shivered, despite the heat, as he got out and climbed six worn stone steps to a wide veranda that had warped, unpainted floorboards. They creaked under his weight, and it was a welcome sound in the stillness. There was an ornate bronze knocker on the wide oak door, and he thumped it loudly after searching in vain for a more modern electric button to announce his presence.
He had a queer feeling that no one would answer the knock as he waited. There was a smell of desertion and decay that seemed to arise almost like a tangible effluvium from the untended grounds and the isolation of the old house, and his muscles twitched involuntarily when the door opened in front of him without warning and with the rasp of rusty hinges.
An ancient and wizened Negro peered out at him. His shoulders were bent and his hair was grizzled, but his eyes were very black and very bright and he wore a shabby but clean and freshly pressed uniform jacket of gray with a row of big, shiny brass buttons down the front and his voice was a soft admixture of subservience and dignity as he said, “Yassuh?”
Shayne said, “I’ve come to see Mrs. Hawley.”
“Nossuh. She ain’t receivin’ this mawning.” He started to swing the heavy door shut, but Shayne blocked it with a big foot.
“She’ll talk to me.”
“Nossuh. Not ’thout you got a ’pointment, she won’t.” The voice was the same mixture as before, but it was firm and unyielding.
Shayne kept his foot in the doorway. “Tell her I’ve come to talk about a gardener named Leon Wallace.”
Shayne thought he saw a flicker of apprehension in the black eyes, but the grizzled head moved from side to side gravely. “No one like that name here. No gardener neither.”
Shayne put his shoulder against the door and pushed. It opened inward, carrying the elderly servitor with it.
“I still want to talk about Leon Wallace.” A wide, high-arched hallway stretched the full length of the house in front of him. It was paneled in black walnut and there were no rugs on the polished parquetry floor. Two old- fashioned chandeliers, spaced twenty feet apart and set with low-wattage bulbs, lighted the gloomy hall dimly. The air inside the thick stone walls was at least twenty degrees cooler than outside.
The old Negro held onto the doorknob doggedly, interposing his slight figure in front of the detective’s bulk. “It ain’t fitten you should push in thisaway,” he continued to protest. “You wanna wait right yere, I go an’ ask Miz Hawley…”
A tall man carrying a briefcase in one hand and a panama with wide curling brim in the other emerged through a curtained archway on the right and demanded peremptorily, “What is it, Ben? You know very well that no one is to be admitted.”
“Yassuh, Mistuh Hastings.” The old man darted a harried look over his shoulder. “You explain to this gentleman how it is.”
The man was in his sixties with a mane of silvery hair flowing back from a strong, bony face. He wore a black broadcloth suit tightly buttoned all the way up, and a black string tie such as Shayne hadn’t seen for years. The Negro closed the door to shut out the light and heat, and the elderly man confronted the detective commandingly. “What is the meaning of this intrusion?”
Shayne said, “I think it’s time someone intruded.”
“Who are you, sir?”
“A detective.”
The bony face in front of him tightened with disapproval. “May I see your credentials?”
“Who are you?” Shayne countered bluntly.
He stopped to set the briefcase beside him and extracted a card from his breast pocket. It read: Hastings A. Brandt, Attorneys-at-Law. Engraved in the lower right hand corner was the name, B. H. Hastings.
“I am legal counselor to the Hawley family. I’ll have your credentials and hear your business.”
Shayne said, “I’m private and my business is with Mrs. Hawley.” He started to move forward impatiently, but the lawyer did not give an inch. Shayne halted with his face inches from Hastings’, who told him coldly, “Mrs. Hawley is in seclusion and seeing no one. Perhaps you are not aware of the tragedy that recently befell her only son.”
Shayne said stubbornly, “I know all about Albert Hawley’s death. More than she does, I think. That’s one of the things…”
“In addition to that bereavement,” the lawyer interrupted him, “I have just this moment completed the sad task of reading the will of her brother-in-law who died very recently. Surely you can state your business to me without disturbing the family.”
“Can you answer some questions about Leon Wallace?”
“I’m sure I don’t understand…”
“Neither do I,” said Shayne. He sidestepped past Hastings and went toward the curtained archway, deliberately making his heels loud on the uncarpeted floor. The lawyer hurried after him with a smothered imprecation, and caught hold of his arm just as Shayne parted the curtains on a large square room that without artificial light was darker than the hallway. There were four French windows at the end of it, but heavy draperies were drawn to effectually seal out the sunlight. A small fire blazed in the fireplace in the center of the right-hand wall, incongruous when one had just entered from the midday heat of Miami, yet sending out welcome heat and light into the gloomy room. An oriental rug on the floor was faded and worn, and the heavy antique furniture was dark and depressing.
There were three people inside the room who lifted their heads and looked with wordless surprise at Michael Shayne when he unceremoniously parted the curtains.
The dominant personality was an old lady who sat in a high-backed fireside chair facing him. She was tall and spare, and held her desiccated body very erect with tiny feet planted solidly on the floor, leaning forward slightly from the waist with both withered hands clamped on the knob of a heavy cane with a brass ferrule at the bottom. Everything about her came to a point-her long, thin nose, the high mound of white hair, her cheekbones and the prominent, jutted chin. Her eyes were cavernous, a slaty blue that reflected lights from the dancing flames beside her. She wore a high-necked, long-sleeved black dress that swirled down to the tips of tiny black shoes and she had a ruffle of white lace at her throat. Her voice was unexpectedly harsh and strong as she croaked, “Who is it, B.H.?”
An overstuffed young man lounged back on a horsehair sofa on her left with both arms spread away from him on the back of it and legs outstretched. He wore a velvet smoking jacket and dark trousers. He was partially bald and his lips pouted sullenly. He lowered his petulant gaze to the tips of his shoes after a brief glance at Shayne.
The third occupant of the room was lanky and shapeless in a dark chemise dress, slouched in a leather- upholstered chair opposite the fireplace. Her black hair was cut short with a fringe of bangs across her forehead. She had a short upper lip that showed slightly protruding front teeth, and her eyes remained half-closed as she indolently surveyed the detective.
Shayne shook off Hastings’ arm and stepped inside the room as the lawyer started to reply to Mrs. Hawley. He said, “I’m a detective with some questions to ask all of you.”
“He has no legal standing whatsoever, Mrs. Hawley,” Hastings interposed. “He forced his way into your home, and I suggest we should call the police to remove him.”
Mrs. Hawley lifted her cane and thumped it loudly on the hearth. “Don’t be an old fool, B.H. Who are you, young man, and what do you want?”
“My name is Michael Shayne, Mrs. Hawley. Did Jasper Groat come here last night?”
“You are not required to answer his questions,” Hastings put in swiftly. “I’ve explained…”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Hawley with another thump of her cane. “Why shouldn’t I answer him? I don’t know any Jasper Groat,” she told Shayne. “No one came here last night.”
“Did you expect him to come?” Shayne persisted. “Did you ask him to come and see you?”
“Why should I? I don’t know the man.”
“Do you read the newspapers, Mrs. Hawley?”
“I know who he means.” The girl in the leather chair spoke languidly with almost no movement of her lips. “Jasper Groat was one of the men on the life raft when Albert died.”
