"The Explosion of the Shotgun Against the Night Came Clear and Loud"

"O'Sheen Goes to the Dogs."
By Leroy Yerxa (1915-46).

First appearance: Mammoth Detective, March 1943.

Short short story (5 pages).

Online at Roy Glashan's Library (HERE; HTML).

     "Run for it. I'll shoot you down before you take three steps."

It's been remarked that the potato famine in Ireland (HERE) put an Irish cop on every large American city's street corner; case in point: "Paddy" O'Sheen, a flatfoot who pays thought-
ful attention to details. Sherlock would be proud . . .

Main characters:
~ Richard Rand:
  ". . . loved his guns and his dog Pat above all else."
~ Pat:
  ". . . the English setter, was whining and scratching at the door."
~ Shad Waller:
  ". . . turned toward the outer door, hesitated and turned back again. 
His face was long and bewildered."
~ Officer "Paddy" O'Sheen:
  ". . . didn't like violent death. It made him sick and angry inside."

Resources:
- Today's story features one of Leroy Yerxa's very few series characters, "Paddy" O'Sheen the beat cop, in the second of his six adventures chronicled in Mammoth Detective (1943-44); the other series characters were "Arrow" Larson (two tales in Amazing Stories, 1942-43) and Freddie Funk (five stories in Fantastic Adventures, 1943-45, 1948). (FictionMags data.)
- Nearly all of the attention given to Leroy Arnold Yerxa these days involves his SFF: Notes (HERE), the SFE (HERE), and the ISFDb (HERE).
- Roy Glashan's substantial collection of Leroy Yerxa stories can be found (HERE).
- This is hardly our first encounter with Yerxa; see "Fingerprints of Fear" (HERE; may have been Yerxa, we're not sure), "These Shoes Are Killing Me" (HERE; definitely him), and "One-Way Ticket to Nowhere" (HERE; ditto).
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