The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 23 Classic Mystery Stories

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MacDonald Sprague sat sidewise at the bar, frankly admiring the grave-faced blonde who sat with an escort a few feet away. But the admiration was entirely a surface veneer covering his cold loathing for the woman.

She looks more like a kitten than a murderess, he thought, studying the grave oval face with its slightly upslanting eyes. It was a face that seemed constantly to hold the promise of a smile which never materialized, a poker face, concealing all that lay behind it, yet somehow suggesting that if the mask were lifted, only laughter and innocence would be revealed.

It was hard to imagine those soft lips tensed in a cruel line and that tiny hand deliberately pumping bullets into a man. So hard that a strange reluctance mixed with the loathing in Mac’s mind for the women he believed had killed his brother.

With his hat tilted back at a jaunty angle and with a glint of satanic humor in his eyes, no one would have suspected MacDonald Sprague’s thoughts were composed of anything but admiration. He had rehearsed his part until everything about him was carelessly jaunty: his dress, his speech, his expression — even the way he moved in sudden controlled bounces. In physical appearance he only faintly resembled the deceased killer whose name he had assumed, but his personality was an almost exact copy.

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