them.”
Miss Morrison sighed deeply. “What I was going to say is that the Greerson job didn’t matter. It just showed how carelessness makes trouble. We never billed him on it. When I asked Mr. Deland about it after the first of the month, he got angry and irritable. First he said he couldn’t remember, and then he said he had had trouble getting the parts. Anyway, he never did fix it the way it should be, and he didn’t feel it was honest to collect a bill like that.
“I told him we couldn’t run the business that way. I insisted that his time was worth something. That was the first time Mr. Dawson ever spoke sharp to me, and he apologized afterward. He said I wasn’t to question Mr. Deland.
“Later, he told me privately that he agreed with me,” she went on, her colorless eyes looking at the dirty ceiling as though it were studded with stars. “But after all, Mr. Deland was a partner and was in charge of the outside work. That’s when he spoke of buying out Deland’s share of the business a little later on when he expected to come into a small legacy.
“But now all this terrible thing has come up, and I don’t know what the outcome will be, with Mr. Dawson lying there in the hospital fighting for his life, and with the tragedy in the Deland home and all.”
She ran out of breath and began sobbing again.
Shayne stood up and patted her shoulder and told her he would come back some other time when things were a little more normal. He left hurriedly with another small item of information tucked away in his mind, though he didn’t see, at the moment, how it could help him.
It did establish a slim connection between ex-Senator Irvin, alias Greerson, and Deland; but he couldn’t see how that connection fitted into the kidnap picture.
Dawson, too, it appeared, had also acted strangely about the Greerson job, refusing to urge his partner to press what appeared to be a legitimate repair bill.
But he was making progress, Shayne reassured himself; and somewhere in the complex pattern lay the answer to four deaths within the space of four hours.
Chapter Seventeen
Shayne found Timothy Rourke in his apartment on the Beach. The neat condition of the living-room, Shayne noted, was further evidence that his reporter friend had undergone a change since fighting for weeks for his life in a hospital bed with a bullet in his abdomen.
Rourke was at his typewriter. He said, “Sit down, Mike. Thank God I’ve got an excuse to quit this and pour myself the drink I’ve been wanting. You’ll drink rye and like it, or you won’t drink.”
Shayne said, “Even rye will taste good to me right now.” He dropped down on the couch and looked around the room. There was a wastebasket beside Rourke’s desk and the trash was in it instead of around it. The ash tray on the desk held ashes and cigarette butts. Heretofore both had been strewn over the rug. Shayne grinned. “You’re getting to be a goddamned old maid about your housekeeping.”
“Yeah. I got used to having things clean at the hospital. I sort of like it.” His cadaverous face was sallow and his eyes bloodshot and weary. He shoved his chair back, went to the kitchenette, and returned with an unopened bottle of rye and two glasses. He handed the bottle to Shayne to open and went back to the kitchenette to get two glasses of ice water.
Shayne poured four fingers of rye in each glass and passed one to Rourke in exchange for a glass of water.
They touched glasses before drinking, and Rourke said, “Skoal” absently.
Shayne drank half of the rye and said, “I wish you’d get yourself a job so you could afford some decent liquor.”
“Three sixty-five a fifth,” said Rourke moodily. He walked to his typewriter, stared at the sheet of yellow paper half covered with typing, then pulled it from the roller.
“Another chapter of the Great American Novel?” asked Shayne idly.
“I’ve turned detective,” Rourke told him. “With you and Painter and Gentry going around in circles, I sat down and did some straight thinking.” He paused, then added, “Thanks for the tip on the Tower angle.”
“I figured you were the only person I could trust not to recognize my voice,” Shayne told him.
“Not that my denial did you much good,” said Rourke with disgust. “It didn’t take Gentry’s boys long to figure, from the old man’s description, that you were the visitor to Cabin Sixteen. They place you there about four- thirty.”
Shayne nodded equably. “Gurney was dead and Gerta Ross passed out when I arrived.”
Rourke slumped down in a chair with the sheet of paper in his hand. He emptied his glass of rye, took a big swallow of water, and said, “Dawson had time to rub Gurney out before he reported in at the Beach.”
“So did Hale and Deland,” Shayne suggested.
Rourke frowned incredulously. “So did thousands of other honest citizens. Why pick on those two?”
Shayne told him what he had learned at the Fun Club, about the call Gurney had received there, and the appointment he made with Gerta Ross to meet him at the Tower Cottages to get her share of the pay-off.
“Gerta practically corroborated that last night, as well as she could corroborate anything in her condition,” Shayne went on. “That makes it look as if someone had hired Gurney to snatch Kathleen Deland-and had to kill him after things went wrong to make sure he wouldn’t talk.”
“Dawson? He fits, Mike,” Rourke pointed out excitedly. “He was in a position to know that Emory Hale would pay off. By having himself appointed go-between, he was in a perfect position to glom onto the money without ever being suspected.”
“Then why did he try to jump town with it?”
Rourke thought for a moment. “To avoid paying Gurney his share,” he guessed. “Then, when he reached Palm Beach and discovered the switched suitcases, he was desperate. So, he hurried back to silence Gurney and turn up with that story of the hijackers.”
“Could be,” Shayne agreed. “That doesn’t explain the fifty grand in counterfeit bills.”
“Counterfeit? The stuff looked good to me.”
Shayne briefly described his interview with Marsten at the First National Bank that morning.
Rourke whistled softly. “Then Emory Hale must have tried to slip over the queer stuff. Maybe he’s one of the counterfeit gang himself. We ought to check on him, Mike-find out where he got the money.”
“Will Gentry is doing that right now,” Shayne cut in. “I’d like to know where Hale went last night when he left the Deland house after hearing Kathleen’s body had been found.”
“He acted pretty badly cut up,” Rourke said, frowning deeply. “I was there when it happened, you know.”
Shayne nodded. “I read Nora Fitzgerald’s account of it in the morning paper. Sounded like you’d dictated it,” he added, repressing a grin.
“Now look here, Mike, my story wasn’t-”
Shayne waved a big hand, and asked, “What was your impression of Hale’s departure?”
Rourke screwed his thin face into a grimace. “At the time, his grief and anger seemed genuine enough. He gave the impression of having to do something, of being unable to just sit there and wait. I know that Mrs. Deland was worried about him and sent her husband to be with him.”
“Did they leave the house together?”
“I don’t believe they did. I think Hale had already jumped in a cab-there were a couple loitering outside-and driven off before Arthur Deland came out. I’m pretty sure Deland took the family car. I’m not sure. That must have been shortly after two o’clock,” said Rourke, glancing at the typed notation he had taken from his typewriter.
“I’ve made up a sort of timetable here to keep the different things straight in my mind. This is the way I’ve got it set down. Deland left his house at ten-thirty with the ransom money. He met Dawson, as directed by the kidnapers, and turned the money over to him, returning home about eleven.
