From: The Shadow, Treasure Trail, 5/15/37 

      THE KID FACES DEATH
      By Steve Fisher 

      The shoe-shine kid takes another lesson in crime-detecting and bags a
murderer! 


      "Slug" O'Donnel leaned back in his chair, took a toothpick out of his mouth
and pointed it. 
      "Danny," he said, "I promised you that time the Hindu kept you locked in his
closet that I'd give you a break on another case sometime. Now that was a rash
statement, made in a moment of —of—" 
      "Of gratitude," Mike Ryan, his redfaced  detective partner, came in dryly. 
      "Yes," Slug O'Donnel went on—"of gratitude. You must know, Danny, that
tipping off kids like you on big crimes, no matter how smart the kids are or how
lucky they are in turning up a valuable  clue now and then, is, to say the least,
highly irregular.  If the chief found out, your friend, Mike Ryan, and I might get
bounced out of the homicide  squad like a couple of duck eggs out of a hen's
nest!" 
      The twelve-year-old shoe-shine boy's eyes became a trifle troubled.   He
shifted the shine kit to his other shoulder,  turned his checkered cap around and
around in his hands. He had red hair, freckles, and frank blue eyes; and he had
been featured in several cases with Slug O'Donnel and Mike Ryan, where he had
been able to spot clues that aided them in making important arrests. 
      "What are you driving at, Slug?" he asked.  
      Mike .Ryan lighted a short stogy and puffed on it. "Kid, what he's really
driving at is that he wants you to do us a favor, and count that as the break he
promised you." 
      "That's not true, Mike!" Slug roared. "I—" 
      "Sure it is," Mike Ryan interrupted. He shoved his derby back on his head.
"You see, there's a guy down on Third Avenue, a merchant, who claims his life
has been threatened. He hasn't any notes, or anything like that. Just claims that
some one is going to try and murder  him, and won't tell us who, outside of the
fact that it'll probably be a woman. 
      "The chief thinks he's screwy. Says we can't throw a ring of police protection 
around every half-baked guy who asks for it. I'm inclined to agree with the chief.
This guy—his name is Hudson— refuses to cooperate with us beyond  telling us
that he's going to be bumped off." 
      "That's it, Danny," Slug said, "that's the whole story. Only, I interviewed the
guy, and I was convinced that he was sincere. Naturally, a couple of detective 
sergeants like me and Ryan can't hang around a store waiting for murder to
happen; especially when the chief doesn't sanction it. But—if anything should
happen, we'd like to get a quick tip on it." 
      Danny sighed, his eyes shining. "I see; you want me to go down into that
district and hang around shining shoes and keeping my eyes open. If anybody
suspicious come around, I should tell you.   If Hudson gets murdered, I should get
you on the phone right away. Is that it?" 
      "That's it," O'Donnel and Ryan chorused. 
      Danny Garrett grinned. "Sure!" he said. "I'm glad to do errands for you guys
like that. Give me Hudson's address." 
       For three days Danny Garrett spent all the hours he had free for shining shoes
in and around the neighborhood of Paul Hudson's combination soda-
magazine-book-stationery store, and by now he had begun to agree with Mike
Ryan and .the chief that Slug was wrong about Hudson. The merchant seemed
neither nervous nor unhappy; and Danny hadn't seen anything that would make
him even slightly suspicious. 
      As a matter of fact, Hudson was a likable man, and Danny struck up an
acquaintance with him. 
      On the third day Danny sipped a soda Hudson had given him for delivering 
some newspapers into apartment houses. 
      "Mr. Hudson," he asked subtly, "did you ever know any cops?" 
      Paul Hudson's dark eyes gleamed. He was a medium-sized man in his early
thirties who had crisp and curly black hair, a swarthy complexion, and thickish
lips. 
      "Sure," he replied frankly. "I told them I thought some one was going to
murder me!" 
      Danny hadn't expected that, and he was astounded. He knew that Paul Hudson
had a dry sense of humor, and that he often startled people by telling the
truth—what he thought of them, their clothes, their wives, and whether or not he
cared for their patronage. He had a score of enemies for this, but twice as many
friends who looked upon him as something rare. 
      "You—you told them that?" Danny asked. 
      "Yeah," said Paul, and closed the subject. 
