“Start giving it to me straight,” said the reporter impatiently as he returned. “What’s all the mix-up about names? First you and Lucy declare the guy is really Brewer, with the black dye washed out of his hair and dressed differently. But Will Gentry says Brewer is dead. And Gibson says the man is Hiram Godfrey, all right.”
“He is Godfrey. And Milton Brewer is dead,” Shayne told him cheerfully. “And Godfrey is the man Black followed all night, but that still doesn’t give him an alibi because Brewer was dead, of course, before Godfrey ever came out of that packing-plant for Hank to pick him up.”
“Don’t you see, Tim?” said Lucy indulgently. “I’ve figured that much out. It wasn’t Mr. Brewer at our office at all. It was Godfrey dressed like Brewer with his hair dyed, impersonating Brewer.”
“Whom Godfrey had already murdered out on the bay,” Shayne added comfortably. “It was your bright hunch that really put me onto that possibility,” he went on. “Remember the bottle of cheap hair dye and the printed instructions? You guessed that Brewer had used it to dye Godfrey’s hair after killing him, using the salt water in the bay to set the dye fast. But it was Godfrey who used it on himself, without salt water. So it would wash right out as soon as he left my office and hurried out to the packing-plant to go in the back way.”
“All right, I get that part of it,” growled Rourke. “Godfrey kills his partner in the bay, smashing up his face so identification is difficult. He dyes his own hair, dresses like Brewer, and goes to your office so that you will swear later that Brewer was alive at five-thirty. Then he hurries out to the plant, washes out the dye and changes into his own clothes, strolls out the front door to be picked up by Hank Black and get himself a perfect alibi. I follow you that far. But what about Mrs. Davis? Or, Mrs. Brewer. How the devil did she get down to Miami from White Plains? And why?”
“That was a very necessary part of Godfrey’s murder plot,” Shayne told him gravely. “She flew down from New York that afternoon, of course. Remember her shopping-trip in the city that kept her away from home all that day and until midnight? Plenty of time to catch a plane and reach Miami by three o’clock, go to a store and buy a suitcase and some books for luggage she could leave behind, then go to the Waldorf Towers and register at four o’clock, picking up a reservation Godfrey had made by telephone the previous day.”
“But what about the Lansdowne girl?” demanded Lucy breathlessly. “The story Mrs. Davis told you that sent you out to La Roma that night.”
“Half-truths and half-lies,” Shayne told her promptly. “It was you who started me thinking about that angle. Remember on our way to Palm Beach when you suggested that Godfrey might have sent the picture and anonymous note to Mrs. Lansdowne after seeing Dorinda dancing and recognizing her as Julia Lansdowne?”
“Was I right, Michael? Did Godfrey send the picture and note?”
Shayne shook his head. “The picture and note were never sent.” He paused for a ring at the door, waited for Rourke to admit the waiter with another round of sidecars.
“Remember, angel,” he went on patiently when they all had a drink. “Mrs. Davis—or, let’s call her Brewer to avoid confusion—took the picture and note out of a plain Manila envelope. She claimed the envelope it had been mailed in had been destroyed. Of course, it hadn’t been mailed at all. Godfrey had been out to La Roma and recognized Julia, got hold of a nude photo, and written that note. He gave them to Mrs. Brewer and coached her in the story she was to tell me that was sure to intrigue me enough to keep me busy all evening checking up on Dorinda. He knew I wouldn’t turn down an assignment like that—not with Dorinda’s picture in front of me.”
“But why such an elaborate hoax?” demanded Rourke. “What did it accomplish?”
“Exactly what Godfrey wanted and planned. Don’t you see, Tim, he had to make very sure that I would be unable to accept the assignment he offered me. Of tailing himself that night. By making sure that I accepted the Dorinda case first, he was safe in coming to me and trying to hire me to follow him all night. You see, it had to be someone like Hank Black who had not seen him impersonating Brewer. If I had gone out to the packing-plant, I would have recognized him immediately as the man who had just hired me.”
“Then all that hocus pocus about Dorinda was just to make certain you’d be otherwise occupied and call in another detective to take Godfrey’s assignment.”
