It shuddered with the impact, but did not give a fraction of an inch.
There was silence inside the room as Shayne stepped back for another try. Somewhere down the hallway a door opened, and the Puerto Rican houseman was slumped back against the wall, his eyes wide and round and staring and his mouth making small whimpering sounds.
Shayne hit the door again with his bruised shoulder, this time lower and closer to the lock, and there was the protesting screech of screws being torn from wood and the door burst open, almost catapulting the detective forward on his face.
He caught the door-jamb and straightened himself slowly. It was a large room, fitted up as an office or study, with a big flat-topped desk set squarely in the center of it and a dead man slumped sideways, half-in and half-out of an armchair behind the desk.
A thin intense-faced young man with a lock of black hair slanted across a high forehead stood flat-footed at the side of the desk and a few feet away from it. He was in his shirtsleeves with a black tie dangling loosely. A. 38 caliber revolver dangled from his right hand and a thin wisp of smoke still drifted upward from the muzzle. He frowned at Shayne in a puzzled manner and said in a perfectly reasonable voice:
“You didn’t have to break the door in. I would have unlocked it after I killed the son-of-a-bitch.”
Michael Shayne drew in a deep breath and expelled it slowly. He went toward the young man, holding out his hand, “Better let me have the gun.”
“Sure.” A twisted grin crossed Ralph Larson’s face and he jerked his head to toss the lock of black hair away from his eyes. He took the barrel of the. 38 in his left hand and ceremoniously offered the butt to Shayne. Then he looked past the redhead and said indifferently to Rourke, “Hello, Tim. You know I told you I was going to kill him. So I did, by God.”
Timothy Rourke said tightly, “I know.” He moved slowly into the room behind Shayne.
The detective slid the gun into his hip pocket and turned to look at the dead man. At that moment the wail of a police siren came to their ears. It rose to a banshee shriek as it approached the house rapidly, and then died to a low moan and silence in the driveway outside.
“He laughed at me, Tim,” Ralph Larson said earnestly, as though it was terribly necessary to explain things and justify himself. “He sat right there in the goddamned chair and laughed in my face when I told him I was going to kill him. He just couldn’t believe it, you see. His goddamned ego just wouldn’t allow him to accept the fact that I meant what I said. He was Wesley Ames, you see. He was immune from the fate that overtakes ordinary mortals. So he didn’t take me seriously. He laughed at me. Well, he knows better now. He’s not laughing now, by God. Because the joke’s on him. I’m the one who’s doing the laughing.”
And he did. He threw back his head and laughed. High, shrill laughter that cut through the silence in the room like a knife. Then he put his hands over his face and sank slowly down to sit cross-legged on the floor and his laughter turned into sobbing.
Outside the room there was the loud purposeful tramp of feet on the stairway, and voices, and Shayne turned to the open door to confront the police officers who had responded to Lucy’s telephone call too late.
5
The first man through the door was bulky and blue-coated, with a big protruding paunch and dull-witted, porcine features. He waved a service revolver menacingly, breathing heavily through open mouth; and he narrowed close-set eyes at Rourke and at Shayne, and then at the sobbing man seated on the floor and finally at the murdered man behind the desk.
“What’s going on here, huh? Stand still all of you. Nobody make a move.” He swung his revolver around, pointing it at first one and then the other, pouting his thick lips and drawing himself up with an air of ponderous authority on wide-spread flat feet.
“Been a shooting, huh?” He sniffed the air with satisfaction, nodding his head slowly. Behind him a younger officer peered over his shoulder, and in the hallway behind him Shayne could see the man whom they had passed in the living room downstairs and the houseman, and another round-faced man who had appeared from nowhere. The trio were drawn together in a little knot, speaking anxiously to each other in low voices.
“Yep. Been a shooting, all right,” the first officer announced with finality. “You, there!” he snarled suddenly at Michael Shayne. “What’s that I see in your hip pocket?”
“It’s a gun,” Shayne told him quietly. He dropped his hand to the butt of the. 38 to pull it out, but the policeman shouted, “None of that. Keep your hands up, hear me?” He swung his revolver around so the barrel was leveled at the redhead’s belly and said, “There’s been enough shooting. Just keep your hands up and turn around slowly, Mister, and face the wall.”
Shayne turned slowly as he was directed, and Timothy Rourke burst out impatiently, “For God’s sake, Officer, that’s Mike Shayne. We came here…”
“I don’t care if he’s Jesus Christ, and I figure to find out why you came here. You just keep your mouth shut while I handle this here according to regulations. Step forward about three feet from the wall,” he directed Shayne, “and lean forward and put your hands out flat so they’re holding up your weight.”
Shayne followed his instructions silently.
“Now then, Powers,” the big cop ordered his companion with satisfaction, “you step up there and take that gun off his hip while I keep him covered.”
He stepped aside and the younger man passed in front of Rourke to lift the. 38 out of Shayne’s pocket.
“Hand it over to me,” the bulky man directed, and he took the revolver and smelled the muzzle of it and announced, “Been fired just recently all right. I guess we got the murder weapon, Powers. You better take a look at that man behind the desk,” he added as an afterthought. “He looks dead enough from here, but in a case like this we got to make sure.”
Shayne pushed himself up erect from his awkward position and folded his arms across his chest and watched sardonically while Powers circled the desk and knelt down to take the victim’s dangling left wrist between his fingers and feel for a pulse. “He’s shot right square through the middle of the chest,” he announced. “There’s a hole and some blood but not very much it looks like to me. He’s dead all right, Griffin.” He let go of the wrist and rocked back on his heels and averted his eyes from the corpse. “What do we do now?”
“What you’d damn well better do,” Shayne grated savagely between his teeth, “is get down to your radio and call in to Headquarters. This is a job for Homicide and nothing should be touched in this room until they get here.”
“You telling me how to handle this?” Griffin swung a broadly amazed face toward the redhead.
Shayne said, “I’m telling you. And you’d better listen if you don’t want to go back to pounding a beat.”
“Is that so, Mister? And just who in hell do you think you are?”
“I told you who he was,” said Rourke disgustedly. “He’s Mike Shayne. And I’m Rourke from the News for Chrissake. We’re the ones who called in the report in the first place and tried to get here in time to prevent a killing.”
“I think that redhead is Mike Shayne, Griff,” said Powers anxiously. “You know, the private dick that’s such good friends with Chief Gentry. We should call in to Homicide, I guess.”
“I don’t care whether he’s a private dick or not, or who he’s friends of,” said Griffin ominously. “I know we got a dead man here and him with a gun that was still smoking in his pocket. Sure, go down and call in to Homicide,” he decided magnanimously. “Tell ’em we got their killer rounded up and dead to rights.”
The younger officer got to his feet and hurried out of the room, the three men still clustered in the doorway drawing back to let him pass.
“Now then,” said Griffin importantly. “You there, sitting on the floor with your face in your hands. What do you know about this. Come on, speak up,” he added impatiently as Ralph Larson took his hands from his face and looked up at him dazedly. “Were you a witness to the shooting?”
Shayne squared his wide shoulders, then stepped over beside Larson and reached down to take hold of his arm and help him stand up. “Don’t answer any questions,” he advised the young man. “You’ll just have to repeat your answers later when Homicide gets here. All of us,” he announced firmly, “should get out of this room and leave it exactly as it is. You know that much, Griffin. Quit throwing your weight around. And just so you won’t look like a
