True Crime Vignettes from COLLIER'S

These entertaining and well-written short accounts, the Collier's editor assures us, are "taken from life"; since it's likely the names have been changed to protect . . . somebody, we'll just have to take his word for it.

"The Dallam Affair."
By Mark O'Neil (?-?).
First appearance: Collier’s Weekly, January 14, 1928.
Short short short story (2 pages).
Online at UNZ HERE.

"Here's an unusual detective story . . ."

"Sir Henry," we're told, "had always been reckless as to how and where he made his enemies"; so when he receives a death threat:

The warning was carefully dated—"London, noon, October 11th." Thin printed characters betrayed a Latin hand in the stiff hooks of the letters.

"Unless," it read, "you abandon trading with our enemies, you have only ten days from this hour to live. Consider."

Sir Henry laughed again as his wife muttered the words.

"Cheap melodrama," he chaffed. "I'm financing a cargo of arms for the Guatemalan government in the revolution there. Some schoolboy evidently thinks he can frighten me with a Deadwood Dick joke."

But it's no joke . . .

~ ~ ~

"The Red Room."

By Mark O'Neil (?-?).
First appearance: Collier's Weekly, March 3, 1928.
Short short short story (3 pages).
Online at UNZ beginning HERE and finishing HERE (scroll to page 48).

"An expert locksmith supplies the keys to some of the mysteries of Paris"

An American in Paris finds himself the prime suspect in a murder investigation, his only hope of being cleared reposing in a sharp French detective:

Objects glinted on a sideboard fringed with red tassels. Startled, he saw a black-handled revolver, with a blunt, blue-steeled snout, lying beside the cut stopper of a brandy decanter. He stiffened, glanced apprehensively about him, and wait-ed for a sound. Only the bark of a scurrying cab penetrated the windows. The atmosphere of the room oppressed him. He became aware of a tall mahogany table in a corner to his left. The thing seemed menacing.

"Look out," he warned himself, "this is a plant!"

Typo: ". . . the magistrate flecked his hand toward the clerk . . ."

~ ~ ~

"The Brantland Heir."

By Mark O'Neil (?-?).
First appearance: Collier’s Weekly, March 17, 1928.
Short short short story (2 pages).
Online at UNZ HERE and HERE (scroll to page 42).

"The true story of the kidnapping of a child and how an ice-cream cone led to the solution"

To a perceptive private detective, in this case all is not what it seems:

MRS. BRANTLAND, an aristocratic young woman, was roundly abusing the thick-set chief of detectives when Elbert Grantland, the husband's father, for whom the missing boy was named, motored from his law office. The old man, a wealthy and hard-headed citizen, assumed command the moment he appeared. He instantly ordered the police to confine their attentions to a physical search for his missing grandson, while to the press he announced a reward of $10,000 for the person who discovered the boy or for information leading to the arrest of whoever was responsible for his disappearance. Then he summoned from New York Thomas Coyle, the head of a private detective agency that had served him in many confidential investigations.

If you've read another story by Agatha Christie about a kidnapping (published five years before this one) then you probably won't be too surprised at the ending.

~ ~ ~

"Last Leg."

By Mark O'Neil (?-?).
First appearance: Collier’s Weekly, April 14, 1928.
Short short short story (2 pages).
Online at UNZ HERE and HERE (scroll to page 42).

"The true story of a young detective and a jewel smugger who had never been caught"

The Customs investigation squad in New York gets a warning cablegram from Scotland Yard that a "notorious jewel smuggler and fence, who had smilingly cheated the law and baffled its watchdogs for years" is on his way there with something not rightfully belonging to him:

They reported one of the boldest robberies ever accomplished in staid old London. Lady Waynecliff, wife of an English brewer recently elevated to the peerage, had gone into the London Mansion House for the lord mayor's ball. She had retired to divest herself of her cloak in one of a congeries of women's dressing-rooms, and as she entered was seized by a man, or men, and doused with chloroform. When she recovered to raise an alarm, she found her diamond necklace had been snapped off. Two hundred thousand dollars' worth of stones vanished, an excited old woman knowing no more about their loss than a grip at her throat.

Two hundred grand is certainly a lot, more than enough for our thief to brazenly attempt to fool the authorities; too bad for him, though, when in trying to pull off his deception he makes one small but crucial mistake . . .

Typo: "flecked ashes from his own into a tray"

Resources:
- Concerning our writer named Mark O'Neil, we only know that he had these four pieces published in Collier's in early 1928, and then he just disappeared.

