Stranger in Town ms-26

by Brett Halliday

  “B-u-t-t-r-e-l-l,” Shayne spelled it out for her patiently. “Amos Buttrell.”

  “Yes, sir.” The voice was doubtful. “He isn’t registered, I’m afraid.”

  “He was a few days ago. Last Friday or Saturday. If he’s checked out since, can you give me an address where he can be reached?”

  “I’ll connect you with the office if you wish.”

  Shayne said, “Please do.” A deep frown creased his forehead and his nostrils tightened as he drew a deep lungful of smoke. When a brisk male voice asked if he could be of service, Shayne explained tersely, adding, “This is long distance and very important police business. I’ll hold on.”

  He held on until the cigarette was smoked down close to his fingertips. Then the brisk voice told him apologetically, “I’m afraid there is some mistake. Our records don’t show any Mr. Buttrell registered here at all during the past two weeks.”

  “How about a Miss Buttrell?” Shayne asked harshly. “Amy.”

  “No one by that name at all, sir.”

  “You’re positive there’s no mistake?”

  “Quite positive.” The voice was very firm and somewhat offended that anyone could dare challenge the accuracy of the Roney Plaza’s records.

  Shayne hung up thoughtfully and reached a long arm for the open bottle of cognac. He took a short drink from the bottle, then got up abruptly to check the newspaper story on the chance he had misread the information it contained.

  He hadn’t misread it. The Courier stated explicitly that Mr. Amos Buttrell was wintering at the Roney Plaza Hotel in Miami Beach.

  Either the news story was in error, or Mr. Buttrell had lied for reasons best known to himself.

  6

  Michael Shayne strode up and down the length of the hotel sitting room, clawing at his coarse red hair with his right hand and tugging at his earlobe with his left.

  What in hell did it all add up to? A beautiful victim of amnesia, supposedly the daughter of a wealthy New Yorker, walking into the bar last night and fingering him for a trio of murderers!

  Yet she had never seen him before in his life. At least, he had never seen her. Could that be a quirk of an amnesiac, he wondered. If they couldn’t remember things back beyond a certain point, were they likely to have hallucinations and think they remembered someone?

  But what was the girl doing in Brockton last night when she supposedly had been taken away by her father the preceding Saturday? Had she regained her memory in the meantime and come back to Brockton to identify the man or men who had attacked her in the first place? That was, supposing she had been attacked on the highway and a simple automobile accident wasn’t the reason for her appearance at the hospital in the condition she had been in.

  Nothing made sense any way you looked at it. Shayne needed a lot more answers before he could possibly start theorizing. He stopped by the telephone stand and looked up the number of the Courier, called it and got the City Desk.

  He asked, “Could you tell me the name of the reporter who covered the story of the identification of the girl-amnesia victim last week by her father?”

  “Wait a minute.” The voice was brusque and disinterested. Shayne waited, listening to the typical background noises of a busy City Room over the wire as he did so.

  “Yeh. That was Hy Brown. You got something new on it?”

  “I might have,” said Shayne cautiously. “He around now?”

  “Covering the police beat. Who’s calling?”

  The redhead hesitated. Then he said firmly, “Michael Shayne. If Brown comes in…”

  “Shayne? Hey, we got an item here…” There was a lengthy pause. Then a pleased chuckle. “Private detective from Miami, huh? How you like our hoosgow? Give us a quote, Mr. Shayne?”

  “You couldn’t print it,” Shayne said amiably. “Yeh. Your alert police force protected Brockton’s innocent children from my reckless driving last night. Okay. If I could get in touch with Brown…”

  “You still in town?” the voice demanded.

  “At the Manor Hotel. I’d like…”

  “Hy’d like too, I bet. An interview from you would make the front page, Shamus. You’re by way of being famous in Florida, you know.”

  Shayne said, “I didn’t know, but swell. If you could…”

  “You at the hotel now?”

  “In my room.”

  “I’ll have Hy around there in three shakes. Sit tight, huh?”

