through the living-room and into the hall before I got even a glimpse of him. I chased him down the stairs as fast as I could, but he was too quick for me. He ran out the front door and disappeared altogether. I called the police at once.”
Shayne nodded absently, but his eyes were very bright. “And your wife didn’t think about having left the necklace in the drawer until this morning?”
“No. Habit is a strong thing, Mr. Shayne. But I know from my own experience that lapses are likely to occur. One is always astounded when one deviates from a set routine, but it is only human. Evalyn-Mrs. Lomax-was frantic at first. She couldn’t believe it, and I might add that she has not been her usual self since the discovery. She appears to be calm and disinterested, but I know her too well. She is brooding over her loss.”
“Does Mrs. Lomax believe that Katrin discovered the jewel box in the drawer and stole it?”
Mr. Lomax didn’t answer at once. A frown drew his white bushy brows together. He said finally, “She doesn’t know. She was in a hurry that night. She’s inclined to be charitable and believe that Katrin didn’t notice that she put the jewel case in the drawer. I, too, am inclined to be charitable.” He sighed dismally and his gray-fringed head moved slowly from side to side. “It’s a bad business, Mr. Shayne,” he went on. “I’d prefer to drop the entire matter, absolve your company of all liability in the matter, if I thought-” His words trailed off and he looked deeply troubled.
“If you thought you could stop the investigation that way?” Shayne said harshly. “In other words, it’s worth a hundred and twenty-five grand to you for me to drop the matter.”
“So many things come up,” he answered, his hands trembling in a helpless gesture. “So many things are much better left unsaid.”
“You’re not the first man,” Shayne told him harshly, “to find that an investigation like this generally drags out a lot of dirty linen. But this is a private investigation. I may do a lot of digging, but I’m only interested in results.”
Mr. Lomax nodded unhappily. “There’ll be an inquest into Katrin’s death, I presume.”
“Sure. But it’ll be rather perfunctory as long as we don’t turn up anything to upset the suicide theory.”
“I don’t know what you think. It’s hard to understand young people nowadays.”
Shayne repeated, “I’m only interested in results. I’ll take a look at that safe now, if you don’t mind.”
“By all means,” he replied. He opened the door on the left and Shayne followed him into a spacious bedroom.
A wainscoting of unvarnished knotty pine some five feet high ran all around the room with white-painted walls above it. One huge painting hung directly across from the door, depicting a buck and a doe and a fawn against a background of snow and spruce. The furnishings were massive antiques, and a delightful piney smell filled the room.
Lomax turned to a miniature painting on the wall to the right as they went in. Removing it, he showed Shayne the small barrel safe and began turning the dial to open it.
An electric light came on when the door opened. Shayne looked into the cylinder and saw several small jewel boxes and a long metal box such as valuable papers are kept in.
He waited while Lomax opened each of the boxes for his inspection, then said, “I guess that’s all,” and started toward the door.
Mr. Lomax detained him by saying, “If I should decide to waive all claim against your company, is there any way you could arrange to have the money paid to my wife so she’d think it came from the company?”
Shayne frowned down at his bony, bloodless face. “You mean if you paid us the money-for us to pay over to her?”
“That’s what I mean-yes. I’m sure she would not agree to dropping the matter without payment.”
“That would take some thinking over,” Shayne answered. “And”-his voice hardened-“there’s still the Katrin Moe angle. You can’t buy that investigation off.”
Mr. Lomax’s body stiffened with dignity. “I hardly meant-to buy you off.” He moved toward a door with a thin veneer of knotty pine on the inside, saying, “We’ll go out this way.”
Shayne went ahead of him and jerked the door open. He walked into a moment of utter silence in the living- room; a strained silence that comes when a group has been discussing persons who appear unexpectedly.
Eddie Lomax was leaning over his mother as though he had been arguing with her. Clarice was leaning against the mantel with an expression of cold disdain on her young face.
Shayne turned to Mr. Lomax and said, “I’ll have a talk with your chauffeur before I go.”
“Yes. I’ll ring for him.”
“I’d prefer to talk to him in his own quarters,” said Shayne.
“I think he’s down in his workshop,” Eddie told them.
“Then you show Mr. Shayne the way down, Eddie,” his father said.
Shayne nodded to the ladies and thanked them for their co-operation. He said to Lomax, “I’ll get in touch with you later,” and followed Eddie out.
CHAPTER FIVE
Shayne picked up his coat and hat from the hallway and went with Eddie toward the rear of the house. Away from his parents, the boy’s sneering defiance departed. Twice he looked at Shayne with his mouth open as though he was about to say something, but went on silently.
They passed a large dining-room and Eddie turned through a butler’s pantry off the kitchen into a passageway leading to a side entrance. He stopped beside a solid wooden door on the right and indicated it with a shrug.
“That’s a stairway going down to the basement where Neal has his shop. But we can’t use it. We have to go out the side door and around.”
Something in his tone made Shayne look at him sharply.
“Why can’t we use the stairs?” he asked.
“Locked.” Eddie pointed to the heavy Yale lock. “Dad or Mom has the only key.” He grinned and assumed an air of sophistication as he continued, “Dad didn’t think it was safe for Neal to be able to get into the house at night, I guess. That old devil sex rearing its ugly head again.” His voice crackled with an odd note of bravado, sneered at his father’s old-fashioned ideas of propriety, yet strove to imply that they might have been justified.
They went through a side door onto the wide veranda that completely circled the house and down concrete steps to a concrete walk, turned to the rear until they reached a point where it was intersected by another walk leading from the garage to the house.
Indicating the right-hand walk, Eddie said, “That goes out to Neal’s apartment over the garage, and the other to the kitchen entrance.”
Shayne got a glimpse of a narrower concrete walk leading to the garden and circling flower beds where hardly perennials were darkly green and fresh in the mist of rain still falling before Eddie started down the basement steps. A door was set flush with the concrete floor. He pushed it open and went in.
The hallway was lighted by a large bulb in the room beyond. As they passed a door on the right, Eddie said, “That’s the furnace room,” and a few steps farther pointed out the inside basement stairway. The steps were covered with dust, and cobwebs hung from the slanting ceiling.
In the large lighted room a man in a short-sleeved polo shirt was working at a long bench. He wore soiled duck trousers and canvas sneakers. His back was turned toward the entrance and he gave no sign that he heard his visitors come in.
Shayne walked slowly to the work bench, his gaze steady upon the broad shoulders and clean-muscled arms of the man working there. The smooth line of his body flowed down to narrow hips and long legs. His head was finely shaped and covered with thick hair that gleamed like copper in the bright light.
Eddie said, “Here’s a man to see you, Neal.”
Neal turned his head and nodded. “Just a minute while I mark this off.”
Ordinarily Shayne would have scorned the regular features and gleaming hair which would have been merely pretty on many men. But there was also an instant impression of ruthless strength and an air of quiet assurance
