The Corpse Came Calling (14 page)

“Working with you?” Grange asked suspiciously.

“In a manner of speaking, yes. This is big stuff, and it ties in with the death of Jim Lacy yesterday.”

“The bird that kicked off on your threshold?” Grange grabbed a pencil and wad of copy paper. “Give.”

“Nix.” Shayne backed away, shaking his head. “It’s strictly off-the-record right now. You can trust Rourke to cover it as fast as it breaks.”

Grange grunted sourly. “The only thing I can trust Rourke to cover is any female who stumbles in his path.” He continued to regard the redhead with suspicion. “Give me enough of it so I’ll know you’re on the level.”

Shayne kept on backing away and shaking his head. “It’s a military secret right now. Honest to God, Grange. Ask Gentry if you don’t want to believe me.”

He swung around and went into the file-room, said cheerfully, “The top of a fine mornin’ to you, mom,” to a stout middle-aged woman who sat in a rocking-chair plying a pair of steel needles to a ball of wool.

She glanced up without slowing her knitting and snapped, “Don’t think I’m going to put my knitting down just to look up something for the likes of you, Michael Shayne. I drop a stitch every time I let go of the needles, and if I drop many more stitches I’ll end up with a sweater to fit one of those Japs instead of our own boys.”

Shayne grinned and said, “Maybe that’s the secret weapon I’ve been hearing about. Get enough of you women knitting sweaters with freeze holes for the Japs—”

He stopped and backed away as her black eyes flashed angrily. “’Tis a great kidder I am, mom. Pay no heed to me. Where do you keep your current New York file?”

“At the end of the third counter—to three months back.”

“That’s far enough.” He went to the end of the third counter and found the files of the
Herald-Tribune
and
Times
bound in monthly batches between stiff paper-covers. He pulled up a stool and selected the
Herald-Tribune,
turned back two months, and began scanning the daily headlines.

He went through four issues before coming on the headline he was looking for:
Daring Daylight Robbery.

He hunched forward and ran over the account of the holdup. Jim Lacy, bank messenger for a well-known brokerage firm—attacked in broad daylight by a lone gunman—knocked to the pavement by a single blow that rendered him groggy—Lacy could give the police only a hazy description of his assailant.

There was nothing in the account to either prove or disprove Shayne’s half-formed suspicion of collusion. The gunman had been resourceful and well prepared, equipped with a pair of heavy steel shears with which he snipped the chain handcuffing the money bag to Lacy’s wrist. Then, menacing onlookers with a gun, he commandeered a taxicab and disappeared in the afternoon traffic.

Shayne turned to the next issue. A photograph of Mace Morgan confronted him on the front page. The cutline read,
Identified as Holdup.

Shayne read the account of Mace Morgan’s capture carefully. He had been arrested in a rooming-house a few hours after the robbery as the result of a tip from an anonymous telephone call. He had vehemently denied any knowledge of the crime and attempted to prove an alibi, but it was checked and disproved by the police. None of the loot nor any physical evidence to connect him with the crime was found, but he was positively identified in a police line-up by three eyewitnesses. Lacy, confronted by Morgan, thought it might be the right man.

A lot of newspaper space was devoted to the large sum of cash and unregistered securities Lacy had been carrying when he was robbed. The total was slightly over one hundred thousand dollars according to figures furnished by his employers. The junior member of the firm had been hastily recalled by telegraph while en route to a vacation cruise in the Caribbean, and it was reported that his wife was bearing up well under the disappointment of having her trip canceled. The wife was a prominent member of the Junior League, and her reactions had made a good human interest story. There were printed reassurances from the brokerage firm that the loss was fully covered by Lacy’s bond, and that none of their clients need worry about the firm’s solvency.

Shayne lit a cigarette after reading the concurrent stories. There was nothing at all to indicate definitely whether Lacy had or had not been in cahoots with Morgan. Yet someone had fingered the job for Morgan. A hundred grand was an extraordinary sum for a bank messenger to be carrying. It was hardly coincidence that Morgan had chosen that particular afternoon for his daring robbery.

