“It’s a colored man they have in jail,” Shayne told him strongly. “They haven’t any real evidence against him, Blake. Just that he appears to have been in town last night about the right time. That’s all. But they’re getting ready to lynch him for your wife’s murder. Do you want that, Blake?” Shayne’s voice was like a whip-lash. “Do you want another murder in Sunray Beach?”
Marvin Blake looked bewildered. He shook his head slowly, blinking his eyes at the detective’s harshly accusing voice. “I don’t,” he muttered. “Of course not. I don’t believe in lynchings.”
“Then it’s up to us to do something to prevent it,” Shayne told him. “Why don’t you start out by telling the truth about last night?”
“I have told you. Down at the railroad station.”
Shayne shook his head angrily. “I just got back from Moonray Beach where I checked your story. You didn’t register at the hotel until just before two o’clock this morning. The evening train from Miami gets there a little before ten.”
“I told you I stopped at a restaurant and bar and had some drinks and something to eat.”
“And spent four hours there?” Shayne continued to shake his head. “No one saw you, Blake. No one recognized the picture I had of you. I couldn’t find a soul in Moonray Beach who saw you last night except the hotel clerk. And he says you weren’t drunk at all when you showed up at two o’clock. Also, Blake…” Shayne deliberately made his voice harsh and cold. “… there’s a train coming back from here that stops in Moonray about one-forty. I can prove you were on that train, Blake.
“I spent almost an hour on the long distance telephone checking the railroad records,” he went on deliberately. “One ticket from Miami to Sunray was taken up on last night’s Express. It was the return half of a round-trip ticket. And the train did stop here to let off a passenger. There’s a record of it and the conductor remembers it, and he’ll identify you as the passenger who got out if I bring him into court. Also, there was one cash fare paid between Sunray and Moonray on that return train last night. You did come home last night, Blake. You got off the train at ten-twenty and walked up here to your house without being seen by anyone. Tell me what you found when you got here.”
“I… I… oh, my God!” Marvin Blake buried his face in his hands and moaned like a stricken animal.
“I’ll tell you,” Shayne said in an unexpectedly gentle voice. “I’ll make it easy for you, Blake. You found Harry Wilsson here. Your best friend. He was upstairs in bed with your wife.”
“No, no,” cried Blake wildly, shaking his head, but keeping his face buried in his hands. “Not Ellie. I swear it wasn’t like that.”
“But it was like that,” Shayne told him grimly. “Wilsson admitted it to me. But he didn’t know… doesn’t know yet… that you came back unexpectedly last night and caught him here. What did you do, Blake? Hide in the bushes and watch him drive away? Why didn’t you jump him then and there? Have it out with him… man to man?”
“I couldn’t,” moaned Marvin frantically, “Don’t you see I couldn’t? How could I face Ellie if I’d done that? I thought about it,” he cried wildly, lifting his face to stare up at Shayne. “I knew I should. I knew I should have come right in the front door and got my gun from the bureau there in the hall and gone upstairs and shot him. And maybe Ellie, too. But how could I? What about Sissy? She’d have to know that her mother… don’t you see why I couldn’t do it? I thought if I’d go away and pretend I didn’t know, that it would be all right. And then I thought maybe I’d kill myself instead. That’s what I meant to do when I went up to that hotel and got a room. But I was afraid I wouldn’t have the nerve to do it and so I bought a bottle of whiskey from the clerk and I drank about half of it straight down and that knocked me out like a light. I didn’t wake up until after noon today. And then I thought I’d just get on the train and come on home and no one would ever know I was here last night at all. No one would ever have to know about… Ellie and Harry. I thought I could just pretend it never had happened.”
“What did you do after you watched Harry drive away from here last night? You came into the house, didn’t you, Blake…?”
“No, no. I couldn’t bear to face Ellie with it. I tried to plan what to do, and that’s when I thought about the train going back and how I could get on it and just ride back to Moonray and stay the night there and then catch the Miami train and come on home this afternoon like I was expected to. I swear I didn’t even come in the house. I went back down the street away from here, and I remember I got sick about half-way back to the station and I crawled in behind a hedge and was sick and I guess I sort of fainted, and when I came back to my senses fully it was time to go on and get on the train to Moonray.”
Shayne was silent for a long moment. Then he said harshly, “You’re going to have to tell this story in court, you know. Right now, there’s nothing to prove that Ellie was still alive after Harry Wilsson left this house. You and Harry will both have to testify as to what went on here last night.”
“Will we have to? What does it matter? Can’t we spare Sissy that? Does she have to go through life knowing that her mother was… that she…?”
“Don’t forget the colored man who’s in jail waiting to be lynched for a murder he didn’t commit. That’s going to happen tonight, Blake, unless we do something to stop it.
“You and I are the only two people on earth who know the truth,” he went on, lowering his tone and making his voice flat and even so that each word had equal emphasis. “We’re the only ones who know about Harry Wilsson and your wife, and about your coming home last night. If I had any proof that Harry didn’t kill Ellie… that she was still all right when he left the house… I might be willing to forget that part of it, just for Sissy’s sake.”
“Oh, she was!” Marvin grasped wildly at the straw Shayne offered him. “Harry didn’t hurt her.”
“Because she was still alive when you came back to the house and let yourself in with your key and went up to her room, wasn’t she?” Shayne asked in a conversational tone. “Was she asleep, Blake? Did she ever know it was you who strangled her?”
“No. Oh, God, no! Leave me alone. Can’t you leave me alone? I didn’t know what I was doing. It’s all a blur. And now Sissy will have to know. That her mother is a rotten whore and her father is a murderer. All I could think about today was Sissy. How I could spare her ever knowing.”
“All right,” said Shayne bleakly. “Keep right on thinking about Sissy. She’s the only one that counts now. Sissy and an innocent Negro, who’s locked up in jail and due to be lynched tonight, if you don’t save him. You owe both of them something, Blake. You’re done anyway. Sissy has a whole long life to live. Why don’t you give her the one gift that’s left for you to give your daughter? Faith in both her mother and her father. She’s lost them both anyway. There’s no way you can change that. But you can give her something to live for… something to cling to in the lonely years to come.”
“How? How can I?” begged Marvin Blake.
“Help me save that Negro from being lynched first of all. Write out a confession. Here.” Shayne found a clean pad of scratch paper beside the telephone and gave it to Blake with his fountain pen. “Make it short,” he directed. “Just say, I confess that I murdered my wife and I don’t want anyone else blamed for my act. Sign your name to it. Go on, write,” Shayne ordered sharply as Marvin hesitated. “It’s your one chance to give a decent heritage to your daughter. This will never be made public unless it’s absolutely necessary. And even then, it doesn’t mention your wife and Wilsson.”
Shayne stood over him while Blake carefully wrote out the brief confession and signed it, then took it out of his hands and folded it and put it into his pocket.
He turned away, saying, “If this could go down as an unsolved crime, Sissy would never have to know anything. Except that her father loved her mother so dearly that he could not stand to go on living after she died. You said something about a gun, didn’t you?”
“Yes… I…” Marvin Blake’s voice became choked. In a moment he was able to continue steadily. “In the right top drawer of that bureau in the hall. It’s a souvenir my father brought back from the First World War. I’ve always kept it cleaned and oiled.”
Shayne stepped into the hallway and opened the drawer and looked down somberly at the blued steel of a Colt’s. 45 automatic. He sighed and nodded, and turned away leaving the drawer open.
He said, “I’ll have to go down and see Chief Jenson about that Negro. We’ll be back in fifteen or twenty minutes.” He went out the front door, closing it carefully behind him, got in his car and drove away swiftly.
16
