confession?”
“He certainly did. Just before he shot himself.” Boyle rustled the sheet of paper. “The damnedest thing you ever read.”
“Wait a minute.” Shayne held up one hand and eased a hip down on the corner of Boyle’s desk so he directly faced Gentry and Payson. “I’m about to be gypped out of my fee,” he protested. “I was hired on a contingent basis to solve this counterfeiting case. Now, you birds are trying to prove it solved itself-just because Hardeman was a weakling who couldn’t stand the gaff when I put the pressure on. That’s not fair to me. Hell, I had it all tied up in a knot before Hardeman killed himself. How about it, Will? Won’t you help me get a square deal?”
Will Gentry sighed through pursed lips. His eyes rested on Shayne’s gaunt face, narrowed and speculative. He nodded slowly in response to his friend’s appeal. “I imagine Mr. Payson will be fair about it. If you can prove you actually had the solution and were ready to crack down, I’d say the track is legally responsible for your fee. Don’t you agree, Payson?”
“Well-er-yes, I would say so. If Mr. Shayne can prove to us that he was in possession of the salient facts.”
“I’ll do better than that,” Shayne boasted. “I’ll undertake to tell you just what was in Hardeman’s confession, though you all know I haven’t read a word of it.”
He lit a cigarette, glancing across at Tim Rourke, who was furiously taking notes. Rourke grinned and nodded encouragement. Shayne glanced from him to Matrix, who still stood aside awkwardly, his shoulders hunched in a defensive attitude, his gaze flickering suspiciously about as though he refused to believe anything he heard. “Take the weight off your feet, Gil,” Shayne advised, “while I try to earn seventeen thousand bucks. That’s the correct amount, isn’t it, Payson?”
“Approximately, yes. Since it appears the track will sustain no further loss after tonight.”
“All right,” Shayne began slowly, “here’s the story. Just for the record, let me say that I first began to suspect Mr. Hardeman at seven o’clock tonight.”
He paused, glancing at MacFarlane with an ironic grin. “Though I did also think you might easily be mixed up in the deal. That’s what you get for harboring crooks out at the Rendezvous.”
“At seven o’clock?” Gentry asked. “You mean that shooting in Hardeman’s hotel room?”
“Yep. It stank,” Shayne asserted cheerily. “In the first place, I don’t believe those birds intended to kill me. They didn’t have their guns out when I barged in-else I wouldn’t have come out of it alive. If they just planned to slug me-what object would be accomplished? No one would be fool enough to think I’d scare off a case that easy.
“That was the first thing that looked phony,” Shayne went on, taking a deep drag on his cigarette. “Then there was Hardeman all tied up in the clothes closet. But the closet door had been left ajar so he wouldn’t smother in there. Why? Why were they being careful of Hardeman’s health-unless he was the one who had hired them to pull the attack on me?”
“By God,” Boyle broke in excitedly, “Hardeman mentions that right here. He realized leaving the closet door cracked was a mistake.”
“The only reason I could see for any of it was that Hardeman had fixed that scene to put himself wholly in the clear before the investigation started. By faking an attack on himself he hoped to divert suspicion from himself entirely. His own guilty conscience made him do it, of course, and it served to point suspicion at him instead.”
“Why didn’t you say something right then?” Payson interpolated with genuine regret. “Ben Edwards might still be alive if you had.”
“Hell,” Shayne snapped, “that wouldn’t have done any good. Where would my proof be? I just had a hunch. I’m sorry about Ben Edwards, but I’m not sure it isn’t better this way. If he had lived he would have gone back to Joliet to serve an unexpired sentence. He escaped after serving five years of a twenty- to fifty-year rap.”
“That’s right, too.” Boyle’s tone was full of awe. He tapped a forefinger on Hardeman’s confession and nodded. “It’s all written down here.”
