"The Mystery of John Swift."
By William Brandon (1914-2002; Wikipedia HERE).
First appearance: Blue Book, April 1943.
Short story (9 pages; 7 illos).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).
(Note: Faded text but acceptable.)
"He's taking a hell of a chance there on trapping himself, from one end or the other of those operations."
AS modi operandi go, the one attached to a serial killer calling himself John Swift is just about as far out as they get: a series of murders stretching across nearly four decades and not a clue as to who, and with a different weapon every time. As for our sleuth, final confirmation of his theory about what's been going on comes from an unlikely source: "Her hair was black, crisp and shining; her figure was young and lissome. But her face was bloated with weeping, her lips were swollen, puffy; her eyes were wild with an animal panic, animal anguish. Constantly the dry sobs shook her thin body. She stared at them but did not see them; she did not look human" . . .
Main characters:
~ Annabelle Sims ("No, he’s just bats"), Jonathan Jaffrey ("the clues were in the words of the letters. In a way, they're obscure, but after you see them you wonder how the police have missed them for thirty years"), Dr. Hans Arnon ("He was, Annabelle knew, a dealer in antique books and manuscripts. Shrewdness was his stock in trade"), John Swift ("I write this in blood"), Rebecca Seward ("was murdered in a town near Chicago in 1909"), Henry ("Yah, but cheez, I got a date. Sunshine I gotta pick up first"), Sunshine ("See what happens when you go out with a flatfoot?"), Lieutenant Shaefer ("We got the slug. We never found the gun. You never find the gun on a John Swift job"), Miss Ingles ("She was cut up enough when her sister got knocked off, see, but when the John Swift thing come up and everybody tells her now Joe Angelo gets loose again she got scared, and that’s what really done the business as you see it"), and Joe Angelo ("You tell ’em the heater’s all right").
References:
- Northanger Abbey (WARNING! SPOILERS! Wikipedia HERE).
- Rumpelstiltskin (Wikipedia HERE).
- Caxton (Wikipedia HERE).
- "pothooks":
"3. an S-shaped stroke in writing, especially as made by children in learning to write." (Dictionary.com HERE).
- Titian (Wikipedia HERE).
- "Honi soit qui mal y pense":
"Honi soit qui mal y pense is a maxim in the Anglo-Norman language, a dialect of Old Norman French spoken by the medieval ruling class in England, meaning 'shamed be whoever thinks ill of it,' usually translated as 'shame on anyone who thinks evil of it.' Older translations state this as 'Evil be to him who thinks of evil'." (Wikipedia HERE).
- Bellevue (Wikipedia HERE).
- Gideon Bible (Wikipedia HERE).
- the Tombs (Wikipedia HERE).
- Gramercy Park (Wikipedia HERE).
- "these torpedoes":
- Capillary tube tests (Wikipedia HERE).
- pantheism (Wikipedia HERE).
- the Empire State building (Wikipedia HERE).
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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