“Did Meldrum type it?” Shayne demanded.
After giving him a long moment of searching scrutiny, Gentry leaned forward and made the comparison. This time he nodded slowly. “No doubt about this one.” He straightened his burly shoulders with heavy dignity and looked sorrowfully at the private detective. “This is the real McCoy, isn’t it? This is exactly what I figured the note would be before you passed off a phony on us last night. It supplies the motive for Renslow to have killed Meldrum, and it clears Phyllis. Why in God’s name did you pull this shenanigan, Mike?”
“You made me. You tried to force my hand at Mona’s apartment last night. What would you have done if I’d handed it over to you then? You would have thrown the book at Renslow and he would have stayed locked up. That would have ruined my chance of making anything off him. Holding that note out on you was my only possible lever to jimmy some dough out of him.”
“I get it,” Gentry growled. “You saw a chance to chisel on the poor devil. You got him turned loose long enough to dig up some jack for you on your promise not to turn him in?”
“It was that simple,” Shayne gibed. “Those few hours I gained were worth five thousand of Renslow’s money. He paid it over just before you walked in.”
Gentry was breathing hard through set lips. A revulsion of disgust shook his heavy body. He said, “By God, that’s about the rottenest deal I ever saw cooked up.”
Shayne laughed. “You know me. Always smelling out a profit. Sometimes they stink a little, but I’m used to that.” He paused, then added casually, “On the other hand, if I’d told you the whole truth last night you would have grabbed Thrip right then, and I never would have got six grand out of him. Altogether, it was worth eleven thou-” He got no further before the significance of his casual words seeped through to the other four men in the room. Painter and Gentry exclaimed, “Thrip?” in disbelieving unison, while the real estate man straightened slowly and stared at Shayne in utter consternation. Hearing Shayne’s words but not quite daring to believe what he heard, Buell Renslow slowly began to rise from his chair as though propelled by a force outside his own volition.
Shayne said, 'Of course. It was Thrip all the way. Not only one murder, nor two-but three. His wife, Darnell, and finally Meldrum.'
“How utterly preposterous.” Thrip laughed hollowly. “With this convincing evidence before you-” He gestured toward Meldrum’s note.
Shayne said, “Exactly. The note clinches the whole thing against you, Thrip. I promised you I’d deliver evidence into the hands of the police that would convict Mrs. Thrip’s murderer. There’s the evidence. I’ve kept my promise to the letter. It’s a hell of a trick to charge a man six thousand bucks for his own conviction, but you should have thought of that when you made me the offer.”
“I don’t get it,” Gentry growled. “Here’s this note to Renslow-”
“The note wasn’t sent to Renslow. That’s the answer. Neat, wasn’t it? Thrip got the note from Meldrum some time yesterday. He realized the jig was up unless Meldrum was permanently silenced. He had already suggested to me that Renslow had sent the extortion notes, and had explained that Renslow stood to profit by his sister’s death.
“That made Renslow a swell suspect, and Meldrum’s failure to put a salutation on the note gave him an idea for getting rid of Meldrum and framing Renslow for it “Shut up!” he exclaimed viciously when Thrip tried to break in. “You tried to frame me in the first place with your lie about planning a fake jewel robbery. You had that note delivered to Renslow at the Tally-Ho so he’d just have time to reach the apartment by midnight. You got there ten minutes early and raised a ruckus so the police would be called, killed Meldrum, and ducked out just before Renslow showed up. As you planned, the police arrived in time to catch Renslow there with the body. You had naturally hoped he’d stick the note in his pocket and be caught with it. That would supply the motive for him to have murdered Meldrum, and with his past record there wasn’t a chance for him to wriggle out-and his share of the estate would go to you. When you learned he had torn up the note and it was in my possession you were glad to pay six grand to have it turned over to the police. All right, they’ve got it. And I hope you like your bargain.”
“Good heavens! the man has lost his senses.” Thrip appealed vehemently to Painter and Gentry. “This is the most outrageous tissue of lies-”
Buell Renslow was on his feet gripping Shayne’s arm fiercely. “You’re right. You must be right. I didn’t understand that note from Carl. I saw it for a frame but I didn’t know what to do. After just getting out of stir-”
“Everything’s okay now.” Shayne patted his shoulder. “Take it easy. Nobody’s going to frame you. Hell, didn’t you pay me five thousand berries to keep you out of jail?”
