Private Detective Stories, November 1947

Easy Death (by Ted Stratton) This private detective tale features Steven J. Rainey, recently discharged from the Army, investigating a two-month-old embezzlement case at Aircraft Corporation. Twenty-six thousand dollars vanished when employees Danny Kellett, a charming drifter with a criminal history, and Barbara Nason, a thirty-five-year-old woman with an eight-year spotless record, fled in a purchased 1946 Buick sedan heading west on Broad Street. Police detective Jim Dalgren, Rainey's childhood friend, has been pulled off the case due to understaffing from the new mayor's reforms against organized crime. Dalgren hints that Rainey should focus on Kellett's aunt, Mrs. Merian, who runs a boarding house where Rainey has taken a room under an assumed identity as a law clerk. The narrative is incomplete in this excerpt, breaking off as a mysterious woman named Bertha approaches Rainey in his boarding house room.