Among them was a folded clipping from a newspaper. It was somewhat faded and brittle with age, beginning to crack in the folds. He smoothed it out carefully and his eyes brooded over a blurred halftone and the brief news story beneath.
With the handkerchief still guarding his fingers, he awkwardly gathered the other papers and cards and returned them to Hardeman’s wallet, replaced it in his coat pocket.
Shayne’s step had an elastic, springy quality as he turned back to the desk, as though he stalked a prey now certainly within his power.
The newspaper cut showed a picture of two men standing side by side. On the left was a lean-jawed man similar to the tinted wedding photograph hanging on the wall of Ben Edwards’s home. The man on the right had a dwarfish body with thin intense features and a big head made to appear bigger by bushy uncombed hair. The features were those of Gil Matrix a decade before.
The cut-line beneath the picture read: From left to right, Claude Bates and Theodore Ross, convicted in District Court today.
The item was dated February 18, 1931. An AP dispatch from Urban, Illinois:
District Judge K. L. Mathis today bitterly castigated Claude Bates in passing sentence upon Bates and his convicted accomplice, Theodore Ross, immediately after a jury brought in a verdict of guilty in a case which has attracted wide attention throughout the state and nation.
Charged more than a month ago with fraud in connection with the printing of fake tickets on the Irish Sweepstakes and their wholesale distribution to unsuspecting buyers, the two men have been in custody here in County jail while awaiting trial on the information sworn to by District Attorney Redford Mullins of Urban.
Claude Bates, confessed ringleader in the conspiracy, was characterized by Judge Mathis today as a menace to the community, and severely reprimanded from the bench for having turned his inventive talent to crime instead of applying it to the solution of worthwhile problems.
Denouncing Bates for putting temptation in the way of Ross, formerly a respected businessman in the neighboring town of Fountain, Judge Mathis imposed a sentence of from twenty to fifty years imprisonment upon the older man.
More lenient toward Theodore Ross, who was shown by evidence submitted at the trial to have had no part in the crime except to weakly allow his printing plant at Fountain to be used for illegal purposes, the judge sentenced him to serve from eight to fifteen years in the State Penitentiary at Joliet.
Deputy Sheriff Elisha Hogan will entrain with the two prisoners tomorrow morning for Joliet where the great steel gates will clang behind them, shutting them off from the outside world for many years and giving them full opportunity to consider the oft-repeated statement: Crime Does Not Pay.
Shayne got a cigarette from his pocket and lit it while his eyes raced over the item. He nodded his head slowly as he finished, inhaled deeply, and lifted his head to stare with abstracted eyes at the dead man.
His fingers slowly refolded the newspaper clipping and slid it into his coat pocket.
As he stared at Hardeman, the brooding look of lost hope faded slowly from his eyes. It was replaced by a gleam of fierce preoccupation, of intent concentration, as though he visualized something else, something entirely different from the scene of murder before his eyes.
His nostrils flared widely, then subsided. His features settled back into placid lines of decision as the silvery blast of a bugle came through the window announcing to patrons of the track that the last race of the evening was about to get under way.
He slid his hip off the desk and went to Hardeman’s side, studying the position of the body and the hand groping toward the pistol it never reached.
He stepped back and tentatively wormed his toe under the corner of the office rug, turned it back to uncover the bare floor between the swivel chair and desk.
Nodding with satisfaction, his eyes took on a hard brightness. He draped his handkerchief over the back of Hardeman’s flaccid right hand, put his own hand over the handkerchief and got a firm grip on the dead man’s fingers, which were stiffening rapidly.
He inched the hand gently forward in the open drawer, using extreme care not to change the natural position of the corpse. He pressed Hardeman’s fingers about the butt of his own. 38 and drew it out.
Careful to allow only Hardeman’s fingers to touch the polished steel and corrugated wooden butt, he turned the cylinder and assured himself that the pistol was fully loaded.
