Guilty as Hell

by Brett Halliday

  “Dad’s still got his eye,” Forbes remarked. “I assume that was Dad and not Walter. Walter Langhorne and a shotgun are two different animals.”

  “You aren’t shooting this morning?” Shayne said.

  Forbes said defensively, “I’m too shaky. When I was a boy I used to come out here with Dad all the time. I don’t see much point in it any more.”

  He sipped his coffee. “I’m beginning to feel hungry. Nothing like fresh air and not enough sleep. Let me finish, and maybe by then we won’t get any dirty looks if we go back and have a decent breakfast. I was about to tell you about United States Chemical. They’re teetering on the edge. They have a nice tax-loss position and Dad sees no reason why they shouldn’t merge with E. J. Despard, through an exchange of stock, to everybody’s benefit. They won’t even discuss it. It’s a Boston company, wholly owned by the Perkins family. We’re Goliath and they’re David, and in real life how often does David win? But this paint coup gives them a reprieve. By the time we stumble out with T-239, they’ll have another ten percent of the market and much prestige, and maybe they can stay out of our clutches. What I’m really saying is, to put this in proportion, it’s more important to them than it is to us. Dad never likes to come in second, but in the long run we probably won’t even lose much money. But for United States it’s life or death. Literally.”

  “What happens if you find out anything before Tuesday?”

  “Well, we’re coming down to the wire, Mr. Shayne. We’d need something so good we could go into court with it on Monday. Calling you in was Dad’s idea. This weekend was mine, a kind of last-ditch expedient. I thought if we could get you and Begley here, plus enough of the rest of us to feed you leads and suggestions, something might give. Begley was foolish to accept, in my opinion. He probably thought it would be suspicious not to. You can question various people individually during the day and get your ammunition ready. Tonight we’ll run an all-night poker game and put on the pressure. I don’t know if you’ve heard about the soul sessions people have been having lately.”

  “The what?”

  “They’re called soul sessions. That’s not a very good name for them. A bunch of people get together for a weekend. By that I mean sixty hours straight without sleep, in the same couple of rooms. For the first ten or twelve it’s like any ordinary cocktail party. Everybody talks on the surface. Then in the middle of the next day you stop trying to impress people, because you’re too tired. You get down to what’s really on your mind. I’ve sat through a couple and they didn’t do much for me, but I have friends who claim the experience changed their life. I don’t mean we’ll do any of that deep probing here.”

  Shayne said skeptically, “Your father agreed?”

  Forbes gave a half laugh. “I didn’t describe it quite like that to him. But he’s been involved in around-the-clock bargaining sessions with union people, and he knows that funny things happen between two o’clock in the morning and daybreak. You forget the stereotypes, the prepared positions. You realize that the other people in the room are human beings.”

  “In Hal Begley’s case I wouldn’t go that far.” Shayne poured more coffee from the big thermos. “Are you certain the Begley firm handled the theft?”

  “Positive. Begley himself isn’t directly involved. All the contacts have been handled by a girl named—”

  He snapped his fingers. Shayne put in, “Candida Morse.”

  “Yes. Begley went on the United States payroll as a management consultant for three months at forty thousand a month. Needless to say, that hundred and twenty thousand didn’t buy any management consulting, because he couldn’t consult his way out of a paper bag. It bought a Xerox copy of a three-hundred-page report. Our source at United States copied one of those pages. The heading had been clipped off but otherwise it was word for word page ninety-nine of our T-239 material, which Walter Langhorne and I put together last spring.”

  Shayne thought for a moment. “How many copies did you make?”

  “None at all. What we were doing was pulling the story together for the board of directors, so they could decide whether to budget for it at the June meeting. As a rule I get a little impatient with office security. Good Lord—we decide on a new advertising approach for some product, and the way we carry on you’d think it was plans and specs for a round-the-world missile. But the cloak and dagger stuff was justified on this one, even I could see that. It stayed in the safe and was only brought out for board members. They had to read it in the office under the eye of a certain Miss Phoebe McGonigle, who is so security-minded that she wouldn’t let her own mother go to the bathroom without proper clearance. So we aren’t talking about the kind of security lapse where some production worker sneaks into the super’s office after the rest of the day shift has gone home. This came from somebody close to the top.”