“That’s right, but it was smart in that he didn’t have Mrs. Brewer feed me a completely cock-and-bull story. By using the truth judiciously, he made certain I wouldn’t quickly discover it was a phony and start wondering why I had been sent on a wild-goose chase. The girl was Julia Lansdowne, she was at La Roma practically against her will, her father’s political career would have been ruined if the truth came out.”
“Even at that, he was taking an awful chance,” insisted Rourke disgustedly. “He might have guessed that you would catch on later that the man who came to your office wasn’t Milton Brewer.”
“How?” demanded Shayne. “It looked safe enough to him. He had mutilated Brewer’s face so I wouldn’t be able to look at the body and say it wasn’t the man who’d come to my office. And don’t forget there weren’t any pictures of Brewer available for me to look at and do the same thing. If it hadn’t been for that quirk of Brewer’s, Godfrey would probably never have dared try the impersonation.”
“But there was the chance that you would see him later and recognize him.”
“He was leaving for New York on the morning plane,” Shayne reminded the reporter. “He had no reason for returning to Miami where I might see him. After Brewer’s body was found, he could have gone ahead and sold the business from New York, collected insurance on his partner, and later have married his partner’s widow. All the things, by God,” added Shayne with a wide grin, “that he told me he intended doing while he was sitting in my office posing as Brewer.”
“But he must have feared that the police would bring him back for investigation after Brewer was found,” protested Rourke. “He was the one perfect suspect.”
“But he also had a perfect alibi,” Shayne pointed out. “That was the crux of it. As Will Gentry told us, he could never have been extradited in the face of that alibi. Henry Black and I were prepared to swear he couldn’t possibly have killed Brewer.”
“But there were pictures of Godfrey. You might have recognized him from—” Rourke stopped abruptly as remembrance came to him.
Shayne nodded with a wry twist of his mouth. “Pictures aren’t much good for that sort of identification. I did look at those photographs of Godfrey without recognizing him. Black hair and glasses, different clothes and mannerisms—even to the point of wearing shoes a size too small to give him a mincing gait—all add up to a hell of a difference in a man’s appearance. Particularly if you only observe him for a few minutes. I did have a vague feeling of familiarity when I looked at those pics, but that’s as far as it went.
“No. It looked pretty safe to Hiram Godfrey,” Shayne went on ruminatively. “Even if I did eventually learn that the whole story about Mrs. Lansdowne was made up. Mrs. Davis had disappeared in thin air, and there was nothing whatever to connect her with Godfrey.”
“Tim and I are just sitting here waiting,” Lucy told him sweetly, “to hear you say that the one mistake Mr. Godfrey made was in picking on the smartest detective in the country to provide him with an alibi.”
Shayne grinned at her and drained his cocktail glass. “I’ll let Tim point that out in the story he writes for his paper,” he told her modestly.
“But it is the truth, Michael,” she insisted. “Why do you suppose he did pick on you instead of all the other dumb detectives in Miami?”
“I can answer that one,” Rourke told her readily. “He had to be absolutely positive that the man he sent Mrs. Brewer to would fall for her story about Dorinda. Some lecherous-minded old goat who would take one look at the girl’s photograph and start slavering at the mouth. Who else would he pick but Micha
el Shayne—than whom—”
He broke off with a wicked chuckle as Lucy Hamilton jumped to her feet fiercely with angry spots of red in her cheeks and exclaimed, “Michael isn’t like that, Timothy Rourke. He just pretends he is to—to t-tease me. D-Don’t you, Michael?”
“Of course, angel.” Shayne was on his feet swiftly and drew her to him. He glared over the top of her brown head at the reporter and said, “You’ve got your story. Why don’t you get the hell out of here and put it on the wire?”
About the Author
Brett Halliday (1904–1977) was the primary pseudonym of American author Davis Dresser. Halliday is best known for creating the Mike Shayne Mysteries. The novels, which follow the exploits of fictional PI Mike Shayne, have inspired several feature films, a radio series, and a television series.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1951 by Brett Halliday
Cover design by Mimi Bark
ISBN 978-1-5040-1441-0
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When Dorinda Dances Page 16
