Murder Wheel and Other Stories by Norman A. Daniels

Book Details

Murder Wheel and Other Stories – From gangsters carving out territories, to a serial killer preying upon young nurses, to the quest to recover a holy Tibetan prayer wheel, there is plenty of murder to go around.

Satan Holds a Seance (1942) – A mystic cult spirits Detective Thayer behind the crystal eight ball.
Chapter I Undercover Yogi
Chapter II Empty Coffin
Chapter III Room Of False Death
Chapter IV The Corpse Returns
Chapter V Suicide Seance

Boomerang Blade (1936) – Jason McGee was a fighting Irishman. He fought his way to the bantam crown, fought his way to a first grade detective’s post—and fought his way out of it. He socked a lieutenant on the nose. But now he faced a double-barreled frame that called for more than fists.

The Scalpel Of Hate (1934) – A weird place to find death—in a nurses’ dormitory! Yet there it struck—bloody and sinister—callous to the beauty of its victims.

The Copper Cobra (1942) – Attorney Stan Leonard’s first case promised to be his last when he took a treatment from the the health cult whose cure meant death.

Murder Wheel (1934) – Through guarded doors, Death stalked unseen— and left in its wake fiendish murders that baffled the police, killings that turned men’s faces white with fear.
Chapter I Men Without Eyes
Chapter II Wheel Of Mystery
Chapter III Shan!
Chapter IV A Daring Move

Norman A. Daniels was the pen name of Norman Arthur Danberg, (1905–1995). Danburg typically wrote under the alias Norman A. Daniels, but he also published under the pen names John L. Benton, Frank Johnson, and house names including Will Garth, Kenneth Robeson, C. K. M. Scanlon, and G. Wayman Jones.

Murder Wheel and Other Stories has 11 illustrations.

Files:

1. Daniels-MurderWheel.epub

Excerpt: Murder Wheel

Chapter I

Men Without Eyes

WHEN Lieutenant Hagan negligently picked up the receiver of the desk phone, he certainly had no suspicion as to what he was going to hear. If he had, his motions would have been much faster.

“This is Dolsen at Courtland House.” The voice was hoarse, strained. “I—I’m going to be mur—murdered. He wants—wheel—of—” The rest was just a low cry, but it held terror in its note. Hagan pressed the receiver closer and with his free hand jabbed a button. He heard a strange flapping noise at the other end of the wire and that was all. The wire was still open, but no living thing answered his hellos.

To the six-foot, gray-eyed man who answered the buzzer in the detective bureau, he gave terse orders.

“Something’s mighty wrong at the Courtland House—that’s one of the apartment hotels on the Drive. Guy named Dolsen called, said he was going to be murdered. And if he wasn’t a dying man, he sure gave a damned good imitation of one. Beat it out there. Better take along a couple of men.”

Sergeant Edward Conley of the Detective Bureau didn’t wait to hear more. Two uniformed patrolmen followed when he beckoned to them. At the door there was a heavy sedan waiting. Lieutenant Hagan was efficiency personified. The car whisked them, siren moaning, to the Drive. Before an awninged entrance it stopped and Sergeant Conley leaped out. He pushed aside the doorman, went through the lobby in six long jumps and to the elevator.

“The floor where a man named Dolsen lives,” he ordered. “And make it snappy!”

The two patrolmen had just time enough to get into the elevator before the door slammed. At the fifteenth floor the lift stopped.

“It’s the apartment at the end of the hall,” the elevator boy told him. Conley banged on the door and then listened intently. No sound came in answer to his knock.

“Well,” he granted. “I hope this isn’t a fake.”

The two patrolmen knew what was wanted of them. Together the three men hit the door. It sagged and they drew back again. This time it flew open, hinges ripping away. Conley went in, gun drawn. He found himself in a large reception room, but it was barren of life. Then he went through the door at the end of the room, paused and shoved his hat way back on his head.

The study was barren of life too. On the floor, telephone still clutched in his hand, lay the body of a man. There wasn’t need for an examination of the corpse. Nothing could live with the ugly, gruesome gashes that covered the face and the neck. There was something odd about the face, too, in spite of the deep cuts. For a moment Conley was stumped. Then he let his chin go out and gulped.

The dead man’s eyes had been plucked out as neatly as if with a surgeon’s forceps!

“This guy must have met the devil himself,” Conley grunted. He turned to one of the patrolmen. “Get another phone—I don’t want to use the one the dead man’s holding. Call the office. Send along the usual gang— fingerprinters, medical examiners, and photographers. And hey— have ’em send the dead wagon, too.”

Conley went to the door he had broken. He examined it for a brief moment. It had been locked from the inside and bolted twice, at top and bottom. No manner of ingenuity could have locked that door from the outside. The bolts had been freshly put on, too, showing that the dead man had been afraid of something. Afraid of what?

He went into the other rooms, peered out into nothingness from the windows. There wasn’t a fire escape within twenty feet of this apartment. City lights twinkled back at him from the street below. Nothing less than a fly could have obtained entrance to the apartment from any of the windows. No one could have locked that single door at the entrance to the suite of rooms. And yet—in the study lay a dead man. There wasn’t the slightest possibility that it had been suicide. No man could inflict wounds upon himself like those. And how could he have plucked out his own eyes? The squad arrived from headquarters and went to work with an efficient bustle. The medical examiner made a brief examination and then came to Conley’s side. He wagged his bald pate from side to side and curled up his underlip.

“I know why he died,” he said slowly, “but I’ll be damned if I know what killed him. Whatever it was, ripped and tore the flesh. The eyes were dug out and the wounds in their sockets are enough to kill. They penetrated the brain. Then there’s a slash on the throat, almost instant death there. The clothing is torn and I’ll bet I’ll find other wounds underneath. I want him at the morgue. Your men finished?”

Excerpt From: Norman A. Daniels. “Murder Wheel and Other Stories.”