The grin faded from Elwood’s lips. He rolled his bulging eyes up at Shayne. Suspicious eyes. “Where would you come out?” His tone was suspicious. “Isn’t your fee contingent on Brand’s conviction?”
“I like the feel of money,” Shayne told him flatly, “but I’ve already cashed a five-grand check from Charles Roche on this job. And I’ve never helped frame an innocent man, no matter what you may have heard about me. And I don’t think,” he went on grimly, “too much of my chances for ever collecting that fee from AMOK. Not if you’re telling the truth that it wasn’t your men who tried to run me off the road tonight.”
“I swear it wasn’t,” rumbled Elwood.
“Then it was some of Persona’s deputies.”
“I didn’t like what you said awhile ago about taking over my job.”
“Then you’d better throw in with me and make a deal with Brand.”
“Or else?” His expression and his voice were still filled with suspicion. He looked down at the. 38 on his lap.
Shayne shrugged. “I don’t like ultimatums.” He emptied his glass and got up. “Why don’t you think it over?”
“And what’ll you be doing?”
“Digging up evidence to hang Seth Gerald. The only way you can stop me is with a bullet.”
He turned and went out the door with long, slow strides, down the hallway and out the front door.
14
The hands of the big wall clock pointed to eleven when Shayne got back to the Eustis Restaurant. The dinner crowd had thinned somewhat, but there were still couples dancing to the jukebox music and some half dozen tables occupied. He stopped just inside the door, lit a cigarette and looked over the crowd, grinned at the expression of alarm and surprise on the proprietor’s face, and strolled over to the desk. He said mildly:
“Things are going to be different around here from now on. You’ll have to take your profit out of the business and pass up the split fees you’ve been collecting.”
The proprietor swallowed his Adam’s apple and brought it up again. “I don’t know what… you’re talkin’ about,” he stammered.
“The hell you don’t. Next time you phone the cops to come and pick up a drunk, they won’t be in such a hurry to get here.”
“I didn’t… I swear I never did,” he drawled.
“Nuts,” said Shayne. He turned to look back at the table he and Lucy Hamilton had occupied. Rexard was still there, with a man he had not seen before. Turning back to the proprietor, he scowled heavily and demanded, “Where’d my girl go?”
“Your… girl?”
“Yeh. The young lady I was with before your stooges made the mistake of picking me up outside the door. A yokel named Titus Tatum was with her when I left.”
“Oh… her? Why, she and Mr. Tatum went out around half hour ago. You say you got picked up… by the police?” He was perspiring freely, and his glasses slid down on his nose. He pushed them up, and wet his lips with his tongue.
Shayne grinned and said good-naturedly, “Don’t try pulling your stuff on me. Just remember next time not to pick on a bosom friend and pal of Hank Elwood’s.”
He left the proprietor swallowing his Adam’s apple again, and threaded his way between empty tables toward Rexard.
The balding dry-cleaning man looked up with a start, and his jaw dropped laxly. “Mr. Shayne! I sure didn’t expect…”
“To see me back so soon?” Shayne supplied. He drew out a chair and dropped into it. “Where did you think I’d gone?”
“Well… I thought,” sputtered Rexard, “well, hell, the way you was staggering when you went out… I figured the cops’d grab you and throw you in the dink.”
Shayne said grimly, “They did. And right on schedule.”
“You look sorta like they treated you rough,” said Rexard.
“As a matter of fact, they were gentle as lambs,” said Shayne, touching his sore and split lip lightly, “in comparison to some things I’ve observed.” He twitched the corners of his mouth pleasantly. “They handed me this souvenir of Centerville justice before Chief Elwood decided it was all a mistake.” He looked across the table at Rexard’s companion, a thin, middle-aged man, pale and gray. He wore gold-rimmed glasses and a strained smile. “I don’t believe I’ve met your friend,” he added, turning to Rexard.
“Pardon me. I was so taken up with… well, I forgot my manners. Mr. Seveir, meet Mr. Shayne. Mr. Seveir publishes the Gazette,” he explained, turning to Shayne again.
The publisher held out a bony hand. “Stranger in town, Mr. Shayne?” His pale eyes beamed behind his glasses. “The Gazette is always interested in visitors.”
“I’m a stranger,” Shayne admitted, crushing the publisher’s frail fingers in an iron grip, “but I’m getting acquainted fast.” He upquirked the corners of his wide mouth, carefully protecting the slit in his lip. “How would you like to run a story on how the local jail stinks?”
Mr. Seveir chuckled and caressed his aching hand. “I see you must have your little joke, Mr. Shayne.”
“I’m not joking,” Shayne said harshly. “Vomit on the floor, stale urine, clogged toilets, and men sleeping on concrete floors and iron bunks with no bedding, and denied the privilege of calling in a lawyer or friends.” He turned suddenly from Seveir’s bewildered and astonished eyes and asked Rexard, “What became of Lucy Hamilton and Titus Tatum?”
“They went out with Mr. Persona. He runs AMOK. A very important man from Lexington. He dropped in soon after you left.”
“So, she wasn’t concerned about what became of me?”
“I… don’t think she mentioned your name… after you left,” he stammered. “I gathered that… you all had a quarrel,” he ended, staring into Shayne’s cold gray eyes.
“Is Persona spending the night in town?”
“I don’t know.” Rexard glanced at the newspaper man. “You know, Frank?”
Seveir nodded. “He’s at the Moderne. With the strike fizzling out, he’s paying off the special deputies tomorrow.”
“Are your columns open to news?” Shayne asked abruptly, “or do you print what you’re told?”
“The press of the United States is free,” Seveir told him with stiff dignity.
“If I brought you proof that Seth Gerald murdered Charles Roche, would you print it?”
“What!” The exclamation came simultaneously from both men.
Shayne grinned crookedly. “You made several attempts to find out my business tonight,” he said to Rexard. “I’m in Centerville for just one purpose: To smash the town wide open and put a rope around the neck of the man who actually murdered Roche.”
“United States Marshal?” Seveir quavered, and mopped sweat from his face.
Shayne neither denied nor affirmed the conjecture. “Print that in your paper tomorrow,” he told the publisher grimly, “and you can quote me.” He got up and sauntered away from the table to the door, went down the street and found his car parked where he had left it.
He had left the keys with Lucy, but shorting a wire across the ignition switch was easily accomplished, and a few minutes later he was speeding toward the Moderne Hotel.
A light shone in the lobby of the hotel building as he swung past the cottages. He stopped in front of the cabin assigned to him. All the cabins were dark except the one at the end of the row. He turned off the headlights, left the motor idling, and went to the door he had left wide open earlier. It was cooler inside now, and everything seemed to be just as he had left it.
He went outside and crossed to Lucy’s cabin, rapped on the door several times, and receiving no answer he walked on toward the lighted cabin at the end.
