Free Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense by Linda Landrigan

flight before he had gone very far into the store. Poise, he told himself. Control. Remember you’re Randolph Blair.
    The counters were already protectively concealed by dust sheets.
    They reminded him of a body, covered, dead. Atkins.
    Though he bolted again, he had enough presence of mind this time to duck into a restroom.
    He was unaware of how long he had remained there, but when he emerged it was evident he had completely collected himself. His walk suggested the regal, or the confident calm of an actor sure of his part. And as he walked, he upbraided himself for having behaved like a juvenile suddenly overwhelmed by stage fright.
    Randolph Blair pushed through the revolving doors. There was a sharp bite to the air, the promise of snow. He took a deep breath, calmly surveyed the people hurrying along, their arms loaded with packages.
    And suddenly he heard laughter, a child’s thin, piercing laugh. It cut into him like a knife. He turned and saw the laughing boy, tethered by one hand to the woman beside him, the boy’s pale face, his arm and forefinger pointing upward, pointing derisively.
    More laughter arose. The laughter of men, of women. A festive carousel, in the show window to one side of him, started up. Its music blared. It joined in the laughter, underscoring, counter-pointing the laughter.
    Blair felt caught in a punishing whirlpool. There seemed no way he could stop the sound, movement, everything that conspired to batter him.
    Then the sight of policemen coming out of the store was completely unnerving. They appeared to be advancing toward him. And as he pulled the Luger on them, and even as he was over-powered and disarmed, a part of his mind felt that this was all unreal, all part of a dramatic role that he was playing.
    But it was not a proper part for one wearing the red coat and trousers, the black belt and boots of a department store Santa Claus, the same clothes three thousand other men in the city were wearing. To blend into their anonymity, he lacked only a white beard, and he had lost his in the frantic exit he had made from Atkins’s office.
    And of course to a child—and even to some adults—a Santa Claus minus a beard might be a laughing matter.

CHARLES WILLEFORD
    A GENUINE ALECTRYOMANCER  
    February 1959
    AT AHMM we like to think of Charles Willeford as one of our own—he actually worked as an associate editor for the magazine for a few years in the 1960s. Though he wrote and published widely, he is perhaps best remembered for his Hoke Moseley mysteries published in the 1980s, most notably Miami Blues , which was also made into a movie. His untimely death in 1988 put an end to a remarkable career. Here’s a story from early in his association with AHMM .
    On the surface , the situation is quite mad, and yet there appears to be an irrefutable logic in the chain of incidents leading to my predicament. There it floats, bobbing, just beyond my grasp, and I have to believe that if I don’t snag it with my fingers this time, I certainly shall on the next or the next stroke … and I must keep swimming, keep trying. There isn’t much else I can do!
    Where did the old alectryomancer come from in the first place? I didn’t see or hear him approach on the soft sand. I looked up from the sea and there he was, waiting patiently for me to recognize him. The blue denim rags covering his thin hips and shanks were clean. His dusky skin was the shade of wet No. 2 sandpaper, and he held a shredded-brimmed straw hat in his right hand. Once he had my attention, he nodded his head amiably and smiled, exposing toothless gums the color of a rotten mango.
    â€œWhat do you want?” I said rudely. One of my chief reasons for renting a cottage on the island of Bequia was the private beach.
    â€œPlease excuse my intrusion, Mr. Waxman,” the native said politely, “but when I heard that the author of Cockfighting in the Zone of Interior had rented a cottage