Girl Out Back by Charles Williams Page B

covers ran largely to toothsome and improbable girls who had died violently in attitudes calculated to display the optimum expanse of thigh. The floor hadn’t been swept for some time. I looked around at the dirty dishes and the rumpled bed. Well, I hadn’t come out here to inspect him for a Good Housekeeping seal of approval.
    I started with the chest. On top of it there was nothing except a folded towel and a pair of thick-lensed spectacles. I slid out the top drawer. There were some handkerchiefs in it and his shaving gear and a small mirror, and two boxes of .38 caliber ammunition. Two envelopes bore the printed return address of an office of the Southern Pacific Railroad. They had been opened, but through the glassine windows I could see there was something still inside. Maybe the checks came with a voucher attached; I’d be able to find out just how large the pension was. I was reaching for one of them when I spied the corner of his wallet sticking out from under the handkerchiefs. I hurriedly slipped it out and flipped it open. It held seven ten-dollar bills, a five, and four singles. But not one of them had a stain along the edge. There was simply no trace of it at all.
    I felt suddenly let down and cheated. Taking the tens over to the window, I turned them carefully in the light, examining them all over. It was no use. They were just like any of millions of others. I shrugged, and returned all the money to the wallet. There was no identification in it except an old New Mexico driver’s liscense that had expired in 1953. It was made out to Walter E. Cliffords, and gave an address in Lordsburg. He was five feet six inches tall and weighed 152. Hair, br. Eyes, bl. He was born in 1910.
    I dropped the wallet back in the drawer and reached for one of the envelopes. When I slid the voucher out, I gave a little start of surprise. The check was still attached to it. It was the same story in the other one. I rooted among the handkerchiefs and came up with one more. The checks were all in the amount of $58.50, payable to Walter E. Cliffords, and he hadn’t cashed one since May. He must be popular with the accounting department, I thought. And suffering from no shortage of money, in spite of the fact she’d said he spent nearly half that amount on comic books and magazines each month. Well, he might get something from Social Security . . . no, you had to be sixty-five, didn’t you? One thing was clear, however; his finances didn’t ring true at all.
    The other two drawers held nothing but clothing. I closed them and turned to the trunk. It wasn’t locked. Lifting off the stacks of magazines, I raised the lid, conscious of a strong odor of moth crystals. The compartmented tray on top held a hodge-podge of miscellaneous stuff, shotgun shells, plastic boxes of bass flies and spinning lures, gun-cleaning equipment, some bottles of old patent medicine, and another pair of spectacles in a case. I lifted it out and set it aside. The bottom was full of winter clothing. I snatched it all out, feeling in the pockets of the jackets and the raincoat. There was nothing else in it except some magazines lying on the bottom.
    Well, what now? I shook my head, still crouched on my knees beside the trunk and staring musingly into its emptiness. There should have been something. Something besides you, honey, I thought.
    The uppermost magazine was another of those true detective things. On its cover a creamy-textured and extremely loth maiden in a Place Pigalle outfit was trying to stay at least one jump ahead of a hearty type with a cleaver. Ah, youth. What mad pursuit? . . . What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
    Wait a minute . . . . I frowned thoughtfully. Why in the trunk? He must have a half-ton of these things stacked around the room; what was special about this one? I grabbed it up. There were two more under it, another crime magazine of a different brand and one of those pocket-sized digests that can reduce Gibbon to four