He crouched beside the chair, lowered the dead man’s hand and gun toward the floor with muzzle down, aimed at a spot of bare wood from which the rug had been turned back.
He cocked the pistol with his handkerchief over the hammer, maneuvered Hardeman’s unresisting first finger under the trigger, curled it snugly against the steel.
Sweat streamed from the detective’s seamed face as he crouched there at his ghoulish task. He forced himself to wait, his own finger on top of Hardeman’s, holding it against the trigger.
There was a lull in the crowd sounds coming in the window; the band ceased playing. It was as though the thousands in the grandstand had an inexplicable prescience of what awaited in the back office, as though they momently caught their collective breath, stilled the clamor of their voices so that the shot might be clearly heard if Shayne dared to press the trigger.
Into the lull came a faint racketing din familiar to every greyhound fancier. The clatter of wheels on curved rails starting at the far side of the oval track, growing louder as the electrically propelled motor zoomed, forcing the stuffed rabbit to bob around the track in exact simulation of the swift bounds of a fleeing jack rabbit.
The dogs set up a yapping in the starting-boxes as the rabbit rounded the turn and came toward them. The yelping of the hounds increased, rising to a shrill crescendo as the bouncing bit of fur raced by the boxes.
Michael Shayne waited with his finger tense on the dead finger gripping the gun. Sweat streamed from every pore of his body.
Then it came, surging in through the window. A deep roar that drowned the yapping of the hounds and the racketing of the mechanical rabbit. Two words bursting in unison from a thousand throats:
“They’re off!”
Shayne’s finger jerked against Hardeman’s, pressing the trigger hard.
The sound of the exploding cartridge was loud in the confines of the office, but merged soundlessly into the roar of the crowd outside.
The bullet tore into the pine floor beneath, a small round hole in the planking.
Still moving with infinite care, Shayne shifted his foot and let the corner of the rug fall back into place, covering the single bullet hole in the floor.
He released his hold on Hardeman’s hand and the pistol dropped to the rug.
Shayne stood up, mopping his face with the handkerchief which had just assisted him in turning a clear case of murder into a perfect suicide.
He then shook his head slowly. The job wasn’t perfect. Not yet. He bent down and pulled the rubber finger tip cover from Hardeman’s hand, slid it onto his own right forefinger.
Going to the typewriter, he began hitting the keys slowly and carefully, using only the protected forefinger for operation, pressing the shift key and moving the carriage with a handkerchief-covered left hand.
Beneath the date which Hardeman had typed before he was murdered, Shayne wrote:
I can’t go on this way longer. I thought I could get away with it but I was a fool. When Shayne was here this evening I could tell from the way he looked at me, the way he spoke, that he suspects the truth.
I killed Mayme Martin in her apartment. I had planned it that way from the beginning…
Shayne typed on steadily, the clacking of the machine loud in his ears. He ended with the words:
… only thing left for me to do. I am going to shoot myself through the right temple and may God in His all-embracing wisdom pity me, though I deserve no pity.
He stepped back from the typewriter and read what he had written, leaving the sheet of paper in the mach
ine. Nodding approval, he stripped the rubber covering from his finger, replaced it on Hardeman’s after obliterating all prints from the inside with his handkerchief.
Grateful for the clamor outside, to which the noise of starting motors was added from the parking-lot, Shayne took time for another slow and comprehensive survey of the interior of the office. Changing the setup from murder to suicide had, strangely, made no difference in the appearance of the room.
He went to the door and opened it enough to press the button releasing the night latch, carefully polished the knob and the light switch.
Leaving the door slightly ajar, he strode back to the desk and with his elbow pushed the telephone to the floor from its position on the extreme corner where Hardeman’s outflung hand might have struck it as he died.
He went out without a backward glance, leaving the light burning, and as he passed through the door he could hear a metallic voice rasping from the phone on the floor;
“Number, please. Number…?”
No one saw him go swiftly down the hall and out under the grandstand, where an eddying mob of people surged toward the exit gates. He joined them, let himself be shouldered around until he reached his roadster, and waited until he was able to edge out onto the highway.
