Hoodwink

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I was sitting tilted back in my office chair, reading one of Russell Dancer’s private eye stories in a 1948 Midnight Detective, when the door opened and Russell Dancer walked in.

Coincidences happen now and then; I knew that as well as anybody after the Carding/Nichols case I had been involved in a few months ago. But they still jar you a little every time. I opened my mouth, closed it again, blinked a couple of times, and then got on my feet as he shut the door.

“Hey there, shamus,” he said. He came through the rail divider, gave the scattered cardboard packing boxes a curious glance, and plopped the briefcase he was carrying down on the visitor’s chair. “Remember me?”

“Remember you? Hell, I was just reading one of your old pulp stories.”

“You kidding?”

“Not a bit.” I held the magazine out for him to look at. “One of the Rex Hannigan novelettes.”

Dancer glanced at the title above the interior illustration, and his sardonic mouth got even more sardonic. ” ‘There’ll be a Hot Crime in the Old Tomb Tonight!’ Frigging editors loved pun titles in those days-the worse the better.”

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