“Sure. I’ll talk. I knew Trueman had the necklace-or was acting as go-between for somebody who had it. He telephoned me yesterday and offered to sell it back to the company for forty thousand. He didn’t tell me who he was, but I recognized his voice when I heard it in the Laurel Club last night. I went to his office to put it up to him straight that there’d be no fix on this one. He denied knowing anything about it, of course. The act he put on about me coming with a gambling beef was for the benefit of anyone listening in.”
“I guessed that much as soon as I learned the dice had been good to you.”
“You’ve got it,” Shayne said. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? I didn’t see Trueman again. I spent the rest of the night unconscious in Lana Moore’s apartment.”
“Which she denies.”
“But I told you she had it in for me.”
“You haven’t told me why.”
Shayne drew in a long breath and made a gesture of exasperation. The lines in his hollow cheeks deepened. “What are you going to do?”
“Hold you for Dan Trueman’s murder.”
Shayne said savagely, “And Trueman’s murderer will be laughing at you while you’ve got me locked up.”
“Maybe. I’ll take a chance on that.”
“Sure. You’re a cop.”
“That’s right,” Quinlan agreed amiably.
His insouciance drove the detective to snarl, “If you lock me up now you’ll end up with two unsolved murders on your hands.”
“Why two?”
“Count ’em.” Shayne held up two long bony fingers and folded them down. “Dan Trueman and Katrin Moe.”
“The Moe girl committed suicide.”
“Sure,” he jeered, “you’re a cop. Close up a case and keep the public satisfied no matter how many murderers walk your damned streets unhung.”
“I’ve been over all the evidence on that-and the coroner’s report. It can’t be anything but suicide.”
“It was murder,” Shayne insisted shortly.
“What the hell makes you think so?”
“All the evidence that’s worth a damn,” Shayne said slowly. “She was a virgin and in love with a guy she was going to marry the next day. Where’s the motive for suicide?”
“Where’s the motive for murder?”
Shayne was silent for a long time. Then he said quietly, “Will you make a deal with me, Quinlan?”
“I don’t know. Give it to me.”
“If I can give you a motive for Katrin Moe’s murder-if I can show you how she must have been murdered-and then show you that her killer is also the logical candidate for the Trueman job, will you forget this stuff you’ve got against me and give me a chance to prove I’m right?”
Inspector Quinlan studied him with a cold blue gaze as he silently considered the proposition.
“Hell, you’ve always got your case against me,” Shayne went on rapidly. “You’ve got the affidavits. I’m not going to run out on you. If I fail, you can slap me in jail so fast it’ll make my head swim.”
“I’ll still have you,” Quinlan agreed thoughtfully.
“What have you got to lose? I don’t want any of the credit on either of the killings. I’m after a fee.”
The inspector nodded slowly. “You’re on. But you’ll have to sell me.”
Shayne said, “I will,” with greater confidence than he felt. He lit a cigarette and settled back to a complete recital of all the pertinent facts he had unearthed since the beginning of his investigation, telling the story in sequence from Lieutenant Drinkley’s impassioned plea in his office to the moment when the inspector’s man picked him up at his apartment that morning.
Quinlan listened with concentrated attention. When Shayne finished he said, “Looks to me like you’ve dug up a lot of stuff that points to a motive for Katrin Moe’s suicide. What’s her connection with the escaped convict whom she visited day before yesterday? Did he steal the damned necklace? One of the pair was riding out a term for burglary and they both seem to have been in New Orleans the night it was stolen. She might have fingered the necklace for them, either intentionally or inadvertently, and later got an attack of conscience and killed herself in a fit of remorse.”
Shayne said, “She might have-but she didn’t,” emphatically.
“And the relationship between her and Drinkley and Lana suggests that he may not have been as true to her as he wanted you to believe. She might have discovered that and turned on the gas as a way out. Or he might even have told her he was calling the wedding off-written her a letter that we know nothing about. So, she goes to bed the night before her wedding and quietly ends it all. You’ve really fixed up the suicide theory, Shayne. I wish my men were as thorough.”
“You’ve got suicide on the brain,” Shayne charged, “and you can’t see anything else. Hell, doesn’t all that suggest something else?”
“I still don’t see how it could be murder unless her killer turned himself into a gremlin and slipped in through the keyhole. Are you asking me to believe that?”
Shayne said grimly, “Here’s how. And here’s why.” He outlined the nebulous theory he had been laboriously building ever since his first visit to the Lomax house. He gave it a lot more solidity in the telling than it possessed, and spoke with a lot more assurance than the facts warranted.
“After that, the necklace had to be gotten back from Trueman,” he ended persuasively, “and Trueman’s murder resulted. I don’t know yet how the killer learned that Trueman was dickering to sell the stuff to the insurance company. That’s the only kink-outside of getting the actual proof to support some things that have got to be true.”
Inspector Quinlan said, “I’ll be damned if you don’t make it sound plausible, Shayne. But how? That’s still the rub. You can’t get away from that locked door and Doc Mattson’s findings.”
Shayne slumped wearily. “I think I can. I think we’ve walked into one of the damndest murder plans you or I have ever met. I accept the locked door and I agree she died as a direct result of inhaling gas fumes from an open gas grate-one that she must have opened herself. But it’s still murder.” He closed his eyes and felt the lump on his head tenderly.
The inspector said dispiritedly, “You’re only contradicting yourself.”
Shayne’s eyes popped open. They were very bright “No. I’m not. Think this over.” He sat up straight and leaned toward the inspector. “Katrin locks her door and gets ready for bed. It was a cold night and maybe she likes it a little warmer than the warm air system keeps it. Or a burning gas grate is cheerful. So she lights it and lies down to dream about her lieutenant and whatever else a young girl dreams about on the eve of her wedding. Anyhow, she falls asleep with the grate still burning.”
He paused dramatically. Quinlan was slowly rolling a pencil in his palms and listening attentively, a judicious frown between his eyes.
Shayne went on, talking fast. “Sometime during the night her grate goes out. She’s sleeping soundly. When the flow of gas starts again it mixes slowly with the washed air coming in from the furnace. The bulk of the gas is carried off by the cold air outlet so that the air in her room becomes tainted very gradually. So gradually that she doesn’t waken after the first numbing effect. She sleeps right on-with a smile on her lips as Doc Mattson said-and drifts from dreams to death.”
Quinlan struck the desk with his fist. “By God!” And again, more emphatically, “By God! Shayne. Maybe you’ve got something.”
“At least you’ll have to admit it’s a theory that meets every angle. And it’s the only theory that does.”
“Could be accidental,” Quinlan said. “Something might have happened to interrupt service for a short time.”
“That’s out,” Shayne said firmly. “Nothing happens to interrupt gas service these days. There’s always an emergency plant. If service was interrupted from the plant you’d have hundreds of casualties-not just one.”
Quinlan got up and paced excitedly up and down the room. “If the gas in the Lomax house was tampered with,” he offered, “all the other gas appliances inside the house would go out at the same time. They’d all have to be relit after the valve was opened again.”