Bright stars gleamed in the sky, covered here and there by fleecy white and scurrying clouds.
He drove slowly, completely relaxed behind the wheel, while a stream of cars raced past him.
The full-bodied scream of a police siren brought him alert as he approached the outskirts of Cocopalm. He grinned briefly as an automobile with red accessory lights and siren going at full blast sped past him toward the greyhound track.
Shayne did not stop at the hotel, but drove a few blocks beyond and turned toward the beach. As he neared Midge Taylor’s cabin he saw lights in the windows and Gil Matrix’s Ford parked in front.
Will Gentry sat behind the wheel of his car across the street and a block south.
Shayne stopped beside Gentry’s car. The Miami detective chief removed a cigar from his mouth and leaned out, gesturing toward the cottage. “Your man pulled up and went in soon after I parked here. Nobody has come out.”
“Thanks, Will. I’ll take over now.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Will you do me one more favor?”
Gentry said. “I might as well be your errand boy as anything else,” caustically.
“Stop by the hotel and ask Phyllis to get a cab and come out here. It’ll only delay you a minute,” Shayne said mildly, “and then you can drive on out to the track and see what’s up out there.”
“The track? What is doing out there?”
“I didn’t stop to ask anybody but I just saw the Cocopalm police force headed hell-bent in that direction. I would’ve gone too, but I knew you’d be getting impatient on this assignment.”
Gentry growled something unintelligible and put his car in gear, but Shayne detained him:
“I’ll meet you at the police station in half an hour with Matrix. Tell Boyle to get Payson and MacFarlane down there too. We’ll clear everything up while we’re at it.”
Gentry nodded and drove away at high speed.
Shayne pulled ahead and parked behind Matrix’s Ford. He got out and glanced in the back of Matrix’s car. Three traveling-bags and a briefcase were stacked on the back seat.
He went up the shell walk and stepped onto the porch lightly, turned the knob and opened the front door noiselessly.
Gil Matrix stood with his back to the door and facing the hallway leading to the bedroom. Midge’s voice floated in from the room as Shayne stood there.
“I’m hurrying as fast as I can, Gil,” she said. “Will I have time to pack another bag?”
From the doorway Shayne answered for Matrix: “Don’t bother to pack anything else, Midge. You’re not going anywhere.”
Gil Matrix whirled around with a smothered curse as. Shayne spoke. His eyes glittered and his thin features twitched. He whipped a revolver from his pocket and leveled it at Shayne, called loudly to Midge:
“Sure. Pack another bag if you want to. We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready.”
Chapter Nineteen: ENOUGH MURDER FOR ONE NIGHT
Shayne stepped over the threshold, moving with careful ease, taking extreme precaution to avoid any sudden gesture which might cause an instinctive reaction from Matrix’s trigger finger.
He frowned at the leveled pistol. “It’s too late for that, Matrix. Better put it down before it goes off.”
Midge rushed into the room, her face pale and pinched with terror. She stood close behind Matrix, her stark eyes looking at Shayne over the editor’s shoulder. She breathed:
“What is it, Gil?” Then, “Oh-no!” in a great sobbing breath when she saw the gun in his hand.
“Stand back out of the way,” he rasped over his shoulder. “Get your stuff ready. No one can stop me now.” Standing perfectly still he appeared to swagger and strut defiance.
Shayne saw Midge tense. Her stricken gaze was fixed on Gil’s pistol. She made a quick move with her right hand as if to grab the weapon.
Shayne said, “Don’t,” sharply.
When she drew back with an expression of disbelief, he explained, “It might go off if you reach for it. There has been enough murder in Cocopalm tonight.” He moved sideways, keeping his hands in plain sight, and sat down near the front window.
Matrix did not move. His head was hunched forward between shoulder blades that jutted up on each side. His round, owlish eyes held Shayne’s unblinkingly. He warned in a thin high voice of near-hysteria, “There’s likely to be one more killing, Shayne-unless you use your head.”
