The Deadly Ones by Robert A. Garron

Book Details

The Deadly Ones – Three stories about murders and the sociopaths that commit it. A corrupt politician accidentally kills his ex-secretary and has to disappear; an accomplice to fraud gets the tables turned on her when she tries to kill her partner in crime; and all of the murders surrounding a secret new gunsight.

The Deadly One (1943)
For a policewoman, Middie was a broth of a girl, and she had what it takes to get a man without using a gun. But when she met Carpenter, she had to prove she could be as tough as he was, because he had killed one girl, and she was next on his list.
Chapter I
Chapter II – Picture of a Killer
Chapter III – Into It
Chapter IV – Middie in the Middle
Chapter V – Trial and Error
Chapter VI – The Gun Was Loaded
Chapter VII – Dead Man’s Buff

It’ll Be Quiet Soon (1943)
For a long time the girl had been the accomplice of a crook, yet he’d been so clever about it that she never suspected the fact. Now that she was married, he was trying to blackmail her, but she was as stubborn as he.

Murder Enough (1942)
The killer was intent on creating violent death, and with some success. ABC, being a pretty good detective and lucky, kept himself alive long enough to find out what was going on, and to discover that the two girls interested in the murders had different methods
Chapter I
Chapter II – Only a Whack?
Chapter III – Start from Zero
Chapter IV – Cops All Over
Chapter V – ABC Is Not Simple
Chapter VI – Value Received
Chapter VII – A Matter of Murder
Chapter VIII – The Grim Game

The Deadly Ones has 27 illustrations.

Robert A. Garron was a pseudonym of Howard Wandrei (1909-1956). Howard Wandrei was the brother of Donald Wandrei, the better-known writer of the two due to Howard’s use of numerous pseudonyms. In fact, Howard wrote over 200 stories across many genres.

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1. Garron-TheDeadlyOnes.epub

Excerpt: The Deadly One

Chapter I

THE ex-Commissioner of Parks and Playgrounds of Middletown, Cyril Carpenter, was unpleasantly surprised. In fact, he was shocked, and he stood still for two long seconds, watching.

His room was Number 11 on the top floor of the Baldwin Hotel, in the neighboring town of the same name. And it was merely a room of moderate proportions, including a shower-stall instead of a bathtub. The hotel was seven stories high. Carpenter was in the bathroom, and Georgia Brooke, the girl, was out there busying herself at the bed.

The management did not concern itself about a woman going to a man’s room, in the first place, unless there was a ruckus. Besides, Georgia left the elevator at the fifth floor and walked the rest of the way.

Whiskey, soda, and a bowl of ice had been sent up. Since neither of them cared for soda, Carpenter had gone to the shower room for water.

He turned on the tap and let it run to get cold. Just previously, Georgia had been sitting on the single-width bed, and he had been smiling down at her. She was a blonde, slim and curvaceous, her eyes bright and blue and typical; her hair was the color of fresh cornsilk and had the same slight curl. Her dress matched her curves very, very well, and Carpenter didn’t forget legs like hers. She was wearing a dress with a high neck; it zippered down the back, and he always thought that dresses like that looked as though they had been put on backwards, except that this one had pockets in the right place, big enough to hold a half dollar each. He rested his hands on her shoulders, kissed her.

And then he was in the shower room, letting the water run cold, and smiling.

He filled one glass with water, then the other. With both hands occupied he fumbled with the tap, trying to turn it off. He couldn’t do it with his wrist, and he thought, what the hell. He could come back and turn it off. So he turned around with the glasses in his hands, and the first thing he saw was Georgia, through the crack of the door. She was in motion. He was in shirtsleeves, having draped his coat over the head of the bed. She was going through his pockets, fast. She had assumed that he was still trying to get colder water, because the tap was still making a noise.

She picked up his jacket and wrung it, trying to find something hidden. She grasped it from top to bottom, quickly, and she found the hidden pocket. Out of it she drew a leather notebook, which she glanced at and thrust into her purse, working the snap carefully so that it didn’t make a sound.

She had been his secretary. Now she had the same job with his successor. Come to think of it, she wanted all the money she could get.

Her mouth wasn’t soft. It was hard and shiny with lipstick, and her eyes were calculating. Her calculations didn’t bother him very much, but he was annoyed that she should take him for such a sucker.

SETTING a glass down for a moment, he turned off the tap and returned to the room. Her eyes were entirely guileless as she smiled up at him. He was a large, gaunt man over six feet tall, with graying hair; he smiled down on her benevolently. Such a clever girl. He wondered how she had found out about his racket. Probably she had added up a few scraps of information down at the office, or she might even have eavesdropped some time when he was talking with his agent, John Gogg. It made no difference, except that he had to get back that slim little book. Later.