      Danny Garrett sat there drinking the soda. A tall, gray-haired man whom
Danny recognized as Stanley Sims, a well-known doctor, and a good friend of
Paul, came into the little store and sat down beside him. 
      "Hello, Paul!" 
      "Hello, doc," Paul replied, smiling slowly.   "How's everything at the clinic?" 
      "Fine!" Doctor Sims boomed. "And Shirly is fine, too. She asked me to tell
you she would see you later to-night. How is your treatise coming?" 
      "The treatise is coming along all right," Paul Hudson said, and he closed that
subject, too. He had a deft way of doing that at exactly the time he wished. 
       Danny said he would see Paul later and left the store. He drummed up trade
on Third Avenue, and two hours later came back and sat down on the newspaper
rack in front of Hudson's establishment. 
      He saw Shirly Parker as she approached.  She was garbed in her white nurse's
uniform and a thin coat. Her hair was jet-black and coiled in rolls on the back of
her neck; she had eyes that were as shiny as ebony. 
      Danny had learned long ago that she was Paul's girl. She entered the store, and
Danny Garrett remained sitting on the rack. 
      He was surprised to see Shirly Parker come out of the store less than five
minutes later.   She glanced at Danny, then up and down the street. Her face was
as pale as a ghost. She had something bulky tucked under her arm that looked like
a manuscript. 
      As she hurried toward the curb to call a cab, Danny noticed idly that she was
wearing new shoes, that the soles, as her tiny feet went clip-clop, were spotless.
Then a taxi pulled up and the girl climbed into it and made off. 
      For a moment the significance of this strange action did not fully dawn on the
shoe-shine boy; then, alarmed, he jumped up and rushed into the store. Paul was
nowhere to be seen, and there were no customers present. 
      Danny went around behind the soda fountain. There was no one there. He
walked back into the small storeroom. Here he stared down, sucking in breath. He
was too paralyzed to move. 
      Paul Hudson lay in a crumpled and bloody heap on the floor, his chest
crimson  with blood, his dark eyes, burning no longer, staring emptily past Danny.
Some of the blood was still trickling to the floor. 
      It was obvious that Paul had been recently murdered! 
       When Danny's senses awakened to the full horror of what had happened he
looked around. There was lipstick on the floor near the body, and it was rubbed
into the wood. Shirly Parker must have dropped it in her hurry and stepped on it! 
      Danny Garrett could feel his heart beating like a hammer against his chest. He
backed away, still gasping for breath. The rear door was open,  exposing a back
yard. Suddenly he saw a figure moving across the yard. 
      Running, Danny reached the door. Miller, the florist whose store was next to
Hudson's, was retreating through the back door of his own shop. 
      Danny knew that he should phone at once, but something forced him out the
door. He walked to the back of the florist shop, saw Miller—a squat, bald
man—washing his hands. Danny looked around the yard.  He bent, touched his
finger to a drop of blood. 
      Temples throbbing now, he glanced again toward Miller, then hurried back in
through Hudson's stationery store. He went at once to the pay telephone and put in
a nickel. He dialed the police  headquarters and asked for Mike Ryan. 
      "This is Danny," he said when the burly Irish dick came on the line. "It's
happened!" 
      "What?" 
      "Paul Hudson has been—been murdered!" 
      "No fooling, kid?" 
      "Yeah—and darn it, Mike, next to you and Slug he was about the swellest guy
going!" 
       
      Slug O'Donnel and Mike Ryan looked at the body of young Paul Hudson  as
the assistant medical examiner busied himself, with a preliminary  examination.
Uniformed cops had been placed at the front and back doors of the establishment
to keep out the curious—some  of whom had been Hudson's friends, some his
enemies. 
      "He guessed right about the murder," Ryan said at last, lighting his stogy, "and
I thought the guy had a screw loose." 
      "I didn't," said Slug O'Donnel, who had a figure like a bean. pole and hair not
unlike a straw mat. "I knew he wasn't kidding. And from what Danny has told us
it's obvious who's behind it. No mystery on this trip, Mike. It's clear-cut: a jealous
woman. 
      "And this is a case just like you'd expect  of a woman. Nothing clever, nothing 
subtle. Stabs the guy, gets hysterical  and beats. it. Even leaves her lipstick 
behind her in the rush." 
