their cruise Friday if Jean had not arrived when they expected her. It simply isn’t like Roy and Maria. They have a daughter Jean’s age, you see, and Jean was to be company for her on the cruise. If anything had happened to prevent Jean’s arrival, they would certainly have contacted me before sailing without her.”
“It would seem so,” Shayne agreed. “And for your sake, I hope you’re right.” He lit a cigarette and looked around the small room frowningly, got up to walk to the fireplace to inspect more closely a framed picture of two young girls on the mantelpiece.
They were about seventeen and fifteen in the picture, he judged. The younger had a piquant, laughing face that brought a sense of bubbling gaiety into the quiet room. The other girl had a broad forehead and a serenely beautiful face. She was, undoubtedly, one of the most beautiful girls Shayne had ever seen.
And she was also, undoubtedly, the girl in the white dress who had come up and spoken to him in the Brockton bar the preceding evening-the original of the photograph on the front page of the Brockton Courier-the girl who had been positively identified as his daughter by a man who said he was Amos Buttrell from the Roney Plaza Hotel in Miami Beach.
The professor had risen and stood close beside Shayne. The sun-tanned top of his bald head came slightly above the detective’s right shoulder.
“Jean and Jeanette,” he said softly. “Taken two years ago. Wonderful girls, both of them. Yet so different. Jeanette was completely irrepressible. So like her dear mother who left us three years ago. Such a comfort after Mrs. Henderson was taken. We were a close-knit trio, Mr. Shayne. The long shadow cast by their mother’s passing was just beginning to dissipate when tragedy struck again last month. When Jeanette was…” His voice faltered and he gulped audibly. “… when she was killed in a motor accident as I told you. It was a difficult blow. A terrible blow. Jean is all I have left. If anything has happened to her now…”
Shayne continued to look straight ahead at the picture of the sisters. His eyes stung and he set his teeth together tightly. He turned away abruptly and went back to his chair and sat down. The professor remained before the fireplace, peering near-sightedly at the photograph with head lifted and both hands thrust deep into the patch pockets of his smoking jacket.
Shayne cleared his throat and said, “I can see they’re lovely girls, Professor. I certainly hope Jean is safe and this is wholly a false alarm. But as you said, it does seem quite a coincidence that both accidents happened near Brockton. What was your younger daughter doing in the vicinity when the wreck occurred?”
“Jeanette?” The professor turned troubled eyes on him and slowly replaced his glasses. “She was on her way to visit a school chum in a small village beyond Brockton for a few days. Driving her own small car. I thought it was perfectly safe. She was seventeen and had had her own license for a year. A very careful driver, I thought. Never had an accident before. And then… like a bolt out of the blue…” He shuddered and pain contracted his ascetic features. He turned slowly and reseated himself, mechanically picking up the meerschaum and uncovering the humidor to dip the bowl inside.
“I think the cause of the wreck was never determined,” said Shayne thoughtfully.
“No.” The professor was carefully packing tobacco into the bowl with his thumb. He got a kitchen match from his pocket, struck it on the underside of the table beside him and drew flame into the pipe. “Your police theorized that she lost control of the light car on a curve and went over the bank. Some passing motorist rescued her from the wreckage and rushed her to the nearest hospital but she succumbed to an emergency operation without regaining consciousness. And he disappeared in the night without leaving his name or telling exactly what happened.”
“I didn’t have any part in that investigation,” Shayne told him gravely as Henderson emitted a cloud of blue smoke that almost obscured his features. “Was there any possibility that the other motorist was somehow responsible for your daughter’s accident, and that motivated his abrupt disappearance after doing what he could for her?”
“The possibility was mentioned. However, I believe a subsequent careful examination of her car proved conclusively no other automobile was involved. It didn’t seem terribly important to me at the time. No matter how it came about, nothing would have given Jeanette back to me.”
“Were you perfectly satisfied with the treatment she received at the hospital she was taken to?”
“Why not, Mr. Shayne? I had no reason to question… are you intimating, sir, that there was laxity in the care she received?”
“I’m not intimating anything,” said Shayne bluntly. “I’m groping around in the dark. She wasn’t taken to the regular Brockton hospital, you know. But to a small private sanitarium on the outskirts of town.”
“So I understand. Because her condition was obviously serious and it was much the closer of the two to the scene. At least, so I was informed by your own chief of police who came in person to break the news to me.
“I’m sure the Sanitarium was closer.”
“I was assured personally by your Chief Hanger that everything humanly possible was done to save the child, and that was a great comfort to me. If I should learn now that there had been negligence…”
“I didn’t mean that,” Shayne cut in, realizing that such a suspicion could only arouse fresh sorrow in the parent. “You remember I asked you earlier if Jean was acquainted with a young Orlando attorney named Randolph Harris?”
“I remember that question. Yes. And I answered that I was quite certain she was not.”
“What about Jeanette? Do you think she might have known him?”
The professor was a little slower and less positive in his reply this time. “I’m quite sure I never heard his name before you mentioned it over the telephone,” he said stiffly. “But in all fairness, I must explain that Jeanette was not as close to me as her elder sister. She led a gayer life than Jean, and had a much wider circle of friends. It is possible he might have been among them and I was not aware of the fact.” He puffed more smoke from his pipe and sighed deeply. “It is exceedingly difficult these days to know just where to draw the line with young girls. They are so much freer today. Without a mother to exert a firmly guiding influence… it is exceedingly difficult,” he repeated. “Since the tragedy occurred, I cannot forgive myself for having weakly gone against my better judgment and allowed Jeanette to have her own car. Yet other girls her same age and in her social group did, and it was difficult to say no.” He smiled wanly. “It was always difficult to refuse Jeanette anything she had set her heart upon. And it was her own money that paid for the car. Their mother left each child a small cash inheritance to be absolutely theirs upon her death. It was her belief that girls needed the freedom and responsibility of having a certain sum that was their very own to do with as they wished. I’m sure her instincts were right,” he added gently, “and I cannot blame her for what happened.”
Shayne said, “Of course not.” He got out a small notebook and pencil. “Just to get everything perfectly clear… can you give me the name of the school friend Jeanette was going to visit when she had the accident?”
“A girl named Lois Dongan. A very sweet child. One of Jeanette’s dearest friends. She lives with her parents on a farm near the town of Diston. Just a few miles beyond Brockton. She and Jeanette were both in the freshman class at Rollins, and she often visited here during the semesters.”
Shayne made a note of the name in his book. “Would Lois be at home now, or at college?”
“Why… at college. She lives in one of the dormitories there and only goes home for vacations.”
“You don’t know which dormitory?”
“No. The registrar can give you that information, I daresay. But what has this to do with Jean, Mr. Shayne? I can’t see any possible connection…”
“Neither can I… at this point.” Shayne arose decisively. “But there are a couple of curious aspects that bother me. If you should get any definite information at all about Jean… if you think of anything that may be at all pertinent that you haven’t told me, please telephone me at once at the Manor Hotel in Brockton. Michael Shayne. You won’t forget that?”
“Indeed not.” Professor Henderson got up in some agitation and Shayne turned to study the picture on the mantel again.
“You have another picture of Jean I could take with me, Professor Henderson? A later one if possible.”
“Why yes, I… I believe I do. If you’ll wait just a moment…”
The professor bustled from the room and Shayne waited. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Henderson that he knew his daughter was not safely on a cruise with friends from Apalachicola. That he had seen her just the night before in Brockton, and that she was apparently consorting with a gang of hoodlums who took murder in their stride.
It couldn’t possibly do any good to tell the professor now, he told himself. The old boy had suffered grief
