Doc. Turner's Murder Mask E-Book

Arthur Leo Zagat

• Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Doc. Turner Series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 31

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Doc. Turner's Murder Mask by Arthur Leo Zagat is a spine-tingling mystery that will keep you guessing until the final page. When a renowned scientist is found dead, his face hidden behind a chillingly enigmatic mask, the case seems to defy all logic. Detective John Blake is drawn into a web of deception and danger, as he delves into the life of the victim and the strange mask that may hold the key to solving the murder. With every clue leading to more questions, Blake must unravel a complex puzzle involving hidden motives and dark secrets. Will he unmask the killer before more lives are claimed, or will the truth remain obscured behind the eerie mask? Prepare for a suspenseful journey into the heart of a murder mystery.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Doc. Turner's Murder Mask

Synopsis

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2

Landmarks

Table of Contents

Cover

Doc. Turner's Murder Mask

Doc. Turner Series

By: Arthur Leo Zagat

Analyzed, summrized, and edited by: Rafat Allam

Copyright © 2024 by Al-Mashreq Bookstore

First published in The Spider, December 1934

No part of this publication may be reproduced whole or in part in any form without the prior written permission of the author

Synopsis

Death strikes with living flame on Morris Street—leaving no sign save charred, battered human wrecks to mark its passing. And Doc Turner, stalking the killer, becomes, himself, a fugitive from the law!

1

ANDREW TURNER'S white-topped head jerked up, his age-seamed face tight with apprehension. He peered near-sightedly through the murky, indoor twilight, trying to pierce the veil of smut and steam hazing the glass panel of his store-door. Outside, the Saturday night gabble of Morris Street had checked suddenly to a shocked silence—as if a gigantic hand had been laid across the lips of chaffering, shawled housewives and had stuffed the raucous cries of the pushcart peddlers back into their leathery throats.

Then, abruptly, a woman screamed. Tumult beat once more against the front of the ancient drugstore. But now it was a roar vibrant with shouting, hysteric voices, with the pound of running feet; and the blue knife-edge of a shrilling police whistle sliced across the mounting clamor.

Shadowy figures rushed across the gray screen that blurred Doc's view of the street, waving spindly arms above forward-bent heads in an ecstasy of horror. Under the nicotine-edged bush of his mustache the old pharmacist's lips twisted. He pushed out from behind his counter, his gnarled hands lifting already to the doorknob that was still yards away.

The door crashed open before Turner could reach it, and Abe, Doc's undersized errand-boy, plunged in. His protruding lips were blue, his eyes deep sockets of black flame in the grime-smeared pallor of his Semitic face. His voice was a squeezed, muted scream. "Ai, Meester, Toiner! Eet's Jeem O'Neill. De Teeng's got eet Jeem O'Neill dees time."

A groan wrenched from the druggist's throat as he passed the lad. "Again! Good Lord! Hasn't it stopped yet?"

Then he was out in the streaming throng, was being swept by the crowd along a debris-strewn sidewalk, under the glare of lights wire-strung from building fronts to leaning poles at the curb. Minutes before, those lights had seemed festive in the holiday spirit of the market evening; now they flicked across white, drawn faces, glinted from fear-widened eyes. From eyes in which, despite the panic they mirrored, there glowed also a queer eagerness, a morbid lust for the gruesomeness toward which they strained. In the emotion-starved, toil-ridden lives of these slum people any excitement was welcome. Even the shock of grisly death. Even the poignant stab of a mysterious menace that might strike next into the home, the breast, of any one of this polyglot mob.

The human flood swirled around the corner next above that which Andrew Turner's pharmacy had occupied for so many years, piled against a human dam—a close-clotted, quiveringly silent mob staring inward at something that drained the color from swarthy cheeks. The raw blaze of Morris Street's illumination was somehow repelled by the gloom of this sleazy side-street and it was a narrow, dark chasm between man-built cliffs. The reek of man-sweat came to Doc's big nose, garlic- laden breath, the stench of unwashed bodies. But his nostrils flared to another scent threading those familiar odors—the acrid, pungent odor of charred flesh.

Turner touched a big, over-coated shoulder in front of him, and said in the curiously hushed tone one uses in the presence of the dead, "Can you let me through, Tony?"