American Sherlocks Nick Rennison (best big ereader txt) 📖

He was just in time, for Grantley pulled the trigger almost at the same moment. Thanks to Nick’s foresight, however, the weapon did not go off.

Grantley cursed under his breath, but he had not emptied his bag of tricks. He suddenly drove his head and shoulders in between Nick’s right arm and side, and threw his own left arm around, with a back-hand movement, in front of the detective’s body.

The move threw the detective backward, over Grantley’s knee, which was ready for him. At the same time, the criminal, whose right hand had remained on the weapon in Nick’s pocket, began to draw the automatic out and to the rear.

In other words, he was forcing the detective in one direction with the left arm and working the revolver in the other with his right. It was manifestly impossible for Nick to stand the two opposing pressures for long.

Either he must break the hold of Grantley’s left arm, which pressed across his chest like an iron band, or else he must let go of the weapon.

The former seemed out of the question in that position; and to relinquish his hold on the revolver meant a shot in the side, which, with Grantley’s knowledge of anatomy, would almost certainly prove fatal.

Backward went Nick’s straining right arm, inward turned the hard muzzle of the weapon. Grantley was twisting the automatic now, hoping to loosen the detective’s grasp all the quicker.

Something was due in a few moments, and it promised to be a tragedy for the detective.

Then, to cap the climax, Willard circled about the two combatants, like a hawk ready to swoop down on its prey, and, seeing Nick’s head protruding from under Grantley’s left arm, hauled off and let drive with the chair.

The surgeon received part of the blow, but Nick’s head stopped enough of it to end the strange tussle.

The detective crumpled up, but Grantley held him from the floor and wrested the weapon from the nerveless fingers. He withdrew it from Nick’s pocket and put it to the detective’s left breast, determined to end it all, without fail.

It was at that supreme moment that Chick charged up and took a hand.

Nick’s assistant reached Willard first. The latter’s back was toward him, and he was just in the act of drawing back the chair. Chick’s clubbed weapon descended on his head without warning, and Willard pitched forward on his face.

It was not until then that Chick saw the automatic at his chief’s breast. There was no time to reach Grantley – not a second to waste.

The young detective did what Nick and his men seldom allowed themselves to do – he turned his automatic around again and shot to kill.

Nick’s own life depended upon it, and there was nothing else to do.

The bullet struck Grantley full between the eyes, and the escaped convict dropped without a sound.

The battle was over and won.

****

Doctor Hiram A Grantley – so called – master surgeon and monster of crime, would never return to Sing Sing to serve out his unexpired term; but neither would he trouble the world, or Helga Lund, again.

If the truth were known, it would doubtless be found that Warden Kennedy heaved a sigh of profound relief when he heard of Grantley’s death. It left no room for anxiety over the possibility of another hypnotic escape.

Doctors Chester, Willard, and Graves were speedily brought to trial, and they were convicted of aiding and abetting the deceased Grantley in an illegal experiment in hypnotism on the person of the great Swedish actress.

As for Helga Lund, she was a nervous wreck for nearly a year, but gradually, under the care of the best European physicians, she recovered her health and her confidence in herself.

She has now returned to the stage, and Nick Carter, who has seen her recently in Paris, declares that she is more wonderful than ever.

He wishes he could have spared her that last humiliating ordeal, but she is wise enough to know that, but for him and Chick, the man she had despised would have made his dreadful vengeance complete.

THORNLEY COLTON

Created by Clinton H Stagg (1888-1916)

If Clinton Stagg had not died in a car accident at the age of only 27, his name might well be much more familiar to readers of crime fiction today than it is. Even in the short career he had, he produced a large number of stories and magazine articles and, at the time of his death, he had just moved to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter. It was while he was driving along a road in Santa Monica that his car overturned and he and a fellow writer who was his passenger were killed. Some of Stagg’s best fiction featured the blind detective Thornley Colton, a wealthy New Yorker who takes on cases purely for the intellectual interest they offer. Known as ‘The Problemist’, Colton is one of a number of blind detectives in early crime fiction (Ernest Bramah’s tales of Max Carrados appeared about the same time in the UK) and, like all of them, he is able to solve the mysteries he tackles through high intelligence and the fact that his other senses have been heightened by his disability. The Thornley Colton stories were first published in 1913 in People’s Ideal Fiction Magazine and were collected in book form after Stagg’s death. Plausibility wasn’t always Stagg’s strongpoint in his plotting but, as ‘The Flying Death’ shows, his stories were lively and full of colour and invention.

THE FLYING DEATH

I

The last sobbing notes of the violin died away. Slowly, reverently, the girl lowered the bow and lifted her chin; the throat-filling hush wrought by the conjuring of her music became wild, unrestrained applause as the spell broke. The beating surges of sound from the gallery, the balcony, the floor seemed to frighten her a little; the frail body in its simple white frock shrank before it; but the girlish lips smiled bravely as