  “How many possibilities, do you figure?”

  “Maybe twenty, and some of those are pretty marginal. You’ll want to look at the physical layout. There’s no copying machine in that part of the building, for one thing. That washes out two or three possible suspects. Another was on the Coast when the transfer probably took place. And so on. I’d say it just about comes down to the people who are here this weekend.”

  “So it’s not only Begley you’re hoping to break.”

  “That’s right. Even if we can’t keep the United States paint off the market, we’d like to find out how it happened so it won’t happen again. A strong minority on the board is opposed to the present management, by which I mean my father. T-239 is Dad’s creation, but if he hadn’t been so damn slow and conservative, if he hadn’t insisted on that last test series, we’d be out with it now. So that’s a point against him. On the other hand, if my Uncle Jose or anybody in the opposition group had anything to do with the leak, hoping to use it to discredit him, Dad can wipe up the floor with them. If he can prove it! I wish it was simpler, but that’s why we’re paying you ten thousand dollars, I guess.”

  “What’s the explanation of the time lag? Why didn’t you bring me in a couple of months ago? This isn’t a job you can do on a weekend.”

  “We wanted to handle it inside the firm, if possible. This wasn’t just my idea; everybody agreed. If there had to be publicity, we wanted to be able to control it.”

  “So right from the start,” Shayne pointed out, “you expected to find you’d been sold out by one of your top men.”

  Forbes nodded. “Not necessarily for money. You know more about Begley than I do, but I understand he’s been known to use blackmail.”

  “Sure. It’s risky as hell, but cheaper in the short run.”

  “So the police had to be ruled out from the start. This is just not a police matter. And how many private investigators are smart enough to find out anything, and how many of those can you trust? Don’t be offended,” he said with his sudden grin.

  Shayne returned the grin, beginning to like him a little better. “I see your problem. If Begley’s been blackmailing one of your people, you don’t want some slob of a private eye to get hold of it.”

  “Well, you must admit, Mr. Shayne, your profession isn’t known for its high ethical standards. But Dad was talking to somebody at Pittsburgh Plate Glass last week, and your name came up. Apparently there’s no love lost between you and Begley.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “The Pittsburgh man said that was the first time Begley had ever been beaten. Dad thought we could count on you to give it a little extra effort.”

  Shayne shook his head shortly. “I didn’t beat him. I collected a fee. The client was satisfied, but I wasn’t. Begley’s still in business.”

  “Now wait,” Forbes said. “Hold on a minute. We don’t want to tie our hands. The only practical outcome I can foresee is a deal, under which Begley agrees to provide us with the name of his contact in return for an agreement from us not to take any legal action. We don’t want your personal feelings to stand in the way if that kind of deal is the best
we can get. Begley as an individual isn’t all that important.”

  “He is to me,” Shayne said evenly. “He’s in a funny business. He can win and lose at the same time. He’s been using that Pittsburgh Plate Glass affair for advertising. It showed that, when he goes after information, he gets it, and he doesn’t care what methods he uses so long as they get results. Good advertising for him is bad advertising for me. I didn’t understand I was being hired to handle a deal. Maybe you’d better look for somebody else.”

  “Time’s too short!” Forbes exclaimed. “You can grind Begley up and eat him in a bun for all I care. But to us, that isn’t the main thing. See what you think this weekend.”

  Shayne waited a moment. “Who’s been handling the investigation?”

