Forgotten (and FREE) Stories: Race Williams returns in "A Corpse in the Hand" by Carroll John Daly

Here's the eleventh in our continuing series of unreprinted adventures of Race Williams. (For a look at the earlier stories, click HERE.) Like most of Race's Dime adventures from this period, this one shows evidence of being part of a larger story cycle. Hopefully we'll someday be able to read them all and put them in context. 

"A Corpse in the Hand" opens with an intimate picture of Race's lifestyle:

     I'm not exactly what you'd call a nervous citizen. I sleep quietly and respectably even though I do have two apartments, except when the jack runs out. Then I have to drop the Park Avenue penthouse. The money had run out now, a more or less regular occurrence, and I was parked in my walk-up—third floor of five, with its steel door that could hardly be bashed in without awakening me as well as half the people across the Hudson in Jersey. No "soft as a feather" business would work, either. I'd be onto the sound of that floating feather before it ever crashed to the floor.

    Sure I've got good ears and eyes—and a couple of good hands, too. The right one was caressing the trigger of a forty-four revolver beneath my pillow. My other gun was in its shoulder holster, hung carefully over the chair, all of six inches from the bed. Two good reason why I'm alive—and why some others are dead. 

As usual, I'll be sending scans of this story to you hundred-odd stalwarts who have requested earlier stories. If you're not among them, just drop me a line at delewis1@hotmail.com and I'll shoot you the whole collection.

This one originally appeared in June 1939.