Why had a gunman been enough interested in that particular item to clip it out carefully and carry it about with him in his coat pocket?
Thursday night, of course, was the same night Amy Buttrell had mysteriously appeared in front of the local hospital suffering from amnesia.
Amy Buttrell had fingered him for three hoodlums here in Brockton last night after she had supposedly been taken away to Miami by a father who seemed not to exist. By the grace of God, Shayne had escaped their ministrations, whereupon a killer appeared at his office door the next morning armed with a gun and carrying a clipping from the Brockton paper.
Shayne knew it all had to make sense somehow, but at the moment it was all a crazy hodge-podge of impossibilities and improbabilities. He tossed off his brandy and went down to the hotel dining room to see if food would make his thinking any clearer.
9
The food was good. Nicely served by a pleasant-faced waitress in a quiet, uncrowded dining room. Shayne sat alone at a table by a window with sunshine coming in from the street, ate a large amount of food and postponed all thinking until he settled back with a pot of coffee to wash down a large serving of excellent strawberry shortcake.
There wasn’t any discernible pattern yet. He went over and over the small store of facts thus far garnered, and remained as much at sea as ever. Dr. Philbrick, for instance. What had actually been behind his effort to have Shayne turned away from his office without interviewing him? Had it, indeed, been due solely to the fact that he had learned Shayne was a private detective who had been arrested by local police the night before, or had he suspected why the detective wanted to see him… and wished to avoid answering questions about the girl? About Miss Buttrell… if that was her name. There was no proof as yet, Shayne reminded himself, that her name was Buttrell. Her father had said he was Amos Buttrell, but he had also said he was at the Roney Plaza for the season. Since the second statement was false, he might have given a false name as well. No one had bothered to check the man’s identity, of course. There had been no reason why they should. They were pleased enough to have a man of evident wealth turn up to identify the girl and take her away from the hospital. Glad to have her bill paid and to be relieved of the responsibility.
But why would a father lie about his identity under those circumstances? Because he knew his daughter had been engaged in some criminal activities and wanted to cover up for her? Could be. Also, could be a hundred other reasons.
Shayne poured a second cup of coffee and lit his third cigarette, and again carefully went over the information contained in the clipping found in the pocket of a gunman who had been waiting for him to appear at his Miami office that morning.
An assistant State’s Attorney from Orlando who had been burned to death in his wrecked car the same night Amy Buttrell (call her that for want of a better name) had been brought to the hospital by an unidentified motorist in a state of shock.
It was too much to think the possession of the clipping had been mere coincidence. It indicated a definite connection between the girl and Randolph Harris. Both injured near Brockton the same night. Her participation in the attack on Shayne last night, and the hood’s unexplained appearance at his office this morning.
That was at least one coincidence too many to swallow.
Orlando! Randolph Harris lived in Orlando, forty miles north of Brockton. And a Professor Henderson lived in Orlando also. Father of a girl who looked enough like Amy Buttrell that the professor had feared he recognized her from the newspaper picture. Professor Henderson had been greatly relieved, Dr. Philbrick had stated, when he learned that the girl could not possibly be his daughter because she had already been identified by a man who called himself Amos Buttrell and said he lived in Miami.
Obviously, the professor would not have pressed his inquiries beyond that point.
Shayne got up from the dining table hastily when he reached this point in his thinking. His waitress hurried to him with a luncheon check, and Shayne signed it and gave her a dollar bill.
Upstairs in his suite again, he got the long distance operator and told her, “I want to talk to a Professor Henderson in Orlando. I don’t know his name or initials, or his street address. He teaches at Rollins College in Winter Park. Will you try to locate him for me?”
The operator told him she would try, and that she would call him back as soon as she had the professor on the wire. Shayne hung up, and prowled restlessly up and down the length of his sitting room, tugging at his earlobe with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand while the knobby fingers of his right clawed through coarse red hair on his head.
There had to be a connection, he told himself. Suppose the girl was Professor Henderson’s daughter! That meant that the man who called himself Amos Buttrell was an imposter. That for reasons of his own he had come to the hospital and pretended to identify the girl as his daughter Amy and taken her away with him.
There would have been nothing to prevent it. Suffering from amnesia, the girl could not protest that he was not her father. In her state, she must have accepted him without question. Just as Dr. Philbrick and the authorities had accepted him without question.
And he hadn’t taken her back to Miami. That much was clear. Because she had still been in Brockton last night.
His telephone rang. Shayne reached it in two long strides. The operator said, “On your call to Orlando. We have Mr. Henderson on the wire. Go ahead, please.”
Shayne said, “Professor Henderson? My name is Michael Shayne and I’m calling you from Brockton.”
“Shayne? In what connection…?” The voice was precise and cultivated. A trifle thin and peevish.
Shayne said swiftly, “I’m a detective working on the case of the girl who had an accident here last Thursday night and suffered amnesia. I understand you telephoned from Orlando Friday after seeing her picture in the paper, thinking it might be your daughter.”
“Jean. Yes. It did give me a frightful turn when I saw the picture so like my Jean. But it wasn’t, you know. I was told she had been positively identified as someone else before I telephoned.”
“I know.” Shayne paused, then went on quickly. “It now appears there is a slight possibility that first identification of the girl may have been an error. Just to make certain… has your daughter turned up safe in the meantime?”
“Why, yes. That is… I have no reason to assume otherwise. You see, Mr… ah… what’s the name?”
“Shayne.”
“Of course. Stupid of me. You see, Mr. Shayne, I didn’t really see how it could possibly be Jean in Brockton even when I telephoned. She had no reason to be near Brockton that night, and I was morally certain she wasn’t, but when I saw that picture so like her and because of the… ah… coincidence of the previous accident to her younger sister which was naturally strongly in my mind, I allowed myself to jump to the conclusion that it might be Jean. You say, now, that there might be some mistake? Dear me. You don’t mean to imply that… that…” The professor’s voice faltered thinly into disbelieving silence.
“I don’t want to imply anything,” said Shayne soothingly. “Do you mean you still aren’t sure it wasn’t your daughter?”
“Why I… I… this is so very sudden. I made no further inquiries, Mr. Shayne. My apprehensions were put at rest and I saw no need to.”
“You mean you’re not actually certain where your daughter is?”
“I… of course assumed she was with her friends on their cruise. They had planned to sail from Apalachicola early Friday morning, you see, to be gone for a week. Since Brockton is not even on the bus route from here to Apalachicola, you can see how I did not consider it possible for Jean to have been injured in Brockton. Yet, with Jeanette’s recent accident so strongly in my thoughts, I could not refrain from wondering… ah… you see, do you not?”
“Not quite,” sighed Shayne. “You say your daughter Jean went by bus Thursday afternoon to Apalachicola to go on a cruise with friends?”
