Joyce heard him but did not answer. He wet his lips excitedly and breathed with agitation. He finally straightened up and turned glittering eyes on the detective.
“Before God, my boy. If Raphael’s signature is beneath that daub which appears to have been superimposed upon the original, you have made a-a priceless find. Priceless!”
“Do you know what the old boy’s original signature looks like?”
“Of course. I have photographs of many of his famous pieces. By heavens, Michael Shayne, how did you come by this?”
Shayne dragged himself up to a sitting position and told the aged artist all about it-as much as he knew and something of what he suspected. He went further and divulged an inkling of his plan of action for the morrow, under a pledge of secrecy. Pelham Joyce had an important place in those plans, and he cackled with enjoyment and understanding as Shayne explained exactly what he wanted done.
Then Shayne got up and went away, leaving the painting in Joyce’s studio until he should call for it.
The evening News was on the street when Shayne shambled out into the air. Up and down the block newsboys were shrilly shouting the headlined news of the bold daylight robbery of D. Q. Henderson, the famous art connoisseur.
Shayne bought a paper and glanced at the story as he made his way to the nearest hotel. An unidentified man had held up Mr. Henderson as he left the airport, and stolen from him a painting upon which Mr. Henderson declined to place any certain value. There were no clues to the identity of the lone bandit. Shayne turned into the lobby of a small hotel where he wasn’t known and signed himself as Mr. Smith upon the register. Paying for a room in advance, he went upstairs and crawled between the sheets without undressing.
CHAPTER 14
He slept four hours and woke up wondering where he was and why he hadn’t just gone on and died. He remembered where he was when he turned on the light, and he knew why he had kept on living when he remembered Gordon. Somewhat to his surprise he found that he was hungry, and his first act was to call down and order dinner sent up. Then he phoned the clerk at his apartment hotel while he waited for it.
“There are two calls for you, Mr. Shayne,” the clerk told him. “Both of them important, I guess. One is from the Tropical Steamship Company. They left a message.”
“Read it to me.”
“Here it is: ‘Photograph identified by steward as Miss Mary Gray, disembarked this morning on inland vacation tour of Cuba. Can be reached through American Express.’ That’s all of that. The other call-”
Shayne said, “Hold it. One thing at a time is all I can handle tonight. Get a cablegram off to Miss Mary Gray. Take this down. You are already involved in one murder and may avert other deaths by immediate co-operation stop. Cable my expense full particulars your reasons for sailing under assumed name who financed trip and why. Read that back to me.”
The clerk read it back to him. Shayne told him to get it off right away and hold the answer when it came. Then he asked, “What about the other call?”
“Mr. Painter called from the Beach an hour ago. He wants you to contact him immediately.”
Shayne thanked the clerk and hung up. There was a light rap on his door.
He went to it and opened it a wary crack. It was a waiter from the hotel restaurant with the meal he had ordered sent up.
He let the waiter in and went back to the phone while the man set up a folding table in the center of the room.
Peter Painter’s voice sounded irked and worried over the wire. “Shayne! I’ve been trying to get in touch with you on that fingerprint request you made this morning.”
“Did you get something on Oscar?”
“Plenty. He was released from the New York penitentiary three months ago after serving a sentence for manslaughter. He has a long record, but is clear with the law at present.”
Shayne said, “Wait. Let me think.” His head throbbed with pain, and it was difficult to think. This meant something. It was the link he had been looking for. While he tried to put things into their right places, Painter barked at him.
“For God’s sake, Shayne, if you’ve got anything, let me have it. That art robbery at the airport has put additional pressure on me. It seems to tie up to the Brighton killings, somehow. I’ve got to give the papers something.”
Shayne grinned at the phone. The angle was coming to him now. “Let ’em wait until tomorrow. Noon tomorrow. Promise them anything, but don’t open your mouth before I tell you to. I’m going to hand it to you, all sewed up in a bag. There’s only one piece lacking in the whole puzzle. You can get that for me. Get the warden of the New York pen on long distance and find out if Julius Brighton is still an inmate or whether he has been paroled or pardoned.”
“Julius Brighton? What the hell?”
“Don’t mess things up by trying to lame-brain your way into it now,” Shayne crackled. “Get that information and call me back here.” He gave him the number and hung up.
The soup was thick and hot and good. The steak, however, was a mistake. It was quite tender, but not tender enough for Shayne’s bruised jaws to handle. After painfully wrestling with it for a time, he gave up and ordered another bowl of soup.
He was finishing that when his telephone rang. It was Painter with the information that Julius Brighton had been released on parole, an extremely sick man, a week before Oscar’s release-with the additional information that Brighton was now being sought in New York for violation of his parole, not having reported to the parole officer for the past month.
Shayne curtly thanked him and hung up while Painter was demanding to know what it was all about. He sat down, lit a cigarette, and stared at the wall. He had all the pieces, now. How the hell did they fit together? He closed his eyes and mentally tried to piece them together. It took him a long time. And in the end he had only a theory. It was a good theory but he wasn’t satisfied. There was one gruesome bit of proof lacking.
He sighed, knowing he couldn’t put it off any longer. He had to know why Oscar wouldn’t let him in his room that first afternoon. He had to know what heavy object had been dragged out of Oscar’s room during the interval between his first and second visit to the garage apartment. A cobweb clinging to the sleeve of a pair of coveralls, dirt-stained knees, clean fresh beach sand in the cuffs of that pair of coveralls.
His entire theory rested on that flimsy basis. He couldn’t hand it to Painter that way. He had to know.
He got up and went out, his face grimly set. It was the showdown. He couldn’t put it off any longer.
The cool night air felt good as he walked down the street to his parked car. It was where he had left it before receiving Gordon’s message earlier in the day. It seemed as though he had parked it there weeks ago.
He got in and drove slowly toward the causeway, stopping at an all-night garage where he was known and borrowing a spade and a slender steel rod with a sharpened point.
There was a pale arc of moon low in the west, and fleecy clouds overhead. A light breeze rippled the surface of Biscayne Bay as he drove over the causeway. It was past midnight and there was little traffic to bother him. By the time he reached the ocean drive and turned north, the breeze was freshening, whipping in whitecaps from the Atlantic. He drove more slowly, taking deep breaths of the salt-tanged air, subconsciously delaying as much as possible.
He stopped his car beneath a palm tree a quarter of a mile south of the Brighton estate, took his steel rod and spade and made his way between two palatial residences to the water’s edge. There he turned and plodded along on the hard-packed sand. The tide was out, leaving a wide expanse of sloping wet sand which glistened in the faint starlight. He mentally checked each narrow strip of private beach as he passed until he knew, suddenly, that he was approaching the south boundary of the Brighton estate.
A low stone wall ran down to a point some twenty feet away from the water’s edge at low tide. Shayne stopped at the wall and leaned his spade against the rocks. Through the wind-whipped fronds of tall palms the house could be faintly seen. One upstairs window showed a dim light. That, he reasoned, was the sickroom.
