strangeandunknown:

All Detective, March, 1933

THE knocking on the door was softly urgent. An insistent little tattoo of bunched knuckles. Silence followed. Then the sound began again. Rap, rap, rap! There was something restrained and deadly in that furtive signal on the outside of the locked door of Room 708.

Tough Tony Farino had sharp animal-like ears and he was positive that the elevator door hadn’t clanged once in the last twenty minutes. There had been no telephone call from the hotel desk downstairs. Whoever was outside in the dingy corridor had come up to the seventh floor without attracting attention; had gumshoed through the lobby, probably, and climbed the fire-stairs on tiptoe.

The girl, Ethel, glared wordlessly at Tony. Her hard eyes were bright with warning.

Farino frowned reassuringly at her. He rose catlike to his feet. The blue-steel gleam of a stubby automatic projected snoutlike from his grimy fist. He took a noiseless step toward the door.

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