“WHY,” ASKED TIMOTHY ROURKE for the fifth time, “did the killer first snatch the body out of your possession and then stage a public wreck to give it back to you?”
“When we know the answer to that we’ll have something.” Mike sat relaxed in a deep chair in the luxurious corner apartment which he had taken after his marriage to Phyllis. Rourke was sprawled out on the lounge across from him. A low coffee table was between them, bearing up under an array of ash trays, a cognac bottle, a heavily depleted quart of Scotch, a siphon bottle, and a large bowl of ice cubes. They had been sitting thus for more than an hour, and Rourke had put a lot of Scotch inside of him. Shayne, tormented by his two-o’clock appointment with Lucile, had been more sparing with the cognac.
“It doesn’t add up to anything,” Rourke insisted. “He had you where the hair was short with the girl’s body in your room. Yet he conveniently carries the body away, then changes his mind and gives the gal back to you. It’s crazy, Mike.”
“Sure it is.” Shayne picked up his cognac glass and looked longingly at its contents, set it down, and took a long drink of ice water instead. “Trouble is, we’ve got a wrong slant somewhere. We can’t see any motive behind any of it. Our unknown factor is why. We’ve got a string of seemingly senseless events that won’t add up until we know the value of X. A simple algebraic equation.”
Rourke yawned and rattled the ice cubes in his tilted glass. He reached out waveringly for the bottle of Scotch and tipped it up, let the liquid gurgle into his glass.
Shayne frowned at him and warned, “You’re taking on a heavy load, Tim.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” He shuddered complacently. “I’m just beginning to feel human again after dealing corpses off the bottom of the deck.” He squinted at Shayne over the top of his glass. “Let’s solve for X since it’s a simple equation. How many people knew Helen Stallings was coming here to give you some dope against Stallings?”
“That would be guesswork. Jim Marsh for one — That is, he sent a girl to see me after talking with her on the phone. He claims he didn’t know who she was at the time—” He broke off, staring past Rourke, his features tightening.
“Then Jim Marsh is one man we can leave out. He sent her to you. If she had some low-down on Stallings that would give him the election he’d be the last man in the world to shut her mouth before she gabbed.”
Shayne said, “I wonder.” He cocked his head as if listening for a sound which eluded his big ears. He drummed finger tips on the arm of his chair.
Rourke stared at him in blank amazement. “You’re determined to complicate things,” he complained. “Seems to me Marsh is the one man we can eliminate.”
“I told you how he acted tonight.”
“Sure. He’s got the willies about the election. Every amateur politician gets that way. I’ve seen plenty of them ready to give up the day before the votes were counted.”
“It was more than that, Tim. Damn it, Marsh acted like a man who wanted to lose — who was afraid to win.” Shayne gave himself a hunch which brought his torso upright and he sat staring queerly as he continued.
“I don’t even know he sent the girl to me. He called me and said she was on her way. We don’t know but what he tried to prevent her from coming — that she insisted—” His voice trailed off. There was a faraway, questing look in his eyes.
Rourke swore angrily. “God, Mike, if you start suspecting Marsh where will you stop? Here’s something that knocks that theory into a cocked hat. The threatening note to Stallings, warning him to withdraw from the election. I suppose Marsh killed the girl so Stallings would win, then sent the note to force him to withdraw.” His voice was heavy with sarcasm.
Shayne shook his head stubbornly. “Someone else could have sent the note,” he pointed out. “Someone who knew Helen Stallings was on her way to my apartment.”
“It had to be the killer,” Rourke argued. “The note was sent to Stallings to hang a frame on you — by someone who knew the gal was dead and couldn’t testify that you hadn’t kidnaped her.”
“That’s right, too.” Shayne mopped his seamed forehead, then meditatively emptied his cognac glass. “Here’s what happened. Someone followed her here and waited until I started to the station with Phyllis, then came in and choked her with her own stocking. There was a struggle and she made an outcry, overheard by someone who pounded on the door and then called Gentry. I had left the door unlocked, and the murderer locked it. He was trapped in here, with the door locked on the inside. He had to unlock it in order to throw full suspicion on me. He escaped by the fire escape and hung around watching. He knew the body was undiscovered when I came back. Afterward, one of Bugler’s men followed me away, and as soon as the coast is clear the body is snatched before you can get back and take it away. Oh, hell! It’s not a simple equation. It’s got a dozen unknowns.” He poured another glass of cognac.
“And Arch Bugler is one of them,” Rourke reminded him. “He keeps popping up. He’s had enough practice in murder.”
