Black Mask (Vol. 22, No. 2 — Mary 1939)

He emptied the gun, but he didn’t know it until it clicked on an empty cylinder. Then he threw it away and dived blindly into the room, flailing with his fists. He saw two shapes huddled at the far side of the room, shooting at him, and he started to dive toward them and tripped over a prone body on the floor. He fell to his knees, and his hand touched a gun, and he gripped it and got to his feet.

The two men at the other end of the room had evidently emptied their guns, for when Paul stood up with the weapon in his hand, they raised their hands above their heads and screamed above the thundering echoes of the gunshots, “Don’t shoot! We quit!”

Paul advanced toward them through the swirling dust, and saw they were Frenchy Peck and Lawrence Cleverly. He kept them covered, and looked around the room. There were two bodies near the kitchen door that didn’t move at all, and another dead man near one of the windows. In the center of the room a man groaned and squirmed, clawing at the floor and bleeding from the throat. It was Baby Face Matt Squeer. Fatty and Gaga and Tony were dead.

Helen Hastings was picking up the pearl-handled gun from the floor where Frenchy Peck had dropped it, and someone was hammering vociferously at the front door and demanding that it be opened in the name of the law.

Paul kept his eyes on Cleverly and Peck, and backed to the door and unlocked it.

“Come on in!” he yelled.

The door was thrust open and a gigantic cop stormed in, police positive in front of him. The cop took one look at the room and gasped.

“Here, you,” he shouted to Paul. “Gimme that gun!”

Paul handed it over with a sigh of relief. “Arrest those two men! They are murderers!”

“Sure, sure,” said the cop. “We’ll arrest everyone that needs arrestin’.” He came into the middle of the room, and said, “Well, for the love of mud! This is Baby Face Squeer!” He looked at Paul. “Did you get him? There’s about fifteen grand reward for him!”

Paul wasn’t listening. He was looking across to where Helen Hastings was busy at the telephone. “Come over here quick, Dad!” she was gasping into the phone. “It’s all cleared up. That... that young vacuum cleaner salesman cleaned it up!”

Paul picked his way across the room and came and stood in front of her and looked into her eyes. She looked back into his and said, “You were marvelous!”

He blushed. “It wasn’t much. You’ve got to remember it was an Easy-Way Vacuum Cleaner. It even says in the sales manual that an Easy-Way can be adapted to a lot of uses that people don’t think of ordinarily.”

There were other cops in the room now, and there were handcuffs on Cleverly and Peck, and a plain-clothes detective was examining the pistol with the pearl handle, while another was taking a dying statement from Baby Face Matt Squeer.

The cop who had come in first had broken open the revolver which he had taken from Paul Tyler, and he was looking at it with a stunned expression.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” he said to the detective sergeant who had come in to take charge. “This gun is empty. The kid must’ve kept Cleverly and Peck cowed with an empty gun!”

“Well, we’ll both be damned!” said the sergeant. “Wait’ll I go and ask the kid if he knew the gun was empty.”

He crossed the room and came up behind Paul, who was still looking into Helen’s eyes and talking to her earnestly. He put out a hand to tap him on the shoulder, then drew it back and listened to what Paul was saying to Helen. A baffled look came into the sergeant’s eyes.

He turned away and came back to the cop without speaking to Paul. “I didn’t want to interrupt them,” he told the cop. “Guess what the kid was talking to her about!”

“I give up.”

“He was trying,” the sergeant exploded, “to sell her a vacuum cleaner!”

Prison Break by K. Webster

Stir-crazy convicts loot a gun cache.

* * *

The stamping machines groaned at No. 7544’s side, and the floor trembled. His nostrils flared at the odors of leather-paint and hides, and his narrow eyes appraised the weighted cane hooked over the arm of a uniformed man.

“Damn you, Sholes!” muttered No. 1029, a blue-shirted old man at his elbow. “If you don’t work faster, that screw’ll crack down on both of us. Easy, he’s watchin’ now.”

“Phooey!” snarled 7544, his jaw muscles turning his face rocky. “I’m going to wake up this dead stir, the worst I’ve been in. Watch.”

With a full-armed sweep he pushed a shoe case off the table. It crashed to the floor, one corner collapsing.

The machines stopped as if giant fingers had grabbed their drive shafts. A whistle shrilled and the guard, looking bored, came over. Lips pursed, he stared at 7544’s blond hair as if wondering where to part it with his cane.

“Say something, screw,” taunted 7544. “Or are you yellow?”

There was an appreciative roar from the other cons, but it died quickly. Three more guards had appeared, one with an automatic rifle under his arm.

“Why, you — you screwball!” sputtered the guard with the cane.