Chief Ollie Hanger into the room.
Sliding through the opening behind him with sinuous grace was Gene with a faintly pleased smile on his ascetic face and a short-barrelled. 38 dangling negligently from his fingers.
20
Shayne said loudly, “What the hell you mean walking in with a gun like that? You can’t use it here. This is the Manor Hotel, for God’s sake. In the center of Brockton. Room four-ten of the Manor Hotel,” he repeated with emphasis. “You’re finished, Chief Hanger. You and your chief abortionist from the Sanitarium.”
“Yeh?” Hanger stepped aside stolidly with the muzzle of his gun steady on Shayne’s mid-section. “Don’t forget I’m still the law in Brockton, and if I shoot a man resisting arrest it’s nobody’s business. My God, you guessed right, Gene. The girl is here. But what in hell are you doing with these two, Magner? Didn’t know you were in on this. But maybe you’ll come in handy at that, and pick up a little business before the evening’s over.” He chuckled evilly and his big paunch jiggled up and down where it overflowed his belt.
Michael Shayne said, “Mr. Magner has been giving us some interesting information about the way your friend murdered Jeanette Henderson a month ago. Eugene Forbes, I think your name is,” he went on with a slight nod in the direction of the tall man who stood, blank-faced, against the door with the gun still dangling from his fingers. “Of course,” Shayne continued conversationally, “You’re already stuck with the murder of that waitress this afternoon on Main Street, and I watched you run down Mule last night and kill him. So even without Mr. Magner’s cooperation, I had plenty on you.”
“So you finally had to stick your big mouth into it?” said Chief Hanger venomously to the undertaker. “All right, by God. We’ll see just what…”
“Can it, Ollie.” Gene spoke in a voice that sounded unutterably weary. “We’ve got the three of them here where we want them, and all the talking in the world won’t change any of that. You better do the job with your gun so it’ll be official.” He inclined his head slightly toward Shayne as he spoke.
“Sure,” snapped Shayne. “You go ahead and blast me, Chief. You don’t see Gene sticking his neck into a noose. You do the job and if there’s any kickback, you’ll get it.”
“What about these others?” asked Ollie helplessly, looking from the girl’s erect figure to Magner who was shrunk back in his chair making himself as inconspicuous as possible. “I don’t mind a-tall gunning this goddamn snoopy shamus right here,” the chief went on. “But how in hell can I explain the others?”
“I’ll take them out with me,” Gene suggested easily. “Another accident won’t be too many, and they got to be shut up. On your feet both of you.” He did not raise his voice as he issued the order. He hardly looked at either of them.
“Don’t be fools,” Shayne said over his shoulder harshly to them. “Stay where you are. They can’t afford to start any shooting up here in a hotel room until you two are safely out of the way where he can finish you off at his leisure. No matter how much either of them wave a gun, don’t move out of your chairs.” He turned back to Ollie and asked, “About how far is it out to State Police barracks?”
“About six miles, but it might as well be six hundred far as you’re concerned.”
“Why, no,” said Shayne easily. “Six miles is just about a nice distance. In about one minute, give or take thirty seconds, they should be knocking on that door behind Gene. I told you you were through, Ollie. But if you’re smart and don’t pull that trigger before they get here, you should be able to beat a murder rap. Gene’s done all the actual killing thus far, the way I see it. Better let it stay that way.”
“Don’t let him kid you, Ollie.” Gene came away from the door slowly and began raising his gun. “We checked at the desk and he hadn’t made any calls. He’s bluffing. He didn’t have time to call ’em before we got up here.”
“How do you like this for a bluff?” Shayne didn’t look at Gene. He turned very slowly and stepped away from in front of the telephone so his back was to Chief Hanger. “That thing sticking up out of my hip pocket is the mouthpiece of a telephone… if you haven’t guessed. And it’s connected right now on a direct line to the State Police. They’ve been listening to every word spoken in this room since you two moved in, and if they’re the boys I think they are you’ve got twenty seconds left to figure what you’re going to tell them when they bust in.”
Shayne heard a sibilant gasp from Ollie behind him as the chief saw the telephone in his pocket. Gene was four feet on Shayne’s right with his gun coming up fast and his face twisted in vengeful rage.
As he spoke his last word of warning to the chief, Shayne dropped his body in a driving tackle toward Gene’s legs that put him beneath the bullet that slammed toward him the instant he moved.
Shayne laughed exultantly as his shoulder hit the gunman’s knees and drove him backward. The gun exploded again before he got a grip on Gene’s wrist and twisted it.
The. 38 slid across the floor and Shayne drove his right fist into Gene’s face as a thunderous knocking sounded on the door.
Shayne got to his feet, dragging Gene up with him. He shot a look at the bewildered and frightened fat face of Chief Ollie Hanger who was hesitating while he tried to figure out the best move he could make under the circumstances, and who hesitantly started toward the door when a gruff voice barked outside, “Open up in there. State Police.”
“Not yet,” Shayne snarled at him, lunging forward to drive the chief away from the door. His left hand gripped Gene’s shoulder and held him erect like a rag doll while his right fist slammed as monotonously as a piston into the bloody and smashed features that were no longer distinguishably human.
He didn’t stop until two brawny state troopers smashed the door down and hurtled into the room. Then he dropped the blood-smeared mess of flesh on the floor at their feet and told them quietly, “I’ll go along with you peacefully, boys, and it’ll be a pleasure to plead guilty to assault and battery in any damned degree you want.”
21
It was nearing midnight when Shayne finally approached Miami on the wide and well-lighted boulevard leading into the city from the north.
There was still brisk traffic in both directions at this hour, and the lights of downtown Miami glowed a welcome for him ahead.
“My town,” he found himself thinking with a queer sort of warmth he had never felt before. A nice town to come back to, by God. Particularly after Brockton. His neck still pained him when he forgot and turned his head too far or too abruptly, and the bullet creases in shoulder and thigh burned a little, but he felt good nevertheless.
He was just about twenty-four hours late, he reminded himself. Twenty-four hours since Lucy Hamilton had sat in her apartment with a bottle of cognac on the center table waiting for his return.
As he neared the street that turned off Biscayne Boulevard toward her apartment, he wondered if she would be sitting up waiting for him again tonight.
He hadn’t called to say he was on his way-hadn’t spoken with her since the morning telephone call when she’d told him about the man waiting in his office.
After the wind-up in the hotel room in Brockton, he felt he couldn’t get out of the town fast enough. There had been a lot of questions and a long statement to be given to the State Police, and then all he’d thought of was getting away.
He didn’t consciously plan to turn onto Lucy’s street as he approached it, but his thoughts of her induced an instinctive reflex action that swung the wheel hard to the left at the intersection when he reached it.
He slowed at the second block on the side street, and a wide, pleased grin lighted his rugged face when he saw light shining from the front windows of her second-floor apartment.
He pulled into the curb directly opposite, cut the motor and got out stiffly. Inside a small, neat foyer, he put a blunt forefinger on her button and pressed it, then turned and waited with his hand on the knob of the inner door for her to release the catch.
There was a buzz and the knob turned. He stepped inside and slowly began climbing the stairs, trying not to limp but wincing each time he pulled his wounded leg up another step.