  Shayne said he would and hung up. He took the pile of newspapers dating back to the morning after Amy Buttrell had turned up at the hospital, and started going through them carefully. There was no Sunday edition, but the Monday paper carried a short item on the front page stating that no progress had been made by the local police toward solving the mystery of what had happened to Amy.

  Her missing automobile had not been located, and no one had come forward with any information about the girl at all. Not even the man who had picked her up on the highway late at night and then faded away without identifying himself. Locally, the case seemed to be at a dead-end and likely to remain there until the girl recovered her memory and was able to tell her own story.

  Shayne was searching through the inner pages of the previous day’s paper for anything further on Amy Buttrell when there was a rap on his door.

  He got up to open it and admit a wiry, eager young man who gripped Shayne’s hand enthusiastically in thin fingers and introduced himself as Hy Brown while his excited eyes danced happily as they studied the livid bruises on Shayne’s face.

  “Holy cats! They did work you over, huh Mr. Shayne? Resisting arrest it says on the docket. Which one of the bastards you resist? Burke or Grimes?”

  Shayne grinned briefly and his hand went up to his face. “Both, I guess. The younger one prodded me into it.”

  “Yeh. He would. Grimes isn’t such a bad old guy. But that Burke!” The reporter whistled expressively. “Took both of them to handle you, I bet. From all the stuff we’ve read about you.” Brown perched himself on the edge of a straight chair expectantly and produced a wad of copy paper and pencil. “You here in Brockton on a case, Mr. Shayne?”

  “No. Just stopped in unexpectedly on my way to Miami to sample your famous hospitality.” Shayne grinned wryly and went into the bathroom to get another glass. He brought it back and set it beside the pitcher of ice cubes with a wave of his big hand. “Help yourself.” He poured cognac in his own glass, added ice cubes and swished them around thoughtfully while the younger man poured a modest dollop in the bottom of his glass and settled back with a look of disappointment on his face.

  He said, “I thought maybe… when I heard you were still here at the hotel and hadn’t gone on this morning… I hoped…”

  “As a matter of fact,” said Shayne easily, “I did think that while I was here I’d check into that Buttrell girl’s case just out of curiosity.” He gestured toward the newspapers on the floor. “You folks at this end never did find out what happened to her that night?”

  “Not a damned thing. That is a real mystery, Mr. Shayne. You hear about it in Miami?”

  “There was something in the papers,” Shayne said cautiously. “You covered the story?”

  “That’s right. From the beginning. I took a photographer out to the hospital that night and shot the pic her father later identified her from.”

  Shayne shrugged and settled back comfortably with his drink. “What did you make out of the whole screwy deal?”

  “What could you make out of it? There she was with a big bruise on the side of her head, scratched up some, and her mind absolutely a blank. Didn’t even know her own name. No identification. Not a damned thing to go on. And a real doll, too. Beautiful, but real class, too, if you know what I mean. You knew right away she wasn’t any tramp.”

  “You interview her father when he came to pick her up?”

  “Yeh. I had a long talk with him.” Brown subconsciously glanced at the papers. “Read my story?”

  Shayne nodded. �
��What sort of man was Buttrell? What did you make of him?”

  Hy Brown shrugged. “About what you’d expect of a yankee geezer with enough rocks to be spending the winter at the Roney. Just ordinary, but a nice enough little guy, I guess. Worried to hell-and-gone about his daughter, and fussing over her like he was a biddy with one chick.”

  “You positive you got the name right?” asked Shayne idly. “And that he’s staying at the Roney?”

  “Sure, I did. Amos Buttrell. Made him spell it out for me. And we talked about the Roney. I stayed two nights there last year. On expense account,” he added with a grin.

  “You haven’t heard anything from him since he took his daughter away?”

  “Not a word. The police either. And that’s funny because he promised he’d keep in touch and let us know how she came along. He took my name down and even my telephone number, promising to give it to me exclusive he was that grateful to us for publishing her picture that brought him here. You heard anything in Miami about whether she got back her memory or not?”

  Shayne said he hadn’t heard one way or the other. They talked on for a few minutes about the mystery of the girl and her vanished automobile, and then Shayne got rid of the young reporter.