      Ryan pushed back his derby. He was skeptical. "It's too easy! Danny, are you
sure Shirly Parker came out of the store like you said, just before you found
Hudson had been killed?" 
      "Positive!" said Danny. 
      "When you deal with crimes of passion—love  and hate," Slug O'Donnel
snapped, reciting something he had read in the police journal, "the solution is
bound to be simple. A person who murders under emotional strain is so worked
up that he doesn't care whether he is caught or not.  You can play the pin machine
over there, Ryan, and chant about things being easy if you want, I'm going after
Shirly Parker!" 
      Mike Ryan seemed a little sad as he watched Slug leave the store.   He
glanced back at Danny, then at the corpse, and said, "He's probably right, but I
hate to admit it." 
      He bent down and scooped up some of the lipstick. While he gazed at the
cosmetic, Danny told him about seeing the florist next door. 
      "Maybe we ought to go over and question him, Mike." 
      "Maybe so," Ryan replied. "Come on." 
       They went out the back way and into the florist shop through its back
entrance. Miller finished attending a customer and turned to see them standing 
there. The squat man, light shining  from his bald head, looked at the small
shoe-shine boy, then up at the red-faced detective. 
      "What's the meaning of this?" 
      "Maybe you haven't heard of the murder next door." 
      "Sure," Miller grunted, "I heard of it." 
      "But it doesn't make you very sorry, does it?" Mike Ryan asked. 
      . Miller shrugged. Danny saw that he had a bandaged. finger. Ryan saw it too. 
      "Cut yourself?" 
      Miller nodded. "I broke a vase and had to take it outside." 
      "Yeah?" Ryan snapped. "Let's see what the wound looks like!" 
      Miller took off the bandage and showed it to them. It did not look  unnatural.
Afterward Ryan, followed by Danny, went outside and saw the broken vase to
verify Miller's story. 
      Danny Garrett began to wonder at the turn of events. Miller's story was
logical. He had every right to be out in the small back yard; and he had an excuse
for the blood.  Then Shirly Parker must be guilty! 
      Ryan took Miller back inside to grill him; but Danny did not go along this
time. He entered the stationery store again. He had no trouble, for the cop
guarding the door had seen that he was with the homicide detective. 
      Danny saw them carry out Paul Hudson.  He would like to believe that any
one but Shirly had committed the crime; and yet, from fairly close relationship
with Hudson, he had seen no one whom he could look upon now as a suspect. 
      He thought of Doctor Sims. Yet Sims must have been out of the place long
before this happened. Maybe Miller  had broken the vase to cover up for any
questioning such as he was now  undergoing. 
      Suddenly an idea came to Danny. He scooped up some of the lipstick as he
had seen Ryan do; scooped it up with his finger nail. Again he left the store, and
headed down the street toward a drug store. 
       It was a half hour later when Slug O'Donnel brought the police car to a skid
in front of the stationery store and hopped out, a bundle under his arm. Danny
Garrett and Mike Ryan saw him. 
      "She's gone," Slug wailed. "Can't find her anywhere! Skipped the city, I guess.
I suggest we go right down to headquarters and send out a general alarm with her
description and all that, Ryan." 
      "Where did you look?" 
      "At the clinic," Slug answered. "At her living quarters, the home of her
mother; I even had some of the uniformed boys scout around to the homes of her
friends. I tell you we worked fast, looked in all the logical places, and she's gone!" 
      Mike Ryan chewed on his short cigar for a moment, then he shrugged. "I
thought I had a lead on a guy in the florist shop, but maybe not. This Parker girl
must be guilty." 
      Slug snapped: "Must be? She is!" 
      But Danny Garrett was looking at the bundle under the skinny detective's arm.
"Slug," he asked, "what's that ?" 
      Slug O'Donnel answered the- question,  though he addressed Ryan as he did
it. "The screwiest thing you ever heard of" he said. "I found it underneath  a
hidden plank in Shirly Parker's apartment when I was tapping around to find
something hollow. Guess what it is." 
      "I'm not paid to guess," grunted Ryan. 
      "It's the manuscript of a book! Look, here's the title." 
      Danny saw it as it was held up: 
      Treatise: Of An American Medical Man By Paul Hudson 
      "Imagine Hudson, a stationery-store guy, writing a book about medicine," said
Slug as he and Ryan climbed into the police car. 
