Just One More Case by W.T. Ballard

Book Details

Just One More Case – four stories of jewel thefts, frame-ups, intimidation, and murder by one of the most popular writers of the pulp era.

There’s That Corpse Again (1943) – Happy Valley, with its winter sports, became a suicide playground for Jimmy Doane. For he was haunted by a corpse on skis that was determined to dog Jimmy’s snow trail until he reached the brink of hell’s jump-off. A five chapter novelette.

Stooge For Slaughter (1938) – Ernie Paulo was a smalltime dip who didn’t have the nerve or the brains to go big time. But nerve and brains aren’t everything. There is a third ingredient that outweighs the other two. Fate. Fate was the third chip. And Ernie found that three’s a crowd—in more ways than one.

Models For Murder (1945) – What grim motive was behind the terroristic frightening of those beautiful New York models and behind the murder that accompanied it? I, Austin Gardner had two dangerous reasons for wanting to find out.
Chapter I
Chapter II No Chary Chase
Chapter III Lady On the Lam
Chapter IV Tough-Stuff Ivor
Chapter V No Break for Bobo
Chapter VI Killer’s Motive

Just One More Case, Uncle Sam (1943) – Eddie Fayne would be in uniform in a week—and he had only that week to solve the toughest case of all!

Willis Todhunter Ballard (1903-1980) born in Cleveland Ohio, was known for his western and detective fiction. Ballard wrote thousands of magazine stories and over fifty TV and film scripts. He was one of the classic writers for Black Mask magazine in the 1930s when the hard-boiled detective was being invented. Ballard was one of Black Mask’s most popular authors, along with Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Earle Stanley Gardiner. His first cousin was author Rex Stout.

Just One More Case contains 5 illustrations.

Files:

1. Ballard-JustOneMoreCase.epub

Excerpt: Stooge For Slaughter

ERNIE PAULO was a pickpocket, a dip, a minor criminal who hung on the outskirts of the underworld gathering in what few crumbs fell his way. He was not above working the race-track crowd, seeing what he could glean from the well-filled wallets of the gamblers. He lacked the nerve to be big-time and he knew it, but he got along fairly well so long as he stayed in his own class.

He sat on the stool before the soft drinks stand outside the door which led to the betting ring and drank coke from a bottle as he munched a hot dog.

Bob South came toward him from the betting ring. Bob South was big, good-natured, his shrewd gray eyes looking out levelly from beneath sandy brows. Bob was a gambler and a square one, a nice guy—a right guy in anybody’s language.

Ernie Paulo set the coke bottle on the counter and swung around, calling his greeting. South stopped, turned and walked toward him.

“Hello, Ernie!”

The shriveled thing in his left breast which passed for Ernie Paulo’s heart expanded under the warmth of South’s smile. Bob South was the only man he knew who ever acted genuinely glad to see Ernie. It always puzzled the little pickpocket. He couldn’t figure why a big shot like South should bother with him. He never had been able to understand it, for Ernie knew himself well.

No one had more contempt for the little pickpocket than he had for himself. He smiled, twisting his small, peaked face into a grimace. “Lo, Mister South. How’re they breaking?”

South shrugged. “Lousy. I can’t pick one to save me. But look, kid. You better lam. I just saw McNulty, the track dick. They’re rounding up the boys as they go through.”

Ernie bobbed his head. “Thanks, pal.”

SOUTH moved his shoulders. “Why don’t you get next to yourself, Ernie? You’ll sure wind up behind the eight ball if you keep touching other guys’ leather. Look. I can get you a job down at the Palace. It won’t be hard and it’ll make you thirty bucks a week.” Ernie whitened. The thought of work always made him extremely ill. He stalled, trying desperately to think of a way of turning down the job without hurting the gambler’s feelings.

South grinned. “Okay. Okay. You don’t have to take it to heart. But some one’s going to land on you and land hard.”

Ernie’s head bobbed again. The word that the cops were out picking up the boys worried him. He watched South go, then he swung around and ducked toward the main entrance. As he went he saw two Pinkertons dragging a rat-faced tout between them. South’s warning had come none too soon.

He rode downtown disconsolately. He’d expected to pick up at least a hundred bucks at the track that afternoon. As it was, he hadn’t picked up a cent. There were three lone, limp one-dollar bills in his pocket as he left the car and started to walk down Broadway. He’d covered two blocks and was passing the Craig Jewelry Company when he saw old man Craig standing in the doorway.

He knew the head of the jewelry company by sight. Craig had had his picture in the papers at least a dozen times as chairman of one civic committee or another. Ernie paused. Craig was talking to one of the store’s guards.

“That’s all right, Roberts. I’ve got them here in my inside coat pocket. They’re perfectly safe, I tell you. I’ll deliver them to Mrs. Hynes myself.”

Ernie Paulo stiffened. He’d read in the morning paper that Marvin Hynes had just purchased the famous Whalhoon diamonds for his wife and that the Craig Company had served as agent. Could it be that old man Craig was carrying the necklace which was valued at better than two hundred thousand dollars in his inside coat pocket? It didn’t seem possible, and yet.…

The palms of Ernie’s hands were itching. They always itched just before he picked the pocket of some substantial looking citizen. The Whalhoon diamonds!

He ran the tip of his tongue around dry lips. If he could only lift the necklace from the jewelry man. Two hundred thousand dollars! No, probably fifty to seventy-five thousand, for the fence would take at least a fifty per cent cut, perhaps more. But even seventy-five thousand would be a fortune to Ernie Paulo. It would make him a big shot, jerk him out of the ranks of pavement pickpockets, put him into the big time.”

Excerpt From: W.T. Ballard. “Just One More Case.”