  As soon as he was alone, he put in a person-to-person call to Timothy Rourke on the Miami Daily News. The connection was made promptly and as soon as Shayne identified himself, Rourke asked curiously, “Know anything about the thing with Lucy at your office this morning, Mike?”

  “What thing?”

  “One of the boys just brought in an item from headquarters. Some hoodlum the police pulled in on Lucy’s complaint, seems like. I haven’t had a chance to check with her.”

  “Do that right away, Tim. And then get onto Will Gentry and find out everything you can about the man. Particularly, if there’s anything at all to tie him up with Brockton or anybody in Brockton.”

  “Brockton? You mean that town up-state?”

  “That’s where I’m phoning from. Know anything about it?”

  “No. Except there’s a kid reporter on the paper there I used to know. Name of Brown.”

  “Hy Brown,” Shayne told him. “He just left here but didn’t say anything about knowing you.”

  “It’s been three or four years. What are you doing there?”

  “Having fun,” said Shayne grimly. “Here’s what I called about, Tim. Do you recall a local story the last few days about a girl amnesia victim turning up in Brockton and being identified by her father in Miami?”

  “Nothing like that in the papers lately, Mike.”

  “The name would be Buttrell,” Shayne persisted. “Amos Buttrell and daughter Amy. Spending the winter from New York at the Roney. Ring any bells?”

  “Not a tinkle.”

  “He was supposed to be registered at the Roney as late as last Friday. I called them long distance but drew a blank. You check at that end to be sure there’s no mistake. And see if there are any other Buttrells in town. Miami or the Beach. And if they’ve got a daughter named Amy who doesn’t remember very well.”

  “Will do,” said Rourke. “Where can I reach you in Brockton?”

  “At the Manor Hotel.” Shayne looked down and read off the number. “Will you get onto it fast?”

  “I’m on it now,” Tim Rourke assured him cheerfully and hung up.

  Shayne put the instrument down and got out of his chair to riffle through the Brockton directory. He found Philbrick Jay Dr listed as living at 312 Orange Drive without any additional office number, and called his residence.

  A briskly impersonal female voice answered his ring, “Dr. Philbrick. May I help you?”

  “You may and I hope you will,” Shayne told her gravely. “Is the doctor in?”

  “He’s with a patient just now. Who’s calling?”

  “Michael Shayne. I’m from out of town and need to see the doctor as soon as possible on an urgent, private matter. When will he be free?”

  “If you could come right along,” she said doubtfully, “I might be able to slip you in between patients. His next appointment isn’t for half an hour.”

  Shayne said, “Right away,” and hung up. He got his hat and hurried down stairs to ask directions from the doorman for reaching Orange Drive.

  7

  Following the doorman’s directions, Michael Shayne discovered that Brockton was essentially a peaceful and pleasant community of home-loving citizens. It was a different picture than he’d got the night before, driving into the business section on the main artery through town, stopping off at the bar and then being escorted to the city jail.

  As soon as he left the business section, he entered a series of quiet residential streets lined with well-kept two-story homes with neat green lawns and many shade trees, with clean children playing decorously on the grass, young mothers in fresh print dresses strolling along shaded walks pushing strollers and baby carriages.

  There was no hint of beneath-the-surface tensions or violence here. The events of the preceding night took on a completely unreal quality in the bright sunlight and the atmosphere of middle-class gentility that was evident on all sides as he drove along.

  But it had happened, despite all the evidence that Brockton just wasn’t the sort of town where such things did happen. Shayne’s bruised face and aching neck muscles kept reminding him of the unpleasant facts of life.

  And the three gangsters who entered the bar behind the girl cold-bloodedly intent on killing him hadn’t been out-of-towners imported just for that job. Somehow, Shayne was sure of that. They were indigenous to Brockton despite all the peaceful evidence to the contrary. Call it intuition or hunch, or the result of long experience in such matters, Shayne was positive the men were local products and had been recognized by at least some of the habitues of the bar-room.

