

. . . He was squat and beefy and bull-necked; there was cruelty in his small, deep-set eyes and in the lines about his mouth. He looked as if he loved his trade of sending men to prison and to death, and Martin Dole, studying him, told himself that it wasn't any wonder that so many crooks and killers were ready to confess when they'd gone into the back room with Carney to see the pieces of rubber hose which Carney playfully called goldfish.

"Bottleneck."
By Hugh MacNair Kahler (1883-1969).
Found in Collier’s Weekly, February 27, 1937.
Short short short story (1 page).
Reprinted in EQMM, September 1943, EQMM: Overseas Edition for the Armed Forces, May 1945, and EQMM (Australia), September 1948.
Online HERE.

Usually the simplest solution is the best; just ask Skinner:

. . . He leaned back and lighted a cigarette. His hands were cupped about the match when somebody came around behind the car, a gun barrel poked through the window and a mild Southern drawl invited him almost amiably to keep 'em up.

"Safe."
By Hugh MacNair Kahler (1883-1969).
Found in Collier’s Weekly, December 3, 1938.
Short short short story (1 page).
Reprinted in EQMM: Overseas Edition for the Armed Forces, April 1946 and EQMM (Australia), January 1949.
Online HERE.

If you're a criminal, you can never, ever, ever relax:

. . . He was still grinning, with his hands still on the steering grips, when the first slug struck him . . .

"Alibi."
By Hugh MacNair Kahler (1883-1969).
Found in Collier's Weekly, August 24, 1929.
Short short short story (4 pages).
Online beginning HERE and finishing HERE (scroll down to page 48).

"One trivial detail overlooked has spoiled many a perfect crime. This is the story of a criminal who decided to overlook nothing . . ."

They say you should expect the unexpected, words to live—and avoid the electric chair—by, as this murderer learns too late:

. . . Certainly luck, as far as such a thing existed, was on his side.

. . . the record was full of well-laid plans brought to grief because their inventors fled from dangers instead of facing them.

. . . "I'm apt to be alive and kicking a long time after they hang you . . ."

. . . The reason his plans moved smoothly was because he'd thought them all the way out.

. . . They had a word for it, the word-loving lawyers; he groped for it as his fingers dealt nimbly with the fat pea pods. Accessory. That was it. Accessory before the fact and, far more important, after the fact as well.

. . . The sickness gave way, now, to a revival of the blind desire to kill, an unreasoning hunger that was like the craving of choked lungs for breath.

. . . It seemed unreasonable that such a thing could be done so easily; the way people talked and wrote about it there ought to be something more impressive about killing a man than just three or four swings of the arm!

. . . When he went out of this room he would know to the minute how long there would be a light behind the drawn window shade.

. . . "I have been asking him why, with three other taxi drivers to choose from, he should hire a sheriff's deputy to drive him to and from a murder. It was either very clever, as I see it, or very stupid."

Notice how the middle name is spelled.

Resource:
- We have previously encountered other micronarratives by Hugh MacNair Kahler HERE.

Category: Brevity is the soul of crime