The Postman Brought Murder

by Brett Halliday

  Jay took it up very carefully in two fingers.

  It was obvious to Shayne that both of them knew exactly what they were about. His heart sank. There had been betrayal of his plan and Mr. Hargrove’s. There wasn’t the slightest doubt of that now.

  “We all know Mr. Mike Shayne here,” Jay said in his deadly silken tones. “We have a dossier on him as we do on all our enemies. He’s a conservative dresser, normally, that is. I wonder what he’s doing with anything as flashy as this crude artifact.”

  Under other circumstances Shayne might have been amused. As powerful as he was, this Jay liked to show off. He was expressing his intellectual contempt for the hoods who served him. It was vanity, and vanity is a weakness. Shayne filed the fact in his memory bank. It was an unconscious process. He was waiting for what else Jay might say.

  Jay turned the buckle over in his hand. He went on talking, his tone suggesting that he might be instructing a class of rather backward children.

  “Notice this peculiar looking object soldered to the underside of the buckle. It’s a bug. A very special sort of bug to be sure. It receives electrical impulses broadcast by another very special bug, and translates them into beeping sounds, or possibly buzzes and vibrations. Anyone—Mr. Shayne for instance—who is wearing this buckle will know instantly when he is close to the other bug that is doing the broadcasting. He can pick it up a long way off, several hundred yards anyway, and follow it. The beeps get louder as he gets closer. He could follow the other bug.”

  Jay paused and looked at them all.

  “By this means he could follow, let us say, a regular United States mailbag that contained the proper broadcasting device. That’s right, isn’t it, Mr. Shayne?”

  Mike Shayne said: “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Jay.”

  He knew though. He knew that his highly secret plan to keep track of the Esperance Diamond had somehow been made known to this man. With the aid of the sending and receiving bugs he had planned to follow the whole theft. The broadcasting bug had been carefully built into the elaborate setting of which the diamond pendant was a part. Its broadcasting range was up to one-half mile, with the signal growing stronger as the two bugs became closer together.

  Shayne intended to let the actual theft of the mail bag take place on schedule and then follow the signals wherever they led. He might even have to take a plane back to New York or to some other city, if the stolen jewel was being carried by courier. There was a packed bag in the trunk of his car parked outside this very building with money, clothing, even a passport in case the trail led outside the country.

  Only when he was sure that the Esperance Diamond had reached its final destination would the big detective have tried to close in. All these thoughts went racing through his mind.

  Mr. Jay looked at him and laughed a very unpleasant laugh.

  “I can see that you know perfectly well what I’m talking about, Mr. Shayne,” he said. “It was a clever plan. Against any other organization than ours it might have had a good chance of success.”

  He tossed the big silver buckle from hand to hand. Even in the dim light coming in from the electric fixture in the hallway, the silver managed to sparkle and shine.

  “Tantalizing, isn’t it?” Jay asked the big man. “Victory so near and yet so far. Ah well, this world is full of might-have-beens.”

  Mike Shayne still said nothing. Jay wanted him to squirm, but Shayne wasn’t about to do that.

  Jay kept watching him with a malicious expression, but the big man kept his bruised face from showing any emotion whatsoever. For long moments their glances locked in a quiet struggle of will against will.

  Jay was the first to give ground.

  “You are a strong man, Mr. Shayne,” he said then. “Strong and clever. The whole scheme was your own plan, I suppose?”

  Shayne kept silence.

  “A pity,” Mr. Jay remarked. “A real pity to waste a man as strong as yourself. You’re worth five of these men of mine. Such a pity.”

  He paused again. Shayne knew exactly what the man meant. Now that he had been captured and the belt buckle taken from him, there was no reason for them to let him live any longer. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of pleading for his life or showing any sign of fear.

  Jay couldn’t resist spelling it out to the end.

  “It was easy to spot your Mr. Smith,” he said. “We sent Charlie over to eliminate him from the picture before the mail comes in tonight. Fortunately I realized that Charlie wasn’t too smart. I had Nita Nolan go along to keep an eye on him. Nita has brains and uses them.

