Shayne put gentle pressure on his chest and said, “Listen, Tim, while I give it to you straight. Betty killed Bert because at the last moment he decided to do the right thing and turn his story in to the Tribune. She had been needling him into the blackmail scheme and she became frantic when she saw that money slipping away. So she shot him. Just like that. Through the back of the head with your target pistol. Then she calmly called Mr. Big and demanded twenty-five grand mailed to her care of General Delivery at ten o’clock this morning. Then she took a batch of sleeping-tablets and passed out. That’s the way you found her when you got to her house a little after midnight, wasn’t it? In bed, passed out cold? And you found Bert Jackson murdered with your gun. How did she get your gun, Tim?”
Sweat stood out on his face. Half of what he was saying was pure guesswork, but he drove the points home and hoped he wasn’t blundering.
Timothy Rourke closed his eyes, and a spasm of pain twisted his cadaverous features. “Is that-the truth, Mike? About the money?” His voice was faint, wavering.
“I swear it’s the truth, Tim,” Shayne told him, bending closer, his voice tense. “Tell me, how did she get hold of your gun?”
“I–I loaned it to her. A week ago.” Rourke opened his eyes slowly. For a moment he appeared to study the taped ear and the puffed left side of Shayne’s face, and the deeply trenched right side, a familiar sight, and the only thing in the world that made sense to him at the moment. His lips twisted in a slow smile intended to show bitterness, but succeeded only in being pitiable. “The gun-was to protect her from Bert-if he got abusive,” he said. “When I-stumbled over his body-on the front porch and went inside and found Betty-passed out in her bed-I thought-”
“That she and Bert had had an argument over you?” supplied Shayne. “And you felt guilty and partly responsible, so you carried his dead body out to your car and stuck him inside, getting blood on your seat cushion in the process, and drove away and ditched him by the side of the road. You hoped to take suspicion off Betty and make it appear he was killed by the man he was planning to blackmail. That’s the way it happened, isn’t it?”
“That’s-right-Mike.” Rourke’s eyes were glazing, and he tried to moisten his dry lips with a dry tongue. “What-happened to me-after I passed out?”
“How much do you remember, Tim?” Shayne asked anxiously, glancing aside at Gentry’s beefy face and seeing his pudgy hand firmly holding the young intern back from the patient.
“Not-much,” Rourke answered thickly. “I was drinking Ned’s liquor. I knew I was getting tight, but I-started to write a story on Bert Jackson-and that’s all-I remember. I blacked out. You know how it hits me, Mike. Like I-feel now-” His voice trailed off, and he closed his eyes.
The intern jerked away from Gentry and took a stethoscope from the rear pocket of his trousers, fitting the listening-tubes in his ears as he approached the prostrate form of the patient. He placed the bell on Rourke’s chest with his left hand and felt for his pulse with the right. After a moment he said, “That will be all. He’ll be out for several hours.”
Gentry came up behind the intern, and Shayne met his stony eyes with the challenge, “Are you satisfied?”
“I got it all,” he admitted, stepping aside and beckoning Shayne to follow as the intern drew up a chair and took his place beside the patient.
“And you don’t think Tim was telling the truth?”
“I had the feeling that you were leading him on, getting him to answer the way you wanted,” Gentry said. He got out a fresh cigar, lit it, and puffed until the end glowed red, then burst out, “It did sound like the truth, damn it, Mike, except that stuff about not remembering shooting himself. Even if a man does pass out from too much liquor-”
“You know how Tim was about that,” Shayne broke in gently. “Hell, you were at my place that night when he picked up twelve hundred in a poker game and didn’t remember one damned thing about even playing poker the next day, yet none of us realized he was dead drunk when we were playing with him. Tim was like that,” he went on urgently. “I’ve seen him write feature stories in his office and he never hit a wrong letter. The next day he wouldn’t even know what they were about until he read them in the News and saw his by-line.”
“That’s very interesting,” the intern said, “and I should like to discuss it further.” He stood up and pushed his chair aside. “May I ask what a mental blackout from alcohol without physical disability has to do with the case?” He took a few steps toward Shayne and Gentry, stopped, and looked at Ned Brooks who sat dejectedly in a chair across the room with his head bowed in his hands.
“From the information I gathered from Mr. Brooks when I first came in, the patient witnessed a murder last night by a woman for whom he cared a great deal. Convinced that it was committed on his account, Rourke destroyed certain evidence pointing to her and later took one drink too many, and a mental block resulted.”
“That’s about it,” Shayne growled, “but Chief Gentry doubts that he could have written a confession and shot himself without being conscious of doing so.” He glanced at Brooks, whose presence he had forgotten until the doctor mentioned his name, but the reporter kept his head bowed.
The intern was saying, “That is exactly what the patient might have done under the circumstances. There is a well-developed theory that when a man blacks out mentally-to use the layman’s phrase-from alcohol, his subconscious controls his actions. Thus, a man under the complete domination of the subconscious, becomes a superlative poker player, or he may attain perfection in any game or any endeavor.
“Let us assume that this man is inherently decent. His subconscious rebels, under the influence of alcohol, against the thing he has done consciously. He makes amends by destroying the evidence of witnessing a murder through the medium of writing a confession absolving the woman he loves and whom he knows to be guilty. Then he attempts to take his own life, believing it is the only way out for him.
“And now,” he continued, turning abruptly to the front door, “it is important that we remove the patient to the hospital.” He called the two men who waited on the porch with the stretcher.
Shayne watched the orderlies edge Rourke’s body gently from the couch onto the canvas stretcher and pull a sheet over him. His mouth was grim and he rubbed a hand hard over his uninjured right jaw.
“Have you gone through Rourke’s pockets?” he asked abruptly, turning to Gentry.
“No. I don’t think-”
“Hold it, boys,” he called to the orderlies as they lifted the stretcher to carry it away, and again turned to Gentry. “Don’t you think you ought to do that, Will?”
“They’ll inventory his effects at the hospital,” the chief said.
“To hell with that. I want it done here, in my presence. I know how hospitals are, and you do, too. If Tim has two grand on him now you’ll find it reported as fifty dollars by the pillroller who goes over him.”
“I resent that,” the young intern retorted with professional dignity. “If you mean-”
“I mean I want to see what he has on him before he is taken away,” Shayne cut in sharply.
Gentry growled, “Go through his pockets and see what you find, Jenkins.”
The orderlies set the stretcher down and waited while the Homicide officer knelt beside it and went over every pocket in Rourke’s clothes. He produced a wallet, a stamped letter to an insurance company, a soiled handkerchief and a clean folded one, three partially used books of matches, a pack of cigarettes half full, a key ring, and a handful of loose change.
When the objects were displayed on the floor Shayne looked them over carefully, shook his red head, and demanded, “Are you sure there’s nothing else?”
“What else did you expect?” Jenkins hunkered back on his heels and looked up at Shayne.
“What does it matter?” Gentry asked impatiently.
Shayne ignored the police chief. With a questing, groping expression on his face he demanded of Jenkins, “Are there any holes in any of his pockets?”
“I didn’t notice any.” He appealed to Gentry.
Gentry’s murky, protuberant eyes were studying Shayne’s face curiously. “I remember you asked the same thing about Bert Jackson when we found him,” he rumbled, then nodded to his subordinate and ordered, “Check every pocket for a hole.”
Jenkins rechecked with ill grace, arose from his kneeling position, and said, “Not a hole big enough for a pin to go through.”
Shayne waved to the patient orderlies, said, “Okay,” then turned to Gentry. “You won’t mind if I follow the ambulance to the hospital? I’d like-”