  There was the matter of the phone call to the police, for instance. The phone call that had not brought a policeman to investigate a clear case of armed assault and kidnapping. That was a matter to be checked later, Shayne reminded himself grimly. It would be interesting to know who had received the call and when. Who was responsible for the fact that no official action had been taken.

  There had been something about the feel of the place when Shayne walked back through the door half an hour after he’d been dragged out unconscious that told him they feared and resented his return to the place alive. It wasn’t exactly that he suspected any of the bystanders of actual complicity in what had happened, or even that they particularly approved. It was more a feeling that he was an outsider and therefore probably deserved whatever had happened to him. An apathetic acceptance of the situation more than anything else. Yet out here on the peaceful outskirts of the town, it seemed inconceivable that Brockton could be under the domination of any sort of criminal element.

  Again and again as he drove along slowly watching for Orange Drive, Shayne ransacked his brain for any conceivable answer to why?

  Conceding that he had been recognized somehow, why had Gene and his two thugs been sent to the bar to wipe him out? No one in Brockton, so far as he was aware, had any earthly reason to fear Michael Shayne or even to hate him.

  Had the girl made a mistake in identity when she came directly to his booth to finger him for the men who entered behind her?

  Shayne didn’t think so. There had been no hesitancy in her manner. He distinctly recalled the look of recognition on her face, his definite impression before she ever took a step toward him that he was the reason she had entered the room. That she had come in looking for him and expecting to find him there.

  Maybe that was an after-result of amnesia. A sort of hallucination that took the place of memory. That was one possibility he wanted to check with Dr. Philbrick. But there hadn’t been a single thing about the girl to give the impression that she was anything but completely normal. Shayne didn’t know much about amnesia cases, but he had a vague idea that such a person would be outwardly different from one in full possession of her faculties. That
there would be something about the look in her eyes or in her bearing that would indicate loss of memory. That was something else to ask the doctor.

  He passed a neat, stuccoed church on the right which was the last landmark the doorman had mentioned, and slowed for the next corner. A neat street sign told him that it was Orange Drive, and he made a right turn into it as directed. The address was well out from the center of town, and the houses here were generally larger, the grounds of each place more spacious than closer to the hotel.

  Number 342 was one of only two houses in an entire block. A large, three-story white house with round columns guarding the front veranda and a cupola on top. It sat well back from the street shaded by magnolias and ancient oak trees, with a graveled drive leading up between a double row of neatly clipped hibiscus shrubs.

  There was a double garage to the right at the rear, and the drive circled in front underneath a porte-cochere where wide wooden steps led up to the veranda.

  Another car was parked directly in front of the steps, and Shayne pulled in behind it. It was a shabby Ford sedan.

  Shayne cut off his ignition and got out to circle around in front of the Ford and mount the steps. The sunlight was bright and there was almost complete country silence as he crossed the scrubbed porch boards and found an old-fashioned knocker on the front door.

  There was no electric push-button visible, so Shayne lifted and dropped the brass knocker a couple of times and waited.

  The door was opened onto a large center hall by a trim Mulatto maid who smiled pleasantly when he asked for Dr. Philbrick, and led him down the cool hall to a sparkling, modern reception room on the right.

  The room was empty. A sign beside the door said PLEASE RING BELL AND BE SEATED.

  Shayne rang the bell but perversely refused to obey the second instruction. There was a conventional long center table with neat stacks of popular magazines and medical journals, comfortable chrome and leather chairs ranged about the walls with smoking stands beside half a dozen of them. On the walls were etchings of hunting dogs, and several framed diplomas. Shayne was studying one of them which conveyed the reassuring information that Jay Philbrick had duly passed the proscribed courses in the Southern Medical College in the year 1932 and had been duly awarded the degree of Doctor of Medicine by that institution when he heard a side door open and turned to see a plump and red-haired nurse emerge in her starched white uniform. She was young and had smiling eyes, a pert nose and a saucy mouth. She tilted her head slightly on one side as she looked at him, and said, “Yes?” in a questioning, hopeful sort of way as though wondering what the devil he was doing there and hadn’t he maybe got in the wrong pew by mistake.