When Dorinda Dances

by Brett Halliday

  Rourke shrugged his emaciated shoulders. “Probably kept it to touch up the roots when it began to show gray,” he suggested. He took the bottle from Shayne and studied it curiously.

  Shayne went over to another door on the other side of the rail. It opened into an accounting-room where typewriters and bookkeeping machines clanked at the touch of operators. The packing-department lay beyond, separated only by a crude lattice-work, and the air was almost chilly from an air-conditioning plant. He closed the door and turned to Rourke.

  “Well, that’s that. Gibson knew about this rear entrance.”

  “That guy seems to know everything,” Rourke observed casually as they went back to the outer office where Shayne thanked the switchboard operator for her co-operation before going out to the press car.

  “Where to now?” the reporter asked.

  “My office. I want to ask Lucy whether she noticed anything at all between Brewer and Mrs. Davis that would give her the idea they knew each other.”

  Rourke jockeyed the car into the heavy traffic, then said, “Even if it was Brewer who was Judge Lansdowne’s friend, it wouldn’t necessarily mean that a friend of the judge’s wife would know him by sight.”

  “I’m grabbing at straws right now,” Shayne grated. “Just checking—because of them being in my office at the same time.”

  “I see,” said Rourke, and they fell silent during the short drive to Miami’s business center. He double-parked on Flagler and they got out and went up to Shayne’s office.

  Lucy Hamilton was idly turning the pages of a fashion magazine when they entered. She looked up curiously when Shayne asked, “Do you recall whether Mrs. Davis and Mr. Brewer spoke to each other when they were in the office here yesterday afternoon?”

  After a moment’s reflection she said, “No, Michael. I’m positive they didn’t. He came in after she had gone in with you. She just stayed a moment when she came out. Just long enough to leave a retainer and give her address. And—oh, I wanted to ask you—”

  “It’s that moment I’m wondering about,” Shayne interrupted patiently. “When she came out and they first saw each other. Did you notice any sign of recognition, any sign that they might have been concealing the fact that they knew each other?”

  Lucy Hamilton shook her brown head slowly, and her eyes were puzzled. “No. I don’t remember that they even glanced at each other. He was nervous and impatient to get in to see you.”

  Shayne whirled about and faced Rourke with a wry grin.

  “Let’s drop in on Will and see if he’s got anything new.”

  “But Michael—” Lucy began urgently.

  The door closed, and the two men went down in the elevator.

  Will Gentry did not have anything new, nothing whatever on the dancer who had disappeared. The Washington street address which Mrs. Davis had given at the Waldorf Towers did not exist, and there was no Elbert H. Davis listed in the Washington directory. Authorities in that city were checking all females bearing the Davis name in an effort to learn if any had left recently on a trip. They were also making discreet inquiries among Mrs. Lansdowne’s friends for a woman answering the description of Shayne’s client.

  “I even called Rollins College,” Gentry rumbled with disgust, “but no one there knows for sure the name of the girl Julia Lansdowne is supposed to be visiting in Palm Beach.”

  “But she is supposed to be visiting there,” Shayne contended.

  “That much of Dorinda’s story seems to be true,” the chief agreed reluctantly.

  “Anything more from the doctor on Brewer?”

  “Not yet. I should be getting a preliminary report shortly. It’ll take longer for a full report. After you left, though, the doc did say definitely that the hair was dyed.”

  Timothy Rourke said excitedly, “I’m beginning to get a crazy hunch about this case. I keep thinking about the way the body was smashed up. Like Mike said, it looks as though a deliberate effort had been made to destroy any possible identification. Even fingerprints.”

  “How about the prints, Will?” Shayne asked.

  “Sergeant Harris got some, but he doesn’t know if they’re good enough for comparison. He’s out at Brewer’s house now seeing what he can find.”

  “I’ll bet ten to one the body is not Brewer’s,” Rourke said eagerly. “But before I say what’s on my mind, tell me one thing, Chief. In going over Henry Black’s report on Godfrey’s movements last night, is there anything to absolutely prove that the man he was following was Hiram Godfrey?”

  Gentry rolled his lids down until his agate eyes were mere slits.

