Stranger in Town ms-26

by Brett Halliday

  “Let’s finish up last night first. What happened to you?”

  “I got away from them. I saw my chance when you started fighting and Bill came running in to help Gene and the other one. He had stayed outside, you see. To keep me from running away. I was supposed to point you out and then turn and go out to Bill again. He had a car waiting and was going to take me away while Gene and Mule ‘took care’… that’s what they called it… of you.”

  “So you ran out?” Shayne prompted her. “What then?”

  “I didn’t know where I was. Not even what town I was in. I didn’t have a penny. I just ran up the street to get away. And I came to a little hotel sign with stairs leading up off the street, and I ran up. There was a dirty lobby and a really nice old clerk. I made up a story about being on a date and having a fight with a man and running away. And I offered him my wristwatch if he’d give me a room for the night. So he did. And I signed the first name I thought of, Marion Smith from Miami. And went to bed.”

  “And this morning you walked down the street and stopped at a restaurant where you saw a Help Wanted sign in the window, and applied for a job as waitress?” Shayne supplied for her.

  “Yes, I… I didn’t know what to do. I was hungry and desperate. You don’t know what an awful, desolate feeling it is.” Tears ran down her cheeks and she struggled to hold back her sobs. “I’m not anybody. I don’t know where to go or what to do. And with those men after me…”

  “Why didn’t you go to the police at once? That’s what they’re for.”

  “I was afraid to. I don’t know just why, but from things Gene and Bill said, I think they’re in with the police in Brockton. They didn’t seem a bit worried about any of the things they did. And that awful fat Chief of Police! I couldn’t bear facing him again.”

  “When did you meet Ollie Hanger?”

  “At the hospital. When Mr. Buttrell came to take me away. He was there with Doctor Philbrick. I was scared even then and felt there was something wrong. I just didn’t think he was my father. But he insisted that he was, and I was so dazed and frightened, and so happy to have somebody recognize me that I didn’t protest. But later, after Gene and Bill had me locked up, I thought about it a lot and it seemed to me Chief Hanger was awfully anxious to have me go with Mr. Buttrell. I don’t know. They didn’t say anything out loud, but I had the impression they knew each other and were sort of in it together. That’s why I was afraid to go to the police.”

  “You were probably smart,” Shayne told her somberly. “Before we go back any farther, tell me what happened after Mr. Buttrell took you away from the hospital?”

  “He was awfully kind. And fatherly, I guess, in an oily sort of way. He had a car waiting, a blue Buick sedan, and said we’d drive straight back to Miami to have my doctor examine me. And we drove out of Brockton and stopped at a drive-in place where he got a bottle of beer and a chocolate malted for me. I thought it tasted funny and sort of bitter, but I wanted it and drank it down. I began to feel dizzy and sleepy before we even drove away… and that’s all I remember. Until I waked up in that locked room all by myself, and I haven’t been out of it since, until last night.”

  Michael Shayne took a long drink of his diluted cognac and set the glass down firmly. “It’s all over now. You have nothing to be afraid of, and you’ll be home with your own father soon. You believe that, don’t you? You trust me?”

  She said, “Yes,” gladly and without hesitation. “Back in the restaurant when you said you were my brother, I had the strangest feeling of peace and happiness. I just didn’t know how you could be, but it came to me that maybe that was why I’d picked you out last night in the bar. And I wish you were my brother,” she added impulsively.

  Shayne acknowledged the undoubtedly sincere compliment with a grin. “Your name is Jean Henderson,” he told her slowly. “You live in Orlando with your father, Professor Henderson. You’re a student at Rollins College where he teaches. Does that bring anything back to you?”

  She knit her brow fiercely and put her fingers up to her eyes. He watched while her lips moved inaudibly, and he knew she was repeating the name to herself over and over again. When she looked up at him and shook her head, her face was blank, her eyes frantic with disappointment and fear again. “It just won’t come back. Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “It will,” Shayne told her cheerfully. “Stop trying so hard. Think about other things. It’s all there. Locked away in your subconscious mind. There’s just a physical block caused by your head injury between conscious memory and your unconscious. Let’s go back now to what you do remember. What is your first conscious memory?”

  “It was night and dark and I was alone stumbling down a strange road,” she said in a low monotone as though she had repeated it often before and the lines were memorized. “I had a dreadful headache and I was bruised all over and I didn’t know who I was or where I was or how I’d gotten there. I just didn’t… know. I kept walking and after a time a car came up behind me and it stopped when I waved and a man jumped out and asked me what was the matter? And I tried to explain to him how it was. And he was nice and didn’t ask many questions and helped me into the back seat and said I needed a doctor. And he drove on in the dark for what seemed a long time, and there were the lights of a town ahead and he said it was Brockton and he’d take me to the hospital and drop me off at the door, and he asked me to promise to let him drive away without being seen and not to tell anybody what he looked like or anything about him. And I promised, but I asked him why, and he said it would just ruin everything for him if his wife found out he was out in that direction that night because she thought he was somewhere else. And he sounded sad and frightened and I felt sorry for him and promised. Because he had been kind and stopped on the road to pick me up, and he stopped in front of the hospital and I got out and he drove off fast, and I waited until he was out of sight before I went in.”

