Painter strutted backward, blowing on his bruised knuckles. “I don’t think it was a mistake, Shayne. You’re through in Miami. Washed up. I may not be able to hang a murder rap on you but you’re through as a private detective in this or any other state.”
Shayne shook his head from side to side. His eyes were very bright. “What’s the setup?”
“Here it is. Right under your nose.” Painter gestured triumphantly. “Joe Darnell was a known police character, yet you sent him out here as your employee to protect a client-”
“That’s twice you’ve lied,” Shayne interrupted in a remote voice.
Painter stiffened and doubled his fist. Then he smiled. “I don’t blame you for trying to deny it but it won’t wash. You promised Mr. Thrip you’d send a man out. Darnell arrived at five and told the butler you had sent him to see Mr. Thrip. Accepting him in good faith as a legitimate, licensed, and bonded private operative, Mr. Thrip showed him over the house and grounds he was hired to protect. There was an unlocked window in the library. It was too good a chance for a man like Darnell to pass up. While the house slept, Darnell crept up here and into this bedroom-looking for loot perhaps, though probably he came directly to Mrs. Thrip’s bedroom for this.” Painter pointed a stern finger at the woman who had been brutally murdered in her bed.
“You’d make a good pulp writer,” Shayne grunted. “Skip the guesswork and tell me what actually happened.”
“Mr. Thrip was aroused shortly after two o’clock by a sound from his wife’s bedroom. He admitted to me that he felt a trifle uneasy about the type of man you had sent out and that may have accounted for the fact that he paused to get a loaded pistol from a bureau drawer before opening the connecting door and turning on the light. It was just as well for him that he observed that precaution, for he surprised this fiend bending over his throttled wife. Darnell leaped away toward the door, but Thrip luckily brought him down with one shot. Those are the unadorned facts, Shayne, and how do you think they’re going to look for you in tomorrow morning’s Herald?”
“They’re going to look like hell,” Shayne admitted. He frowned down at the dead woman, then around at Joe Darnell.
“Have you gone over Joe?” he asked suddenly.
“Of course.”
“Was he armed?”
“No, but-”
“How much money did he have on him?”
“Three or four dollars. If you think you can talk your way out of this-”
“Stop your yapping,” Shayne snapped without looking at Painter. He started forward and the detectives subconsciously relaxed their hold on his arms. Painter trotted after him as he strode into the dressing-room and moved from one piece of furniture to another, his gaze searching everywhere for the jewel case which Thrip had described to him. It was nowhere in sight.
Behind him Painter panted venomously, “My men have been over everything. There’s not the slightest question-”
Shayne stopped him with a savage gesture. “You’ve never been able to see anything that wasn’t under your nose. Something stinks around here. Even you should be able to smell it.”
“There’s a stink all right but nothing to compare with the stench that’s going to be raised tomorrow when the story comes out.” There was gloating triumph in Painter’s voice.
“I want to see Thrip,” Shayne cut in.
“He’s suffering from shock. His physician has ordered him to remain undisturbed at least the rest of the night.”
“Yeh,” Shayne muttered, “murder is an unnerving business. What about the rest of the family-the servants? I’ve got to find out-”
“I’ve questioned all the family and the servants as a matter of routine and there isn’t the slightest doubt that the affair happened just as I outlined it to you.”
“That’s what you say,” Shayne growled. “It’s what you want to think. It solved everything neatly-even to putting me out of your hair. I’m not taking this lying down.”
“But you’ll take it, Shayne. I’ve warned you time and again that you can’t play with fire and not be burned.”
Shayne turned his back on the dapper detective chief. There was a stir in the hallway outside, the babble of voices. The newshounds had arrived.
Shayne shouldered his way through them as they came trooping in. They shot questions in his direction and he answered them with a jerk of his head toward Peter Painter, who was waiting to be interviewed.
Outside the death chamber Shayne stood in the wide hallway looking down the length of it. The policeman whom he had seen pushing the young man across the hall now stood guard outside a closed door on the opposite side about halfway down.
The guard scowled and planted himself solidly in front of the door as Shayne approached.
“Can’t nobody go in here,” the man said. “Chief’s orders.”
“Your chief’s orders don’t apply to me,” Shayne told him. “These people are my clients and I have a right to see them.”
“Your clients, eh? Bad luck that is for them. The lady in the bedroom yonder-she was your client too, I’m told.”
Shayne said, “This is going to be tougher on you than on me,” without rancor.
His knotted fist came up smoothly and without warning from his side. It struck the cop’s jaw solidly with all of Shayne’s hundred and ninety pounds behind it. The man in uniform went down with a surprised look on his face.
He stayed down without moving.
Shayne glanced around swiftly to see that he was unobserved, then dragged the policeman up to a slumped sitting position against the wall, opened the door silently, and went inside.
Chapter Five: THREE UNPLEASANT PEOPLE
When Shayne closed the door behind him, shutting out the hall light, he blinked at the dimness, waited a moment for his eyes to adjust themselves to the faint light cast by a pine log crackling on andirons in a tiled fireplace across the room.
It was a large sitting-room, he soon perceived, with French windows along one side and with open doors leading into bedrooms from two sides. He thought for a moment he was alone in the room. Then he heard the sound of heavy breathing coming from a divan set against the wall near the fireplace.
As he turned his eyes in that direction a trickle of resin gurgled out of the burning log and yellow flame spurted up. In the wavering light he saw two figures on the divan. The girl was sitting at the end next to the fireplace, legs stretched out in front of her. A slim-bodied young man in evening clothes lay full length on the divan with his head in the girl’s lap. His face was toward her and he was breathing loudly.
Her head was bent forward and she appeared to be staring down at him intently. Brown hair that was bobbed long enough to comb hung down, shrouding her face from Shayne’s gaze. Shayne was certain that they were both unaware of his presence in the room. He wondered if the young man in evening clothes was asleep, passed out, or neither. He wondered if they were brother and sister.
He said, “Hello,” and stepped toward them.
The girl jerked her head and the longish strands of hair were flung back from her face. Her eyes looked perfectly round and they glittered in the light from the leaping yellow flame. The young man’s head came up a second later, like a released spring. He swung his legs off the end of the divan and sat up beside the girl. His face looked yellower in this light than it had out in the hall when the cop led him away from his stepmother’s room. His mouth began opening and shutting again, but, as before, no words came out. It gave him the appearance of idiocy.
The girl smoothed her negligee and asked angrily, “What are you doing, sneaking in here? The police said we wouldn’t be disturbed.”
