The Dion Hartley Murder Case

Broadways My Beat from Times Square to Columbus Circle, the godiest, the most violent, the lonesome-most mile in the world. Broadways My Beat with Larry Thor as Detective Danny Clover. Broadway, where the measured screaming of the spectaculars echoes into the wilderness of the night, and their cadence is the beat of a metallic and mechanical heart.

This is the rhythm of the life you're assigned to on Broadway. There's nothing you can do about it. You challenge it with a whisper or a plea or a cry and there's no one to hear it.

Because Broadway's ears are tuned only to the throb of the mechanical heart. It's Broadway, my beat. It came at noon, a transcript of a phone conversation requesting the extraordinary pleasure of my presence of the apartment of one Dion Hartley, but urgently, but immediately.

So I put my present in a squad car, brought it to the apartment of Dion Hartley, and placed it therein. It was an experience. The apartment seemed to contain everything exquisite that had been fashioned or dreamed by men, all in crystal glass cases, all tagged with little golden medallions, and all ruled over by Dion Hartley, but exquisitely.

This excruciatingly lovely Grecian's touch-rat is to clover. You want to know what it costs? No, not particularly. What costs you do? It cost me my most precious emotions, even a few pennies of my soul.

If I had one, a devastating price to pay Mr. Clover for a lousy statue, if you say so. Your delightfulness to Clover. You want to know why I sent for you, fatally and evidently you.

Now I'm here, I might as well know, for a very simple reason. I am going to be murdered. Don't look at me that way, Mr. Clover. I'm quite, quite serious. Tell me about it. Look about you, Mr. Clover. My apartment. My possessions.