Black Mask (Vol. 29, No. 3 — January 1947)

Endicott took fresh alarm. He said hastily: “Wait a minute, Mike. If you’re expecting trouble, naturally it’s up to you to keep an eye on developments. But you’ll have to work under cover. You mustn’t ask any bothersome questions of these folks.”

“Yeah? I’m supposed to go read the answers in the stars.” O’Hanna snapped his fingers. He said: “Hey, that might work. I’ll go ask Zane to show me his comet.”

He headed through the lobby, down the front steps across the landscaped grounds. Tonight was the kind of night Endicott’s publicity pamphlets boasted about — cool enough to sleep under blankets after the daytime California sun.

As O’Hanna blinked the lobby lights out of his eyes, the stars showed up like lamps over the pine and black oak treetops. O’Hanna came to a stop, legs braced wide, chin tilted high. Thinly, behind him, came the sounds of piano and saxophones in the Palomar Room. The music brought a picture of the crowded bar under the artificial moon, the dancers circling in the smoky haze under the electric, indoor stars. The Palomar Room seemed far away, and no great bargain.

Irish-gray eyes widening in the dark toward the great, jeweled constellations over his head, O’Hanna mused: “Zane’s right — that layout in there is phony. I’ll be damned if those amateur astronomers haven’t got something on—”

The shot tore his thought in two.

At the flat, wicked report, O’Hanna’s head came down, his stare raked toward the chalets scattered in the concealing trees.

Window-light glowed from a dozen different chalets down the slope. The shot might have sounded from any of them. It might have been out under the trees.

A woman’s scream sliced off a cut of shrill, high-pitched fear and horror.

O’Hanna’s bent elbow came up. Luminous hands on his stopwatch registered 9:20. He was coming up on his tiptoes, running, as the elbow pumped down. Footpaths looped and veined through the landscapery. O’Hanna took the bee-line route toward the scream, as straight as the trees would let him travel.

He didn’t see the other man in time. It was doubly dark under the trees whose boughs blotted out the starlight. O’Hanna hadn’t heard any warning, either. His own sprinting feet kicked up too much disturbance as they crushed pine needles and oak leaves.

The other man hadn’t seen or heard O’Hanna for the same reasons. He was just there in the way, squealing affrightedly, as the house dick came bearing down on him.

They crashed. O’Hanna skidded a yard, jumped up, dropped handfuls of pine needle and leaf mold. The other man lay still, whooshing for breath.

The house dick stooped, fanned the fellow’s angular form. He didn’t find a gun.

The man wailed: “D-don’t shoot again! My money’s in my hip pocket! Don’t kill me!”

O’Hanna yanked the other to his feet. He hadn’t brought a flashlight, and in the dark the man’s face was a long, narrow blur that didn’t add up to recognizable features.

O’Hanna said: “Relax, I’m the house detective. What happened here?”

“I... I don’t know! I heard a shot! Then a man came running at me with a great big shiny gun in his fist. I ran for my life.”

O’Hanna said: “Come on. Show me where.”

The man quavered: “Straight ahead — there.”

Straight ahead was a clearing, the silhouette of a swiss-roofed chalet, and a lighted window with a telescope barreled up out of the opening and aimed above the tree tops.

O’Hanna went ahead and looked in through that window. His eyes were on a level with the polished brass rods, graduated hour circles, and ball-and-crank mounting of the telescope. His glance raked down through the gleaming brass-work and the outspread wooden legs of the ’seope’s tripod. The glance became a fixed stare — fixed on the small, shrunken corpse of Charley Zane. He’d been shot dead center through the bald top of his head. There wasn’t much blood, and there wasn’t any powder burn at all.

The set-up looked as though somebody had stepped up to this window, aimed a gun, and fired as Charley Zane bent his head down over the telescope’s eyepiece.

O’Hanna closed a hand on the narrow-faced man’s arm again. “Come on. Inside.” They toured the building, went up natural stone steps to the rustic door. O’Hanna thrust the door open, was face to face with a red-haired young woman at the entry hallway phone.

The redhead was saying: “Notify the manager immediately. Mr. Zane has been murdered,” and broke off as she glimpsed O’Hanna.

O’Hanna said: “I’m the house officer. How’d it happen?”

The redhaired young woman said: “This way. I’ll show you.”

Chapter Two

Clues and Comets

This way led through the front room where a hearth fire snapped at its task of taking the chill off the night air. Somebody had dropped a poker in the middle of the peasant-style braided rug. Spica Zane was a huddled figure in a corner of the divan. She held a handkerchief balled against her mouth. The hands that held the handkerchief were tense, white-knuckled fists. Her eyes were clenched shut, too.