truth about last night. When you came in you met Carl coming out-that it? And he stopped you from going on upstairs. And you suspect it was because he and Dorothy had framed your stepmother’s death together. Maybe they heard you coming and he hurried down to stop you while she went ahead and finished up the job.”
“No! No, damn you. Don’t say that!” Ernst dragged himself up in his chair with an effort toward dignity that was ruined by the tears running down his face. “Dot couldn’t have had anything to do with it. She’s just shielding him. I know she is. He’s got some strange power over her and she isn’t herself any more.”
Shayne grunted disgustedly. He turned away and went unsteadily to the wall cupboard where he got two glasses and brought them back to the table. Filling both, he offered Ernst one, saying gruffly, “Put that in your belly and buck up.”
“No, I–I couldn’t drink it straight.” Ernst grimaced and shuddered. There were red splotches on his yellowish cheek where Shayne had slapped him.
The big detective shrugged and set the glass down. He sipped from the other one and said irritably:
“All right, pull yourself together your own way. And stop your sniveling and your silly attempts to lie. If you didn’t think your precious sister had a hand in it you wouldn’t be here right now. You’re damn sure not trying to cover up for Carl.” He dropped heavily into a chair, got out a cigarette, and stabbed the end of it aimlessly at his mouth while his eyes stalked the cringing youth before him.
“I came to see you because-I felt Carl was trying to drag Dorothy into it. I told her she shouldn’t lie for him. I knew you’d find out he hadn’t left when she said he did.” He stopped to catch his breath and Shayne put in:
“Let me get one or two things straight for a change. Did Carl Meldrum meet you at the door when you came home last night?”
Ernst nodded sullenly. “And he wouldn’t let me go upstairs at first. He grabbed me and started saying a lot of silly things and I thought he was just trying to detain me so that-well, so I wouldn’t find out-”
“All right. I get the picture. So you wouldn’t hurry up to your sister’s room and find out she wasn’t there.”
“Yes, she was. She was, too. She was just undressing.”
“Or dressing,” Shayne put in cynically. “You’re still not quite sure which. All right. How soon afterward was the shot fired?”
“I-don’t know. Not very long, I guess. We were-talking in Dot’s room.”
Shayne nodded. He said calmly, “That all ties up nicely.” He paused, tugging at the lobe of his left ear, then asked, “Is there a telephone extension in your upstairs sitting-room?”
“Yes.”
“What time was it that Dorothy got the call she wouldn’t tell you about?”
“It was while the police-What call are you talking about?”
“The same one you are,” Shayne assured him pleasantly. He emptied his glass of cognac. To all outward appearances he was cold sober. Mental stimulus had a way of doing that to him. It counteracted the influence of alcohol, driving the stupor from his brain and leaving it clear and alert.
“It was after she got the call that she told you to lie about when Carl left,” Shayne went on in a musing tone. “You argued about it but she won you over. She and Carl were in it together, of course.”
Ernst came to his feet suddenly. “You’ve said that once too often. I told you I wouldn’t stand for it.” His face was contorted and his eyes were like the eyes of a rat in a trap. “I came here to find out what your newspaper accusations mean,” he panted. “All right. You’re not going to pin it on Dot. You’re not, I say.”
He moved away from Shayne, reeling across the room, dropping into a half crouch. His hand went into his hip pocket and brought out a. 32 automatic.
In a hoarse whisper, Shayne said, “Drop it, you fool.”
“I won’t. I’m going to kill you.” Ernst Thrip was speaking in a whisper also. There was slobber on his lips.
The telephone shrilled out between them in the silence.
Shayne’s eyes darted to the wall instrument. He put his hands flat on the table top and pushed himself up slowly.
“Don’t you move a step,” Ernst cried out in shrill warning. “It’s one of your tricks.”
The telephone kept on ringing.
Shayne swung toward Ernst abruptly. In a thick voice he said, “I’m going to answer that phone.”
He took a quick stride forward and a sibilant gasp escaped Ernst’s lips. There was a loud report in the room and a bullet stung Shayne’s thigh.
He whirled and lunged at the youth, who was looking down at the smoking weapon in his hands as though he didn’t know how it got there, Shayne’s rush slammed him to his knees and the detective’s fist crunched against the side of his head. Ernst slid to the floor and lay inert.
The telephone had stopped ringing when Shayne got to it.
He jerked the receiver off the hook and said, “Hello.”
The hotel clerk’s voice answered apologetically. “I’m sorry, Mr. Shayne, but your wife must have hung up or she was disconnected.”
“My-wife?” Shayne repeated.
“Yes, sir. She seemed excited and in a hurry and I tried to get you right away on both phones.”
“She didn’t say anything? Where she was-or anything?”
“No. She waited to talk to you when I told her you were here.”
Shayne said, “Thanks,” in a flat voice and hung up. Sweat dripped from new lines in his face as he walked slowly back to the table. He picked up the drink he had poured for Ernst and emptied it in one gulp.
Then he looked across at the young man, who was struggling to get to his feet, and said, “I think I’m going to kill you. You baby-faced twerp, do you know what you’ve done? You don’t know-and you don’t care, do you? You’re so swelled out with your own filthy affairs that you’re not worrying about anything else.”
Shayne advanced toward him slowly, knotted fists hanging loosely by his sides. Ernst cringed away, scrambling on the floor for the pistol that had fallen from his fingers. Shayne waited until he got hold of it, then very deliberately took a quick stride and brought his big foot down on the hand over the pistol. Ernst squealed with pain as blood oozed from crushed fingers. Shayne laughed.
“You stinking little louse. What gives people like you the idea that they can walk in here and throw slugs at me for the fun of it and then go out under their own power? And stop me from answering my own telephone under gun threats? Answer me that!”
With his hand pinioned under Shayne’s heavy foot, Ernst thrashed about on the floor, his screams racking through the room.
Shayne continued to curse in a low, hard monotone, grinding Ernst’s hand and wrist into the rug. Then, disdaining to touch him with his hands, Shayne kicked the boy’s body once, with savage force.
Ernst’s squeal died away to a rasping whimper; he lay limp. The detective drew back, eying the body reflectively, as though somewhat surprised to see Ernst there. He rubbed one hand over his jaw, and then across his eyes. Ernst didn’t move. From where he stood, Shayne couldn’t tell whether he was breathing or not.
At the moment it didn’t matter a hell of a lot. He was still wondering sickly where Phyllis was and why she had been prevented from finishing her telephone call.
After a time he called Chief Will Gentry, keeping his back turned on Ernst’s figure.
He said, “Hello, Will,” pleasantly. “Mike Shayne on this end. I think maybe I’ve killed young Thrip. Better send a doctor up to my apartment with a basket to pick him up. What? Well, why not? I may kill off the rest of the family before I get through. I don’t give a damn what you do about it, Will. Any dope on Carl Meldrum? Okay. I’ll be seeing you.”
He hung up and went out, leaving the door closed but unlatched. In the hall he shivered and went up the steps to his living-apartment and got a coat.
In ten minutes he was on his way to Miami Beach.
Chapter Thirteen: JAIL CAN WAIT