Shayne directed his next explanation to Will Gentry, who had subsided and slumped to a restful position in his chair. “I wanted to talk to Mayme Martin before I started on the case, and made a flying trip back to Miami to see her. I didn’t have time before leaving.” He paused and grinned sardonically. “I had an important engagement with Mr. Hardeman at exactly seven o’clock.” Shayne caught Gentry’s eye. Gentry nodded approval. His gaze shifted to Tim Rourke. Rourke’s nostrils flared and his eyes twinkled.
“When I got back to her apartment, Mayme Martin was dead,” Shayne resumed. “I made the mistake of first thinking she was murdered to prevent her from talking. Then-when Gentry showed me a slip of paper with my name and phone number on it, I began to see it differently. It looked as though she had been sent to tell me something that someone wanted me to know. You understand, gentlemen, I knew nothing about the case when I talked to Miss Martin. The only name she mentioned was Payson’s. She knew, somehow, that Payson intended calling me in on the case.”
By way of interruption, Mr. Payson coughed delicately.
“Then I realized,” Shayne continued, “what had actually happened. Whoever sent her to me knew that I had been to see her. They didn’t know she had demanded money from me for herself and I had refused. Anyone who knows me would know that I would, naturally, refuse.” He paused and grinned, catching Will Gentry’s eye. “Right here, I would like to exonerate Mr. Payson. Miss Martin’s deal was entirely with Hardeman.
“When Hardeman murdered her he was positive that she had told whatever she was supposed to tell-and her usefulness was ended. Not only that, but she was safer out of the way so she couldn’t keep on talking and ball up the deal. So-” Shayne drew his hand across his throat, intimating the manner in which Mayme Martin had died.
“When I learned that Miss Martin and Gil Matrix were old friends and that she had broken with him, it looked like a good bet that her information dealt with Matrix’s past-which eliminated Matrix as the man who had sent her to me. He had gone to certain extremes to keep his past a secret.”
Shayne sought out Will Gentry’s eyes, found them, and winked.
Chief Boyle took advantage of the quiet and said in a loud voice, “Damned if all that isn’t right here in Hardeman’s confession.”
“Now, we come to the part Ben Edwards and his camera played in the case. While I was in Miss Martin’s apartment, she called Max Samuelson on the phone and told him she knew for a fact that the invention was perfected and knew where the model and the plans were. This was confusing, as you can readily understand, gentlemen, but the name Ben Edwards stuck in my mind. Remember, I hadn’t the faintest idea what anything was about at the time.
“After I arrived here and started working on the case, both Mr. Matrix and Mrs. Edwards tried to convince me that the invention of the camera was not perfected. They gave this reason for Ben’s refusal to patent it. I thought he must have another reason, after talking with John Hardeman who assured me that it was perfected. Naturally, I began to bore into that reason. I deduced that there was something in his past which he was afraid would come to light if he applied to Washington for a patent. I know Max Samuelson, and had an idea that he knew what it was.
“I know now what that reason was-Edwards was afraid his real name would come out when the patent office investigated, and he would have to go back to prison.”
“Yes, sir,” Boyle interjected. “Hardeman knew all that a month ago. He says here that that was when-”
“Wait.” Shayne held up his hand with a pained expression on his face. “I’ve got to convince Mr. Payson I have earned my fee.”
“This is all most amazing,” Mr. Payson said quickly. “So far as the fee is concerned, I am convinced, but-”
“That was when Hardeman saw what a slick chance he had to put over a counterfeiting deal,” Shayne interrupted, “with a perfect frame-up to hang the rap on Matrix and Edwards when the going got tough. I don’t know what salary you were paying Hardeman for managing the track,” he went on, turning to Mr. Payson, “but it evidently was not enough. He saw the stockholders earning huge dividends while he did all the work.”
“That is not true-” Mr. Payson began, but Shayne cut him off.
“The camera and Ben’s refusal to patent it must have given Hardeman the idea. It was simple enough for him to arrange with a printer in Miami to print the forgeries. Hardeman was the man who decided what the new design would be each day. He could have his forgeries printed ahead, distributed to the stooges who cashed them for him before the genuine ones were even printed at the Elite shop. And he could get out from under any time he wanted
