Death Ray (ePub)

Follow Bill Oliver as He Tracks down a Cowardly Killer and Solves a "Clueless" murder!



Excerpt



Kib Nasten had worked this out pretty cleverly, he thought. Doctor Robert Wasey paid blackmail. A smooth con man named Ringo had hooked Wasey. Twice a year he called around and the doctor gritted his teeth and handed over two thousand in cash. Now the price was to be doubled, with Rib Nasten as Ringo's partner in the "clip."



Disguised as a decrepit old man, Nasten had pushed past the protesting office girl and gained the doctor's inner office. Doctor Wasey, who was leaning over a black slab of a table and working at a black, boxlike thing wheeled up beside it, stared impatiently at him.



"My dear sir," he said. "There is a patient ahead of you. If you will please wait your turn-"



Nasten stepped closer to Doctor Wasey, and in his right hand was a gun with the bulky cylinder of a silencer on it.



"This is a stick-up, you sap. Put your hands up and keep 'em there," he said, in a low tone that was none the less deadly for being low.



Wasey's hands rose. Not a very large man, he seemed to shrivel a little under the menace of the gun.



"I haven't anything of value-" he faltered.



"Keep your voice down! One peep out of you, and you get it." Nasten jabbed the gun toward him. "This gat's silenced, so I could plug you easy and nobody'd know."



Doctor Wasey moistened his lips nervously.



"But I haven't any money here. I haven't a thing-"



"Bunk," said Nasten. "A guy named Ringo is supposed to come in here in about an hour and get two grand from you.



Two thousand bucks. You'll have that around the place, now. I want it."



Doctor Wasey's face got, if possible, a little whiter.