The Lieutenant flipped a lever
on a desk transmitter.
"Send Spillane in here."

Cornell Woolrich
"Marihuana"
1941

He had greased black hair

parted in the middle

and a wax mustache;

wasn't tall and wasn't short;

and looked more like

his mother's side of the family,

but he didn't want anyone

to forget his father.

I made a bet with myself that

his parents never made it legal.

Earl Norman

Kill Me in Tokyo

1958

"I am sorry for all men,"

   she said.

"But the others I am sorry for

   and send away.

You I am sorry for

   and I let you come.

That's how I know

   I love you."

Eric Knight

You Play the Black

    and the Red Comes Up

1938

He told about all the women

what he had knowed,

and all the saloons he'd been in,

and some of it was a lie,

'cause if all those saloons

was as swell as he said they was

they'd of throwed him out.

James M. Cain

"Pastorale"

1928

She may 

be a

feminist,

my boy,

but she has

startling

lapses.

John Dickson Carr

The Three Coffins

1935

The night was like purple ink.

And it was as though the bottle

that held the ink

had been smashed against the sky

by some insurgent celestial accountant.

For heaven was pitted with its tiny,

twinkling particles of broken glass.

And there seemed to be no one

there to sweep them up.

God's office was closed for the night.

Cornell Woolrich

Fright

1950

He was disturbed,

still trembling, still vibrating

with the throes of the crisis,

but he was the master;

the animal was downed,

was cowed for this time,

at least.

But for all that, the brute

was there. Long dormant,

it was now at last alive,

awake. From now on he

would feel its presence continually;

would feel it tugging at its chain,

watching its opportunity.

Frank Norris
McTeague
1899