"He Ripped a Gun from His Pocket and Would Have Fired Point-blank . . ."

"The Alibi That Was Too Air-Tight."

By W. T. Ballard (1903-80; Wikipedia HERE; Black Mask Magazine HERE; Thrilling Detective HERE; the ISFDb HERE; and the IMDb HERE).

First appearance: Detective Short Stories, February 1941.

Short short short story (4 pages).

Online at Archive.org (HERE).

   "In a moment we are going to flash onto the screen the picture of the lucky winner which was taken last Wednesday evening."

THAT all-important alibi (Latin for "somewhere else"). Criminals of every Intelligence Quotient level covet alibis because prison cells will soon engulf them unless they can come up with a plausible one; meanwhile, amateur and professional detectives spend a good deal of their time trying to bust them. In today's story, a neighborhood recidivist with, let's face it, a diminished IQ imagines he has an alibi that's "air-tight," making him immune to the law. But the law, in the person of a smarter than average policeman, is about to cleverly deflate those expectations—in a most unpredictable manner . . .

Main characters:

~ Lavant ("My luck. It’s your luck, copper. You're lucky as hell"), Dan Haggar ("I’m hoping you’ll make trouble so I can take you in feet first"), Old Reilly ("Shur-r-re and I never was so sur-rprised in my life, for if Lavant has one virtue it’s sobriety"), the inspector ("Luck might not always be with you"), and Marta ("It wasn’t luck, Inspector").

Typo: "to met him".

References:

- "Garbo" (Wikipedia HERE) "learned to smile in Ninotchka" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "our bank club idea":

  Movie theaters used to be more interactive, with managers offering prizes to the moviegoers:

  "In 1936, Bank Night was played at 5,000 of America's 15,000 active theaters, and copies of it were played at countless more. The popularity of Bank Night and similar schemes contributed to the resiliency of the film industry during the Great Depression more than any other single business tactic." (Wikipedia HERE).

- An episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents included the word "alibi" in the title. (IMDb HERE).

Resources:

- Our author's full name was Willis Todhunter Ballard. If that middle name sounds familiar, consider his first cousin's moniker, Rex Todhunter Stout.

- Writing as "Robert Wallace," our author gave the world "Murder Magic" (HERE).

The bottom line:

From Larry Niven's "The Alibi Machine" posting (HERE).

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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