  “What are you driving at? As I recall Hank’s report—no.”

  “Take a look at it this way. Black had never seen Godfrey. He had nothing but Mike’s description over the telephone as given by Milton Brewer. Now, Black goes out to the packing-plant and sits himself outside and waits until a man answering that description comes out of the office and gets in a blue Buick that he’d been told was Godfrey’s. Now, what did the man do then? Did he see anyone who knows Godfrey? Did he go any place where Godfrey would be recognized? Rourke shifted his feverish eyes from Shayne to Gentry. Both were listening, the chief leaning forward with his arms folded on the desk, and the detective tugging at his ear lobe with a faraway look in his eyes.

  “I don’t think he did,” Gentry said. “According to Black’s report he went directly home from the plant—a small bungalow where he lives alone and has a cleaning woman come in by the day.”

  Gentry paused long enough to hurl a soggy cigar butt toward a wastebasket, then resumed. “The woman wasn’t there at night. Godfrey changed into a business suit and went out to dinner at a small restaurant. We can easily check on whether he usually went there, if necessary. After dinner, he went home and went to bed about eleven o’clock. Black and Mathews stayed up all night watching the house, both front and back exits. Then they tailed him to the airport this morning. He called a taxi. They watched him board the plane for New York and saw the take-off. That finished their job.”

  “So, anybody who superficially resembled Godfrey could have done exactly that,” Rourke pointed out with satisfaction, “and Black would not have been any wiser.”

  “Wait a minute,” Shayne interposed sharply. “What the devil makes you think it wasn’t Godfrey?”

  “I’ll come to that in a minute,” Rourke resumed. “Right now, I think we’ll all agree that Black would swear on the witness stand that he had followed Godfrey all night, because he tailed a man answering the general description Shayne gave him over the telephone.”

  “That’s true enough,” the detective granted. “But what does it get you?”

  For answer Rourke took the small bottle of dye from his pocket. “I read the directions on this when you handed it to me in the plant, Mike. You didn’t. Listen to this:

  “‘May be easily applied within minutes. Moisten a piece of absorbent cotton with the dye and apply thoroughly to dry hair. Can be washed out with any soap or shampoo and leave no trace. To achieve a permanent effect, the hair should be wet before application with a strong salt solution, and must be rinsed within fifteen minutes with a further salt solution to set dye.’”

  Shayne lifted one shoulder negligently and said, “I don’t get your angle.”

  “I’m betting big odds that the man Black saw board that plane this morning was not Hiram Godfrey.”

  “Then who was it?” Shayne exploded.

  “Anyone answering the general description Black had. Somebody who had been coached for the role and who had Godfrey’s car and house keys.”

  “According to your theory,” Gentry rumbled, “maybe you can tell us where Godfrey was all this time.”

  “Dead—murdered,” said Rourke. “Hiram Godfrey was murdered before Black went out to the plant to get on his tail.”

  Shayne started to protest, but the telephone on Gentry’s desk interrupted him.

  The chief answered, listened a moment, then hung up. He said
, “That was Sergeant Harris out at the Brewer house. He picked up some prints, but reports that it will be difficult to make a definite comparison with what he got from the corpse. It looks as though we’re stymied—unless we can get hold of enough of Brewer’s teeth for a dentist to work on. If Doc doesn’t find some scars, or other identifying marks, we may never know for certain who the corpse is.”

  CHAPTER XI

  “That,” said Timothy Rourke, “is what I’ve been waiting to hear. The dead man is Hiram Godfrey, of course.”

  “You’re nuts, Tim,” Shayne said impatiently.

  “I don’t think so.” The reporter bent forward and tapped the bottle of hair dye. “This is the clue you’re neglecting. You pointed it out yourself at the plant. A man like Brewer isn’t the type to use a cheap article and apply it himself. He would have a professional job.”

  “So?”

  “So, what was this bottle doing in the lavatory unless Brewer used it to dye his partner’s hair black after killing him in the boat yesterday afternoon?”

