Michael Shayne's Long Chance (18 page)

There was a long bare table with chairs ranged around it. Henderson and Joseph Little sat at one end with some papers spread out in front of them. Denton, Soule, and Henri were at the other end. Drake stood against the wall just inside the door looking at his brother-in-law with tight-lipped disapproval.

Shayne drew a chair a little apart from the others and invited Lucile to sit down. He then moved toward Joseph P. Little, holding out his hand. The magazine editor wore his pince-nez and a harassed frown. His mild features showed strain and sleeplessness, but his collar was fresh and his bow tie primly in position. He put a limp hand in Shayne’s and murmured, “We meet again under the shadow of tragedy.”

Shayne held his hand firmly. “I’m sorry, Mr. Little. If I’d done my job it wouldn’t have happened.”

Little shook his head sadly. “I feel you did all you could.” He made a limp gesture of defeat.

The others were seating themselves around the table. Henderson shuffled some papers in front of him and said impatiently, “I’m a busy man, Mr. Shayne. If you care to sign this affidavit I’ve prepared—”

“Are you satisfied with the identification?” Shayne interrupted sharply.

“Perfectly,” Henderson said. “Mr. Little has made a definite identification of the girl as his daughter and has fully explained the peculiar circumstances which led to her adoption of a pseudonym.”

Shayne swung on Joseph Little and said grimly, “You have some explaining to do. Come with me a moment.” He led Little to the other end of the table to face Edmund Drake. “I believe you two know each other.”

Little winced at Shayne’s tone. He said, “Yes, we—how are you, Edmund?”

Drake said stiffly, “I’m very well, thank you.” Neither of them offered to shake hands.

Shayne said irritably, “I want the truth, Little. Why did you lie to me in Miami?”

The editor’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He wet his lips. “I’m not certain I know what you mean.”

Shayne turned to Timothy Rourke. “You heard our discussion in Miami, Tim. Does Mr. Drake remind you of anyone described by Little at that time?”

Rourke came closer and carefully surveyed Drake. “Sure. He’s the menace Little warned you against.”

Joseph P. Little burst out, “He is, indeed. You must understand, Mr. Shayne, that I couldn’t bring myself to explain that he was actually Barbara’s uncle.”

“You made up the whole story,” Shayne snorted, “about him being a dope peddler and a threat to your daughter’s life.”

“Yes, I did. All of it except that last statement, Mr. Shayne.” Little appeared to grow in stature and his pale eyes glittered. “I sent you here to protect Barbara from Edmund Drake. I believed then that her life would be in danger if he found her. And I would believe now that
he
murdered her if the crime had not been confessed by another person.”

“You’ve always hated me, Joseph.” Drake’s tongue dripped venom. “You wouldn’t let us see Barbara because you knew she preferred her aunt and me—to you.”

“Yes, Edmund, I’ve always hated you.” Mr. Little took off his pince-nez and spoke quite firmly. “I’ve hated you ever since you married my sister and squandered her substance. You ruined her life—sent her to her deathbed with a broken heart and a wrecked body. I kept Barbara away from you because I didn’t want her to learn what a loathsome thing you really are.”

Drake’s flaccid features twitched. “You turned her against us—poisoned her mind against her aunt, who loved her like a mother. You exerted every bit of influence you could muster to force her to change the beneficiary of her insurance from my wife to you.”

Dead silence pervaded the room during the few seconds before Mr. Little said, “I did urge Barbara to change the beneficiary of her policy after Elizabeth took to her bed and it became evident that she no longer wished to live. Certainly I shrank from the sure knowledge that the money would do nothing for her, but would inevitably pass into your hands to be dissipated as you had wasted her small fortune.”

He stepped closer, shaking his pince-nez in Drake’s face. His anger gave him added dignity and poise as he resumed. “And, though I’ve been ashamed to confess the abhorrent suspicion, I have actually feared for Barbara’s life so long as that temptation remained before you. When you came through Miami and insisted that I give you her address, using your wife’s illness as an argument, I realized you were desperate as you saw that small fortune slipping through your clutches.

“It was then that I called you in, Mr. Shayne,” he continued, stepping back from Drake and turning to the detective. “I didn’t know what Edmund Drake might attempt if he were successful in locating Barbara under her assumed name. Perhaps I should have confided in you fully, but I could not bring myself to do so. By giving you his description and warning you against him I felt Barbara would be safe until her aunt’s death. After that the danger would be past.”