Yet that wasn’t a definite clue to Lacy’s participation either, for Shayne knew it was often a firm’s policy to keep its messengers in ignorance of the value of the parcels they carried, simply to prevent what he suspected in this case.

He turned the bound pages back slowly to an issue several days earlier than the robbery. Pearson had said the government plans were stolen two days before Morgan committed the holdup. To be on the safe side, Shayne went back four issues. He read through the complete papers carefully without finding any mention of any such loss in a government plant.

He cursed himself with mild exasperation when he finished wading through the many pages of newsprint. He knew damned well he wouldn’t find anything. With the country at war, there would be strict censorship over such news. The government couldn’t be expected to publicize the loss of an important military secret.

He hesitated for a time, sucking smoke into his lungs and weighing one angle against another in his mind.

After careful consideration of the known facts, he turned to the issue of the preceding week and began a careful study of less important local news items, quite sure that the story he sought had not been important enough to make front-page headlines at a time when American ships were being torpedoed up and down both coastlines.

He paused to glance through half a dozen accounts of burglaries and allied crimes in the great city before he found the one he was looking for: a two-column story on the second page, dated six days previously.

At 11:00 p.m., when returning to their Fifth Avenue apartment from the theater, the socially prominent Mr. and Mrs. J. Winthrop Barton had been accosted at the door by an armed thug wearing a handkerchief over the lower part of his face as a mask. He gruffly ordered them inside, promptly disposed of the lady with a handkerchief doused in chloroform, and threatened her husband with death unless he opened the small wall safe and gave up his valuables.

Mr. Barton had complied with proper celerity, explaining to the police later that the safe held only a moderate amount of cash, which the masked intruder had seized, departing immediately and without causing further trouble.

A set of fingerprints had been conveniently left on the doorknob, and from them the thief had been identified as one Harry Houseman, possessor of a long police record under many aliases, lately a guest of the State of New York at Ossining. Police promised an early arrest of Houseman, and there the affair ended as far as its publicity value was concerned.

After glancing through the next few issues to assure himself that the promise of “an early arrest” had borne no further fruit, Shayne closed the file and went out past the lady with her knitting, leaving a cheerful, “Thanks, mom,” behind him.

As he strolled out, he asked Grange, “Any report from Tim yet?” and received a blasphemous negative reply.

“And if you see that double-jointed no-good,” Grange bellowed, “tell him he’d better turn in a story before we go to press—and not one about pink elephants and mauve lizards.”

“I’ll probably run into him,” Shayne said with a wide grin. “And I’ll deliver your message if he’s in any condition to listen to it.”

He went out, took the elevator to the ground floor, and got into his car as the first faint streaks of crimson on the horizon preceded the rising sun.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

SHAYNE STOPPED on the corner of Flagler Street and bought a newly printed
Herald
from a yawning newsboy. He drove on to his hotel and went into the lobby, pausing to fold the newspaper back to the advertising section.

His advertisement was near the bottom of a short row of
Personals.
He tugged at the lobe of his left ear as he read the printed words. With his fountain pen he made a conspicuous ring around the one-line advertisement, then went to the desk and got a large envelope. He put the
Herald
inside, leaving it folded open at the marked advertisement, printed an address on the envelope, and gave it to the clerk with instructions to call a messenger and have it delivered at once.

Upstairs, he hesitated just inside the door of his apartment, listening for sounds from the bedroom. While he heard nothing from Rourke, he crossed the room and stopped in the bedroom doorway.

Timothy Rourke lay twisted up at the foot of the bed in a position which showed he had been unsuccessfully trying to make his finger tips reach the cord binding his feet to the bedpost. His eyes glared up at Shayne with a blaze of frustrated fury. His throat muscles worked spasmodically, but only a faint mumble was audible past the efficient taping job Shayne had done on his mouth.

Shayne took off his hat and angrily ruffled his red hair. He said, “God damn it, Tim, why do you make me do this to you? If you’ll agree to listen to reason I’ll let you up from there.”

Rourke shook his head violently.