Category: True crime (we think)

Decisions, Decisions

"Twelve Hours to Live!"
By Jack Williamson (1908-2006).
First appearance: Wonder Stories, August 1931.
Reprinted in Startling Stories, March 1946.
Collected in The Early Williamson (1975) and Wolves of Darkness (1999).
Short short story (6 pages).
Online at Comic Book Plus (HERE; use dropdown menu and select page 68).

"Captain David Grant is faced with a desperate choice when he is pursued by an implacable vandal in the interstellar void!"

The rocket liner Queen of Night doesn't stand a chance against the heavily armed pirate ship Black Hawk, but as the Queen's captain will find out, there are worse things than dying in the vacuum of space. (Note: Readers might be dissatisfied with this story's conclusion, which, to put it kindly, has been "borrowed" from a story found in a million school textbooks.)

Characters:
~ Captain David Grant:
   "Man the rays!"
~ Nell Grant, newly wed to Captain Grant:
   "Oh, it's lovely! What is it, a comet?"
~ The Black Hawk, ruthless space pirate:
   "What do you think of my hobby?"

Typos: "to disintergrate the atoms"; "disintergrating rays" (at least they're consistent).

Resources:
- On his megasite Atomic Rockets, Winchell Chung has a page devoted to space piracy, where the pros and cons of the idea are discussed:

Space Pirates is a science fiction trope that just won't go away. The image of pirate freebooters on the high seas is just too romantic for words; science fiction writers can't resist. Alas, in a scientifically accurate world, they are more or less impossible, much like space fighters and for similar reasons. There ain't no stealth in space, so it is practically impossible for a fat space galleon to be surprised in mid-trip by a sinister space corsair flying the Jolly Roger. Or a rude surprise for a space merchant ship whose trajectory passes too near the Somali Asteroids for that matter. It would be several orders of magnitude easier for the "piracy" to take the form of grand theft from the merchant's warehouses on the ground. — Winchell Chung, "Interstellar Piracy" (HERE), Atomic Rockets

- Wikipedia has a couple of articles (HERE) and (HERE) about space pirates, and TV Tropes has fun with the concept (HERE).

The bottom line:
   "How can we sail to an island that nobody can find with a compass that doesn't work?"
   "Aye, the compass doesn't point North. But we're not trying to find North, are we?"
   — 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl'

"He Wouldn’t Have Been Shocked at the Blast of a Pistol, the Sudden Pain of a Bullet Crashing into His Back"

Stewart Sterling was a pseudonym of Prentice Winchell (1895-1976), a major pulpster of the thirties through the fifties, who turned out an impressive number of stories for just about all of the important crime fiction pulps of the era (e.g., Black Mask, Detective Tales, G-Men Detective, etc.).

Much like Erle Stanley Gardner, Sterling created quite a few series characters starting in the '30s, some of which appeared in only a handful of stories, but others that he continued with throughout the rest of his career, among them Steve Koski, Gil Vine, Fire Marshal Ben Pedley, the Special Squad, Rod Keeney, "Demon" Ames, Keene Madden, Don Marko, Mal Varney, Dab Jenson, and even a one-shot with somebody named Leadflinger (see Fiction-Mags for the story lists).

Richard Moore, in his article for Mystery*File entitled "Stewart Sterling: King of the Specialty Detectives" (2003),  focuses on two of these characters, Gil Vine and Ben Pedley, and, in passing, a few more:

He did like his specialty detectives.  Aside from Vine and Pedley, there was another series published under the name Spencer Dean that featured a depart-ment store detective by the name of Don Cadee. An early one-shot novel with the wonderful title Down Among the Dead Men (Putnam, 1943) was about the harbor police. He also managed to work into his writing schedule two paperback originals for the great Gold Medal series published under the name Dexter St. Clair. I have seen little describing Winchell’s personal life. The bio in the Ace Double says "He lives aboard his Chesapeake Bay cruiser at the Municipal Yacht Basin in Daytona Beach, Florida."

Before he turned to novels, the Sterling Stewart by-line was used on a series of nine stories in the legendary magazine, Black Mask, which were labeled "Special Squad" stories. The 1939-1942 series highlighted different "special" squads from homicide to the bomb squad. I have yet to read any of the series but the descriptions make them sound like examples of early police procedurals. — Richard Moore, "Stewart Sterling: King of the Specialty Detectives" (HERE)

One of Sterling's "specialty detectives" not mentioned in the article is Don Rixey, a full-time radio repairman and part time sleuth, who, as far as we can determine at this time, appeared in only two adventures.