      Danny Garrett watched them drive off, then he headed down the street as fast
as he could walk. He could imagine Paul Hudson writing a book like that, and he
could imagine a reason for it. It was the book Shirly had taken with her from the
scene of the crime. 
      He remembered Doctor Stanley Sims asking Paul about the book, and how
Paul had answered with reserve, as though it were too personal a subject to
discuss. 
      Danny went into a telephone booth and looked Sims up in a directory. A few
minutes later he was at Sims's door, ringing the bell. 
       It was a brownstone house near Gramercy Park.  It was pitch-dark now,
except for the street lamps which glimmered a few feet away. 
      Danny waited impatiently for an answer;  then he rang again. Still no answer. 
He went down the steps to the sidewalk to think. There was a curious burning
inside of him, as though he were being foolish to leave. 
      At last he crept around the side of the house. It was abundant with ivy vines.
Seeing a light that shone from one of the side windows, Danny climbed the small
picket fence and peeked in. 
      He saw Doctor Sims, in shirt sleeves, his face covered with sweat, cross the
room. There was something about the intensity of his expression that chilled
Danny. The tall, thin surgeon disappeared  from sight. 
      Still, Danny had not seen enough to warrant calling for the detectives; the
clues he was following were, as yet, too vague. He leaped to the vines, clung to
them, and crawled to the high sill of the window. 
      Ryan had always warned him about doing anything against the law, but this
time Danny felt that Shirly Parker was in grave danger, and that if he didn't do
something about it now it would soon be too late for anybody to do anything. 
      His desperate hope that he was right and that he might find the girl a prisoner 
here gave him courage and would, he thought, excuse him even in the eyes of
Mike Ryan. 
      Carefully Danny lifted the window. Silently it slid upward. He squeezed his
small body through and jumped to the carpeted floor of the room.  There was no
sound. 
      Danny saw Sims coming back, and he ducked down behind a chair. In a
moment the tall doctor was gone again. 
      Danny rose again and moved forward.  He was breathing hard now, and sweat
had begun to crease his young face; his blue eyes were feverishly alert. Presently
he found himself in a dimly lighted hall. 
      The faint odors of medicines and a dustless cleanliness that made the air dry
and parched, came to his nostrils. It was as though he were in a house that had
been closed fifty years ago from the outside world; a house that had not changed
with the times, but  remained stiff and cold and old-fashioned, so that to walk
through its rooms was like walking in forbidden territory. 
      He was in the middle of the hall when he heard a short scream. It had come
from a woman in a room just ahead! 
       Danny turned and fled to the living room, and then he stopped. The scream
sounded again. He looked about desperately for a phone. There was none. 
      He began thinking. Even if he did phone, the police, or his detective friends,
might arrive too late. There was no one in the whole house who could help the
person who was screaming  but himself. Yet he was a lad, and to risk himself
against the fury of a murderer— 
      Sweating what seemed like blood now, he turned and doggedly went back
into the hall. He looked again for a telephone and saw none. He moved stealthily
toward the room from which the screams had come. 
      He heard voices: "You and Paul tricked me! I want to know where it is!" 
      "If you knew you would kill me," Shirly Parker gasped.  "You would kill
me—" 
      "No," came the doctor's thick voice, "I will kill you if you don't tell me! Kill
you here and now! It is only that manuscript that I want!" 
      Her voice was filled with terror. "Don't come near me again with that knife!  
That's your murder knife! Don't come near me!" 
      "Will you tell?" 
      "No!" 
      Danny heard her scream again. He turned the knob of the door. It opened
easily. He saw the doctor's thin back, thee shirt that was sweat-ridden; he saw the
terrified, black-haired nurse half lying  in a chair. Danny gasped. 
      The doctor had her in a strait-jacket. Danny knew that he had to work quickly.
He moved to a chair, picked it up. He lifted it over his head. It was heavy, and
that was not easy to do. He rushed toward the doctor. 
      Sims heard him and spun around. Danny had one fleeting look at the horrible, 
dilated eyes, the lock of gray hair that hung over the surgeon's glistening
forehead, the surgical knife that was in his hand— 
      Then the chair crashed. It caught Sims squarely on top of the head. The
doctor's legs went out from under him like pieces of string. 