Drake started to say something, but Shayne cut him off. He asked Little, “Why—after her aunt’s death? Wouldn’t that clinch the insurance money for Drake?”

“On the contrary. I took the policy out while my sister was unmarried and it was made payable to her. Not to her heirs and assigns.” Mr. Little’s voice rang with incisive triumph as he continued. “I understand that Barbara was pre-deceased by her aunt by a matter of several hours. Ample time, Mr. Henderson assures me, to prevent the face of the policy from going into Drake’s hands. Were it not for that fact I should certainly have considered her uncle a prime suspect and would have demanded a searching investigation.”

Shayne nodded thoughtfully. He tugged at his earlobe and said dryly to Edmund Drake, “Maybe you’re lucky you didn’t have a motive.”

He spoke to those at the table, rousing them from complete absorption in the scene between Joseph Little and Edmund Drake. “I think we can go on with our business,” he announced. “Captain Denton, have you something to say before I get started?”

CAPTAIN DENTON gave a start of surprise when Shayne addressed him. He looked aggressively around the table, cleared his throat, and muttered, “I didn’t know it was going to be a public meeting.”

“Every person in this room,” Shayne assured him, “is intensely interested in what you have to say.”

Denton squared his bulky shoulders and spoke directly to Inspector Quinlan. “I’ve been thinking things over, Inspector. I’ve been pretty much worried, thinking maybe there was a mistake made last night.”

“What kind of mistake?”

“In that suicide case. The Jordan girl. I think I might’ve—well, maybe I went off half-cocked. It’s been worrying me bad because it’s our job to see that justice is done no matter what we think about it ourselves.” Denton spoke in a self-righteous tone, and he sounded sincere.

“Go on,” said Quinlan impatiently.

Denton drew in a deep breath. “It’s this way, Inspector. The way it all happened, I might’ve jumped to a wrong conclusion. The girl was dying when I got to her, see? She was hysterical and kept moaning about not wanting to live because Margo Macon was dead. She kept saying it was her fault and that kind of stuff. So I—well, it sounded to me like she was confessing. And then she died without saying any more. But I’ve been thinking and thinking. She didn’t actually say she did it herself. Not in so many words. She could’ve meant something else. I just don’t want to have it on my conscience that maybe I was wrong and her confession cleared the real murderer—if it wasn’t her.”

“This,” Inspector Quinlan exploded, “is a hell of a time to be thinking about that. You might as well admit the truth, Denton. You saw a chance to grab some publicity and make my department look bad. By God, I’ll see that this is taken up—”

“Just a minute, Inspector,” Shayne interrupted smoothly. “It may prove that Denton’s mistake was just what we needed to crack the case. By giving the murderer a feeling of false security, perhaps he has made the mistake we needed.”

Quinlan turned his cold blue eyes on Shayne and demanded, “But what could have possessed the girl to commit suicide and say those things to Denton if she wasn’t guilty?”

“I think I can explain that.” Shayne looked at Henri Desmond. “Evalyn Jordan was in love with Desmond. God knows why, but she was. Desmond was playing around with Margo. He came to Margo’s apartment at ten o’clock, quarreled with her and threatened her when he learned she had another date later that night. Evalyn heard all that. She killed herself because she thought Henri had carried out his threat. Isn’t that a fact, Desmond?” Shayne’s tone was ruthless.

Henri Desmond shrank from the accusation. “I didn’t do it.” His voice cracked on a high note of fear. “I swear I never went back to her apartment.”

“Whether you did or not it explains Evalyn’s suicide. She saw herself as the central figure in an ugly scandal and murder. She was given to morbid spells during which she took dope furnished by you, Henri. You killed Evalyn Jordan just as surely as if you’d forced the poison down her throat.”

Shayne’s attention was attracted to the door, which was opening. A man came in quietly. He was well over six feet tall with a loose-jointed figure which carried an unpressed suit of clothes with the inelegance of a scarecrow. He had dark, saturnine features and deep-set, glowing eyes. He carried a paper-wrapped parcel under his arm and stepped forward to set it on the table with a thump.

