Three Desperate Situations

IT'S RELATIVELY RARE that people get trapped in hostage situations, but it does happen. Today we have several fictional treatments of this popular theme (book and movie writers seem to love it), all of them featuring hostages who, against all odds, are able to get out of their predicament by unusual means: by having a police record, by noticing small details, 
and by doing exactly what they're told . . . exactly . . .

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"The Silent Witness."
By H. Frederic Young (1903-?; HERE).
First appearance: Ten Detective Aces, April 1941.

Short short short story (3 pages).
Pulpgen link has gone dead.

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"One Shot Trick."
By Benton Braden (?-?; HERE).
First appearance: Thrilling Detective, September 1945.

Reprinted in Thrilling Detective (Canada), September 1945 and Thrilling Detective (U.K.), January 1946.
Short short story (7 pages).
Online at Archive.org (starting HERE) and (finishing HERE).

Typos: "of his blue eyes hard" [dropped text]; "the bank in went broke" [dropped text].

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"My Sister Mary."
By Keith Edgar (?-?; HERE).
First appearance: Collier's, April 24, 1948.
Short short short story (1 page).
Featured (HERE).

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Resources:
- Real-life hostage situations are covered on Wikipedia (HERE) and (HERE); the IMDb lists a hundred and seventy-six "Kidnapping/Hostage Movies" (HERE), while the Taste of Cinema website selects their ten favorites (HERE).

The bottom line:

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