  Gentry grunted, and Shayne started to offer an argument, but Rourke held up his hand and said, “Wait—let me tell it my way, all of it. Don’t you realize how peculiar it was for Brewer to go out in the boat with Godfrey—alone? We know he was deathly afraid his partner was planning to murder him. Yet he makes this trip on the bay the day before Godfrey is due to leave for New York. Why?” His eyes glittered in their deep sockets as he flashed them from Shayne to Gentry. He stood up and began pacing the floor.

  “I’ll tell you why,” he continued. “I’m guessing that Brewer planned to get the jump on Godfrey when he went for the boat ride. He provides himself with a bottle of hair dye that can be applied instantly, and an outfit of his own clothes. You told me yourself, Mike, that Brewer said he and his partner were about the same build.

  “When they’re out on the bay, Brewer simply pulls a switch—gets his lick in first. After killing Godfrey, probably in the same manner as he described Godfrey’s attack on himself, he wet his partner’s head with salt water, applied the dye, stripped off his clothes, and dressed him in the suit he had brought along. He then put his own wallet and other identification in the pockets, smashed up Godfrey’s face beyond recognition, and even took the precaution of mangling the fingertips to destroy any possibility of prints. After that—splash—and Godfrey’s body is in the water, and he hightails it to your office to give you that cock-and-bull story.”

  There was a faint smile on Shayne’s wide mouth. “It makes a pretty story, Tim, but I still don’t get the basic angle.”

  “It’s perfectly logical,” Rourke contended. “Here’s this situation between the partners coming to a climax. Brewer realizes he will be the best suspect if Godfrey is found murdered. So he figures out the plan I’ve outlined. It won’t be Godfrey who is found murdered. It will be Brewer. He will disappear, and no one will bother to look for Brewer, because he will be dead and buried.”

  “What good would all that hocus pocus do him in the long run?” Gentry demanded. “He can’t ever reappear to get his share of the business.”

  “Brewer happens to be a married man,” Rourke reminded him. “His estate will go to his wife eventually. All he has to do is stay out of sight, and have her meet him later in South America or some place with the money—and a new name.”

  “You’re forgetting another thing in your fantastic theory,” said Shayne bluntly. “Brewer’s wife was in love with Godfrey, according to his story.”

  “Sure. According to Brewer’s story,” gibed Rourke. “You have only his word for it, and who is there to deny it? He knew Godfrey couldn’t. Godfrey was dead before Brewer came to your office.”

  Shayne quirked a ragged red brow at Will Gentry. “Does any of this make sense to you?”

  “When did Tim Rourke ever make sense?” rumbled Gentry. “You stick to writing fairy tales in your newspaper,” he added to Rourke.

  “Wait a minute,” Shayne interposed abruptly. “Let Tim go on with it. Why did Brewer come to my office with that story if he’d done what you suggest?”

  “Because he had to establish the fact that the corpse is his and not Godfrey’s,” Rourke told him in the patient tone of one explaining a simple problem to a mental deficient. “He can’t afford to have both partners disappear after that boat trip. He’d be afraid there would be an element of doubt as to which body it was, and a more thorough investigation would be made, ending in the positive identification of Godfrey.

  “To forestall that, he hires a private detective who will swear that Godfrey got on the plane for New York this morning. That leaves only Brewer missing—and a body is washed up wearing Brewer’s clothes and hair dyed black. Ergo. It is accepted as Brewer with no questions asked.”

  “But Godfrey is immediately our best suspect,” Gentry argued. “So we jerk him off his plane—the man Brewer has hired to impersonate Godfrey—and bring him back on a murder charge. The man obviously wouldn’t be Godfrey, and couldn’t pass for him in Miami for a minute. So the whole plot falls flat on its face.”

  “But you didn’t drag Godfrey off the plane,” Rourke pointed out wearily, “because he had an unimpeachable alibi—cleverly provided by Brewer. Don’t you get it? That was the essence of his plan. He had to fix things so Godfrey couldn’t possibly be suspected—at least until the man impersonating him had a chance to reach New York and drop out of sight.”

  Gentry had been jotting notes on a pad. He pushed it away, took out a handkerchief and mopped perspiration from his beefy face, and said, “It’s getting too damned complicated for me. You pick some holes in it, Mike.”