  “When Charlie didn’t come out of the house, Nita looked through the windows. Then she arranged to capture you and bring you here to me. Nita knew who you were and what you were up to, of course.”

  He paused again. Then got to his point. “Will you join us now, Shayne? Switch sides. We’ll pay you well, you know. This is the only time I’ll ask.”

  Shayne looked at the little man and shook his head: “No.”

  “I’m sorry for that,” Mr. Jay said. “I won’t make the offer again. Take Mr. Shayne away and kill him, Rocky.”

  VI

  THEY TOOK Mike Shayne out by the kitchen door and then turned right toward the Bay. With his arms and hands firmly bound behind him and his feet hobbled by an eighteen-inch length of cord there wasn’t much the big man could do to resist.

  He went along with them. The men snickered at the short mincing steps he had to take to keep from falling flat on his face. Nita Nolan kept a hand on his left elbow, guiding him as he walked and once or twice giving him enough support to keep his balance in a tight spot.

  She noticed the grateful look he gave her.

  “I’m not writing you off yet, lover,” she said so softly that the others couldn’t hear. “Maybe you’ll do the same for me some time.”

  In that context the remark was completely out of place. It set him to thinking, both then and later on. At the moment he only managed a grin and a wink in return.

  There was a sea wall fronting the estate where it touched Biscayne Bay, and this was cut into by a docking slip which had a boathouse at the landward end.

  They led Shayne into the boathouse and made him get into a sixteen foot lapstrake skiff tied up there. When he tried to balance so that he’d keep his feet one of the men hit him in the face. Shayne fell full length into the bottom of the skiff up toward the bow. The center seat had been taken out so he was lying in dirty seepage water along the keel.

  He expected the men to shoot him or club him to death as he lay there.

  Under the circumstances it would have been a smart thing to do, but they didn’t do it.

  Rocky got into the stern of the skiff and hitched up a portable tank of gasoline to the outboard motor. He had trouble starting the motor, and the others laughed at him, but he finally got it going. He cast off the line and steered out of the boat slip into the open water.

  “Put him down deep,” one of them called out. “Let the crabs eat on him tonight.”

  Shayne didn’t struggle. It was already dark on the water and no one from shore would see or care if they did. People were always acting crazy in boats.

  Rocky steered straight out toward the channel where the Intracoastal Waterway buoys marked a deep cut in the Bay bottom.

  When he was in the deep water Rocky cut the outboard’s motor back to idling speed. He got a couple of heavy concrete blocks that he’d put in the boat at the dock and tied them together with a length of rope. Then he stood up and took a step forward toward where Shayne lay.

  It was obvious he was going to tie the other end of the rope to the big man’s feet to sink the body after it was put into the water. He’d probably shoot the detective first and then throw the body out of the skiff.

  Mike Shayne wasn’t the man to wait to be killed like a boar on hog-killing day.

  As Rocky stood up to step forward Shayne twisted suddenly over on his back. He bent his knees and then a
rched his whole body and launched a terrific kick with both feet as Rocky bent forward to reach for him.

  If that kick had landed squarely it would have broken the hood’s neck.

  He saw it coming though, twisted his own body and tried to pull back. He wasn’t quite fast enough.

  Shayne’s feet hit Rocky squarely on the upper chest with a heavy thud and lifted him backward and right over the gunwale of the skiff. He hit the water with a splash like a leaping tarpon going back into the water.

  Shayne scrambled wildly in the bottom of the boat. In a moment he managed to get upright and hunched himself to the stern, where he could get his hands on the controls to the outboard motor.

  He got the power control lever shoved over to full speed, and after that it was easy. Even with his hands tied behind his back it was simple to grasp and guide the tiller.

  Shayne steered right across the bay for the lights on the Miami side. A long way behind him he thought he could hear Rocky floundering in the water, but he had no intention of going back to investigate.