“But he wouldn’t have killed a society girl who was pulling him up out of the gutter,” Shayne protested. “According to those newspaper accounts you gave me, he and Helen Stallings were practically engaged. And she’s due to come into a wad of money soon, isn’t she?”
“On her twenty-first birthday, I think. A couple of weeks from now. I think the whole story was printed in the paper when she started the suit against her stepfather and then dropped it.”
Shayne reached in his pocket for the sheets of newsprint he had wadded together at the Wildcat earlier in the evening. He looked at them curiously. It seemed very strange that he had seen them for the first time only a few hours ago.
Spreading them out, he found the one he wanted and began reading the story. He nodded thoughtfully and said, “The bulk of the estate was left to the girl in trust until her twenty-first birthday, in the event she didn’t marry sooner. If she married or died before then, it reverted to her mother. After Stallings married the mother, he adopted the girl legally, thus gaining control of the trust fund.” Shayne sucked in his breath sharply. “Do you recall her name before it was changed to Stallings?”
“Nope.” Rourke’s eyes were bleary and he had difficulty focusing them on Shayne.
“Get this. It was Devalon. Helen Devalon.” The note of suppressed excitement in his voice brought Rourke up straight on the couch. He blinked and shook his head roughly from side to side.
“That ought to mean something — Damned if I know.”
“Another drink and you won’t know anything,” Shayne said sharply. “Lay off. Where’s Smith College located?” he jerked out.
“N’Ham’shire ’r some place.” Rourke stifled a yawn. “One of those swanky girls’ schools in New England.”
Shayne got up and went across the room to a bookcase, dropped to his knees, and pulled out a volume of an encyclopedic set and thumbed the pages. He came back grinning. “Smith College is in Northampton, Massachusetts. That, my befogged comrade, is the whistle stop played by Beany Baxter’s Band a couple of months ago.”
“Beany Baxter’s Band? That sax player! The wedding certificate!” Rourke’s legs moved feebly. He put his palms down on the couch as if to thrust himself to a standing position, then fell back into soft comfort.
“There’s the Whit Marlow tie-up,” Shayne said cheerfully. “He and Helen Devalon were married in April. No wonder he went barging around to ask Arch Bugler what-the-hell. Can’t blame a bridegroom for getting sore about the way she and Arch have been playing around.”
“But she was on the spot when she came down here,” Rourke said. “She had to keep the marriage a secret until she was twenty-one or lose her father’s estate. To avert suspicion, she acted unmarried.”
“In a big way,” Shayne agreed with a grimace.
There was a thoughtful silence between them; then Shayne said, “I ought to have taken that train for New York.”
Rourke chuckled evilly. “Give your wife a chance to kick up her heels — away from a lug like you. Serves you right.” With his head resting on the upholstered arm of the couch, he looked down his long lean body at his shoes. He wriggled one foot feebly.
Watching him, Shayne chuckled. “Let Phyl have her fling. She’ll appreciate me more when she comes back.”
“Oh, yeh?” Rourke grinned disarmingly. His mind appeared clear.
“She and Marlow probably planned a public wedding later,” Shayne resumed, “without mentioning the one in April under her real name of Devalon.”
“So that’s why Marlow had the document hidden so carefully. But what does it get us, Mike? He wouldn’t have killed her.”
“Husbands have killed their wives for less than that.”
“But he couldn’t blame her so much. She had to pretend she wasn’t married as much for his sake as hers.”
“But not quite so wholeheartedly,” Shayne pointed out. “She could have announced her engagement to him without forfeiting a fortune. No, we can’t count Marlow out. Sex jealousy and greed motivate ninety-nine per cent of our murders. He had plenty of reason to be jealous.”
“He didn’t look like a killer to me — the glimpse I had of him in the hotel tonight.”
“He was a little off par,” Shayne explained. “No man puts his best foot forward when he’s wearing off a Mickey Finn. Bugler fed him a doped drink when he called on him this evening and began laying Bugler out for the way he’s been running around with her.”
Rourke’s head came up and his eyes wavered toward Shayne. “You get around, don’t you? Suppose Arch knew Helen was married to Marlow?”
Shayne tugged at his ear lobe. “I wasn’t in on much of the conference. From what I saw and heard, Marlow was getting nasty and Bugler eased him off with private stock before he could make a scene at the inn.”
Rourke tested his strength once more with his palms flat on the couch, came shakily to a sitting position. He reached for the Scotch bottle and Shayne warned, “You’re hitting the bottle pretty heavy, Tim.”
