The Uncomplaining Corpses ms-3

by Brett Halliday

  “It’s a story,” Rourke told him. “Right or wrong, it’s a different angle.”

  “Play it like it was right and you won’t regret it,” Shayne assured him. He slid off Rourke’s desk and barged out of the smoke-fouled room to the elevator.

  Out on the street, he strolled leisurely to his car, got in, and drove to his hotel. Going through the lobby, he saw that the clerk had observed his entrance but was studiously pretending to be looking elsewhere in the evident hope that Shayne would go on up without stopping.

  Shayne’s heels thudded across the tiled floor. He stopped in front of the desk. “Anything for me, Jim?” he asked pleasantly. “You know, Michael Shayne,” he added as the young man jerked around with a show of surprise.

  “Oh, yes. Sure, Mr. Shayne. Of course, I know-ha-ha-No, there isn’t anything in your box this time.”

  “Don’t believe everything you see in the newspapers,” Shayne admonished. He turned to the elevator and the clerk gaped after him, rubbing his diminutive chin with shaking fingers.

  Shayne knocked on the door of his apartment, a gay rat-ta-tat-tat-tat-tat which would tell Phyllis that it was himself coming home. When the knock was not answered he opened the door with a key. He called, “Phyl-hey, Phyl,” but the call was echoed back by silence from the four empty rooms.

  He made a quick survey of the apartment in frowning perplexity and when no playful hiding-place revealed her presence he came back to the living-room and opened the liquor cabinet.

  The note from Phyllis was balanced on top of a half-full cognac bottle. He poured himself a drink while he read her hurried scrawl:

  Darling-after seeing that girl I just couldn’t sit here and do nothing. I won’t tell you where I’ve gone because you’d disapprove, though I’m really quite capable of looking after myself. If I’m lucky I’ll come back with some good news.

  Your own Angel.

  He read the note for the fifth time, then crumpled it up viciously. He didn’t say anything out loud, but his eyes were harried slits. Then for the first time his gaze slid down from the signature, Your own Angel, and saw Dora’s address scribbled in a postscript.

  Hastily he opened the table drawer and scrambled in it, hunting for Dora’s pistol. The. 25 automatic was gone.

  His blunt, bony fingers drummed against the desk-top for a moment, then he got up and carried the bottle and glass to the center table and set them down, went aimlessly into the kitchen as though his legs were carrying him from force of habit rather than by conscious motivation.

  He put ice cubes in a tall goblet and filled it from the faucet, stalked back into the living-room and placed it beside the cognac bottle.

  He paced around the room briefly, lit a cigarette, sat down at the table, filled his glass and sat staring at it. With an angry gesture he tossed it off. He said aloud, very gently, “You shouldn’t have done that, Phyl.”

  He refilled his glass, splashing some of the liquor on the back of his hand. He set it down, untouched, and got up.

  In the bedroom he called the Palace Hotel and asked for Carl Meldrum. He stood on widely spread legs, jaws clamped, listening to the phone ring echo hollowly over the wire, then asked the hotel switchboard to connect him with the room clerk on duty.

  The room clerk reported that Mr. Meldrum was not in, that a young lady had called for him not long ago and they had gone out together. Upon close questioning, the clerk described Phyllis in flattering detail. Shayne thanked him and hung up.

  With his left ear lobe clutched between thumb and forefinger he stared moodily around the room, then went back to the living-room.

  At the desk he found a long envelope and a sheet of heavy note paper. He wrapped the sheaf of fifty twenty-dollar bills which he had secured from the bank in the note paper, placed them carefully in the long envelope, went outside and dropped them in the mail chute after addressing the envelope to Mrs. Dora Darnell at the address on Phyllis’s note.

  Then he came back and took up his vigil with the bottle of cognac and glass of ice water.

  Chapter Ten: DANGER-SULKING TIGRESS

  It was shortly past noon of a morning that had seemed endless when the telephone rang in the bedroom of the Shayne apartment. The sound rasped spitefully through the stillness, buzzing in his ears like a hornet, penetrating the fog hugging his senses as he slumped in his chair before the center table in the living-room.