  It was fifteen minutes before Mike Shayne managed to guide the outboard skiff to the landing dock of a boat rental place on the Miami side of the Bay.

  The night watchman in the boat slip had seen the big private detective’s picture in the Miami News and luckily remembered that fact. He cut the big man loose and let him use the phone in the establishment’s office.

  The first call Shayne made was to the office of his long-time personal friend, Miami Chief of Police Will Gentry. The chief was in his private office smoking a long black cigar when the call came in.

  “Thank God it’s you, Mike,” were his first words. “I was beginning to think you’d run into something you couldn’t handle.”

  The Miami police were in on the case of the registered mail robberies, as were the authorities of a dozen other jurisdictions. On this occasion they’d agreed to keep hands off unless called in by the redhead himself.

  Mr. Hargrove and the insurance syndicate he represented had political weight on a nationwide scale. They had convinced the police that the arrest of small time hoods would accomplish nothing compared to a chance to find and identify the kingpin of this deadly racket.

  Chief Gentry accepted the reasoning. However, he and his men were standing by to assist in any way possible.

  “I almost did.” Shayne said. “They’re on to this caper, Will. They got Smitty.”

  “That’s rough,” Gentry said. “Any idea who hit him?”

  “You send a car to Smitty’s place,” Shayne said, “and you’ll find the contract man right beside him on the living room floor. His name was Charlie, and he worked for a Mr. Jay on the Beach.”

  Shayne described Jay and gave the street number he’d seen on the iron gates of the old Beach estate.

  “Jay’s no local,” Gentry said. “You’d know him or I would. You want me to tip Petey Painter to raid that house?”

  “It would be a waste of time,” Shayne said. “Jay doesn’t live there. He and his boys borrowed it for a while. They were going to snatch me at the airport and take me over there. I saved them the trouble by turning up at Smitty’s. By the time Petey’s boys get there the joint will be empty.”

  “What do you want us to do? Put an army around that rock when the plane lands?”

  “Not a bit of it. Leave me alone, like the original plan called for.”

  “I don’t know if we can do that, Mike,” Gentry said with a serious note in his gruff voice. “That was before we thought they knew you were in on this thing. If they know that, how much else do they know? We can’t risk letting them get clean away with that big diamond. You know that.”

  “I don’t know anything of the sort. Will, we’ve got to let them think they’re one up on us and go ahead and make their play. Otherwise we keep the Esperance Diamond. Sure, but Mr. Big is still as safe as ever. He goes right on raiding the mails just like before.”

  “Let Uncle Whiskers worry about that,” Gentry said. “My neck will go under the chopper if that sparkler is lifted in my front yard. I have to have that stone tonight.”

  “Call Evan Hargrove in New York,” Shayne said. “He’ll tell you the same thing I do, and his people are big enough to make it stick. Nothing is going to do any good in this case except to come up with the name of the top man. If we don’t manage that, then they just go right on operating like numbers or dope or prostitution. No matter how many small fry get picked up, they can always be replaced.”

  “You don’t think this Mr. Jay is the top man?” Gentry asked.

  “No,” Shayne said, “I don’t. That would be too easy. They wouldn’t take me to him if he was really important. As a matter of fact, Will, they wouldn’t let me get within a mile of him. No, this Jay character is a fall guy or a front man of some sort. Anyway, you call Hargrove in New York and get me a green light to go ahead with this in my own way.”

  “I won’t have to call New York,” Gentry said.

  “Just what does that mean?”

  “Your man Hargrove is in town. He’s got a suite at the New Imperial so he can be right here for this operation. I can call him there in a minute. Where can I ring you back when I hear what he has to say?”

  “You can’t,” Shayne said with sudden decision. “I know what he’s going to say. Just stay out of my way and let me do the job I was hired for.”

  “Now look, Mike. I don’t know about this. I’m not sure you ought to be running loose the way you go wild on a case. There’s two men dead already, and maybe another floating in the Bay.”

