Great, a story told in 1st person so I will never know who the speaker is unless he talks in front of a mirror. When in Rome, IL . . .
I was trailing a man named Healey. He had slipped out of Chicago two hours ahead of me and headed for Los Angeles. Gard, an op from another agency, mentioned that Healey had been seen in Caliente, Nevada. I mistakenly went to see Frank Caliendo in Las Vegas, then after the show headed to Caliente. Healey was in the second place I looked; the first being all the places he wasn’t.
He was in a small-time poker game. During a break he bought cocktails for the rubes at his table, while having lemonade himself. I asked if he knew a bookie from back east named Lonnie that I knew he knew but he didn’t know that I knew. We became thick as pudgy thieves, even though only one of us was; a thief I mean. Frankly, both of us could lose a few pounds. Healey had ripped off a railroad for $150k and nearly been busted when he tried to put a hotel on it.
That night, Healey came to my room. He needed to get out of town quick before the missus caught up with him again. There was a deal with blackmail and also a deal with a white male who claimed to be her brother. Healey was just in Nevada to get a quickie divorce at the Elvis Divorce Chapel & Muffler Shop. I agreed to drive him back to Los Angeles. He had no luggage, like many boobs leaving NV with just the shirt on his back.
While I was waiting for him in the car, I heard 5 shots from the hotel. Like a dope, I went back in. Upstairs, I found Healey dead of gunshot wounds and his wife stabbed to death with a pistol in her mitts. Witnesses had seen Healey picking his teeth with the knife at the 24 hour buffet. Among the missing: $150k, less some chump-change in the chump’s pocket.
My guess was that Healey had gone upstairs to knock off his wife, using me as the getaway driver. Her alleged brother must have interrupted, shooting Healey in the back after he had stabbed the woman. Now he had looted the loot. This seemed plausible until Gard told me the dead woman was not Healey’s wife.
Gard and I paid a visit to the real Mrs. Healey. She was a hot dame with snappy gams, a real pip. She seemed genuinely distraught at Healey’s murder. She had been hoping they could patch things up. Plans had already been made to ship her husband’s dead body back home to Detroit where it would not be noticed.
Back at my hotel, I got a wire from Chicago. The dead woman was a contortionist extortionist who worked with her husband Arthur Raines, who pretended to be her brother for 23 hours and 58 minutes each day. Her fake brother’s real brother William Raines was listed as a contact — and I’m assuming it is his brother — this is 1933, for God’s sake.
I staked out casa de Raines until I saw a man I assumed to be him get in a cab. We followed the cab until the driver looked back and our eyes met. I had seen him at the scene of the crime! Then he took off, leaving us in the dust. I cursed and embarrassed myself in front of the cab driver — dammit why do they all speak English!
Thinking about taking a train back to New York, I drove by Mrs. Healey’s apartment one last time. I spotted a blue Chrysler out front that I had seen in Nevada. I slipped the spick elevator boy a buck, and went up — er, I hope no one reads this in 84 years [ed: probably close to the truth]. I could hear through the door that the man and Mrs. Healey were talking, but why would they be together? Hearing a scream, I busted in.
Mrs. Healey — and by this point, I really wish I had gotten her first name — was up against a wall as two men wrestled on the floor. Arthur Raines and my pal Gard were fighting for a gun. I was able to easily pick up the gun and conk Raines on the noggin. Then Gard conked me. Then Mrs. Healey conked Gard. The titular One, Two, Three.
When we all regained consciousness, Raines explained the whole complex story. My head was still pounding; mostly from hearing the whole complex story. Mrs. Healey fled to New Zealand and wisely bought property in The Shire.
I found out the next day I had a concussion and was kept in the hospital for 9 days until they realized there was no such thing as HooverCare. The whole Healey ordeal cost me about a grand.
While I enjoyed this story, I’m not sure I enjoyed it so much that facing another 1,125 pages isn’t scaring me.
Post-Post:
- First published in Black Mask in May 1933.
- Also that month: the Loch Ness Monster was first spotted. Possibly related, this was 2 months after Prohibition ended . . . well, 4,000 miles away. But the Scots were probably loaded anyway. [pffft – various accounts suggest other dates]
- Written by Paul Cain.
- No wait, that was a pseudonym for Peter Ruric.