  He lurched upright and steadied himself with one hand on the table. His eyes were bloodshot, his face bleak and expressionless. An empty cognac bottle lay on its side on the floor. Another, holding two-thirds of its original contents, sat on the table. The ice-water goblet was empty except for the remains of two ice cubes in the bottom. For the past half hour he hadn’t been bothering with chasers.

  The telephone kept on ringing. Shayne walked into the bedroom with flat-footed carefulness, swaying a trifle but otherwise apparently sober. He lifted the phone and said, “Shayne,” into the mouthpiece.

  Will Gentry’s voice answered him: “I’ve located the Tabor woman, Mike. She has an apartment in Little River.” He gave the address.

  Shayne said, “Check, Will.”

  “She works as a hostess in that classy Tally-Ho dump north of Little River,” the detective chief went on. “It’s beyond the city limits and we don’t pay much attention to what goes on there but none of it is very good. And here’s something you may want: Your Carl Meldrum hangs out at the Tally-Ho a lot.”

  Shayne asked, “What else have you turned up on Meldrum?”

  “Damn little. He pays his hotel bill and sleeps there once in a while. He’s got half a dozen dames on the string, including the Thrip girl. From rumors, he may be on the junk or maybe he just feeds it to his women to loosen them up. No dope on Renslow. I’ve wired Colorado and I’m still trying to get touch with the Renslow estate lawyers.”

  Shayne said, “Thanks, Will. Keep on trying.” He paused, then asked throatily with a hint of anxiety telling in his voice, “You haven’t got a tail on Meldrum, have you?”

  “No. I sent a man over after you left but Meldrum had gone out with some frail. Not one of his regulars, according to the hotel help, but the way she was hanging onto him they guessed she would be before the day was over.”

  Shayne said, “Thanks,” again and hung up. His hand stayed on the telephone while he looked broodingly down at the unmade bed. The covers were thrown back from Phyllis’s side and her pillow still held the dent her head had made. The red pajamas were tossed over the foot of the bed. Shayne took two long steps forward and stooped to touch the pajamas with the tips of his fingers. He shook his head and laughed for his own benefit. The laugh was directed at one Michael Shayne, hard-boiled private dick who refused to let life touch him. The laugh ended in a deep gurgle in his throat.

  After a while he went out of the bedroom and closed the door behind him. He got his hat and coat and slid the bottle of cognac into his pocket, then went down in the elevator, stalked through the lobby, and got in his car to drive north to Little River.

  At the suburban section at Seventy-Ninth Street and Northeast Second Avenue he turned north on the avenue and drove slowly past two blocks of business buildings. Mona Tabor’s apartment house was on a side street half a block from the avenue, a neat three-story stucco building with an impregnable atmosphere of respectability, set back in the middle of a lawn. Gaily striped garden chairs in palm-shaded spots about the lawn were occupied by lounging groups of young and middle-aged women in slacks or shorts who were keeping negligent eyes on their sun-suited youngsters playing on the grass in the bright sunlight.

  Shayne parked just beyond a wide concrete walk and got out stiffly. He dragged the brim of his hat down against the sun’s glare and went up the walk toward the entrance. The chattering of the women on the grounds stopped and he knew they were watching him, sizing him up with the universal interest of bored matrons.

  He walked on into the coolness of a large, comfortable lobby green with potted palms, str
aight past the desk to an elevator in the rear. A Negro operator wearing a red pillbox hat slid the door shut behind Shayne and looked at him questioningly with black pupils swimming in white orbs.

  Shayne said, “Miss Mona Tabor,” and curiosity flickered in the lad’s comical eyes, went away when Shayne stared at him with hard blankness. The boy manipulated the lever and the elevator rose smoothly to the third floor. He opened the door and gestured down a wide hall to the right. “Down yonduh, suh, at th’ee-o-six, but I don’ reckon Miss Mona done got up yit.”

  Shayne got out without replying and went to the end of the hall, where he stopped in front of 306. The elevator door did not close until he knocked, but he did not look back to see the curious black and white eyes watching him. He waited for the silence in upper hall and room to be broken by footsteps coming toward the door.

