Salmon for Satan

By using a sinister fiery-eyed feline to solve a mystery, Patrolman Clancy proves black cats are unlucky—for killers! Note: very short

excerpt

Beyond the glow of the streetlights along Barton Street's unlovely length, the night was dark with the blackness of the first hour after midnight. The cheery whistle died upon the lips of Patrolman Michael J. Clancy as he turned the corner to start the second half of his nightly prowl.

Clancy had a grim and deadly premonition. Somewhere in those darkly deserted blocks ahead of him, Satan would be waiting for him tonight. The thought sent the reddish-gray hairs on the back of Clancy's broad, sun-burned neck bristling eerily erect.

It was not that Patrolman Clancy was lacking in the matter of courage. If it had been merely a few gunsels lurking in the shadows of Barton Street, Mike would have barged cheerfully into battle with his blue eyes blazing, his night-stick lustily swinging, and his Police Positive spitting lead—if he remembered to draw it, which he seldom did in moments of emergency.

Satan, however, was a menace of another and quite different color. You can't use a night-stick on a banshee, and .38 calibre slugs are of little value against a leprechaun. Satan was one-third banshee, one-third leprechaun, and four-thirds devil—and if you said that those figures seemed to add up to a slightly incredible total, Clancy would tell you that you simply didn't know your Irish arithmetic.