Rourke nodded cheerfully. “Why not? You’re not one to deliver a temperance lecture.” He took a sight on the cognac bottle and saw that it was more than half full. “You’re not up to par tonight, Mike.”
“I have things to do.”
“Tonight?” Rourke attempted to register astonishment.
“Certain things,” Shayne explained, “are best accomplished under the cloak of darkness.”
Rourke squinted at him suspiciously. “I can think of only one sort of thing.”
“You’ve got a dirty mind,” Shayne accused.
“Need it to cope with you. Blond or brunette?”
“I don’t know. Ask me about her legs. They’re stumpy.”
“Damn it, Mike, it’s after midnight. You’re not going out frailing at this hour?”
“The date,” said Shayne, “is for two o’clock sharp. She has to slip out after the rest of them go to sleep.”
Rourke shook his head sadly. He tilted his glass, and a tear ran down his lean cheek into the Scotch. “It’s not right to kid about something like that, Mike. You had me hating your guts once tonight. Don’t pull another stunt like that.”
Shayne laughed shortly. “This gal’s the kind that has nine lives,” he said lightly. “Throttling wouldn’t kill her.” He got up and paced back and forth, ruffling his coarse red hair. “Thank God my morals are elastic enough to meet an emergency. How is a man to get information out of a frenetic maiden except—”
“Don’t do it, Mike,” Rourke pleaded. He slopped some whisky over his tie as he emptied his glass. “Let me go in your place. I’m not married. Nobody cares what I do.”
“You’re drunk,” Shayne said gravely. “You wouldn’t do either of us any good.”
“Going home,” Rourke said. “Not going to stay and abet adultery.” He swayed to his feet, tested his skinny legs carefully. He started forward and stumbled.
Shayne caught his arm and held on when Rourke tried drunkenly to fight him off. He guided the reporter’s shambling footsteps into the bedroom and pushed him down into a chair. He knelt down to untie his shoelaces, saying, “You’re not going anywhere tonight. Maybe I’ll bring my date back here and let you chaperon us. But you’ll have to sleep off your jag first.”
He got Rourke’s shoes off, then pulled off his trousers. He left him lolling in the chair while he went to the bed and turned down the covers, then hauled him up and shoved him down on the mattress.
Rourke waggled his head from side to side in disapproval, then closed his eyes and breathed heavily in sleep. Shayne drew only the sheet up over him, for the night was warm, and turned away. Rourke was snoring when he went back to the living-room.
Shayne glanced at his watch. It was one-thirty. He took a hat and a belted trench coat from the closet, left a shaded light burning in the living-room, and went out, snapping the night latch to lock the door behind him.
He took his time driving across the causeway in Rourke’s sedan. A lot of things bothered him, turning his normally rational thought processes into a kaleidoscopic blur. It was the screwiest case he had ever tried to unravel. Every time he thought he had a lead it branched out into a lot of unanswered questions. He refrained from thinking about what was going to happen when Helen Stallings’s body was found and identified the next morning. That was going to move the deadline forward a few hours. As soon as she was discovered, Stallings would have no reason for further deferring publication of the threatening note which he and Painter accepted as Shayne’s handiwork.
Shayne knew a lot of other people who were going to accept the same premise if he didn’t have the case solved before Stallings published the note. That was the danger of the sort of reputation he had deliberately allowed to grow up about him. Not only allowed — the popular idea that he would stop at nothing to gain his ends had been encouraged. A legend like that was good for business. It brought him the tough cases that paid big fees. And it was always hanging over his head, like a sword held by a hair, to destroy him if he dared to make a misstep.
Someone had taken that into account, he reasoned, when the kidnap note was sent to Stallings. He didn’t actually fear the final legal consequences. The election was the thing right now. There was no use kidding himself. An aroused citizenry would revolt and vote Stallings into office if the kidnap-murder charge was brought against him in the headlines.
There was that creepy feeling of revulsion under his ribs when he thought of how much depended on the impending interview with the Stallings maid, Lucile. Thus far she was the only person even remotely connected with the case who showed a tendency to talk freely. He was not sure what he hoped to learn from her, but he had an uneasy feeling that the answer to the entire riddle was, somehow, tied up with the Stallings household.
His earlier hunch had been strengthened by the discovery that Helen Stallings was secretly married and that her young husband had just arrived in Miami. What had at first appeared to be a purely political setup with a city election dependent upon the outcome was now revealed to have broader ramifications and far different potentialities — a personal complex — more the sort of thing with which he was prepared to cope.