  The silence continued. He tried the knob and it wouldn’t turn under his hand. He knocked louder and more authoritatively and waited again. He took a drink from the cognac bottle and his eyes became brighter.

  He knocked twice again before he heard the sound of heels clacking on the floor inside. He kept on waiting and presently the door opened inward a few inches.

  He put his shoulder against the door and went in past a woman wearing a rich red and yellow silk kimono of Oriental design who was pushed back by the opening of the door but who made no great effort to hold it against him.

  Little light filtered into the living-room past the drawn curtains of two wide south windows. The atmosphere was heavy with the sweetish odor of perfume or incense, overlaid with a peculiar scent that was irritatingly familiar to the detective but one which he couldn’t immediately name.

  He strode directly across the room and drew back one of the draperies, then lifted the window to let in fresh air.

  Mona Tabor was closing the door as he turned back from the opened window. She was a tall woman with a willowy grace which bespoke firm flesh and inward poise. She looked an assured thirty-five and there was a hint that some of her earlier years might have been tough ones. She wore no make-up on her strong regular features but there was deep natural color that tinted her smooth cheeks, and full lips took color from the flaming crimson of her robe. Coppery hair was brushed directly back from a wide, smooth forehead and the same metallic glint showed in thick eyebrows and long lashes above the brown eyes which calmly appraised this intruder.

  Shayne took off his hat before her cool appraisal and rubbed a calloused hand over his coarse red hair, waiting for her to speak.

  She didn’t say anything. Her attitude was wary though not hostile. She stood facing him with an impersonal directness which simply questioned his presence.

  Shayne grinned disarmingly after a time and said, “You’re okay, sweetheart.” He lounged down on a padded window seat and tossed his hat on a brocaded divan.

  Mona’s left shoulder lifted slightly and her lips curved in a not unfriendly smile. She said, “Maybe you are too,” her gaze catching the reflected flame of sunlight on his red hair. She added, “Maybe not,” as an afterthought and moved across to the divan.

  When she sat down, Shayne saw that she was short-waisted with a pair of the longest legs he had ever seen.

  She leaned back gracefully, letting her head lie so that chest muscles lifted high breasts against the silken fabric. She looked down her straight, nice-sized nose at Shayne with a hint of mockery in her eyes.

  Shayne held her gaze unwaveringly. He said, “I’m okay, all right. I’m a friend of Carl’s.”

  She showed no sign of being impressed. Her expression did not change when she said, “That doesn’t prove a damned thing.”

  Shayne asked, “Doesn’t it?” He was digging in his pocket for a cigarette and he looked away. When he got the pack out she was holding flame-tipped fingers toward him.

  Shayne stuck a cigarette in his mouth and shook another from the pack for her. She didn’t move and he had to take three steps to give it to her. She looked up searchingly into his face while he lit a match and held the flame to her cigarette.

  Her brown eyes were slumbrous, conveying the same hint of passion in repose that her body and position cried out. There was no odor of perfume about her, and Shayne liked that, but her parted lips exuded that half-familiar scent he had noticed strongly when entering the room.

  He took a step backward to light his own cigarette and her gaze lingered on the strong, harsh lines of his face. She patted the divan beside her. “It’s more comfortable here than by the window.”

  Shayne shook his head and muttered. “Thanks.” He retreated to the safer position and sat down, reminding her, “I told you I was a friend of Carl’s.”

  She said, “How nice.” Her tone was mocking, and it was as though claws had been momently unsheathed.

  Shayne knew that she was a dangerous woman. Dangerous as hell. An intelligent woman with no scruples. A woman who could easily destroy a man. He recognized the tantalizingly familiar odor from her lips now. It was the strong unnerving smell of absinthe, and he knew now that Meldrum had been under the influence of the green stuff that morning.

  He drew the cognac bottle from his pocket and worried the cork with his teeth while she watched. Perfunctorily, he asked, “Have a drink?” then tipped it to his mouth when she shook her copper-colored head as he had known she would.

  The drink steadied him. He set the open bottle on the floor beside him and growled, “Carl sent me to get things straight with you. You know the spot he’s in.”

