Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 5, May 1957

At her home she let herself in quietly, went down the hall to her room. She closed the door softly behind her, turned on the light.

The sparkles leaped at her eyes and she smiled. She took the watch from her wrist and held it in her hand. Then she went to her dresser.

She saw herself in the mirror. Her mouth was parted, her eyes wide and dreamy. She smiled at the mirror as she dropped her hands and opened a drawer.

Without looking, she dropped the watch into the drawer. It lay there with its fellows. Gaudy squares, triangles, circles of bright glass. Rings, bracelets, pendants. Sylvia’s collection.

Sometimes when she came home like this she undressed completely and took them all out, put them on all at once, but tonight she closed the drawer.

Then she went to the living room and waited for her father. She would cry and tell how she’d been raped and beg her father to leave town with her. And, like all the other times, she knew that he would do just as she asked.

The Deadly Dolls by Henry Kane

Vivian Frayne — beautiful, but dead. My job, getting the filler. The catch, staying alive to enjoy the five grand fee.

1

I was lying around the House like a lox. In other words, I was lying around the house (which is a three room apartment with terrace on Central Park South) like a smoked salmon in an appetizing store, belly-side up and inert. I was lying around like a smoked salmon because I was bored. Even private detectives get bored. I was bored with skip tracings, and bill collectings, and tracking erring husbands, and untracking erring wives. In short, I was bored with the routine of my racket. Nothing of real interest had happened for months, and I’d had it. Right up to the gullet. So this day I had packed up and gone home. I had told my secretary that I was going to be lazy for the day, that I would be at home, and that I was not to be disturbed unless it was something extra special.

Turned out to be something extra, extra special.

I was lying around, in comfortable briefs, lapping up the scandal of the tabloids — when the bell rang. Unthinking, I laid the newspapers aside, crawled off the couch, ambled to the door, opened it, and felt myself grow reverently rigid at the sight of such pulchritude so unexpectedly limned within my doorway.

“Mr. Chambers?” she said.

“Mr. Chambers,” I said.

“I am Sophia Sierra,” she said.

Sophia Sierra, so help me. That was the name.

“Please come in, Miss Sierra,” I said, and as she crossed the threshold and I closed the door, I hung on to the knob for support.

“The lady in your office,” she said, “told me I would find you here.”

“Yes, yes,” I mumbled.

And suddenly, hanging on to a doorknob and ogling a Sophia Sierra, I realized I was utterly unclad except for the tightest and skimpiest of briefs.

“Forgive me,” I said, relinquishing the doorknob and making a grotesque effort at a gentlemanly bow. “I... I didn’t expect company. I... I’ll go... I’ll go make myself presentable.”

Large dark eyes viewed me from tip to toe and back to tip.

“You’re presentable,” she said cooly. “Quite presentable. Quite, indeed.”

“Thank you,” I said, and I stood there, and we ogled one another, and I do not know what thoughts she had, but the thoughts I had might make themselves too obviously apparent, so I waved her to the living room, scampered to the bedroom, donned a T-shirt, slacks, socks and loafers, and scampered back to the living room — but not before I had had a fast glance at the mirror and a fast comb at the hair.

She was out on the terrace.

It was warm for this cool time of the year, and she had removed her coat. She was leaning on the balustrade — elbows resting and hands clasped — looking out upon the city: which gave me a moment to look out upon her. She was something to look out upon. She was a picture in black and white: a living, breathing picture in black and white. Her close-fit dress was black, her shoes were high-heeled pumps of the shiniest black, her stockings were the sheerest of jet black nylons. Her flesh was cream-soft white, and her dress was so cut that a good deal of the soft whiteness of flesh was exposed. She turned, suddenly, from the balustrade, straightened, and regarded me, standing there at the entrance to the terrace. She regarded me — I regarded her.

“I’m a messenger,” she said.

“Messengers like this,” I said, “should happen to me the rest of my life. Your name really Sophia Sierra?”

“Sophie Sierra,” she said. “I’m Cuban.”

“But you speak English perfectly.”

“Oh, I was born here. I mean I’m of Cuban extraction.”

“Like a drink?” I said, touching her elbow, moving her back to the living room.

“No, thank you,” she said, and in the living room she stood stock-still, long-fingered hands on her hips, eyes moving over me. “I’ve heard about you,” she said. “Heard you’re kind of a ladies man.”

“So?”