Harry Veigle nodded to the inspector, who said with cold irony, “Come right in and make yourself at home, Veigle.”

“Thanks, Inspector.” Veigle grinned broadly as Shayne came forward to grip his hand. He complained, “It’s been dull around here the last few years without you, Mike.”

Shayne said, “That’s all over now.” He introduced Veigle to the others briefly, adding, “Mr. Veigle is one of the foremost authorities on fingerprint identification in the country. I’ve asked him here to make an experiment for me.”

He went to the table and unwrapped the empty cognac bottle which was smeared and crusted with the blood of the murdered girl. He said, “I have an apology to make, Inspector. I withheld this evidence last night after I found it in the girl’s apartment.”

Quinlan made a loud noise deep in his throat.

“I don’t blame you,” Shayne interrupted, “but here’s the way it was—if you’d got hold of that bottle last night I’d be in your jail charged with murder. It’s got my prints all over it—mine and Margo Macon’s. That right, Veigle?”

“That’s right. And one other set.”

“That’s what I had to find out,” Shayne went on swiftly to Quinlan. “I can explain how her prints and mine got on the bottle. We drank out of it that afternoon. But the murderer is going to have a hard time explaining how his prints got on it.”

From the other end of the table Denton scowled with black anger. “How’d you snatch it?” he demanded. “Where was it hid when we searched the joint?”

Shayne continued to Quinlan, “I discovered her body when I went to my room to clean up from the beating Denton’s strong-arm boys gave me. And I found this bottle. You can see where that put me. Right square behind the eight ball. Damn it, there’d never have been an investigation if I’d called the cops right then and turned this over to them.”

Quinlan said, “Keep on talking.”

“Veigle wants to make a little test.” Shayne looked slowly at the faces around the table. “He wants to compare your fingerprints with the third set found on the death weapon.” He turned to Veigle. “Got your stuff with you?”

“Sure.” He groped in a sagging side pocket and brought out a small tin case. He opened it and got out an inking pad and a dozen small rectangles of paper. “Pass these around and I’ll get the prints.”

Shayne started at the head of the table with Henderson. “Just write your name on it,” he said pleasantly. “That way, there’ll be no mistake.”

“I’m afraid there’s already a mistake,” Henderson protested austerely. “Surely I’m not involved.”

“Just for the record. We need enough extra samples to show there’s no hocus-pocus in Veigle’s comparisons.” Shayne passed on to Joseph Little and Edmund Drake. He paused beside Lucile Hamilton.

She turned a worried face up to him. “That bottle,” she whispered, “I remember Margo showing it to us. Do I—have to—sign my name, too?”

“I can’t force any of you to give us your prints,” Shayne said, “but refusal is going to look like an admission of guilt.”

Lucile shuddered and said, “Give me one—then.”

At the other end of the table Shayne grinned as he passed out slips to Desmond and Rudy Soule. “If you guys refuse, we’ll go take a look at the records.” He stepped back from the table. “I guess that’s all. Mr. Rourke was in Miami and I haven’t got around to suspecting Captain Denton or the inspector.”

There was tense silence in the room as Veigle moved from one to the other, deftly rolling their finger tips on the inked pad and transferring the prints to the slips of paper signed by each.

When he finished with Rudy Soule and started shuffling the slips in his hands, Shayne said hastily, “Why don’t you go in the next office to make your comparisons, Harry? You’ve got to be damned sure you’ve got evidence that’ll stand up in court—if you do find the right set here.”

Veigle nodded and said, “I’ve never lost a case in court,” and went out.

Shayne took a deep breath and said, “The fingerprints will only be the clincher. I think I know who the murderer is. I hope I can prove it.

“Two things about this case have puzzled me from the first: the telephone call Barbara made to her uncle’s hotel just before she died, and a photograph which was stolen from my hotel room at about the same time. That telephone message—” Shayne stepped closer to Drake. “You haven’t explained why she called you.”

“I presume she wanted to see me. I’ve explained how her father kept her away from her aunt and me.”

“But you claim you hadn’t contacted her previous to that call.”

“I hadn’t.”

“How did she know where to reach you?”

“I don’t understand that either,” Drake confessed.

“Be careful,” Shayne warned harshly. “Be damned careful, Drake. This isn’t any time for covering anybody or anything up. Your life or someone else’s may depend on the truth.”