who wants you dead. If you can’t throw any light on that, we’ll have to go to the people closest to you. Your stepdaughter is certainly the most logical person to question on that point.”
“Yes… I begin to see your logic,” Henderson admitted unhappily, not able to refrain from a baleful look at Shayne’s impassive face. “I’ll contact Muriel’s friends in New York, and ask her to return at once.”
“Do that. And if you don’t, I’ll show you that we’re not so stupid and insular here as you think. I want to talk to that girl.”
A detective came hesitantly through the archway and said, “If you got a minute, Chief…”
“I’m through here.” Painter faced Henderson again and told him, “I’m not arresting you… yet. But don’t try to leave town, and get your stepdaughter back here in the morning.” He turned and went away stiffly on hard heels, and Henderson turned to Shayne, mopping perspiration from his face.
“Why did you bring Muriel into this? It was entirely your doing. If you hadn’t mentioned her name, Painter would never have thought of questioning her.”
Shayne said, “Because I’d like to ask her some questions myself, and Painter has the facilities for locating her which I don’t. I didn’t one goddamn bit appreciate the way you tried to use me to pull your chestnuts out of the fire tonight,” he went on harshly.
“You’re not my client and I had no moral obligation to conceal the fact that the letter you showed me this afternoon positively named your stepdaughter as the instigator of the attempts against you. If that dead man on your doorstep was hired by her, she’s the one who’s really responsible for his death. Goddamn it, Henderson,” he went on angrily, “don’t you realize that every bit of dirty linen in a man’s life comes out in a homicide investigation? This thing may look cut and dried to you, but Painter is a stubborn cuss when he gets started and he won’t stop digging until he finds a motive. If your stepdaughter has a secret motive for hating you, you’d better spill it to me right now. I might be able to do something for her if I know the truth before Painter has a chance to dig it out.”
“But I swear as God is my judge that there’s nothing, Shayne. It’s not that I’m afraid to have her questioned, it’s just that the publicity will ruin me politically and socially if such rumors ever get out.”
Shayne said, “This is your last chance to come clean with me before I walk out of here and start doing some digging of my own.”
“But I have nothing more to tell you. I swear that as…”
“I know,” Shayne interrupted with a disgusted snort. “So you’ll have nothing to complain about when God does start judging you.” He turned and stalked out.
13
“Now then, Mike. How does all this tie in?” demanded Timothy Rourke, following the detective as he emerged from the house and circled around to his parked car.
Shayne paused with his hand on the door handle. “All what?”
“I’ve been patient,” said Rourke bitterly. “I’ve been a good boy and refrained from digging into things or asking questions when you asked me not to. But now you’ve got your corpse. It’s time you came clean. Remember me? I’m the guy who started you on this. Handed the whole thing to you on a silver platter.”
“What did you hand me on a silver platter?” Shayne grunted uncompromisingly, opening the door and sliding his rangy frame beneath the wheel.
Rourke moved swiftly to stand against the door and prevent it from closing. “Jane Smith. For God’s sake, Mike! Don’t you know that from that first evening I knew Saul Henderson was in it somehow, and it didn’t take any great deductive powers to figure that Jane Smith was Henderson’s stepdaughter. From that, it was an easy jump for my agile mind to deduce that Henderson was the man she wanted bumped off. But I stayed away from it, Mike, because you asked me to. I trusted you to let me in when the time was right. I got you over here to meet Henderson this afternoon and you slipped off for a private talk with him and never gave me a word of it. But now Henderson has killed a man on his doorstep. You know how it looks from where I stand?”
“How does it look to you?”
“As though that dead man is the substitute killer Jane Smith dug up after you turned her proposition down. If that’s true, you can’t sit on it any longer, Mike. I’m a reporter, goddamit. I’ll have to start working on that lead unless you give me the dope. And if I do it on my own, Peter Painter will be third-degreeing Miss Muriel Graham before you know it.”
“He’ll be questioning her in a few hours at any rate,” Shayne told him tonelessly.
“I understood she’s in New York.”
“I put a bug in his ear tonight, and he’s having her brought back pronto.”
“You’re tossing her to Painter?” Rourke asked incredulously.
“What else can I do?” grated Shayne. His voice softened. “Not exactly, Tim. And I’m not going to hold out on you much longer. I have one fast call to make over in Miami, and then I’ll have a pretty clear picture. Go back to the office and file your first story without pulling Muriel Graham into it,” he went on persuasively, leaning forward to switch on the ignition. “Then come straight to my place and I’ll meet you there and we’ll decide exactly where we’re going.”
“All right, Mike. I’ll wait another hour if you say so. But no more than that.”
Shayne said, “An hour will do me fine.” He leaned forward to switch on the motor, then hesitated and asked, “Any identification on the dead man?”
Rourke shook his head. “Not a damned thing. A few bucks in his pocket and a matchbook from the Lucky Tiger Bar on First Street in Miami.”
Shayne nodded and his motor roared to life. Rourke stepped back to let him swing the door shut, and Shayne cut his front wheels sharply to pull past the reporter’s car and the police vehicles in the driveway.
The first faint streaks of dawn were breaking in the sky behind him when Shayne pulled off the Causeway onto the mainland and drove directly to the same two-story stucco house he had visited earlier that same night. The street was deserted and no lights showed in any houses of the block as he pulled in to the curb.
He got out and went up the walk to the front door, found it unlocked and entered a small hall where he groped around and found a light switch. A forty-watt bulb overhead lighted the hallway and the flight of stairs leading up. He climbed the stairs quietly, not tiptoeing but avoiding unnecessary sound. The upper hall was faintly illuminated from the light below, and he went directly to number 5 where he knocked lightly. There was complete silence in the old house as he waited. He tried the doorknob when there was no response, and found it locked as he expected.
He knocked again, longer and more loudly, and was rewarded by the creak of bedsprings inside the room. Then Hilda’s voice, slurred with sleep, came from beyond the locked door, “Who is it?”
“Mike Shayne.” He kept his own voice low, but loud enough to penetrate the thin wooden panel. “Open up.”
He heard a click, and light showed around the door casing. There was silence and a momentary wait, and he could envision Hilda Gleason (or was it really Moran?) standing on the other side of the door trying to make up her mind whether to unlock it for him or not.
Then he heard the click of a latch, and the door opened inward a few inches and her composed voice came through the crack. “Please wait one moment, Mr. Shayne.”
He waited, and through the crack could hear her movement across the room. In a very brief time he heard her coming back, and the door swung wide to admit him. He stepped inside and faced her as she closed the door tightly.
Without make-up, her face was white and strained. Her light brown hair was straggly, and her eyes were round and frightened. She was barefooted and wore a shabby, light flannel robe which she clutched tightly together in front, and the two-inch hem of a white nylon nightgown showed around the bottom of it. There was a double bed with rumpled sheets and covers at Shayne’s right, beyond it a single window that was open all the way from the top.
She said, “What is it? I was sound asleep when you knocked. It must be very late indeed.”
“It’s practically morning.” There was one upholstered chair and one straight chair in the room. Her Angora
