One Hour Late: Manhunt Classic Mysteries

By William O'Farrell and John Betancourt

The young girl down by the beach was going to mean a lot of trouble to the little community. She attracted men the way honey attracts flies. The problem was—which man was going to murder her?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Release date: Sep 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781479464456

Book preview

Table of Contents

ONE HOUR LATE

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

INTRODUCTION

A WILLIAM O’FARRELL BIBLIOGRAPHY

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

ONE HOUR LATE

WILLIAM O’FARRELL

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2021 by Wildside Press LLC.

Originally published in Manhunt, April 1959.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

INTRODUCTION

Manhunt was a crime fiction magazine published between January 1953 and April-May 1967. Most issues were digest-sized, though collectors prize the few larger-format issues from 1957-58, which are generally harder to find. It was originally titled Manhunt Detective Story Monthly, but that was soon shortened to simply Manhunt, the name with which mystery readers are most familiar today. It ran for a total of 114 issues.

It was harder-edged than its competitors Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, dealing more with noir, hardboiled, and crime tales than traditional mysteries. Its closest competitor was probably Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, though MSMM generally featured lower-quality work. If you look at the names published in all these magazines, you will find a lot of overlap. But the edgier writers always went to Manhunt first: names like Cornell Woorich, Frank Kane, Mickey Spillane, Richard S. Prather, Evan Hunter, and so many more could be found in its pages, alongside newer writers like Richard Deming, Fletcher Flora, Talmage Powell, and Lawrence Block—all of whom would go onto make names for themselves in later years.

* * * *

Which brings us to William O’Farrell (1904-1962). I wasn’t familiar with O’Farrell’s work before I encountered his short novel One Hour Late, which appeared as an original in Manhunt but was not reprinted in book form until today. According to the Fictionmags index, he published just 22 works in mystery magazines, primarily Ellery Queen’s and The Saint Mystery Magazine, starting in 1955. Only three made it into Manhunt. Of his 15 novels (published between 1942 and 1963), 13 appeared under his own name, and 2 appeared as William Grew. A bibliography follows, in case you want to track any of them down. GAdetection.com calls his first mystery, Repeat Performance, one of the weirdest crime novels ever written. Intriguing praise!

O’Farrell had a career in television, too, working as a screenwriter for both the Perry Mason TV series and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He won an Edgar Award in 1959 for his short story Over There Darkness (published in Sleuth Mystery Magazine, October 1958). That he was only 58 when he passed away seems a real tragedy for the mystery field—he was only getting started.

—John Betancourt

Cabin John, Maryland

A WILLIAM O’FARRELL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Repeat Performance (1942)

Brandy for a Hero (1948)

The Ugly Woman (1948)

Thin Edge of Violence (1949)

Causeway to the Past (1950)

The Snakes of St Cyr (1951) aka Harpoon of Death, Lovely in Death (abridged)

These Arrows Point to Death (1951)

Walk the Dark Bridge (1952) aka The Secret Fear

Grow Young and Die (1952)

The Devil His Due (1955)

Wetback (1956)

Gypsy, Go Home (1961)

The Golden Key (1963)

As William Grew

Doubles in Death (1953)

Murder Has Many Faces (1955)

CHAPTER 1

IT WAS late spring. The Southern California season had ended only the week before but the afternoon was hot. The prowl car from the sheriff’s sub-station drove slowly down the beach road. It passed Point of Rocks, and a few miles farther south pulled off the road at the foot of Martinez Canyon. It parked there, facing the highway and partly hidden by a concrete bridge, in a position to observe traffic approaching from three directions. Cars came south from the sub-station and Point of Rocks, north from Palisades City, and from straight ahead down the winding canyon road. The location was a good one, from the point of view of the two deputies in the car. The shopping center on the far side of the road was a traffic focal point.

The parking spot had further advantages for one of the deputies, the man who sat erectly on the right. He was dark and good-looking, and his black eyes stared expectantly at the small cafe next to the supermarket. His name was Tommy Riggs. The big round face of the other deputy, the one who sat behind the wheel, was placidly expressionless. His name was Earl Bingham, and he didn’t have the driving curiosity that Tommy had. Some people, and Tommy was among them, believed that when Earl was physically awake he was still half-asleep.

They sat there for twenty minutes, from two-thirty until ten minutes to three, and all that time Tommy watched the cafe. Customers came and went, but whoever or whatever he was waiting for did not appear. He gave an irritated glance at the Swiss cigarette lighter Earl was playing with, and turned his attention to the row of beach houses on his right.

There were fifteen or twenty of these, built close together in a straggling line along the road. The nearest was about twenty yards away. Tommy knew the weather-beaten, wooden house. It had recently been bought by a man named Warren, who had divided it into two apartments, one above the other. Warren lived in the lower level and rented the upper half to an artist and his wife. From where he sat, Tommy could see the upper bedroom window. The same look of irritation he had given the cigarette lighter crossed his face. He disliked and disapproved of artists. Tommy disapproved of any man, for that matter, who apparently had to work less hard than he did. He shifted his position, looked past the house down at the beach. He muttered an exclamation and leaned forward, watching the couple on the sand.

There’s no law forbidding a man and girl to make love in public, within reasonable limits. But when the man is married and at least thirty-five, and the girl a year or two below the age of consent—well, a thing like that, it makes a guy’s blood boil. Tommy said so, in anger and disgust.

What do you mean?

You saw those two down there!

Earl nodded. He kissed her. What you mean, it makes your blood boil?

Tommy, intent on what was happening delayed his answer. The man trotted across the sand and disappeared around a corner of the Warren house. The girl waited for a moment, then sauntered after him. She, too, disappeared, and Tommy turned back to stare at the cafe.

I mean it makes you sick.

Why?

You saw what happened. She’s just a kid. You know what’s happening right now?

Earl thought about it. He nodded doubtfully. I guess so, he said.

But he guessed wrong. What had actually happened and what was happening at the present moment, was not at all as Tommy had imagined. It was ten minutes before three. The motivation of the scene the deputies had just witnessed was only slightly tinged by sex, and it had no sexual outcome. Its beginnings lay in nothing more serious than a restlessness that had come over Dave Russell thirty-five minutes before…

* * * *

At two-fifteen Dave had taken a half-hour break. The decision to knock off was not reached easily. He