Outside the hotel was bright, hot sunlight, and Marvin Blake sweated from every pore of his body as he walked toward the railroad station carrying his heavy bag. He felt faint, and he thought surely he would have to stop and set the bag down and be sick right there in public on the sidewalk, but somehow he managed to keep moving along at a steady pace, and he reached the station five minutes before the train was due, but he went straight on to the platform to board it without buying a ticket to Sunray from the office inside.
It would be smarter and safer, he thought, to pay cash for a ticket to the conductor on the train. Then there wouldn’t be any record made of the transaction, and no chance that the local stationmaster would remember having sold a ticket between the two towns if the question ever arose.
Not that there was any chance it would ever arise, Marvin assured himself while the train from Miami thundered in and he waited for one of the coaches to stop in front of him so he could get aboard. No one in the world, he thought, had any reason to suspect he hadn’t stayed for the final night of the convention in Miami last night as he had planned.
No one in the whole world would ever know that he had been in Sunray Beach last night and what had happened there. If only it hadn’t ever happened, he thought desperately as he settled himself into an empty coach seat and waited for the train to hurry. If only it were possible to turn back the clock, efface last night and its horror.
He settled himself down on the seat and tried to make himself feel as though none of it had happened, as though he were just plain Marvin Blake returning from the convention and looking forward eagerly to greeting his wife and his child when he got off the train at Sunray.
Because that’s the way he should be feeling, he told himself. That’s the way he had to act when he got off the train. As though nothing had happened. As though last night had not been.
The conductor came through and uninterestedly accepted his cash fare for the short run to Sunray Beach, and passed on forward through the train, and Marvin closed his eyes and wished his head would stop aching and tried to pretend that everything was just the way it had always been, and the clacking of the wheels almost put him to sleep for a moment, and it all began to seem like a dream, and suddenly he was uneasily aware of a sort of pressure against his chest, and he put his hand up there, half in a dream-state, and he felt that hard lump of the gift box in his breast pocket containing the pretty earrings he had bought as a gift for Ellie in Miami, and a fierce anger took possession of him and he took the box out of his pocket and glared at it.
He ought to throw it away, he thought. He ought to destroy it. What an utter damned fool he had been! To give up his last night in Miami to save enough money to afford the earrings to take home to a bitch of a wife who was already planning to spend the evening in the arms of his best friend.
Tears came into his eyes again, but he blinked them away angrily and put the square gift box back in his pocket. He’d better hang onto it, he thought. It would look better that way. Him bringing a special present home to Ellie, all wrapped up and with a card in it. It would go to show how much he loved Ellie and trusted her.
That was very important, now. Much more important than it had ever been in the past when he had loved and trusted her, and never had any reason to be otherwise. He couldn’t say why it was more important now. Obscurely, though, he knew it was on account of Sissy. Sissy must never know. She must never be allowed to guess. Nothing else was important from this time onward in life. He must keep that always in mind. He must guard every word henceforth, every inflection.
Marvin Blake’s heart pounded and his hands were clammy as the afternoon train lunged on down the tracks closer and closer to home.
Who would be at the station to meet him? How would he carry it off? Suppose Harry Wilsson were to be there? He and Minerva. It would be the most natural thing in the world, they being his and Ellie’s closest friends. But would Harry have the guts to face him after last night?
How could a man do that? Of course, Harry didn’t have an inkling that Marvin knew. He’d probably be afraid not to come to the station to meet his train, Marvin decided contemptuously after a bit of thought. It would be like Harry to brazen it out. Hell, maybe he had been brazening it out for a long time and was used to it. Maybe last night hadn’t been the first time for him and Ellie… not by a long shot.
The conductor came walking back through the train, and he called out, “Sunray Beach,” while he was passing Marvin’s seat.
The train swayed a little as it began slowing down for the station, and Marvin got up and pushed his suitcase out into the aisle with his foot, and braced himself for a moment, leaning down to try and peer out the window as they ground into the station, but he couldn’t see anything in the bright sunlight outside the grimy window, and he straightened up and got a firm grip on his bag and walked back to the exit where he was the only passenger to get off.
He stood at the bottom of the steps for a moment on the narrow cindered strip, blinking his eyes and looking up and down the track for a familiar face.
He saw three men walking toward him unhurriedly from the direction of the station. He recognized only one of them, Chief of Police Ollie Jenson. The other two were strangers.
He looked beyond them to the station platform, but saw no one else who appeared to be there to meet him. Not even Harry Wilsson.
Marvin Blake shifted his suitcase from his right hand to his left, and advanced to meet the three men.
13
Chief Jenson stepped forward in front of the two strangers and extended his hand, exclaiming effusively, “Hello there, Marv old boy. Had yourself quite a time in the city, I reckon. You look like you hung one on last night for sure.” He gripped Marvin’s right hand tightly and shook it with more enthusiasm than seemed necessary under the circumstances, and Marvin smiled with an obvious effort and admitted, “I have got a hangover, Ollie. Where is everybody? I thought sure…”
“Well, I got a couple fellows here I want you to meet, Marv. Come up from Miami special to see you. Mr. Timothy Rourke. He’s a reporter on the Miami News, Marv. And Mr. Michael Shayne. Meet Marvin Blake, gentlemen.” Marvin looked confused and somewhat frightened as he allowed his limp hand to be shaken by both men, and he muttered, “From Miami? I just came from there. I don’t see…”
“Tell you what, Marv. It’s like a newspaper interview, see?” said Ollie Jenson, stooping to pick up Blake’s suitcase and taking him firmly by the elbow. “My car’s parked right here in the shade. Let’s all go over and sit down comfortable, huh?”
“Wait a minute now, Ollie.” Marvin resisted the pressure on his elbow and looked toward the station again. “Where’s Ellie and Sissy? I made sure they’d be down to meet the train. What’s going on here anyway? Has something happened that you’re keeping back from me?” His voice rose shrilly, underlaid with panic.
“Now Marv, boy, you just take it easy,” Jenson counseled him with an appealing glance at Rourke and Shayne for assistance. “Don’t you worry about them. You’ll be seeing Sissy all right in just a few minutes. Let’s just get this little business took care of first, then I’ll drive you straight on home.”
He dropped his hand from Marvin’s arm as Shayne and Rourke moved up on either side of the man, and he moved on a few paces ahead of the trio toward his police sedan which waited nearby at the end of the station parking lot.
“Just a few questions, Mr. Blake,” Timothy Rourke said quietly. “First off, where were you last night?”
“Where do you suppose I was?” snapped Marvin. “At the tail-end of the convention getting drunk and making a fool of myself… that’s what. Why is the Miami News interested in that? I don’t get this at all. There’s something wrong, isn’t there? By God, if you don’t tell me…”
“We want you to tell us, Blake,” Shayne interrupted him. “We know you weren’t at the Atlantic Palms Hotel last night. You checked out at four o’clock yesterday afternoon.”
“So you know that, do you?” demanded Marvin Blake bitterly. “What’s it to you what I did last night? Can’t a man have any privacy? Who are you, anyhow, to be asking questions?” He doggedly stopped in his tracks and looked the big redhead up and down with challenging eyes. “I don’t think I got your name.”
“Mike Shayne,” the detective told him.
“What paper do you work for? What is this anyhow?”