  “There are a few things,” Shayne said absently. “How, for instance, did the bottle of hair dye get back in Brewer’s office laboratory if he used it out on the bay to dye Godfrey’s hair after murdering him?”

  “Might be a dozen explanations,” said Rourke promptly. “This could be a bottle he bought beforehand to try it out on himself. Or maybe he forgot to take it along, and had to pick up another bottle on the way to the boat.”

  “Could be,” Shayne agreed. There was an expression of searching concentration on his lean face. “But what about Hank Black’s seeing a picture of Godfrey in the papers and swearing he was not the man he tailed all night?”

  “Not much chance of that,” said Rourke. “On a job like that, Hank wouldn’t get too close. Besides, in a news photo you don’t get coloring—hair, eyes, and so on. Of course,” he continued thoughtfully, “Black is a pretty smart cookie, and he might catch on. But don’t forget, Brewer didn’t pick out a really smart operator like Hank for the job. That was accidental. Because you already had a client and couldn’t take him on. What he did was go to a dumb Irish Shamus named Mike Shayne—who doesn’t recognize a murder solution when it’s handed to him on a silver platter.”

  Shayne grinned. “Might be something in that.” He turned to Gentry with a frown. “Crazy as this sounds, Will, it can’t hurt anything to have the New York cops pick up Hiram Godfrey—or the man who’s impersonating him.”

  “I can do better than that,” growled Gentry. “After listening to Gibson this morning I thought it might be smart to check on Godfrey. I arranged with New York to have a couple of men on his tail at La Guardia when his plane lands.”

  Shayne nodded agreement. “One sure way of checking Tim’s theory is to show Black a picture of Godfrey. Think you’ve got one in the morgue, Tim?”

  “Should have several. Both Brewer and Godfrey were pretty well known in business circles. Let’s go see.”

  Shayne stood up and suggested to Gentry, “Why not get hold of Black and have him meet us in the Daily News morgue?”

  “Sure. Right away, Mike.”

  CHAPTER XII

  Shayne and Rourke sat at the long table in a room adjoining the morgue in the News Building. The detective was leafing through a plump cardboard file filled with advertisements and courtesy photographs dating back ten years when the firm of Brewer and Godfrey was es
tablished. There were pictures of the plant, trucks, and employees, but no recognizable faces.

  Rourke had the thin personal file of Hiram Godfrey open. He muttered, “Funny we don’t have anything personal on Brewer, but here are a couple of pretty good shots of Godfrey.” He laid two 8 x 10 glossy prints before Shayne. “These seem to be the latest on Godfrey. The dates are on the back. This one is two years old, and the other three.”

  Shayne pushed the company file aside and studied the latest picture of Hiram Godfrey. It had been snapped on the golf links during an amateur tournament, and showed him bareheaded and in mid-swing. He wore plus fours and a shabby jacket, and there was a look of athletic youthfulness in his stance, and the profile of an alert, lean face.

  “He looks vaguely familiar,” he muttered, “but—”

  “But you don’t frequent the Miami Country Club,” Rourke broke in. “You’ve probably seen him around town without knowing who he was. Here’s another one. Full-face, but not quite so close up.”

  Shayne scowled at the snap of Godfrey standing in front of the packing-plant. He was bareheaded, hair tousled, and the same careless attire that Brewer had mentioned as an outstanding characteristic. Except for his average size, there wasn’t much to identify with the mutilated body they had viewed on the beach, but Rourke continued to argue fiercely for his theory when Shayne pointed this out to him.

  “You can’t deny it could be Godfrey. Forget the smashed face and the dyed hair. That makes a lot of difference.”

  “Could be,” Shayne said absently. “What color hair would you say he has?”

  “Blond or light brown. But dyed black—”

  “We’ll see what Hank Black says,” said Shayne impatiently. He laid the print aside and drew the partnership file to him again. “I’ve gone through half of this without finding any originals.”

  “They’re separate. Here, I’ll show you.” Rourke flipped the clippings over, frowned, and said, “That’s funny. There aren’t any. But I remember distinctly that the Brewer wedding was quite a social event. There’s got to be something.” His voice died to a mumble and he began riffling through the file with trembling hands.