The Restless Hands by Bruno Fischer

Book Details

The Restless Hands – Rebecca Sprague was a beautiful girl but the very fact of her beauty brought death and terror. Beneath the the serenity of Hessian Valley lurks the mysterious strangler with eager fingers.

The Restless Hands (1949)

1. Tony Bascomb
2. Rebecca Sprague
3. Mark Kinard
4. Ben Helm
5. George Dentz
6. Rebecca Sprague
7. Tony Boscomb
8. Mark Kinard
9. Ben Helm
10. George Dentz
11. Ben Helm
12. Rebecca Sprague
13. Tony Bascomb
14. Ben Helm
15. Mark Kinard
16. Rebecca Sprague
17. Ben Helm
18. Mark Kinard
19. George Dentz

Bruno Fischer (1908-1992) was a prolific pulp writer and 1950’s paperback novelist. Fischer also wrote under the pseudonym of Russell Gray. His writing style has been compared with that of Cornell Woolrich.

Fischer described his “usual manner” of writing as containing “movement and suspense with very little violence” and as being about “ordinary people in extraordinary situations”.

The Restless Hands contains 25 illustrations.

Available for and

1. RestlessHands.epub
2. RestlessHands.mobi

Also available on Barnes & Noble

Excerpt: The Restless Hands

1. Tony Bascomb

IN New York it wasn’t easy to get hold of a gun that could be hidden in your pocket unless you had a permit or knew the right people. Tony Bascomb had no permit and the right people he knew were now for him the wrong people.

He stood at the window of his room and stared down at the sleeping street.

Restless shadows and shifting shapes hovered about the stoops and doorways of the brownstone houses on the opposite side. Probably they had no physical substance. His wristwatch said four-seventeen—too soon for Bruff to have set the pieces into motion. But it wouldn’t take him long.

He told himself that the effect would be spoiled by flight, the edge would be taken off the joke. But without at least a weapon the alternative would be messy, not to mention undignified.

He packed his two bags. When they were locked he paused in front of the dresser mirror. His long fingers ran over his deeply cleft jaw. He could use a shave but his razor was packed. He still wore what he had put on for the job—corduroy trousers and a poplin jacket and a white shirt open at the throat.

What the hell, his feet were washed. He’d make a decent enough corpse. He put on his rakishly crumpled tan hat and left the rooming house. He walked west —a tall loose-jointed young man who never hurried, not even now.

At the corner a man eased out of a store doorway.

Abruptly Tony Bascomb stopped, the bags swaying against his calves. The man was gaunt and shabbily dressed. He was nobody Tony had ever seen before but that meant little. Bruff had quite an organization.

“Got a cigarette, Bud?” the man asked.

Tony put down both bags. Without taking his eyes off the man, he pulled a half-filled pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

“Keep the pack,” he said.

“Thanks, Bud.”

Tony did not pick up his bags until the man was lighting a cigarette. He made himself take a dozen steps before glancing back. The man was shambling off in the opposite direction. Tony looked down at his hands holding the bags. They were reasonably steady.

HE walked two blocks north and descended to the subway and took the first local that came along. At that hour the train was almost empty. He arranged himself in a seat against a window and covered a yawn with the back of his hand. Within a few minutes he was asleep. He rode the subway until well into the morning and then ate breakfast in a midtown Manhattan cafeteria.

Stores were now open but it would be no easier to get hold of a hand gun than during the middle of the night. There was no point in hanging around New York. The war had taught him that heroics were stupid. They caused you to die sooner than you had to without doing anybody any good, particularly yourself.

He walked east on Forty-second Street to Grand Central. One hour and fifty-two minutes after the train left New York it pulled into Hessian Valley.

The station consisted of cinders on either side of the tracks. Most trains haughtily ignored it. The village started haphazardly here with half a dozen tracks and gained population as it climbed the hump that bisected the valley.

The day was mild and bright, the perfect kind that came in June according to the poet, whoever it was. But it got hotter with every climbing step and the bags kept gaining weight. At the top of the hill he reached the compact business section consisting of little more than a single city block. He stopped in front of Delmore’s drugstore to rest and light a cigarette.

“Tony!”

Across the street Mark Kinard was getting out of his battered station wagon. He wore white ducks and a white T-shirt tight on his deep chest. The usual couple of locks of thick black hair straggled over his brow. They shook hands with the ardor of boyhood friends.

“Back home for a while?” Mark asked.

“Only for a couple of hours.”

Mark looked across at the station wagon, then up the street, then at Tony.

“I’ll give you a lift,” he said, picking up one of the bags.

When they were seated in the station wagon Mark Kinard’s black eyes become solemn. He concentrated on making a U-turn before he said grimly, “The police are looking for you.”

“What for now?” Tony said indifferently.

“You shouldn’t have left town the night Isabel was killed.”

Tony leaned back in the straight seat, pushing out his legs as far as he could. “I couldn’t know that she was going to be murdered.”

“Of course not. But I’m telling you that the police are looking for you because you did leave. Not only Chief Cooperman but the state police.”

“And your idea is that I’m ducking into town to see my mother and then right out again to avoid the cops.”

“I thought you ought to know, that’s all.”