  She didn’t reply. A tawny glint came into her eyes and went away while she waited for him to go on. She took a deep drag on her cigarette and smoke flowed smoothly out of her nostrils. She was as quiescent and as dangerous as a sulking tigress.

  “You know all about it,” Shayne insisted. “He told me you were fixing him an out for last night.”

  Mona Tabor’s tongue came out and wet the outer surface of her lips. She said, “Then he hasn’t anything to worry about, has he?”

  “He sent me over to get the whole thing straight. So there won’t be any mix-up in the stories you and he tell the cops.”

  “You’re lying, redhead.” She said it without rancor. “I don’t know what your game is but there’s something about you that does things to me-if you know what I mean and I’m damned sure you can guess in three tries.” She was languorous, her words were faintly slurred, and the tawny glint was in her eyes again. They were not so dark a brown as he had thought at first

  Shayne shook his head impatiently. “That sort of thing isn’t going to get us anywhere. What I want-”

  “I can make you want me, redhead.” She made no physical movement.

  “You’re not guessing,” he agreed harshly. Sweat was standing on his forehead. He stared across the room at the wall, which he discovered was stippled in rose and blue and yellow. His hand groped for the bottle beside him. He lifted it and drank and there was perfect silence in the room.

  Shayne broke the silence. “I’m a married man,” he said.

  “I’m married, too, but I’m not working at it right now.”

  “I’m told it lasts longer that way,” Shayne said, “but right now I’m working at it.”

  “You’re the kind that would be,” Mona Tabor agreed with an undertone of bitterness.

  He turned his head slowly to look at her. She had not moved a muscle of her relaxed body, yet beneath the surface tension was apparent to his wary scrutiny.

  “You’re going to come over here close to me in a minute,” she told him. “You can’t help yourself, redhead. We haven’t anything to do with it. Neither of us. I think we’ll get drunk together. God! I love getting drunk in the daytime. You know what I mean-drunk!”

  Shayne crossed his knees and stared down at the tips of his big shoes. He could get everything out of Mona if he went at it right. Less than three weeks ago he would have seen his job clearly and worked at it.

  He lurched to his feet, grabbing his cognac bottle by the neck. “Yeh, I kno
w what you mean,” he repeated thickly, “but I’ve got to see a dog about a man.”

  “Not until you’ve had a drink with me, redhead. Just one drink and then you won’t care whether you ever see a dog or a man either.”

  She was standing close to him, body muscles curved beneath the clinging silk of her robe. He dragged his eyes away from them, set his jaws hard.

  She nodded triumphantly and moved away in a long-limbed stride. Shayne watched her go into an inner room and presently she reappeared with a small liqueur bottle and two gold-rimmed glasses. He watched her pour green absinthe into one glass and strode forward to put a big hand over the other glass to stop her from filling it.

  “I’ll stick with my own brand,” he said, dangling the bottle before her eyes. “And before you take that drink you’d better tell me what I should say to Carl.”

  “Damn Carl,” she said. She caught his wrist to pull his hand away. He gripped the glass tight enough to crush the fragile rim. The pieces dropped to the floor. Shayne looked down at blood oozing from his palm. He was too drunk to cope with this sort of thing, and he knew it.

  Laughter gurgled up in Mona Tabor’s throat; she pushed her body against him and took a sip of absinthe while her wide eyes looked into his speculatively over the tilted rim.

  He muttered, “I’m sorry but I’ve still got to see a man,” and started for the door in long strides.

  She didn’t move to stop him. He was sure she expected him to stop of his own accord.

  He didn’t. He was reaching for the doorknob when a knock sounded outside.

  She cried, “No,” from behind him as he kept on reaching and got hold of the knob. With his hand grasping it he turned to glance at her over his shoulder.

  She came to him shaking her coppery head, holding one crimson-tipped finger to her lips as the knock came again. “Don’t open it,” she whispered. “Whoever it is will go away. For God’s sake, redhead-”

  He laughed down into her face from which self-assurance had vanished; fright was in its place. He turned the knob sharply, pulling the night-latched door wide open. The woman behind him cut short an angry remonstrance, then pressed close to Shayne as if for protection, sliding her arm about his neck. They stood like that, looking out at the tall, white-haired man who stood outside.