(1) "Fit to Kill."
By Stewart Sterling (Prentice Winchell, 1895-1976).
First appearance: Popular Detective, March 1949.
Short story (10 pages).
Online at The Luminist Archives (HERE). (Note: First two text pages damaged but readable.)

"Don Rixey takes his radio kit along when he tunes in on the activities of Larry the Gong!"

With a vicious robber knocking over gas stations all over the place, Don Rixey can be forgiv-en for being concerned about his girlfriend Annnalou, who happens to work at one of them; when her place is robbed and she gets a death threat, Don decides that the police, who keep blowing him off, aren't doing enough fast enough and, using his radio repair skills, a ham-mer, and some nails, sets out to pin down the crooks. Unfortunately, one of them, a trigger-happy deranged drug addict, has a gun and the other, a hellcat in a negligee, knows how to use a sharp butcher knife for other than culinary purposes . . .

Main characters:
~ Annalou Kenyon, who works at the Outside Inn:
   "I hardly ever forget a face."
~ Don Rixey, who runs Regal Radio Repairs:
   ". . . it’s going to take another year before I can hold out enough from the payback on that GI loan to feather our cozy little nest. Meantime, the idea of your bein’ all alone way out here, nights, with that holdup artist runnin’ wild, is enough to drive me to drink."
~ The tall girl:
   "The tall girl was willowy and graceful. Like those models at the big stores in town, Anna-lou thought. The dress she was wearing helped the illusion along. It was something soft and fuzzy in a pink-and-gray mixture, cut way down to there in front. It had that New Look every-body was talking about."
~ Bill, attendant at the Outside Inn:
   "Icy Eyes, my foot! That’s the trouble with these creeps. They pull a gun on some guy with bad nerves, get away with a few bucks, and the papers start buildin’ ’em up like they was Jesse James the Second."
~ Eddie (a.k.a. Larry the Gong):
   "I’m givin’ you some friendly advice, babe. You talk all you want to, to those Little Boy Blues. But you’ll sleep better if you kind of forget to remember what I look like. You didn’t see me very good. Catch wise?"
~ Lieutenant Les Wiley:
   "So now you’re going to find it hard to remember, huh?"
~ Detective James O’Hare:
   "Still, you’d like for the police to stick their necks out by going around and arresting somebody, just on your guesswork? We’ve too much to do to’ go wildgoosin’ off at every crackbrain suggestion from amateur gumshoes, sonny."

Typo: "Bon dabbed at claw marks on his cheek".

~ ~ ~

(2) "Shot with Luck."

By Stewart Sterling (Prentice Winchell, 1895-1976).
First appearance: Thrilling Detective, April 1950.
Short story (12 pages).
Online at The Luminist Archives (HERE).

"Don Rixey finds it takes a radio repair man to fix a murder frame!"

Don is just about to close up shop when he gets a phone call from someone claiming to have a radio on the fritz, and the prospect of a two-dollar service fee is irresistible; but almost as soon he walks into the place:

   "He took off his hat, marched in. He got two steps beyond the arch when the roof fell in on him! An overpowering screeching in his brain, as if some gigantic oscillator was vibrating out of control. A searing flare like a million flash bulbs exploding simultaneously. Then Voom! Blackout!"

When he comes to, however, Don finds he's not alone:

   ". . . the man on the floor behind him wasn’t going to be able to explain what had happen-ed. Three bright scarlet threads flowed from blackened holes in the white triangle of shirt which showed above his vest, down toward his right armpit, out of sight beneath his coat."

Yes, Don has walked into a gilt-edged murder frame, and it looks like the shortest path to clearing himself is out a window . . .

Principal characters:
~ Don Rixey:
   "Maybe, technically, he wasn’t escaping. They hadn’t actually arrested him. But even if he managed to get away now, he’d only be getting himself in deeper. On the other hand, the cops were pushing his head under, every chance they got, anyway. Wouldn’t listen to him, wouldn’t believe him when he tried to tell them what he knew."
~ Annalou Kenyon:
   "Every single word Don says is absolutely true!"
~ Eddie and Frank:
   "Keep on pourin’, Rixey. We’ll get all this stuff sooner or later, anyway. Just save yourself a lot of trouble if you spill it now."
~ Slenz:
   "This is the gun goof who shot that paymaster an’ got away with thirty yards this morning."
~ Mrs. Francine Garnet:
   "You’re such a perfect Patsy, pal!"
~ Lieutenant Les Wiley:
   "A dame says ‘Patsy’ and you decide she’s a killer. You see her out on Route 60—so you figure she lives here on Chestnut. You never saw her but that once—you don’t know what her name is—she’s gotta be this Mrs. Francine Garnet!"
~ Mike Brewer:
   "One those 14-tube contraptions, guaranteed to bring in such world-wide reception as Paris, Kentucky, London, Ontario an’ Moscow, Idaho. Condenser replacement, rectifier tube."
~ Templeton D. Yates:
   "The plump man with the mustache smiled at Don. He was wearing a light topcoat. He had his right hand bunched in the pocket. And it was not a nice smile."