  Shayne sat silent for a moment, considering her story. It sounded to him like the truth. But how did it tie up with the other bits of information he had gleaned? Her sister’s death in an auto accident in the same vicinity a month ago. Randolph Harris’ fatal accident the same night she had been hurt. The coincidence of her sister having been taken to the Brockton Sanitarium after her injury, and a man answering Harris’ description having asked directions to the Sanitarium a short time before he died.

  He emptied his glass and said quietly, “Lean back and relax, Jean. Shut your eyes and try to make your mind a complete blank. I’m going to mention some names. Don’t tussle with them. Don’t try to remember. Tell me if any of them evoke anything.”

  She nodded and wet her lips and settled back in the deep chair. She drew in a deep breath and closed her eyes, folded her hands in her lap.

  “First there’s your own name. Jean Henderson. That didn’t get us anywhere. Let’s try Jeanette. Jeanette Henderson. A sister, perhaps. A younger sister. Don’t bother to answer me unless something comes through. Randolph Harris.” He spoke the name distinctly and waited a moment. “A young lawyer, Jean. From your home-town of Orlando. Assistant to the State’s Attorney there.”

  He waited again but there was no flicker of response on the girl’s face.

  “The Larches who live in Apalachicola and have a sailboat. Mr. and Mrs. Roy Larch. They have a daughter about your age, Jean. I don’t know her name but you are assumed to be on a cruise on the Gulf with the Larch family now. Lois Dongan,” he went on slowly when there was still no response from Jean. “Your younger sister’s best friend. Also a student at Rollins. Will Lomax. Another friend of your sister’s. The Brockton Sanitarium, Jean. Not the hospital you were taken to. The Sanitarium.”

  Her eyelids flew open and she sat up, her face showing excitement and hope. “It was there! I almost had it. I know it was there. Something dreadful, it seemed. Something so dreadful my mind just closed down and refused to admit it. The Brockton Sanitarium! What is it? What should I know about it?”

  Shayne stu
died her tortured young face gravely, reminding himself that he knew nothing whatever about psychiatry, and this fooling around with a human mind might be dangerous as hell. But there was a fierce urgency within him to get on with it. Hardly more than an hour before, he had seen another girl gunned down in broad daylight in front of his eyes because she had been with him and was wearing Jean Henderson’s distinctive dress.

  He set his teeth together hard and said, “For one thing, Jean, the Brockton Sanitarium is where your younger sister, Jeanette, died last month after an automobile accident.”

  Her face went white and she shrank back in the chair from the impact of his words. “My… sister… died there?” she said weakly: “Oh, God! If I only could remember. If I could only remember something. I think I’ll die if I don’t. I can’t go on living this way! Don’t you see that I can’t?” Little bubbles of spittle showed on her lips as her voice rose in hysterical shrillness. Her eyes were round and glazed and she beat her clenched fists impotently on the upholstered arms of her chair.

  Shayne was on his knees beside her instantly, cursing himself for a blundering fool while he caught both her hands in a grip tight enough to cause physical pain.

  “Stop it, Jean!” His voice was harsh and commanding. “Stop it and listen to me. I’m not going back any more. Not yet. Not until you’re ready. We’re going to talk about the last few days. About Gene and Bill and the room where you were kept prisoner.”

  She quieted gradually, and the glazed look went away from her eyes. “I’m sorry. But I wish you’d tell me who you are and how you know all these things.” Shayne released her hands and stood up to look down on her broodingly. “I should have told you sooner. I’m a private detective from Miami. My name is Michael Shayne, and many years ago I was married to a girl whom you remind me of very much. I got pulled into this situation by sheer accident last night when you selected me in the bar as a recipient for Gene’s attentions rather than the man you were supposed to betray. I’m not sore about that,” he added quietly. “It was an honest impulse on your part to protect a man who had been kind to you, and I’m glad you picked me for the scapegoat even if it was pure accident.

  “Not knowing why I was attacked last night, I’ve been digging into things all day, and I soon learned that you weren’t Amy Buttrell at all. I’m convinced now that the man who called himself Mr. Buttrell and pretended to identify you was just a tool used by Gene to get you away from the hospital before your own father came to take you home. I talked to Professor Henderson this afternoon, Jean. He’s a hell of a nice guy, and you’re a lucky girl to have him for a father. As soon as this mess is cleared up and you’re in your own home in familiar surroundings, your memory will return all right. Stop worrying about it. This is a perfectly normal course for an amnesia case such as yours to take.” He wondered if this were true as he spoke, and hoped to God it was. At least, he was rewarded by a tinge of color in her pallid cheeks and an expression of trust in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry I went to pieces for a moment. All right, Mr. Shayne, what can I do to help… other than making my mind remember things it refuses to remember?”

