Hooded Detective, Volume III No. 2, January, 1942Various
General
Hooded Detective, Volume III No. 2, January, 1942
Various
Detective and mystery stories -- Periodicals; Pulp literature
At the fringe of dawn the next morning, Black Hood was high in the
Catskills, in the mountain fastness of that whiskered old man who had
been his teacher--that man known simply as the Hermit. There in the
Hermit's laboratory, Black Hood and the old man made a careful analysis
of that scanty sample of powder which Black Hood had scraped from the
coat of the murdered Jack Carlson.
Finally, the old man straightened from the microscope over which he had
been bending.
"My son," he asked of the Black Hood, "what are your findings?"
"The stuff is face powder," Black Hood said. "But it's something else,
too. Mixed in with the face powder is another substance."
"Naphthionate of sodium," the Hermit said.
"That's what I thought," Black Hood nodded. "It's one of those
substances which becomes phosphorescent in ultra-violet light. And those
light bulbs in Jack Carlson's garage were ultra-violet bulbs. The light
from them is invisible to us poor mortals. You see what that means,
Hermit?"
"Not entirely," the Hermit said.
"It means that Jack Carlson was marked for murder. That face powder came
from the cheek of a woman--some woman who pressed her cheek against
Carlson's lapel. And a pretty gesture of affection it was, too. It made
Carlson so easy to kill!
"You see, the naphthionate of sodium in that powder sticks to just about
anything. Even if Carlson had brushed the face powder off, the
naphthionate would still have been there. When Carlson entered the
garage, he turned on the light switch. No visible light came from those
bulbs--only "black light" as it is called. And the killer was waiting.
In the black light, the killer could not be seen, but Carlson was
perfectly targeted by that smudge of naphthionate which glowed on his
lapel.
"It was all planned in advance--the lady's part to smear the powder on
Carlsons' lapel, a sort of Judas kiss. And then there was the killer's
part--to replace the ordinary bulbs with the ultra-violet type, and to
wait with drawn gun to shoot Carlson."
"Who, then, is the Eye?" the Hermit asked.
"I'll stick to my original idea," Black Hood said after a moment's
thought. "I still think that Jack Carlson is--was--the Eye. That alibi
he arranged for himself at Weedham's home, that warning from the Eye
which stated that Carlson was to die, his efforts to make Biggert's
death look as though the killer had been shooting at Carlson instead of
at Biggert--that all points to Carlson as the Eye. He was trying to make
himself appear the fair-haired boy in front of Sergeant McGinty.
"Further, and I think conclusive proof, is that signal device which was
used to 'warn' Carlson. That was--Carlson's own device. It was Vida
Gervais, I believe, who turned the signal light through the French
windows at the Weedham house. And then later, in a previously appointed
spot, she left the signal light for Carlson to pick up as he left the
house.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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