Tenseness grew in the small hospital room. The men listened silently. They watched Shayne as they would watch a barometer when a hurricane was about to strike-a force which would surely kill or injure someone among them.
Shayne’s voice was sharp when he said, “That’s quite a coincidence that you should go straight to the kidnaper of your beautiful young daughter, just on the off-chance that he might know something about it.”
Tears trickled from Deland’s eyes and ran down the creases in his face. He said, “I remembered what Emory said when he-introduced me to Gurney. Something about Gurney being a good man to know if I ever wanted a dirty job done. Like arson-or-poisoning my wife,” he ended, his body shaking with sobs.
Hale went over and took Deland by the shoulders and shook him soundly. “Get hold of yourself, Arthur. That’s nonsense. You know I wasn’t serious. I just happened to know Gurney was a cheap crook and I just told you that in fun. I’d had a few drinks,” he ended apologetically, and turned away.
Shayne said harshly, “Let him alone.” He asked Deland, “Did you telephone Gurney at the Fun Club last night?”
“Telephone him?” His cavernous eyes bored into Shayne’s, then wavered. “No, I went out there, but they said he’d already gone. So, I didn’t know where to look for him or what to do.” His arms fell limply against his thighs.
Shayne swung away from him and confronted Hale. He said bitterly, “So you knew Gurney. You knew he was a cheap crook who might be hired for a nice safe kidnaping?”
“God!” breathed Hale. “Do you think I’d arrange such a despicable thing as that? My own niece whom I loved like a child of my own?”
“You wouldn’t have thought Kathleen was in any real danger,” Shayne pointed out. “If it was all planned ahead and would mean no more than detaining her from home a day or two.”
Hale burst out furiously, “By God, I won’t stand for such an accusation.” He started toward Shayne with powerful hands doubled into fists.
As he did so the telephone on the bedstand beside Dawson rang. Shayne was standing over it. He scooped up the receiver and said, “Yeah?” He listened for a moment, then said, “He’s right here. How bad is it?” He listened again, then turned to Deland and announced quietly, “It’s the fire department. Your house is burning down.”
Deland hurried toward him, gasping, “Minerva! Is she all right?”
“Your wife is all right,” Shayne soothed him.
“How bad is it? The garage too?” His face was twisted with grief and panic.
“Just the house,” Shayne assured him. “You carry insurance, don’t you?” He spoke again into the instrument, saying, “Okay. If there’s nothing Deland can do about it, what was the use of calling him and piling up more bad news?” He hung up and turned to Emory Hale to answer his last outburst.
“The only reason I’m not accusing you,” he said, “is because I don’t see how you could have profited. Even if you did intend to furnish counterfeit money for the ransom you still wouldn’t make anything on the deal.”
Peter Painter turned to him, bristling angrily. “See here, Shayne. You’ve been doing a lot of talking about counterfeit money. It’s the first I’ve heard of any such thing. What are you trying to prove against Mr. Hale?”
Shayne silenced him with a gesture. “Keep on listening and you’ll learn lots of things about this case.” He turned to Dawson and said, “Though I don’t see how Hale could have profited by the kidnaping, you stood to make thirty grand if you promised Gurney twenty thousand for his part. You still didn’t know that money was counterfeit when you came back to my hotel looking for it and ran into Slocum, did you?”
Dawson moved his head feebly, but didn’t answer. Sweat stood on his pallid brow, and his eyes were dull through the wetness covering them.
Gentry pushed himself up ponderously from his chair and joined the others standing around the bed.
Shayne went on. “We know you murdered Slocum, Dawson. It had to be you. At the airport I mentioned that I’d try to get my old apartment back, and you found a paid-up hotel receipt in my luggage that gave my apartment number. We had you lined up for it all the time,” he added contemptuously, “but we didn’t have any proof until they compared the blood and some hairs on the vase with your blood and hair. You murdered Slocum in cold blood. He was just an innocent man wanting an apartment, and never harmed anyone.”
“It wasn’t murder,” panted Dawson. “I swear it wasn’t. It was self-defense.”
“Self-defense against me” said Shayne. “Not against Slocum.”
“Yes.” Dawson turned away wearily. “I expected you to open the door when I knocked, and I had a gun in my hand. The guy went berserk when he saw the gun. Before I could explain, he snatched up something and struck me. I hit him in self-defense. He wouldn’t go down. He fought back. I had to keep on hitting him.” Dawson covered his face and began to sob. “I had to,” he cried hysterically. “Don’t you understand? I had to fight him all the way back to the bedroom and keep on hitting him until he lay quiet.”
Shayne turned to Gentry and said moodily, “I knew it had to be Dawson as soon as I learned Slocum had been attacked at the front door instead of in the bedroom.”
Gentry rumbled, “It was premeditated murder, Mike, even if the victim was an innocent bystander.”
“Yeah,” said Shayne absently. “The other party I suspected, Senator Irvin, had my keys and would have unlocked the door and walked in without knocking.”
“Some day,” said Gentry, “your Dutch grandmother may take a holiday from you and the wee folk.”
“Some day, maybe,” Shayne agreed.
Timothy Rourke made his way to Shayne’s side and said in a low voice, “So it was Dawson all the way. He planned the whole damned job and had himself appointed go-between so he’d handle the money. Then he tried to double-cross Gurney by jumping town with the dough, and inadvertently caused Kathleen’s death by the delay.”
“Not quite all the way.” Shayne spoke reluctantly, with a note of genuine sadness in his voice that none of his friends had ever heard before. “The man who arranged the kidnaping of Kathleen Deland had fifty grand in queer money to get rid of. Using it for a ransom pay-off seemed like an easy way of exchanging it for good money. If Dawson had planned it, he would have been careful to have the kidnaper name him as the go-between. But the kidnaper didn’t do that, Tim. You told me yourself that Arthur Deland named the go-between. So-”
There was a strangled gasp behind him as Arthur Deland whirled away from the group and sprang toward the open window nine stories above the ground. Painter leaped to intercept him, but somehow Shayne’s big body was in his way.
Deland dived through the flimsy screen headfirst, and those in the room stood rigid, listening for the dull thud that drifted up to the hospital room an instant later.
Chapter Twenty
“It’s still utterly inconceivable to me,” muttered Emory Hale. “Fantastically unreal. Arthur idolized that child and his wife. You realize, of course, that she’ll never live down the shame of this.”
It was ten minutes later. Painter and Rourke and Hale had just returned to the hospital room after ascertaining that Arthur Deland’s neck was broken, and after arranging for the removal of the body.
“She’ll have a lot more to live for than if he hadn’t gone out that window,” Shayne told him. “She need never know he wasn’t driven crazy by grief unless someone in this room talks out of turn. Gurney’s dead,” he pointed out, “and Gerta Ross doesn’t know who hired him for the job. She’ll do a short stretch for her part in the affair, and that’ll end it. Nothing would be gained by dragging the Deland name through the dirt.”
Hale looked around at the two officers and the reporter, moistened his lips, and said, “Is that the way-Are you gentlemen willing?”
“I don’t see why we have to do any talking,” said Gentry gruffly. “Of course, Tim is a newspaper reporter.”
“Count me in,” said Rourke quickly. “God, what a story it is this way!”
“His jump out the window may have cost you fifty grand,” Shayne told the New Yorker. “He’ll never be able to tell you where he hid your fifty thousand after handing Dawson the fake ransom money last night. The phony stuff is