Nine-tenths of Shayne’s cases had money at the bottom of them; he had come to regard such a will as Helen’s father had left as nothing more than an instrument of murder. Long ago he had learned not to look beyond his nose for a motive when a large sum of money was involved. No wonder he had grown cynical regarding the combination of murder and money. They were inseparable companions.
He didn’t quite see how it worked out this time, but he had a strong hunch that the motive for Helen Stallings’s murder would lie in the human relationship revolving around her rather than in the political struggle between Jim Marsh and Burt Stallings.
The political angle, he reasoned, was more of an effect than a cause, an accidental by-product of murder rather than the primary purpose.
Mrs. Stallings and thus, indirectly, Stallings himself would benefit by Helen’s death before her twenty-first birthday, Shayne mused. Still the ironical fact remained that she had already legally forfeited her inheritance by secretly marrying Whit Marlow in defiance of her father’s will. Anyone cognizant of the marriage would have known that the girl’s death was not necessary to cause her fortune to revert to her mother. That was one of the questions which desperately needed an answer. Did Stallings know about the marriage prior to her death?
Another big question was Arch Bugler’s connection with the situation. His open intimacy with Helen Stallings stunk. Bugler was a known gangster. Did the girl know? They could not have met by mere chance. To Shayne it was inconceivable that a well-bred girl would deliberately choose the mobster for a companion.
The illusive sheen of a dying moon on Biscayne Bay was like a drug. The air pouring in the open windows was cool and moist. A nostalgic mood crept over him and caught him unawares, sweeping him back to his own youth — to the time when he played a cornet in the college orchestra. For a welcome moment his mind moved in a maze of memories, forgetful of the case at hand, but he could not long escape the mental picture which was haunting him — the dazed eyes and pallid, contorted features of Helen Stallings as he first saw her.
What was she like normally? She was young and possessed, no doubt, of all the illusions of youth. A saxophone player in uniform could easily represent a knight in armor with the added attraction of sensual, melodic strains from that wailing instrument. A saxophone could express a player’s sentiments without words. Shayne had known college boys who used that method. Had Helen regretted her marriage to a slight, anemic youth and taken refuge in the arms of a mature, strong-armed man years her senior? He recalled that Rourke had said that consorting with mobsters was a fad with youngsters.
A cloud sailed over the moon and a mist from the sea swam before Shayne’s headlights, snapping him back to reality and a consciousness of his destination. He picked up his thoughts where he had left off.
Suppose Stallings and Bugler had worked out a plan together to ensnare the girl? The terms of her father’s will made Helen’s marriage before her majority worth a great deal of money to Stallings. Did he arrange with Bugler to rush her off her feet into a hasty marriage for that purpose?
Still, why would he choose a man like Bugler for that purpose? There were thousands of men more eligible and more prepossessing in Miami.
He gave the problem up with a baffled shrug and hoped that Lucile’s information would supply at least a key to the puzzle.
He was approaching the bridge leading to the Stallings estate. His headlights showed the girl wasn’t there as he cut the motor and slid up to the bridge approach. He glanced at his watch and saw that it lacked five minutes of the appointed time. He lit a cigarette and settled back to wait.
Lucile was not there when he lit his second cigarette. Complete silence enveloped the remote section of the peninsula. Darkness covered the car as he waited for the maid to keep her appointment, for the moon was lost to sight. The heavy cloud on the western horizon obscured it.
Was he going to be stood up by the girl? It was beginning to look like it. His watch indicated fifteen minutes after two when he threw away his second cigarette and yawned. He had been stood up before but never by a girl who seemed as eager for a date as Lucile.
He got out of the sedan and stretched, then walked slowly up on the arched bridge, stopped at the top of the span where he could see the upper story of the Stallings mansion.
Everything was in utter darkness. Beyond was the placid glistening expanse of Biscayne Bay, and far beyond that a few vagrant lights on the mainland.
An odd sense of unease possessed him. He wasn’t kidding himself when he knew Lucile wanted to come to him when she made the appointment.
It was two twenty-three. He watched and listened intently, holding his racing thoughts in abeyance. The only sound was the plashing of ripples against the bridge piers beneath him.
The wry grin went away from his mouth, and his features hardened into a mask of anger. All at once he realized how much he had been counting on the information he hoped to get from the girl. Perhaps she had been caught when she slipped back into the house after leaving him earlier in the evening. Stallings must have seen his car parked there, might have recognized it. The housekeeper would have told him who the visitor was.
If the girl had been forcibly prevented from meeting him it would be an indication that someone was afraid of what she might divulge.
It was exactly two-thirty when he crossed the bridge and walked cautiously toward the unlighted house on the island.