- Not so fast, that was a nom de plume used by George Carrol Sims because he had a girl name; no, I mean George.
We are told Joe Ferguson drives his wife crazy by spending most of his time 
His buddy Frank identifies the creature as a wolf spider, maybe 100 million years old. He says the amber is Joe’s area of expertise. Although, as a geologist, I’m not sure how tree sweat falls in his bailiwick. Maybe in the 
That night, the store-owner who sold him the rock drops by the house. He has a buyer for the amber and wants to get it back from Joe. He returns the money Joe put down, and Ellie gives him the specimen from the lab. When Joe gets home that night, he finds Ellie having tea with the store-owner and some other creditors. They’ve decided they will all be partners in Joe’s research venture which they have named Spider, Inc.
The Elder is giving a speech to the prisoners about the era twelve generations ago, before the New Masters arrived, when humans held dominion over the earth. Special scorn is heaped on the treasonous humans who help the 
Later, 98843 is complaining to a guard about the lack of replacement parts for the factory. She is joined by a young mute girl [1] who has been bringing water to the prisoners as they work. She is also teaching the girl about electronics. This is good, because the way 98843 mouths off to the overseers, there won’t be a 98844.
Prisoner 91777 (Bill Cobb) is elected as the new Elder. The Commandant orders them both to his office to receive supplementary rations for the prisoners. 91777 wants to know how 98843 got him to agree to this, but she dodges the question. The Commandant tells them they will receive sharrak, an alien food from the New Masters; also some cigars from the 
The Commandant’s new eye goes bad, revealing that he is a robot. He orders 98843 to repair him or he will feed the young girl to the sharrak. She does, and becomes his personal mechanic, living separate from the other prisoners. Despite her securing more food for them, they shun her as a traitor.
A good episode despite maybe being padded out a little. As usual on The Outer Limits, the performances and production design are great assets. Harley Jane Kozak and David Hemblen as the Commandant were both great in their roles.
Writer Jeffrey Hunt’s car is pulled out of the water. A detective standing by is immediately suspicious of his wife Debby and his agent Tony Lynch. They also retrieved a notebook with three false-start letters: Goodbye Debby, Goodbye Tony, then Goodbye Debby & Tony. This was pretty prescient as the next scene is one of those godawful amber-bathed Cinemax style sex scenes with the wailing sax, but with an NQ of 0%.[1] This is not HBO, this is TV.
At a reading of Jeffrey’s books by Vivian and Tony, Debby waves Tony outside. The director very nearly sneaks some humor into the episode before catching himself. She tells Tony all about Jeffrey. His bright idea is to kill Jeffrey for real.
Back at casa de Hunt, it becomes clear that Tony & Jeffrey were in cahoots. They have a glass of wine to celebrate, but Tony’s is poisoned. The police show up again. These are both the most diligent and most incompetent cops in the world. The cops break in and find a note on the typewriter: POISONED BY GUILT. A GREAT WRITER IS DEAD. GOD FORGIVE US, DEBRA, FOR THE MURDER OF JEFFREY HUNT.
Post-Post:
An AHP Christmas episode. Unlike 
She explains today is her new birthday. While cleaning the closet, she found hidden bank books showing a balance of $33,000 [1]. He explains that is for their old age. She calls him a cheap, miserly, penny-pinching, money-grabbing . . .” She can’t say asshole on TV, so she asks for a divorce. Alexander is stunned. He thinks, “That would be a terrible thing. I didn’t want to part with Jennifer . . . not in this community-property state.” So he decides to kill her — Ho ho ho, AHP rules!
That night, Jennifer’s eyes roll back in her head and she keels over dead. Well, not quite. Arthur calls the doctor who finds she is in very bad shape, but still alive. The doctors says if she makes it through the night, she has a small chance to recover. Not one to take risks, Alexander smothers her with a HOME SWEET HOME pillow.
This was such a good episode that the last minute fumble is not a deal-breaker. The performances are uniformly great. Dennis Day as Alexander was believably prim and parsimonious. Alice Backes was almost too good as Jennifer. She had a sly delivery, an interest-ing angular beauty and a smile that cut through the jokes. She could have been the standard AHP cookie-cutter shrewish wife, but turned the part into a real person. The thugs were appropriately menacing and even kind of textured characters. Their mugs sold the menace, but their deeds and manners showed more depth. The chemist was a dead-ringer for