Typos: "No! Noll" (transcription error); "the flashing red eye of the patrol coop"; "We’ll find of a way."

Resources:
- Oddly enough, in "Fit to Kill" the New Look in fashion becomes a major clue; go (HERE) for more about what that was.
- A reprint of Dead Right (novel, 1955), Gil Vine's next-to-last story (probably in abridged form) appeared in the Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine, February 1956, and is online (HERE); what is possibly Fire Marshal Ben Pedley's last appearance, The Hinges of Hell (novel, 1955), was reprinted (again very likely abridged) in the Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine, February 1959, online (HERE).

The bottom line: "People say New Yorkers can't get along. Not true. I saw two New Yorkers, complete strangers, sharing a cab. One guy took the tires and the radio; the other guy took the engine."
   — David Letterman

"I Am Not Aware There Is Much Beyond Jupiter, but I Only Read the Sports Section"

"A Clean Sweep with All the Trimmings."
By James Alan Gardner (born 1955).
First appearance: Tor.com, December 14, 2011.
Novelette (28 pages).
Kindle edition HERE.
Online at Tor.com HERE.

"Presenting a new original science fiction story, 'A Clean Sweep with All the Trimmings,' by author James Alan Gardner, a Damon Runyon-esque tale of courteous guys, bulletproof dolls, and the fedora-clad spacemen that bring them together. This week marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the death of American writer Damon Runyon, best known for his delightful, distinctive prose style and for the series of post-Prohibition New York stories that eventually inspired the musical Guys and Dolls."

Ordinarily Madame Rosa's is the place where guys who are so inclined can find cupcake dolls in abundance, but today it is not exactly a safe place for anyone to be in.

Our unnamed narrator—a guy whose job is to clean up messes made by other people who, let us say, do not have a high regard for the law and wish to avoid entanglements with the same—is called to Madame Rosa's "establishment" because it has suddenly become a free fire zone, with bullets flying all over the place; except for the ones coming out of a tommy gun belonging to a doll from upstairs ("a gift from an admirer"), most of them have been fired by these guys who wear green fedoras, have glowing red palms, and spill wires and green blood when they are perforated. What is hard to understand is that their targets are not peccant husbands or two-timing boyfriends like you might think but the cupcake dolls themselves, prompting our narrator to observe: "That is a waste of good dolls."

Twenty sticks of dynamite later Madame Rosa's is no more, so that there is nothing left to interest Mr. J. Edgar Hoover; but in cleaning up the mess our narrator meets Kitty, a most unusual doll as he soon discovers:

   "'Kitty,' I say, 'you are the first doll I meet who is bulletproof.'
   "'You do not mind, do you?'
   "'It is a fine way to be. I often wish it for myself. However, I now suspect you have secrets.'"

Oh, she has secrets all right, including a big one concerning just who—and what—she really is . . .

More often than not our author precisely nails the "Runyonese" (see below for what that is):

   "My last doll leaves me for a shoe salesman, and it is a hard blow when a doll decides you are lower than a guy who spends all day on his knees."

   "The guy who sells me this truck tells me it has safety glass, but if so, it is the same type of safety you get from safe bets with FiveAce McQueen."

   ". . . we leave the vicinity, since cops and firemen will soon arrive, and as a good citizen, I do not wish to get in the way of their duties."

   "Before you can say, 'Speak of the devil,' a guy walks in wearing a green fedora. I do not wish to keep encountering this individual. I am running out of trashcans. Furthermore, there is a limit on the number of shootouts that can happen in public places before someone gets hurt. As if to illustrate this point, the guy in the green fedora pulls out a John Roscoe and fires it, taking off a citizen’s ear. Luckily, it is only a waiter and not a good waiter at that, because once I order a juniper sundae from him and he does not understand what I mean."

   "When a doll cries, it is about something very small or very big, and both ways, a guy is out of his depth."

