The Killer

Ernest H. Smith is a private investigator with an unusual specialty: for the right fee, he makes troublesome people disappear. When Wilma Rogers arrives asking him to kill her stingy husband, she brings more than a motive and a generous promised reward—she has the household schedule, a floor plan, and a signed contract. Smith’s meticulous methods suggest this is not his first such assignment.

Disguised as a television repairman, Smith reaches the Rogers home at the appointed hour and carries out the murder with chilling efficiency. But the real mystery begins afterward, when he places the body inside a humming metal cabinet hidden in his truck—and moments later, there is nothing left inside. Told in brisk, matter-of-fact pulp style, this compact science-fiction crime story follows a professional killer whose perfect system may conceal complications even he has not anticipated.