“No, Gil,” Midge begged. She pressed close against him. “I don’t understand,” she wailed. Her tongue came out to moisten her lips but left them dry. “You won’t tell me anything. What’s all this-talk about killing? Why should Mr. Shayne try to stop us from going?” She spoke with great effort and tried again to moisten her lips with a dry tongue.
“Because he’s too smart,” Matrix snarled. “Because he wasn’t satisfied with what was right before his eyes. He had to go digging into something else.” The little editor’s body began to tremble violently. The pistol was not cocked, but Shayne knew that it had a double-action mechanism and too much pressure on the trigger would fire it without cocking.
Midge put her arm around Matrix’s shoulders. Terror drove all youth and gaiety from her face and she looked as old as Gil Matrix. She crooned, “There now, Gil. There now, darling,” as a mother might croon to her baby.
She exerted gentle pressure on his shaking body, moving him slowly sideways to the couch. He let himself be pushed down to the cushions. The pistol wavered, then slid from his inert hand to the floor. He looked down at it in some surprise, slowly moved the fingers of his right hand as if testing their ability to move.
When he raised his eyes to Shayne’s the desperation had gone out of them and the pinched look had passed from his thin features. He nodded and essayed an odd little secretive smile.
“You win. You and Midge. It wouldn’t do for her to go away with me.”
“No,” Shayne agreed. “It wouldn’t do at all-Ross. You should have learned by now that nothing is ever gained by running away from things.”
The editor’s eyelids flickered at the name of Ross. That was the only evidence of surprise he allowed himself. He said, “So-you know all about that?”
Midge had curled herself up on the couch beside him. She had her arm around his neck and her finger tips caressed his cheek as she gazed at Shayne with bright, questioning eyes, trying desperately to understand without asking questions.
Shayne said, “Yes. I know all about that.” He paused, added casually, “I talked to the warden at Joliet long-distance this evening.” He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered Matrix one.
The little editor said, “No, thanks. I don’t see how-” He stopped, chewed fiercely on his underlip.
Shayne lit his cig
arette. “You don’t see how I found out-with Mayme Martin and Ben Edwards both dead-and with you grabbing off the anonymous note Hardeman sent to me at the hotel.”
“You-know about that too?”
Shayne shrugged. “I guessed it came from Hardeman. He seemed to be itching all along to tell me something without quite getting around to it. I can make a pretty good guess what was in it.”
“Go on,” Matrix probed. “Guess.”
“He doubtless mentioned your past penitentiary record-and Ben Edwards’s. And I imagine he pointed out the proximity of the Voice office to the ground-floor windows of the Elite Printing Shop, and mentioned the camera that Ben had invented. I understand the camera had a faculty for taking very clear pictures from a great distance-an invention which would undoubtedly enable you to get pictures of each new set of tickets as they were printed-to be reproduced by you. And I presume he did not neglect to point out the incriminating fact that Edwards had suddenly decided not to patent his invention-but was resolved to keep it a deep secret even though a patent might be worth a great deal of money.”
Matrix nodded his bushy head. “All that was in the message. I was a sap to think it would do any good to keep it out of your hands. I might have known you’d go right to him and get the same information.”
“Why, no,” Shayne answered placidly. “I admit I just came from the track, but Hardeman wasn’t talking.”
Matrix stiffened. His eyes were blank as they darted toward the pistol on the floor beside him.
Shayne said again, “It’s too late for that.”
“Yeh,” Matrix agreed in a dull voice. “Yeh. I guess you’re right.”
Shayne reached in his pocket and took out the old newspaper clipping. He handed it to Matrix, saying, “Here’s something you forgot to get from Hardeman the last time you saw him.”
Matrix took it from him and started to unfold it, then glanced quickly at Midge and stopped.
“Show it to her,” Shayne commanded evenly. “She has a right to see it. Trying to escape your past is what has put you in this trap.”
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