  “Hargrove said I had a license to kill,” Shayne told his friend, “so don’t worry about it. And don’t try to contact me. I’ll call you.”

  He hung up the phone.

  The next call Mike Shayne made was to his confidential secretary, Lucy Hamilton.

  “I’m okay,” he told Lucy. “Had some trouble but perfectly okay now.”

  Shayne told Lucy to take an emergency bag containing money, a gun, some clean clothes which he kept at the office, and bring them to him at the boat rental place. From there she could drive him to a nearby car rental so that he could get transportation. His own car was still parked where he’d left it in the driveway of the big Miami Beach mansion. At least it was if Jay and his people hadn’t decided to dispose of it.

  In any case Shayne hadn’t the least intention of going back to find out. Unless Rocky had managed to swim ashore and call the big house, Jay probably thought the detective was dead and at the bottom of the Bay. That would have suited Mike Shayne perfectly. He didn’t want to call attention to himself at the moment.

  On the other hand he wasn’t at all sure that Rocky was dead, or indeed that Rocky and the rest of them hadn’t been doing some very elaborate play-acting there at the end.

  If Mike Shayne had been in Mr. Jay’s place, with a prisoner who was known to be very dangerous indeed to dispose of, he would have done it very differently. The logical thing would have been to kill Shayne right there in the mansion with a bullet, a knife or a club. Then, but only then, put the body in the skiff to be sunk in the Bay at leisure. They had him. He could have been killed. Nobody need worry about a corpse kicking Rocky overboard and escaping.

  On the other hand, if they hadn’t wanted Shayne dead they could have just left him tied up in the wine cellar—or for that matter driven him some place and turned him loose.

  Why go through an elaborate charade in order to let him make his escape?

  On the surface none of it really made sense.

  Mike Shayne was smart enough, though, to know that a man like Mr. Jay was no fool, no matter what he might let himself appear to be. Whatever he had done was for a purpose.

  Shayne had a strong idea his own life might depend upon his ability to figure out what that purpose was.

  All these thoughts ran through Mike Shayne’s head while he waited for Lucy Hamilton. It wasn’t long that he had to wait. Lucy was an experienced and capable woman. When she was assisting
her boss on a case, she didn’t waste any time.

  Shayne put on a clean shirt when she arrived, put money in his wallet—his own had vanished when Jay’s hoods had frisked him—and put a gun back in his holster. He found a fresh belt and used it to replace the one from which the bugged buckle had been taken.

  “I feel like a whole man now,” he told Lucy Hamilton.

  She laughed at him. “I never realized a belt made so much difference to a man.”

  He laughed too. “You know it was the gun I was talking about, Angel.”

  “Of course, Michael. I mean, if you say so, yes. What are you going to do now?”

  “We’re going to eat,” Shayne said. “Drive me over to Galagher’s on the Boulevard and we’ll each put away a big thick steak. After that take me to a car rental and I’ll hire my own wheels.”

  “That sounds good,” she said. “After that where do we go?’

  “After that you go on home to your place and double lock the doors and get a good night’s sleep.”

  “I want to help, Michael.”

  “The best way you can help right now is stay out of trouble so I don’t have to worry about you. We are up against some real tough cookies on this one, Angel. Tough enough so I want you out of the line of fire.”

  She knew better than to argue with her boss about that. “Oh, Mr. Hargrove called you at the office about half an hour ago. He’s on Miami Beach and wants you to call. He wants me to let him know if I hear from you. What should I do?”

  “From now on for the rest of tonight you never heard of me,” Mike Shayne told Lucy Hamilton. “Don’t tell Will Gentry anything. I mean that. Not a thing. Above all, don’t tell Hargrove you even heard from me. You don’t know where I am.”

  VII

  LUCY HAMILTON waited until she and Mike Shayne had been served huge blood-red steaks with all the trimmings at the famous Biscayne Boulevard restaurant before making any further comment. Then she took up right where the conversation had broken off before.