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Talmage Powell

The Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 2 °Classic Mysteries!

“Life Sentence” was originally published in Manhunt, April 1960.

A Note from the Publisher

Talmage Powell (1920–2000) was one of the all-time great mystery writers of the pulps (and later the digest mystery magazines). He claimed to have written more than 500 short stories (and I have no reason to doubt him — I am working on a bibliography of his work, and so far I can document 373 magazine stories... and who knows how many are out there under pseudonyms or buried in obscure magazines!) His pen names included Robert Hart Davis, Robert Henry, Milton T. Lamb, Milton T. Land, Jack McCready, Anne Talmage, and Dave Sands. Some (like Robert Hart Davis) were “house names” shared by many different authors. (Bill Pronzini also wrote as “Robert Hart Davis,” for example.) His work appeared in Dime Mystery, Black Mask, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Magazine, Manhunt, and many, many more

He wrote his first novel, The Smasher, in 1959. He went on to pen 11 more novels under his own name, 4 as “Ellery Queen,” and 2 novelizations of the TV series Mission: Impossible. Clearly, though short stories were his first love.

Enjoy!

— John Betancourt

Crime Gets a Head

Milton T. Lamb

Originally published in Ten Detective Aces, September 1943, under the pseudonym “Milton T. Lamb”.

Chapter I

Percival Smith, my boss, was reading a book written by some guy named Freud when the phone rang. He didn’t look up from the book. He said, with a nod, “Answer it, Willie.”

I was glad to, glad of the chance to do something. Percival Smith has long periods of silence when’s he not very good company. I’d been twiddling my thumbs and trying to doze for the last hour.

I got out of my chair, walked to his desk, and picked the phone up. I said, “Yeah?” A torchy voice asked, “The Smith Agency?”

“None other,” I said, thinking that the female who owned the voice must be plenty easy on the eyes.

“Is Mr. Smith in?”

The boss kept reading. I nudged him with my elbow and pointed to the phone. He frowned at me, shook his head, and looked back at his book.

I said, “I’m sorry, but he’s not here. Can I help you? This is Aberstein. I’m his assistant.”

“I’m Alicia Droyster,” the voice said. “I...”

I covered the mouthpiece with my hand. “The Droyster dame, boss!”

He sat up at that, closed his book with a pop. He reached out a hand which the little blonde dish at Central Barber Shop manicures twice every week.

The Droyster dame was saying something about a calling card and a Great Dane dog, when I broke in. “Just a minute. The boss has just blew in.”

I handed him the phone, stepped back to watch him. He began asking Alicia Droyster a lot of questions. His eyes sort of got warm-looking and I could see his hand get tight on the phone. Well, I been with him long enough to know the signs. I wondered what in hell it would be this time.

Smith can get into more messes in five minutes than you or me could in ten years. He began to smile and it made my stomach nearly do a flip over. I wished he would tell the Droyster dame good-by and hang up. But I knew from the way he was grinning that he wouldn’t do that. Smith is a private shamus because he wants to be. And that kind of guy always hunts trouble.

I moved around the desk and sat down. I was already betting myself three to one that Smith would find what he was hunting — if Alicia Droyster hired him.

Two days ago, Mark Droyster, Alicia’s loving hubby, had gone home late in the afternoon, gone in his bedroom, and rigged up a contraption with coat hangers and a sawed-off shotgun. I thought it was a very messy way for a guy to kill himself. When they found Droyster there hadn’t been anything left of his head.

The bulls had marked it up as suicide without thinking about it much, and Droyster had been put six feet under late yesterday. It had been a very private funeral. Alicia Droyster, a sawbones named Lawrence Jordan, the preacher and pallbearers were all the people the Droyster dame would let come into the cemetery.

As usual, the boys on the news sheets made a big splash with it. This Mark Droyster had been as tough as a bulldog. He’d started as a kid selling papers, muscled his way up in a rough and ready style until he was a big shot. But when he cashed in his chips, the newshounds hinted that he was busted. It was odds around town that losing his dough had put him in such a funk that he killed himself.