Meanwhile he fixed the drinks, casually tossing her purse aside so that he could sit down with her.

He had always liked the gals, and the fact that this one was unscrupulous made her more interesting. He talked ramblingly and with erudition, planting a fatherly hand upon her knee, keeping her occupied mentally and physically. He was very methodical, taking a drink and putting it down to kiss her, as though the act were a punctuation mark in a sentence. In any case she submitted, much like a patient in a dentist’s chair, smiling because the thing she had come after was safe in her purse. After tonight she would be in the money.

Proximity to Carpenter meant that a girl would soon be disheveled, and Georgia was no exception. Finally he said, “How about combining business with pleasure? I’d like to finish those sketches.”

Very few people knew about his hobby: He was—or considered himself an artist. But she had modeled for him before; and that was, in fact, his excuse for having her here tonight.

“All right,” she said, and began disrobing. “Are you sure this is business?”

“Certainly.” He tucked a twenty among her things.

She thought—the old goat; with all the women in the world, he’d pay twenty dollars just to see one without any clothes on. Because she didn’t think he was much of an artist; he had never let her see the sketches he’d made of her.

She wasn’t entirely correct.

He asked her to turn around, and she did, first putting her shoes on so that she wouldn’t get her feet dirty on the rug. Keeping her mirth to herself, she followed his directions. If this was fun for the old boy, fine. Apparently he was comparing in his mind normal conditions with how a girl’s body actually looked in the same circumstances. Her composure was aloof, as though she were modeling a gown instead of moving about sans.

However, she was poetry to watch, with her shapeliness, and she got interested in herself. She looked down and decided that there was no question about her legs. She had just shaved them, and gleams highlighted the contours as she moved.

Because Carpenter had her light a cigarette as though she were doing it at a cocktail party, had her straighten a picture on the wall. . . . He asked her to touch the floor with her legs straight, knees locked; she could do better than that, and pressed the flat of her hands against the rug.

All the while, he was making quick sketches on a small drawing pad: as she walked like a girl merely going down the street, or sat, or danced by herself, and so on. Really she didn’t think that he was doing any drawing at all; just pretending.

AFTER several drinks she was back in her clothes again. She turned her head, with her back to a large mirror, to make sure that her stocking seams were straight. There was little doubt in her mind that Carpenter was drunk, because she had kept pouring some of the contents of her glass into his. Actually she had had only a few ounces from the bottle, which was now empty.

She made ready to go, tucking the twenty-dollar bill, folded across and across, into the top of her stocking. He grinned at the sight of the smooth long leg. Then she came back to get her purse.

“I’ve heard all kinds of stories about the amount of junk a girl keeps in her purse,” he said. “Let’s see.”

He picked up the purse.

“No!” she exclaimed, and jerked it out of his hand.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, pretending blankness.

She didn’t know his capacity, for he wasn’t drunk at all. He was having some grim fun with her. But she sensed that something was wrong, backed a step away from him.

Rising slowly, he smiled at her and said, “Let’s be friends. Just give me back the notebook you took from my coat. I saw you take it from my coat when I was getting cold water in the bathroom. You put the notebook in your purse.”

She sneered with anger and fear, saying, “So you knew it all the time!”

“Well, give it back,” he said mildly.

Pretending to work at the snap on the purse, she suddenly made for the door. Her skirt wrapped around her legs in spiral folds, and she nearly fell before she seized the doorknob. There was also a deadlock on the door, and she tried that when the knob wouldn’t work. But that time Carpenter had reached her; he was old, but he was big and powerful and fast. With one blow he swiped her to one side, so hard that she looked as though she had thrown her precious purse away. He watched it tumble across the rug toward the bed.

And then there was a clunk. He had sent her spinning, and when she fell, her head struck the radiator under the window with her full weight. She turned over and fell to the floor on her face, with her skirt up and showing the smooth, satiny sheen of her pantie-girdle, plus her intriguing roundness. He kept looking at her for a while, and she lay still.

He walked to the purse and picked it up, and took out the notebook which she had stolen. He replaced the book in the “secret” pocket of his jacket, and put the jacket on but didn’t button it.

“Damned little meddler,” he grumbled.

He couldn’t leave her lying there like that, so he went over and crouched beside her. His big fingers couldn’t find her pulse. Irritated, he knelt and rested his head on her breast, and listened and listened. There wasn’t any heartbeat; she wasn’t breathing; she was dead. He was so astonished that he stared at her parted lips for a full minute, crouching. The crime was something that he didn’t want to believe.

Excerpt From: Robert A. Garron. “The Deadly One”