      As he struggled on the floor in an effort to regain his feet, Danny's eyes
centered on the bottoms of the doctor's shoes. Then the eyes widened as a thought
raced through the shoe-shine boy's brain. 
      Sims was nearly on his feet again. Danny grabbed at a vase, crashed it over
the doctor's head. 
      The surgeon groaned and fell back. Danny could see the phone now; it was in
one corner of this, an old-fashioned operating room that probably dated to the
doctor's early days of home practice. Heart smashing within him, the shoe-shine 
boy rushed to the telephone and picked it up. He kept his eye on Sims. 
      "Homicide headquarters—at once I . . . I want to talk to Mike Ryan!" 
       Ten minutes later the two detectives were in the room. They released Shirly
Parker and put Doctor Stanley Sims, now returning to consciousness, in
handcuffs.  The girl was explaining. 
      "When I saw what happened, I realized  what the trick was," she said. "Paul
had spoken of the possibility of his murder because of the treatise he was writing
about the medical profession  as he had seen it. You know, he served as an inteme
at the clinic and later as a surgeon. 
      "They said he had a brilliant future. But he found a corrupt system, that Sims
and other doctors and men of prominence accepted bribes to cut down on
patients' charity supplies. Paul Hudson  was always an honest man who always
told the truth, no matter what the cost. 
      "Maybe these systems had been operating  in certain types of hospitals for
years and years, he thought; still, it was no reason he should tolerate it. But when
he came forward with his stories he found that he had no actual proof. He was
laughed at, disbelieved, and authorities made it so hard for him after that that he
was forced to withdraw  his name from the medical rolls. 
      "So he bought that little store near the hospital .and devoted his life to
gathering real evidence against certain members  of the staff; mostly Doctor
Sims, the head of the clinic. He put down everything in the book he was writing:
'Treatise: of an American Medical Man.' He told Sims and others of the book in
an offhand way as an excuse for being around the hospital so much. 
      "I helped him all I could. But only Sims dreamed of what Paul Hudson was
writing. He knew that if the book were published it would ruin him—put him
behind bars. Break the rotten system, expose the graft—" 
      "And so," Ryan cut in, "he killed Hudson and left the lipstick so it would look
like you had done it." 
      She nodded. "He thought he stole the manuscript, too. But Paul had had a
dummy manuscript for just such an emergency. He kept the real one hidden  and
told only me where it was; that if. anything ever happened to him, I must see that
it was saved at all costs. 
      "When I saw the lipstick and that the dummy manuscript was missing, my
only thought was to take the real manuscript  to safety, and then go to Doctor
Sims and try to get some evidence of murder on him. I thought if the police had
caught me I would be locked up, wouldn't have a chance. You see—" 
      "That's all right," Ryan said. "We have the rat now. Thanks to the kid, here,
and yourself. How'd you know she hadn't done it, Danny?" 
       Danny Garrett shifted his shine kit. "I took some of the lipstick to a drug store
and asked them to look at it," he replied. "Sims must not have been very
particular what shade he got. The kind that he had left rubbed into the floor was
for platinum blondes!" 
      Ryan and Slug O'Donnel gazed thoughtfully. at Shirly Parker's black hair, then
grinned. 
      But Doctor Stanley Sims, his eyes smoldering, came to life now. "So I left
blond lipstick? What of it? Is that proof of anything? You can't hang a murder on
me just because Hudson was writing a treatise in which I was mentioned!   You
talk like absurd fools!" 
      Danny Garrett was looking at Sims's shoes. He nodded to Slug, and the
bean-pole detective lifted one of the doctor's feet up. Danny nodded, and Ryan
looked also. 
      His feet both on the floor again, Doctor  Sims stared at the detectives, his face
growing more ashen in color. 
      "What is it?" he whispered thickly. 
      "Something else you didn't think of," Mike Ryan said, puffing on his stogy.
"You rubbed the lipstick into the floor to make sure it would still be there when
we arrived. Well, it was!  You did a good job. But the part that's got you slated
straight for the chair is that that same lipstick is on the sole and instep  of one of
your shoes!" 
      The killer sagged like an empty sack. Slug O'Donnel dragged him from the
room, and Shirly Parker followed. 
      Mike Ryan shoved back his derby hat and looked at young Danny Garrett.
"Well, you've done it again, kid!" he said.