fingers. “I did it to protect her. I thought if D. L. got the idea she didn’t mean anything to me, she would be safe. I thought he wouldn’t try to get at me through her. I guess I was wrong.”
“What about Madame Swoboda?”
“What about her?”
“Your wife thinks you’re in love with her.”
“I let her think that.” Milford uncovered his face, looking at Shayne in undiluted misery. “I didn’t know what else to do. I had to make my wife break away from me for her own safety. You can see that, can’t you?”
“I suppose so.”
“But it isn’t true that I didn’t love her,” Milford cried. “I do love her. I always will. She’s the only one I’ll ever love.”
Despite the fact that Shayne had not expected to like Dan Milford, he was finding that he did. At least, he pitied him and pity was close to liking. Milford showed an unexpected honesty and, out of keeping with his size, a humbleness. It was easier now to understand Clarissa’s stubborn love, even though Milford had tried to make her think that he loved another woman.
However, emotions should not influence judgments. No matter how convincingly he might talk about his love for Clarissa, the hard fact remained that her insurance money would get him out of a bad spot and, apparently, it was the only thing that would.
To determine just how bad the spot was, Shayne asked, “What happens now that you can’t pay off D. L.?”
Milford said, almost inaudibly, “He’ll kill me, I think. He might have been contented with working me over for a long hospital stay, but now with his muscleman murdered-he’ll blame me for that-”
“Why not go to the police? Get protection?”
Milford faced the detective squarely, his jaws drooping, his mouth twisted. “What’s the use? They can’t watch over me all my life. Myself, I don’t deserve it anyway. But I’ll go to them for Clarissa, now that I know.”
“Don’t worry about Clarissa. She hired me to find out who sent her the voodoo doll, and I’m having her guarded.”
“Thanks, Mr. Shayne.”
“Do you think it’s possible,” the redhead asked, drawing out a cigarette and lighting it, “that your brother-in- law believes it was Clarissa who ran over his son?”
“Why would he think it was Clarissa?”
“It was Clarissa’s car. The hit-and-run driver hasn’t been identified. Why couldn’t it have been Clarissa?”
“I’ll tell you why it couldn’t. Clarissa had the set of keys she always uses in her purse. She always kept an extra set hidden in the car-ever since she got locked out of her car one time.”
“Where in the car?”
“I don’t know.”
“So when the car was found abandoned, it was the extra set of keys that was in it?”
Milford nodded.
“Did anyone tell that to the police who investigated the accident?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Anyway, it was obvious that the car thief found the hidden keys.”
Shayne said, “Let’s come back to Percy Thain. Wouldn’t you say sending a voodoo doll seems more characteristic of him than of D. L. or his muscle-men?”
“Yes. Only why would he stab Henlein? I don’t think he ever heard of Henny Henlein.”
“Who said Henlein was stabbed?” Shayne asked quietly.
“Didn’t you?”
“I said one of the voodoo dolls he received was stabbed, and one was strangled. Henny Henlein was shot- with his own gun.”
Milford’s face grayed. “With his own gun,” he repeated dully. “Was it a. 32 Colt with the corrugations on the walnut handle cut off on the lower side?”
Shayne’s gray eyes held on Milford with quickened interest. “I could find that out. At the police station they told me the gun had been positively identified as Henlein’s.”
“Mr. Shayne, I’m going to level with you. You say you’ve put protection on my wife and I’m grateful. And anyway, I’ve gambled and lost, and lied to Clarissa about Madame Swoboda, and I’m in debt to a loan-shark who is undoubtedly going to kill me, so what have I got to lose by a little involvement in Henny’s murder?”
“I thought you said you weren’t involved.”
“I didn’t kill him. But last week I took his gun away, when he came threatening me with it for De Luca.”
“What did you do with the gun?”
“Took it home. Put it in a dresser drawer. I haven’t looked for it since. I thought it was still there.”
Shayne dropped his cigarette butt into a spittoon. “I suppose you know what you’re saying. The person most likely to find it there would be your wife.”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Milford denied loudly. “You must be crazy if you think Clarissa would, or could, kill Henlein.”
“She had good reason. She knew you were in up to your ears with D. L. So maybe Henny threatened her. Maybe he ordered her to meet him and she took the gun along, just in case-”
“If you think that-” Milford rose suddenly, glaring down at Shayne. “I don’t want you to have any more to do with her. We’ll hire someone else-”
“Take it easy. I don’t think Clarissa killed Henlein. He got two dolls and she got one. I think the same person sent them all.”
“Then why’d you say that?”
“I thought you were trying to make me think she killed him.”
“God, no,” Milford said huskily. “I love my wife.”
“You’ve a poor way of showing it. She’s worried sick about you. Go home to her.”
“How can I? I’m broke. She thinks I don’t love her-”
“Even a married man can kiss his wife,” Shayne said, his gray eyes bright. “One kiss will take care of everything. All she wants is you.”
He rose and walked away, past the poker table and the dice table, and some of Shayne’s heartsick anger about Sylvester spilled over to touch Dan Milford. Somehow, he still couldn’t help liking the man.
11
Shayne got into the car, swung around in the middle of the block and turned north. An unpeopled silence had been about him when he left the river, but as he approached the center of town the tempo of city noises increased and when he parked, the hum of life was around him.
It was well known in certain circles that the loan-shark racketeer, De Luca, headquartered at a place called Joe’s Bar, near Southeast First and Flagler.
Inside Joe’s he ordered a Hennessy, turned sideways and leaned one elbow on the bar while he surveyed the long smoky room. Despite the fact that D. L. was known to be tops in mobster money, Joe’s Bar looked no more plush than a thousand others.
The room was half full, three men at the bar beside himself and five or six more in booths at the side. In the rear, next to the cigarette machine, a man slouched against a door, seemingly unconcerned, but obviously on guard. Downing the cognac, Shayne left a bill on the bar and walked over to him.
“Where do I see D. L.?” The redhead put coins into the cigarette machine and pulled a handle. With a tinkle and a thud the cigarettes dropped down.
The man looked at Shayne expressionlessly. The skin on his face was ridged and flaking, much like that of the man who had been tailing Shayne in the gray Buick. Acne was either an occupational disease of gangsters, or the result of childhood malnutrition.
“He ain’t in.” The words were insolently mouthed, the stream of smoke in Shayne’s face a calculated challenge.
