Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 104, No. 4, August 22, 1936

I dug the old canines into Porky with all the ferocity of a rattlesnake with St. Vitus dance and he yelled like a tortured banshee and slipped the .38 to the floor. Then I crossed a feeble left to his chin, because I was off balance, but as it pushed him back from me I took a nose-dive for the floor and grabbed that gun like the farmers grabbed their AAA checks.

Stivers was a quick boy. Quicker than I gave him credit for. I’d expected him to have been slowed down by the fact that Rainsford had double-crossed him — which was as much a surprise to me as anyone — but not Leo.

He had a revolver off his hip in seconds and he took one shot at me just about the time I descended for the pistol.

He missed me and he fired again, twice. I don’t know how it happened. Maybe a ricochet. But Porky took one of those bullets below the stomach and fell over right on top of me.

He was the heaviest and safest shield a man could have had. I saw Stivers’ legs below the table and I started peppering them myself, surprised at first at the quiet action of the silenced .38 gun.

“Get up, get up off him, you fool!” Stivers yelled. “Give me a chance at him!”

But Porky wasn’t getting up for no one no how on account he had a stomachache.

Stivers started to run around the table and I let one go at his face. It missed by a hair. He must have heard the crack of the bullet passing. He turned stark white and backed off crying, “Porky! Porky!”

Then he started to lam.

By this time, I rolled out from under Porky, covered with the trigger-man’s own blood and I went to my knees with my head just over the top of the table and the .38 ready for business when Stivers — on his way out into the front part of the store — stopped dead, staring.

“Drop it, rat,” some one outside said.

Stivers was too panicky to drop it. He fired his gun once, wildly.

He was answered by a single crack from a Police Positive and he caught the slug in the most painful place, the kneecap, and crumbled like the 1929 stock market.

I didn’t need a map then. I knew it was Poppa Hanley. Kneecaps are his favorite targets.

He came in, roaring, “Daffy! Daffy, are you all right?”

“Yea, verily,” I said, sighing at the sight of the shambles. “Would you mind, Mr. Houdini, telling an ignorant reporter how you got to this garden of Eden?”

Hanley stuck an unlighted cigar in his mouth and put up his gun. “Hell,” he grunted stolidly. “I been following you ever since you said you had a lead, and it’s been a nice merry-go-round. When these two Pollyannas picked you up, I figured your lead was too hot. And as for the front door — why do you figure I carry this ring of keys?”

“Well,” I said, “congratulations. The big one slipped Rainsford the cyanide. The little one engineered the whole thing.”

“What’s this broken dagger?” asked Hanley gruffly. “They were looking for the rubies, hah?”

“Hey, Fido Vance,” I lied, “how come you know that, too?”

“Know it?” he said, his eyes twinkling. “Wasn’t I the guy who found a stack of smuggled stones in the heels of Rainsford’s shoes? Him and these scrambled yeggs were in cahoots on a little side-smuggling. They double-crossed Rajnsford after he had double-crossed them!”

I sighed.

“Poppa, you get too smart. You are very bad for my ego. And now if you will kindly pass the smelling salts I will get to a telephone and inform the Old Man that he has something in the nature of a small scoop.”

Things like that make the Old Man almost human...

Backfire by Robert E. Larkin

John Cramer was one of the slickest confidence men in the game until he tried a fast play in a new racket.

* * *

Three times John Cramer read the letter that lay on the desk before him. Three times he cursed the sender of the letter, Peter Rush, the founder of the Land Owner’s Loan Company, and Cramer’s senior partner.

Why, he wondered, did Rush have to pick now, of all times, to retire? Cramer fidgeted. One good break was all he needed in the stock market. He could then replace the shortage and no one would be the wiser. But now — he cursed Rush again, and for the fourth time reread the letter.

It was short and to the point. The auditors would arrive on the morrow at the request of Peter Rush to go over the company’s books.

Six years had passed since that day Rush had taken him into the firm. Six years. It had been a long, hard climb, but he had made it. He looked at the lettering on the glass panel of his office door: “J. Cramer, Vice President and Treasurer.” Again he cursed Rush, as his mind went back over the years.

Unknown to Rush, Cramer had once been one of the slickest confidence men in the game. At the time Rush offered to take him into the firm, things were going bad. People no longer had ready cash to be taken in by any cock-and-bull story that was put up to them. Hence, he had snatched at Rush’s offer like a drowning man, sensing an easy mark in the trusting loan company’s president.