  “I have. Forbes Hallam, Jr., junior executive. I thought it might be more interesting than what I was doing, which was one step above emptying the wastebaskets. I didn’t know what I was getting into. I thought the culprit would turn out to be a technician or white-collar worker with a grudge against Dad. If Dad had ever gone to business school, he would have flunked his human relations, I’m afraid. One of his favorite sayings is that he doesn’t care about being popular, he cares about the quarterly dividend. This is old-fashioned enough to have a certain charm, especially if you happen to be a stockholder, but there are people in the company who—well, who hate him. Unfortunately, I couldn’t come up with anybody who hated him and also had access to the report. It’s beginning to look as though I stole the damn thing. I mean it. I did the actual writing on it, under Walter Langhorne’s supervision. I tried to put the technical stuff into English. After Walter edited it, I did the proofreading. There was even one day when I got fed up with Miss Phoebe McGonigle and I didn’t turn in the proof sheets. As soon as you start asking questions, Mr. Shayne, you’ll find out that I’m not the typical eager-to-please trainee. I’m a trainee as a last resort, and I kicked and screamed all the time they were fastening on my button-down shirt and pulling up my executive-length socks.”

  He grinned again, making one of his abrupt shifts. “But the junior-executive racket isn’t as bad as I expected. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Dad gave me a year after college and I wrote a bunch of short stories. I sold a few. If you make the mistake of looking mildly interested, I’ll press copies on you. Maybe some day I’ll write about what goes on in the Despard administration building. The public would be amazed!”

  “How long have you worked there, Forbes?”

  “Two years. In my own opinion, I’m underpaid. I’m also not very good about making out personal budgets and crap like that, so I frequently find myself short of funds. I didn’t steal any formulas, however. Formulae. I know that for a fact, even if nobody else does, so I haven’t wasted any time investigating myself.”

  He took a sip of coffee. “I’ve picked up a certain amount of gossip, which I hope I can use if I ever get around to writing that novel. I didn’t go hunting for it; it just drifted in. One of the first things I learned was that Hal Begley Associates isn’t listed in the Yellow Pages as a spy firm. Ostensibly they’re a chi-chi employment agency, handling nobody earning less than twenty thousand a year. Probably they even do some legitimate business along those lines, I don’t know.”

  “Why not?” Shayne said. “That’s the easiest way to pick up industrial secrets—hire somebody who can carry them out in his head.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way. What I’m getting around to, slowly, is that Walter Langhorne and the girl from the Begley firm were seen together at an art auction in Palm Beach.”

  Shayne considered. “Has Langhorne said anything about changing jobs?”

  “Mr. Shayne,” Forbes said anxiously, “I feel like a fink! He’s not only talked about changing jobs, he said something about tying up with United States Chemical, damn it! Naturally he told me in confidence, so if you use this, would you mind disguising where you got it? He’s a friend of mine. He’s easily the brightest man in the place.”

  “And he’s still working there, which might mean that Candida tried and didn’t get him.”

  “It might, or it might mean that he’s taking a postdated check. He cares what his friends think, and he wouldn’t want them to think he’s a thief. But I can’t believe it, Mr. Shayne. It’s perfectly true that he doesn’t think he owes his main loyalty to E. J. Despard and Co. But he’s one of the few people I know with any moral standards at all. There are more important things in Walter’s life than the quarterly dividends.”

  A shotgun went off in the blind to their right. Glancing up, Shayne saw a single mallard almost directly overhead, climbing. He would have had a shot a second earlier, but it was too late now.

  “And at that point,” Forbes said, “I decided I was no longer running this investigation. The last thing I could do is go up to Walter Langhorne and ask him to explain what he was doing in Palm Beach with the sinister Candida Morse.”

  There was a hoarse, urgent shout. Shayne and Forbes looked at each other for an instant. Then Shayne whirled and stepped up out of the blind.

  The senior Hallam burst from the adjoining blind, his crest of gray hair blowing in the wind. He had his tan hunting cap in his hand. He crunched it violently, threw it down in the reeds and banged his thigh with his fist.