“You’re a stubborn fool,” Shayne expostulated in a reasonable tone. “I’ve just been talking to Grange. He’s pretty sore because you haven’t showed up on the job.”

Rourke lay back and stared at him. He was breathing heavily through distended nostrils.

“I told Grange you were working with me on an important story,” Shayne went on cheerfully. “I fixed it with him so I don’t believe he’ll fire you this time.”

He stepped forward to sit on the edge of the bed, complaining, “Quit looking at me like that. It’s giving me the jumps. Damn it, Tim, if you’ll promise to listen to me—give me a chance to explain—”

Again Rourke shook his head violently.

“All right,” said Shayne, “even if you have decided I’m a complete heel and you won’t throw in with me—there’s no need for you to stay tied up like this. The whole thing will be over in a few hours—one way or another. All you have to do is give me your word you won’t interfere while I handle it my own way. I’ll untie you and we’ll have a drink together like a couple of rational human beings. Don’t be a sap,” he went on violently while Rourke continued to shake his head negatively. “You can’t do anything to stop me. It’s going to happen my way whether you like it or not. You might as well be comfortable while it’s happening.”

When Rourke’s headshaking became more rapid and determined, the detective sighed and got up. “All right. Go on and be a martyr. I’m going to have a drink—and some coffee.”

He examined the tape and cord on Rourke’s feet and hands, then went out of the bedroom without looking back at him. Daylight was streaming in the east window, making the electric light look yellow by comparison, giving the littered room an unhealthy appearance.

Shayne crossed to the table and emptied the cognac bottle into a glass. He tasted it and grimaced, walked to the window with the glass in his hand, and looked out over the mouth of the Miami River and Biscayne Bay.

The lush green of tropical shrubbery and the shimmery blue of placid bay water were as beautiful in the morning light as they had ever been, but Shayne found something repugnant in the scene he had hitherto admired. He took another sip of the evil-tasting liquor and fretfully wondered what was the matter with him. A feeling of revulsion and of craving was queerly blended inside him.

He had been content here in Miami for a good many years. Now, irrationally, he knew it could no longer be. It was not easy to analyze the sensation, quite impossible to justify it, but he recognized a recurrence of an inward urge that had kept him on the move during an adventurous past—an urge that was stronger than reason, that had kept him jumping from one job to another while he sought something that always eluded him.

He had believed that phase was ended after he settled down to a private practice in Miami—and after meeting Phyllis Brighton. Here was what he had been seeking, reason told him, a niche into which he fitted at last. His practice in Miami had given him the danger and action he had to have, with a sense of satisfaction each time a particularly difficult case was written off the books on the profit side.

Now he knew he had been a fool to think that his restlessness was a passing phase, to hope it could ever end for him. He had been determined that marriage should change him, but now he knew nothing could change him.

He moodily emptied his glass and found the taste of cognac good again. The round red rim of the sun was rising above the tiled rooftops of Miami Beach and the long night was ended.

He turned away from the window and went into the kitchen, drew a pot of hot water and put it on to boil, dumped a lot of coffee in the drip pot, and sauntered back into the living-room, consciously refraining from looking into the bedroom in order to avoid Tim Rourke’s accusing eyes.

He whistled a tuneless melody as he gathered up the empty liquor bottle and soiled glasses, emptied overflowing ash trays, setting the room in order for Phyllis’s return.

He heard the water boiling and went into the kitchen to pour it over the coffee in the dripolator. He took down an oversized china mug from a shelf and waited until the water gurgled through, then filled it to the brim with strong, clear coffee.

He settled himself in the living-room with the cup of coffee on the arm of his chair. All sense of unease had left him. He felt alert, yet emotionless. It wouldn’t be much longer. The blue chips were down and he had made his draw. He could do nothing except wait for the message that would mean the showdown had come.

He lit a cigarette and drank his coffee with complete enjoyment, his long frame relaxed and comfortable.

The mug was almost empty when the telephone rang. He went into the bedroom without haste, sat on the edge of the bed, and lifted the telephone without looking at Rourke. He said, “Shayne talking.”