Death Stalks the Night by Hugh B. Cave

Book Details

Shudderry thrills aplenty as the Acid Murderer roams the city, leaving death in his trail. And yet, there is a simultaneous crime spree by the Scarlet Thief, a spree of break-ins and robberies. Aren’t these really one and the same criminal?

The Silent Men (1936) – Bill Hafey, Private Detective, Takes a New Trail When the Jaws of a Criminal Trap Close on Him!
The Careless Cadaver (1939) – A dick for many years, Donnelly had seen death in many forms—but this was something new and different!
The Forgotten Man-Killer (1938) – How does a man feel when he goes to the death house—or when he kills everything that he values?
Death Stalks The Night (1935) – The ghoulish deathshead always followed upon the bitter-almond smell of hydrocyanic acid—and flesh bubbled horribly in the stew.
A twelve chapter novel.

Hugh Barnett Cave (1910–2004) was one of the most prolific contributors to pulp magazines of the 1920s and ’30s, selling an estimated 800 stories in almost all genres, but he is best known for his horror, weird menace and science fiction stories.

Stragella and Other Stories contains 4 illustrations.

Files:

1. Cave-DeathStalksTheNight.epub

Excerpt: Death Stalks the Night

Chapter One

THE inner sanctum of Naigler, Ekhart & Ellson, Inc., lay in darkness, except for a warm amber glow which played over the massive door of the company’s safe. The hands of a square clock on Alvin Naigler’s private desk stood at fourteen minutes after 2 A. M.

In the center of a small moon of light, tapered fingers worked patiently on the smooth dial of the safe, a slender, immaculately dressed figure knelt Sphinx-like beside the safe door. In the silence of the office, the only audible sounds were the slow even breathing of the crouching intruder and the muffled clicking of metal tumblers as did the dial revolved under pressure.

The fingers ceased their patient labor. A low sigh of satisfaction escaped the thief’s lips. The safe door swung open.

The intruder leaned backward, produced gloves from a pocket of his coat and slid his hands into them. Directing the flashlight’s beam into the safe’s interior, he swept a probing hand over the many compartments, lifting papers, pamphlets, rubber-banded packages from their pigeonholes. Selecting those of value, he leaned back again, calmly transferred the loot to inner pockets of his coat.

From still another pocket he took a thin leather wallet, opened it, and with gloved fingers lifted out one of a dozen small white cards. Carefully he placed the card upright in the central compartment of the safe, aimed the light at it and studied it with unblinking dark eyes.

The card bore an engraved scarlet figure of a woman holding in her uplifted hand a pair of balanced scales. Beneath the figure appeared a single scarlet word: JUSTICE.

Silently the thief put a gloved hand on the safe door, closed it, wiped door and dial with a silk handkerchief. He stood up, inhaled deeply and adjusted his clothing before moving away. He wore evening clothes.

He took a cigarette from a box on Alvin Naigler’s desk, cupped a glowing match in his gloved hands and strolled to one of the three curtained windows. The cigarette gleamed red in the dark as he inhaled; the red glow revealed a lean, good-looking face, sensitive lips, dark hair and dark-gleaming eyes. Standing at the window, the man gazed down on the street below—Washington Street, the aorta of a dozing city.

Dispassionately he watched the small, buglike figures of occasional pedestrians, the twin eyes of occasional slow-moving automobiles. Then he turned, walked quietly to the door of the outer office. Pacing over the sill, he made his way through darkness toward the door leading to the corridor.

Then, very suddenly, he stood stock still, eyes narrowed as he stared at the closed barrier. From the corridor outside—the seventh-floor corridor of what a certain group of hypocritical moneylenders had been pleased to call the Integrity Building—came the drone of a moving elevator.

The dark-eyed young man stepped back, leaned against a desk. The drone of the elevator ceased; steel doors muttered open and clanked shut. Slow footsteps advanced along the corridor outside.

The young man moved again, drew a small black automatic from a pocket of his evening clothes and flattened himself against the wall, within arm’s reach of the door. The footsteps stopped on the far side of the barrier. The knob turned; the door opened.

A short, plump man, more than middle-aged, paced methodically over the threshold.

The plump man closed the door by leaning against it. With business-like steps he walked across the outer office and reached up to yank a light-chain as he passed beneath a frosted globe in the ceiling.

In the doorway of the inner sanctum he stood on wide-spread legs, breathing heavily, noisily, his back toward the leanfaced intruder who stood near the wall. He made a grumbling sound through scowling lips, turned slowly as if bewildered. Then he stiffened, stared with blinking eyes at the immaculately clad figure who stood watching him. Explosively he said:

“Justin Wayne! What the devil— Then it was you who phoned me!”

The young man came forward, slid his automatic unobtrusively into a pocket and left his hand in with it. “I didn’t phone you, Naigler.”

Alvin Naigler stood motionless again, gaping. He stared, let his irate gaze sweep the young man’s lean body from foot to head. “Then what the devil are you doing here? Confound it, someone called me on the phone and told me to come here! At this hour of night! If you didn’t do it, what are you here for?

“How’d you get in? Who did phone me?”

“I didn’t come here to answer questions, Naigler.”

“No? Well, we’ll see about that! Come into my private office. There’s something queer about this confounded business. I—” Naigler paraded into the dinner sanctum, switched on a light and dumped his fat form into a swivel-chair beside the desk. He folded his hands over his protruding stomach, thrust his head out belligerently as the young man sat quietly in a straight-backed chair on the other side. “Now then, explain yourself!”

“You talk as though I were one of your employees.” A vague smile crossed Justin Wayne’s sensitive lips.

“I’m talking as man to man! Damn it, Wayne, I hardly know you! You’re a member of my club, that’s all. What are you snooping around my office for at this time of night?”

BEHIND Naigler’s chair, some distance behind, loomed the middle of the three large windows. A dark shadow moved on the ledge outside as the financier leaned forward, scowled into Justin Wayne’s calm face. Neither Naigler nor Justin Wayne turned to gaze at the window; both would have had to turn almost completely around in order to concentrate on it.

Excerpt From: Hugh B. Cave. “Death Stalks the Night.”