Pay-Off in Blood

“It was those gamblers who were forever after him for money.” She sighed and placed the palms of her hands flat on the table in front of her, turning her profile to Shayne again. “It was his only weakness. He did think he could beat the races. He was always on the verge of making a big killing… and never did.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“For years. Ever since I’ve been with him. But it hasn’t got real bad until these last few months. They’re the ones that did it. They’ve been threatening him, and he’s been so worried.”

Shayne asked, “Did you know he was being blackmailed, Belle?”

“Blackmailed? Doctor?” She swung her head to look at him with absolute incredulity on her face. Then she began to laugh. Softly at first, gurgling and chuckling from deep inside, and the laughter grew until it took possession of her, shaking her heavy body and coming out gaspingly which slowly grew to the proportion of hysterics.

Shayne got up and stood behind her and put both his hands on her shoulders and shook her ungently. “What’s so funny about it, Belle? Tell me what’s funny and maybe I’ll laugh, too.”

“Doctor? Blackmailed?” She lolled her head from side to side and tried to stifle her laughter. “What on earth for? If you only knew…”

Shayne said, “I know. He was kind and gentle and ethical and everything in the book that a doctor should be. But he was paying blackmail, Belle. Why?”

“I don’t believe it,” she said flatly. She had stopped laughing and had control of herself now.

“Nevertheless, he was.” Shayne took his hands away from her shoulders and went back to his chair. “They were sucking him dry, and last night was the big pay-off. He admitted to me last night that he had explained the drain on his income to his wife by pretending to her that he had been losing heavily on the horses. He evidently told you that, too.”

“Yes. Yes, he did.” Belle nodded emphatically. “I never dreamed…” She paused and became silent, then arose from her chair and turned briskly toward her suitcase. “Goodness! Celia will be wondering what on earth has happened to me. If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Shayne…”

He got up and said, “Sure. I’ll step outside while you finish packing your bag. Then I’ll drive you out to the doctor’s house, if you like. I’d like to talk to Mrs. Ambrose for a moment… while she’s still sober,” he added, tossing out the bait and waiting expectantly in the doorway.

Belle ignored it. She said placidly, “That will be nice. I’ll be ready in just a few minutes.”

He walked slowly out to the sidewalk and waited for her, wondering again about her choice of living quarters, mentally comparing the one-room layout with Lucy Hamilton’s pleasant three-room apartment in Miami. Yet the two girls earned about the same salary. Well, he told himself, some people liked to spend their money on one thing, and others on another, and reminded himself again that he had no idea what sort of private drains Belle Jackson might have on her income.

He watched with pleasure as she came toward him from her room, erect and statuesque, swinging the suitcase along in her right hand as though it were filled with feathers. She had a free-swinging stride and a lightness of step that minimized her bulk and weight and betokened an inner vitality that was good to see.

He opened the back door of his car and took the suitcase from her, and opened the front door while he put it inside.

As he drove away, he said, “One thing I wanted to ask you. About the doctor’s pistol. Did he take it with him last night?”

She didn’t answer for a moment and he glanced aside at her curiously. She was looking straight ahead and appeared to be frowning.

She said, “His pistol? I didn’t know he had one.”

“Mrs. Ambrose said last night that he had owned one for a long time. She also said he usually kept it at the office or in the glove compartment of his car.”

“I don’t know anything about it. He certainly never kept one at the office. Wait a minute, though. I do believe he said something once, a long time ago, sort of jokingly, I guess, about having some sort of gun at home, and he hoped his wife wouldn’t get jealous of him making late calls on some of his women patients and decide to use it on him.

“I know he was just joking about that,” she went on quickly. “I remember now that we both had a good laugh about Celia either being jealous or being able to shoot a pistol, if she were.”

She paused and then asked, in a queerly strained tone, “Was that what they used to do it with? Doctor’s own pistol?”

“I haven’t got the official report yet. A thirty-two automatic was found lying beside his body with one shot fired. I don’t even know if it was his own gun.”

They drove on a short distance further in silence, and then Belle Jackson asked hesitantly, “Where was Celia when it happened?”

“In the house. Passed out cold in the bedroom, I guess. With about a quart of straight vodka inside her, according to the police doctor. Do you know if that was habitual with her?”

“I don’t know much about her personal habits. Doctor wasn’t one to gossip about his home-life. Sometimes he did say little things that… that indicated he… was worried about her.”

“Was he popular with his women patients?”

“He was popular with all his patients.” She made this statement with a note of finality which seemed to rule out further discussion of the doctor’s private life and personal habits, and Shayne found himself wondering again about the past relationship between Dr. Ambrose and his full-bodied nurse.

Given a wife like Celia, sipping on her vodka bottle at home, and thrown into close, day-by-day intimacy with a woman like the one who sat beside him, you couldn’t rule out the possibility of an adulterous triangle.

Could that have been the basis for blackmail? If it were true, how far would the good doctor have gone to conceal the knowledge from his wife? What incriminating proof could have been contained in the white envelope for which he had been willing to pay twenty thousand dollars?

This was a question that Shayne kept coming back to in his own mind. Since the very beginning, last evening, he had wondered why the doctor had been so certain he was buying back complete immunity from further blackmail. Any document can easily be duplicated… as he had tried to point out to the doctor.

He turned onto the quiet side street and slowed to a stop in front of the modest house where Dr. Ambrose had met his death.

He turned off the ignition and said, “I’ll carry your bag inside. If Mrs. Ambrose is up to it, there are a few questions I would like to ask.”

Actually, what he wanted more than anything else was to witness this meeting between the two women on the morning after the doctor’s death. On the surface, everything appeared placid and proper, with the widow requesting the doctor’s nurse to come and stay with her for a few days, but, inwardly, Shayne wasn’t so sure.

He carried Belle’s suitcase in his left hand and took long strides to stay abreast of Belle up the walk, and he stood close to her when she rang the doorbell.

The door opened immediately, and Shayne was completely unprepared for the appearance of the widow this morning.

Her platinum curls were carefully arranged as though she had just come from a hairdresser, and the flesh of her rounded cheeks was as smooth and firm as a young girl’s, and her mouth was like a rosebud. She was effectively attired in a black, silk skirt that clung caressingly to her hips and thighs, and a short- sleeved blouse of dull bronze which reflected a metallic sheen in the sunlight. She was wearing tiny, bronze pumps with very high heels which gave her a look of poised youthfulness utterly at variance with the spectacle she had presented the previous night.

She put out both her hands to the nurse and said too sweetly, “Oh, Belle, honey. I know you loved him, too.”

Belle took Celia’s small hands in her big ones and said throatily, “I just can’t make myself believe it yet. I couldn’t go near the office anyhow… with it being empty and all.”

Celia Ambrose looked past her at the redhead, and a small, puzzled frown marred the smoothness of her forehead. Her blue eyes rounded inquiringly, and Shayne was positive she didn’t remember him at all from the night before.