  Shayne splashed toward him. Hearing the sound, Hallam turned and waited. He was a short, plump man whose usual position was straight up and down, to get the maximum mileage out of his limited stature. He had a tight mouth, sharp, unfriendly eyes. Everything about his bearing showed that he wasn’t in the habit of losing, and if he did lose occasionally, he would do it without grace. Now he had suddenly changed roles. He was breathing as though he had climbed a long flight of stairs.

  “There’s been a terrible accident,” he said in a strained voice as Shayne reached him.

  He made a distracted gesture and pressed both clenched fists to his chest. Shayne stooped and looked into the blind.

  Walter Langhorne lay on the muddy duckboards. A magnum charge of 4’s had caught him in the left cheekbone and there was nothing left of that side of his head.

  CHAPTER 3

  An intelligent-looking Labrador retriever whimpered beside the body. One shotgun, a fine lightweight English weapon, hung from a nail at the back of the blind. Another, a full-choked 20-gauge, lay on the boards at Langhorne’s feet. Shayne’s quick scrutiny of the blind picked up one other object of interest—a silver pocket flask on the bench.

  Forbes, at Shayne’s shoulder, made a sound as though he had been hit. Shayne turned back to the father. Hallam had dropped his hands and seemed to cringe away. A drop of saliva glistened at the corner of his mouth.

  “How did it happen?” Shayne asked quietly.

  “I don’t know.” Hallam stared at the water at his feet. “I just don’t know.”

  He drew a long shuddering breath. His eyes started slowly up the redhead’s rangy body. When they met Shayne’s eyes he gave his head a short shake, as though awakening from a hard sleep.

  The detective took out his pint of brandy. “Take some of this. You have to talk about it sooner or later. You might as well get it over with.”

  Hallam went on shaking his head. His hand started up to take the bottle, but he dropped it again.

  “No. If they smell it they’ll think I’m drunk. I’m cold sober. I drink very sparingly, Shayne. Four ounces of whiskey before dinner, sometimes a weak Scotch afterward. I never touch alcohol before lunch.”

  “Then that’s Langhorne’s flask in there?”

  Hallam blinked again and his back straightened. He was beginning to recover, though both fists were still clenched. His son was vomiting into the long reeds at the end of the blind.

  “The flask,” Hallam said. “A silver flask. Yes, it’s Walter’s, of course. It cost a hundred and twenty-five dollars at Tiffany’s in New York. I happen to know. A hundred and twenty-five dollars!” He made a quick, convulsive motion. “Shayne, he just sat there drinking, m
aking barbed remarks. I’ve known him since I was ten years old. Stop that!” he told his son sharply. “Or go farther away.”

  His tall brother-in-law, Jose Despard, emerged from the next blind in the line. After a moment he came toward them, an awkward figure in too-large waders. Hallam scooped up a double handful of salt water and dashed it over his face. After doing this twice more, he straightened, dripping. This time he came back to his full height.

  “Despard,” he called, “What’s the reason for the kaffeeklatsch? You people make one holy hell of a decoy. Especially you, Shayne, with that red hair.”

  Hallam said steadily, in something approaching his usual tone, “I just shot Walter.”

  “What?”

  “The damn fool popped up in front of my gun.”

  Despard looked blank. He swiveled from Hallam toward Shayne. The detective told him, “We’ll need the sheriff. Go in and phone.”

  Despard looked back at Hallam. “You shot Walter?” he said stupidly. “Walter?” Suddenly his eyes sharpened. “What makes you think he’s the one? Have you gone out of your mind?”

  “It was an accident,” Hallam said coldly. “Let’s everybody get that straight. Call the sheriff.”

  After a moment, Despard turned and headed for the jeep. Shayne offered Hallam a cigarette. Again the older man shook his head. Forbes, at the end of the blind, came erect. He was pale and shaken.

  “The sheriff knows me,” Hallam said. “His name’s Banghart. What’s his first name?” He thought for a moment. “Ollie Banghart. I think we put some money in his campaign last year. I’d give anything if this hadn’t happened. I was swinging on the duck. I was low to start with. Much too low. When the gun came around, there Walter was, falling toward me. It was too late to do anything.”