“Relax,” Tony drawled. “There’s no heat on me. Besides, I didn’t murder Isabel if that’s what’s on your mind.”

“Don’t be a jerk,” Mark said.

Tony turned his head to look out at the high school sitting on a grassy knoll. He had been kicked out of it twice but each time his mother had raised enough fuss as a widow and a taxpayer to get him reinstated.

“Who else thinks I murdered Isabel?” Tony said.

“Cut it out,” Mark said irritably. “Practically everybody in town was more or less suspected, though it was pretty plain that a tramp did it.” Ahead a roadside neon sign announced —KINARD CABINS. A hundred feet back of the sign the two-story frame house was freshly painted white with green trim. To the right, in a neat semicircle, stood the even dozen cabins, each one with a cute little porch and a miniature lawn.

“I’ll walk the rest of the way,” Tony said.

Mark Kinard didn’t slow the station wagon. “It’s easier being driven.”

“Thanks.” Tony twisted in his seat. Mrs. Kinard was hanging sheets on the clothesline on the side of the house away from the cabins. “How’s business, Mark?”

“Well, the season’s hardly started. We expect a good summer.”

“Why don’t you get out of that crummy business? It’s for women and old men.”

Mark scowled at the windshield. “Do I have a choice?” he said.

THE station wagon swept around a quarter of a mile curve to a cluster of houses on the right side of the road. Between an imposingly gabled gingerbread house and a gleaming stucco flat-roofed house the small green-shingled cottage huddled ashamed and apologetic. Its driveway was hard dirt, pitted by pools of water lingering from a recent rain. The station wagon stopped within a few feet of the open porch.

This was the only home Tony Bascomb remembered. It wasn’t much but whenever he came back it looked good to him for the first couple of hours. He got out of the station wagon and took the bags Mark handed out to him.

Once the wild jumble of grass and weeds between the porch and the road had been a lawn but you couldn’t expect a widow living alone to take care of it. His mother’s ten-year-old sedan was parked at the side of the house. The fenders were even more crumpled than they had been and the rear bumper was hanging by a thread. He heard himself say, “How’s Rebecca?”

It was out, the subject that had hovered unspoken between them since the moment they had seen each other.

“She’s all right,” Mark muttered. His right hand massaged the steering wheel.

“No wedding bells?” Tony said.

“No.”

“What a waste of loveliness,” Tony said.

Mark’s black eyes flashed. “Shut up, Tony!”

“Sure,” Tony agreed amiably. He extended his hand through the station wagon window. “Thanks for the lift, Mark.”

The front door led directly into the living room. It was almost always too dark in there because on bright days his mother kept the heavy curtain drawn to protect the furniture, though it was many years since sun or moths or spilled liquids could make any difference in the appearance of the overstuffed set. He left his bags there and went through the dining room and into the kitchen.

At the porcelain-topped table his mother sat drinking coffee and eating one of the sugar buns on which she practically lived. That was probably her lunch. A small white radio on a shelf above the gas range was relating an eternal soap opera.

“Tony!” Myra Bascomb said. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

She threw her arms about him and held him tight and kissed him. Her lips tasted like a young woman’s. She wore one of her usual housecoats which fitted tightly over her short, fullblown figure.

“You’re getting fat, Myra,” he told her.

“And I practically starve myself.” Her red mouth pouted. “Why don’t you ever come to see me?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“New York isn’t so far. You could come up for a Sunday now and then.”

He said, “How about some coffee?”

SHE always kept a big pot of it on the stove and toward evening, after it had been reheated half a dozen times, it could take the skin off your tongue. Because it was only noon the coffee was still drinkable. As they sat opposite each other, she went into her usual complaint about nobody caring for a lonely widow, not even her only son.

“Even your letters,” she said petulantly. “All you write is that you’re feeling well and you hardly ever write. You must be doing well if you sent me twelve hundred dollars last week but when people ask me what you work at I haven’t the remotest idea.”

“I drove a truck,” he said.

“Do you make that much money driving a truck?”

“I worked overtime and saved it.” He looked down at the bun in his hand. “By the way, can I have a piece of that money today? Say five hundred.”

“Today?” She sounded frightened. “You’re not leaving today?”

“I’m sorry but I’ll have to push off this afternoon. I’m making a business trip.”

“What kind of business? You never tell me anything.”

“I’ve quit the trucking job and I’m trying to get located at something else. I’ll tell you about it when it’s more definite.”

She sighed. “I’ll go to the bank for the money as soon as I dress.”

“You’re a swell girl, Myra.” He moved around the table and kissed her. Then he patted her shoulder and went into the living room for his bags.

His room upstairs was the way he had left it, except that now it was considerably neater. Always it was there for him to come back to. All it needed was a perpetual light in the window for the erring son.

The trunk was in the deep closet. He pulled it out and rummaged through junk until he found the shoebox in which he kept the Luger he had brought back from the war. Also in the shoe-box was a box of 9 mm. cartridges. He went to the bathroom for a shower.”

“When he returned to his room he found Myra standing in front of the dresser, staring down at the gun. “Tony, you—you carry a gun?”

Excerpt From: Bruno Fischer. “The Restless Hands.”