She let the dog into the fenced backyard and glanced at the clock. It was time for her own supper, so she opened the icebox and took out a couple of eggs, a small tomato, an onion, some parsley, and a package of Velveeta cheese. She beat the eggs with a couple of spoonfuls of cream and cooked them in a skillet on her gas range. She added chopped tomato, onion, and parsley and some thin slices of Velveeta, then folded the omelet in half and slipped it onto a plate. She poured herself a glass of milk from the bottle in the icebox, took off her apron, and sat down to eat at the kitchen table, her current reading propped up on the green glass butter dish in front of her.

Usually, this was a mystery from the library, but tonight she was reading a story in the crime fiction magazine The Black Mask, one of the pulps that she enjoyed. The story involved a Chicago gangster who was trying his best to go straight, but kept getting hooked back into a life of crime. It was the same issue of the magazine (September 1929) that had carried the first installment of an exciting novel—The Maltese Falcon—by a new writer, Dashiell Hammett. Verna had copies of the third and fourth installments (in the November and December issues of the magazine) but she was still looking for the other two issues, so she could read the whole story from start to finish. She had heard that the book would be out soon, but she doubted that Miss Rogers would get it for the Darling library. Miss Rogers was not a fan of hard-boiled detectives. She wouldn’t like Sam Spade. And anyway, there might not be any money for new library books. The town budget was getting awfully tight.

Verna was deep in her story when she heard Clyde—always a reliable watchdog—barking at the side fence and then a sharp rapping at the front door. She turned the magazine over to mark her place and went to the door. Standing on the porch was a complete stranger, a man she had never seen before. He was heavy-bodied, with a round, jovial face, small eyes, and a fleshy-lipped smile that showed off a gold tooth. He looked like a dandy in a gray woolen double-breasted suit, vest, blue silk tie, hat, and polished black shoes. When he raised his hat, she could see that he was completely bald.