Resources:
- You can find out a lot more about James Alan Gardner (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), and at his homepage (HERE).
- Mike Grost explains how Damon Runyon (1880-1946) correlates with the universe of fiction:

Damon Runyon became famous in the 1930's for his humorous, and highly original, short stories about Broadway low lifes, gamblers, crooks and bootleggers. Aside from the fact that many of Damon Runyon's tales have crooks as their protagonists, his stories have little in common with the Rogue School. Rogue literature forms a well defined tradition of elegant crooks committing ingenious thefts, while impersonating members of the upper classes and thumbing their nose at the police. There is nothing of this in Runyon. One would never confuse his Nicely Nicely Johnson or Dave the Dude with such authentic rogues as Raffles or the Saint. Mainstream critics have always been puzzled about where to place Runyon in the scheme of things. He is a writer with no literary prestige among academic critics, but he hardly fits in with the genre of mystery fiction, either. — Mike Grost, "Damon Runyon" (HERE), A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection 

- In addition to James Alan Gardner, it's easy to see why Damon Runyon has been an inspiration to other writers:

He was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. To New Yorkers of his generation, a "Damon Runyon character" evoked a distinctive social type from the Brooklyn or Midtown demi-monde. The adjective "Runyonesque" refers to this type of character as well as to the type of situations and dialog that Runyon depicted. He spun humorous and sentimental tales of gamblers, hustlers, actors, and gangsters, few of whom go by "square" names, preferring instead colorful monikers such as "Nathan Detroit", "Benny Southstreet", "Big Jule", "Harry the Horse", "Good Time Charley", "Dave the Dude", or "The Seldom Seen Kid." His distinctive vernacular style is known as "Runyonese": a mixture of formal speech and colorful slang, almost always in present tense, and always devoid of contractions. He is credited with coining the phrase "Hooray Henry", a term now used in British English to describe an upper-class, loud-mouthed, arrogant twit. — Wikipedia, "Damon Runyon" (HERE)

- We've spent a little time with Runyon ourselves (HERE).

The bottom line: "Sure, I'm legit. I'm in favor of law and order. But you don't have to have it right in your own house, do you?"
   — Remy Marco

"As He Died—by Accident or Design—or Maybe Just That Bad Luck Which Works Against Every Murderer—He Branded You"

"The Scarlet Letter."
By Ray Cummings (1887-1957).
First appearance: Detective Fiction Weekly, December 12, 1936.
Short story (10 pages).
Online at UNZ HERE.
(Parental caution: Strong language.)
(Note: Text is smudgy but legible.)

"He Had Just Killed the Man—and He Knew It Was a Perfect Crime. But He Didn't Know That Murder Always Marks a Man Unmistakably!"

When it comes to professional rivalry and internecine envy, it's hard to top artists and their work; take a jealous rival with a mountain of gambling debts, the object of his warped affec-tions (a pretty girl with a sizable inheritance), and her reluctant artist father, toss them all into the mix and you've got yourself more than enough ingredients for murder . . .

Principal characters:
~ Kenneth Rance, "the famous illustrator":
    "I tell you I'm through with him. Out of my will he goes—the first chance I have to get to the lawyers' and change it. You're only a child. You're in love with his handsome face. He's got a dozen girls like you—any pool room loafer downtown could tell you."
~ Dianne Walters, Rance's niece:
   "'We're going to be married, Uncle. I'm eighteen—' The abrupt firmness of her tone made Rance stop before her, startled, so that he looked almost frightened."
~ George Gregg, "an artist" through whose perceptions the story unfolds:
    ". . . the idea of murdering Rance was still only a vague conjecture in his mind. He would kill Rance—if necessary. But he would plan it carefully."
~ John Martin:
   "Gregg knew him—a hardware salesman named John Martin—a fellow fascinated by Dianne's beauty—or the money she would inherit from Rance. Gregg's rival."
~ Melvin Cone, "the famous sleuth":
   "He had a very cordial, grave sort of smile. And then Gregg noticed his eyes—mild, blue eyes, but damnably restless. They seemed never still. Darting. Questing. As though the man's calm, poised voice, his smile, were things unconnected with those questing eyes."

Typos: "the'd never prove anything"; "They're got him"; "I don't what to think."

Resources:
- Nathaniel Hawthorne's famous novel about Puritan guilt and hypocrisy (HERE) manages to insinuate itself obliquely into our story.
- We last bumped into pulpmeister Ray Cummings (HERE).

