"Come Along and I'll Put You to Bed"

"The Broken Seal."

By Allan Vaughan Elston (1887-1976; the IMDb HERE; the ISFDb HERE; and Fantastic Fiction HERE).

Illustration by Dom Lupo.

First appearance: Collier's, February 23, 1952.

Short short short story (1 page).

Online at Archive.org (HERE).

   "Sheriff Clem Logan stared suspiciously at his only clue in the Jim Hendricks case. This was a quart bottle of whisky which lacked half a pint of being full."

IT would be nearly impossible to make a list of killers, real and fictional, whose personal habits betray them, eventually leading them into the rough arms of Lady Justice. The detective in today's story is depending heavily on the character traits of his suspects to 

settle on the actual murderer and there's nothing wrong with that, but he hasn't considered the possibility that you can look at a clue from more than one direction . . .

Principal characters:

~ Jim Hendricks ("was never known to take a drink; he only kept it on hand for guests"), Sheriff Logan ("Covertly, he watched Jake's customers—the sippers and the gulpers, soft men and hard men, mild men and tough"), Virgie McBride ("looked up from the summary she was typing"), Vic Prewitt ("There was a revenue seal over the cork"), Jake Costigan ("This being the only saloon in Bitter Creek, Jake naturally knew more about local drinking habits than anyone else. The saloon man was a teetotaler himself, not from choice but because he had stomach ulcers"), and Clint Brannagan ("a heavy man with cords in his neck. A gun swung at his hip").

Resource:

- As you see from the author's links above, Allan Vaughan Elston produced Western fiction almost exclusively; but when he wrote for Hollywood TV in the '50s he basically kept to the modern day in shows like Manhunt, Danger, and City Detective, an exception, oddly enough, being an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

The bottom line:

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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