“What did you mean about Darnell?” Gentry demanded. “And a fake jewel robbery?”
“That’s a little secret between Mr. Thrip and me,” Shayne told him grimly. “For months,” he went on, “our upright Mr. Thrip has been planning one of the most cold-blooded and most nearly perfect murders I’ve ever run up against. He’s the man who wrote those extortion notes to his wife. Maybe he first actually hoped to collect from her on them. She told me he urged her to pay the demands when they first came. When she refused to be intimidated, he got another and what he hoped was a better idea. He used the notes as an excuse to his wife and to Painter for hiring a private detective to guard his house. He gave me a different story. He didn’t mention the notes to me. He asked me to send a man out to plant evidence of a burglary and steal an empty jewel case as a means of collecting insurance on the jewels.”
Shayne paused, eying the financier coldly. Thrip’s body seemed shrunken, the flesh hung limply from his jowls.
“I fell for his story,” Shayne admitted bitterly. “Not hard enough to accept the job, but I did send Joe out there-to get murdered, as it turned out. I refused to help him stage the fake robbery,” Shayne went on slowly, “because at that time I represented the insurance company he was going to victimize. One of the few things I don’t do is to bite the hand that writes a pay-check. But I happened to run into Joe Darnell, who was trying to go straight and starving at it. Thrip had promised to leave a thousand-dollar bill in the empty jewel case. I didn’t see why Joe shouldn’t have that bill.”
Shayne again paused in his rapid recital, his lips twisting wryly. “I guess you can stick me for compounding a felony. I told Joe to go on out there and pretend he was going through with it-to grab the money but leave the jewel case and leave no marks of a forced entry-which I thought would be a sweet double-cross on Thrip.
“But he already had a tougher double-cross planned.” Shayne shrugged his shoulders. “The jewel case story was no more than a decoy to get a man of questionable character into his wife’s boudoir at night so he could kill the poor devil in cold blood and hand a dumb cop like Painter a perfectly solved murder with a victim who couldn’t deny his guilt. He might have got away with the whole thing if Meldrum hadn’t accidentally come from his daughter’s room at the psychological moment and seen him strangling his wife. Always on the lookout for a blackmail angle, Meldrum realized what his information was worth and he detained Ernst downstairs long enough to let Thrip finish the job. Does that add up?”
“A damnable tissue of lies,” Thrip sputtered. “Not supported by a single provable fact. The man is insane. With not one iota of proof-”
“There’s your proof.” Shayne gestured toward Meldrum’s note. “As soon as I read it I knew it had not been addressed to Renslow originally. Meldrum knew Renslow quite well. He knew Renslow was intimate with Mona. If he was asking Renslow to meet him in Mona’s apartment, he would have said just that-Mona’s apartment. Not three-o-six Terrace Apartments. The note was obviously addressed to someone unacquainted with Mona. Check up on Thrip’s movements at midnight, Will, and I think you’ll find he wasn’t at home.”
The strength oozed out of Arnold Thrip’s body. He swayed back, put a trembling hand on the table to support himself, guilt in every feature and movement.
Shayne stepped back and glanced at his watch. A loud knock sounded on the door. He said, “That’ll be the press. You and Painter give Rourke the story, Will. And play up my refusal to go into the jewelry insurance racket to the AP man. I want that to make headlines in the New York papers. There’s an insurance executive up there who’s going to come crawling on his knees when he reads how I was too ethical to play a gyp game against him.” He went to the door and admitted Rourke and another reporter, hesitated with his hand on the knob. “Before you get tied up in this press conference, Will, how’s for getting on the phone and ordering Phyl released? I haven’t seen that girl for more than twenty-four hours-and that’s a hell of a long time to keep a man and his wife separated.”
Gentry laughed and started for the telephone. Shayne hurried down the corridor with one hand deep in his pocket, where his fingers curled lovingly about the double wad of bills.