The bottom line: "There are, fortunately, very few people who can say that they have actually attended a murder."
   — Margery Allingham

"We Both Went Down Onto the Bare Boards of the Stage and Didi Cheri, Still Yelling, Jumped on Top of Both of Us"

"Puzzle for Poppy."
By Patrick Quentin (Richard Webb, 1901-66, and Hugh Wheeler, 1912-87).
First appearance: EQMM, February 1946.
Collected in The Puzzles of Peter Duluth (Crippen & Landru, 2016) (on sale HERE).
Short story (16 pages in the C & L edition).

"In spite of our former prejudices, Poppy disarmed us immedi-ately. She was just a big, bouncing, natural girl unspoiled by wealth."

What do Peter and Iris Duluth, a last will bequest, a nervous guardian, and a pregnant St. Bernard have in common? It will take a realization on Iris's part (one very reminiscent of a well-known G. K. Chesterton story) and a lucky shot by a precocious little girl with a charm-ing lisp to expose (and we do mean "expose") a carefully-planned murder plot against an unusual intended victim.

~ ~ ~

"Death and the Rising Star."

By Patrick Quentin (Hugh Wheeler, 1912-87).
First appearance: Better Living Magazine, June 1955.
Reprinted in EQMM, December 1957.
Collected in The Puzzles of Peter Duluth (Crippen & Landru, 2016) (available HERE).
Short story (21 pages in the C & L edition).

"There's a dead man lying in my apartment. If you don't do something, I'll be arrested."

For Peter Duluth (here flying solo without Iris), being a Broadway producer is hard enough, but when the leading lady for what he confidently believes will be a sure-fire hit becomes unavailable and her brilliant replacement gets herself neatly framed for murder, he could be forgiven for feeling that it's just not his day; in order to extricate his rising star, get his play before the public, and avoid the breadline, Peter will have to set a trap for the real killer, without the slightest inkling of who it might be.

A great cover by Gail Cross

Resources:
- Both Wikipedia (HERE) and the GAD Wiki (HERE) have plenty of information about Patrick Quentin; Curt Evans has his own short review of our book (HERE).
- Our previous encounters with Quentin's extremely rare short fiction featuring Peter and Iris are (HERE) and (HERE).

The bottom line: "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
   — Julius Henry Marx

"The Trap Appeared on the Eighth Morning"

"The Trap."
By Murray Leinster (Will F. Jenkins, 1896-1975).
First appearance: Munsey's Magazine, August 1929.
Short story (11 pages).
Online at UNZ HERE.

"Colby's murder plan was perfect—except at one point."

Live and learn, as they say:

   "THIS is a very instructive story. It deals with the value of a reputation, the best way to commit murder, what to do with embarrassing letters, and where stolen thousand-dollar bills may be exchanged or spent with the minimum discount—all of which information is useful; but mostly it deals with the value of a reputation."

Main characters:
~ Colby, rather squeamish for a killer:
   "Colby felt hideously ashamed — not of the murder, of course, or even of the fact that
he was a thief; but searching like this, searching a dead man's clothing, made him feel unclean."
~ Grahame, D.O.A.:
   "No, there was no money belt. Colby swore, a trifle shaken. Grahame must have the money on him! He was a free-lance bootleg operator. He had come down to make a deal for two thousand gallons of corn whisky. Colby told him that he had been running a still for three months, and wanted to sell all his product in a lump, avoiding constant dealings and myste-rious trucks and cars, and so eliminating the probability of suspicion. Grahame must surely have brought the money; but where was it?"
~ Detective Sergeant Nesbit, "coarse and unlovely":
   "Then he remembered Nesbit's heavy, dull-witted patience, and how he had hanged Jud Harris two years after his first wife's murder. It had taken him two years to solve that crime, but he had done it. If he believed Colby had murdered Grahame, he would keep on working until he had an air-tight case, if it took him ten years."

". . . the benevolent dog and the pink starched dress . . ."

Resources:
- Our story takes place during the Prohibition Era in the United States (1920-33; see HERE); zealous Progressive reformers took their cause very seriously indeed, with backwoods moonshiners (see HERE) being as much the objects of their ire as anyone else who would dare defy the law.
- For detailed biographical accounts of Murray Leinster go to Wikipedia (HERE), a dedicated website (HERE), and the Encyclopedia Virginia (HERE); the SFE (HERE) and the ISFDb (HERE) have more bibliographical data.

The bottom line: "If it weren't for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, no Van Gogh, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong."
  — Jasper Fforde