  Shayne went back to his chair and sat down heavily. “Right at this point, there’s only one thing in your story that I question. The fact that Gene didn’t know who I was when he assaulted me last night. You see, there was a man waiting for me to show up at my office in Miami this morning who seems to have some connection…”

  “My God!” He sat up suddenly with an expression of fierce disgust on his lined face. “How dumb can a man get? Of course. My wallet last night. When Gene made Mule put it back in my pocket in the car. They wanted it to look like a straight hit-run accident. But it told them who I was. And when I got away, Gene thought I’d head straight for Miami… and he still thought I was the man who’d rescued you previously. Because you had identified me as that man for him. So he sent someone, maybe Bill, to finish off the job he and Mule had bungled.”

  Listening to him with a puzzled frown, Jean asked timidly, “Does it help? What you just said.”

  “It puts me back on the right track. Our job right now, Jean, is to figure out why you were dangerous to them; why they went to the trouble to snatch you from the hospital and keep you prisoner for several days.” He sprang to his feet and began to stride back and forth across the room in front of her. “The obvious answer is something that occurred before you lost your memory. Something that someone can’t afford to let you remember. Your attack of amnesia was okay, but they couldn’t trust it to last forever. In fact, Dr. Philbrick stated plainly in the paper that you should recover your memory quickly once you were home among familiar surroundings and faces. And they evidently could not allow that to happen. So Buttrell came in to the picture. That much seems fairly clear. But what about the stranger who picked you up in his car that night? Why is he important in the picture? Why were they prepared to kill him out-of-hand last night as soon as they thought you had showed them the right man?” He stopped in the midst of his stride and his theorizing to glare down questioningly at Jean.

  “I don’t know,” she responded helplessly. “They’ve been after me for days to identify him for them. From the way they acted, I knew it was terribly important for them to find him. They kept asking me questions about him and threatening me when I told them over and over again that I just had one good look at his face and didn’t recall a single distinguishing feature. I didn’t tell them any of the things he told me in the car either,” she added firmly. “Not even that he lived in Brockton or anything like that that might have helped them find out who he was.”

  Shayne drew in a deep breath and turned away from her to pick up his empty glass and pour a very moderate drink of straight cognac in the bottom of it. He sank back into his chair and said, “That’s where we’ll pick up the pieces, Jean. Start back from the moment his car stopped beside you on the highway. Tell me every word he said, every tiny detail you can remember until he drove away in the night leaving you in front of the hospital.”

  18

  “I’ll do the very best I can,” Jean Henderson promised him solemnly. “But it’s all sort of blurred, particularly at the beginning. I was in a state of shock, I guess. I didn’t know how I’d got there on the strange road at night. I didn’t know who I was or…”

  “And then a car came down the road from behind you and stopped,” Shayne put in to get her on the track he wanted. “Did you signal the driver to stop?”

  “I… don’t know,” she faltered. “Probably I did. At least I stopped on the side of the road and turned to look at the headlights. And he slowed down and stopped right beside me and jumped out on the other side and came around behind and caught my arm just as I seemed about to faint. And I went all to pieces. Hysterical and crying like a baby and asking him who I was and how I got there. And he was awfully gentle and had a soft soothing voice. I remember he kept saying, ‘There, there, you poor lamb. Don’t take on so, dear child,’ just as if I were about twelve instead of nineteen. And when he finally understood I had hurt my head and lost my memory, he didn’t waste time with any more questions, but said right off, ‘We’ll have to get you right to a doctor, child. No doubt your loved ones are badly worried about your whereabouts this very moment,’ and he helped me into the back of the car and told me to lie back and relax and he would take care of me.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “I don’t know. A sedan. It ran smoothly and the motor was quiet. He drove quite slowly. I don’t know whether it was ten minutes or an hour, but it seemed a long time to me. He spoke back over his shoulder to me half a dozen times without turning his head, worried about how I felt and whether I was comfortable. And then when the town lights showed ahead, he slowed down some more and began talking real fast, explaining that he did want to do what was right, and his conscience just wouldn’t let him pass me up on the road back there even though he hadn’t wanted to because it might get him in a lot of trouble if it ever came out that he was the
one brought me to the hospital.

  “I didn’t know what he meant by it at first. It just didn’t make sense. And then he hinted very delicately-because he thought I was too young to understand about adultery I guess-that he had been visiting a lady friend that night. Well, that’s exactly what he called her,” she protested in response to Shayne’s amused look.

  “And that his wife thought he was tending to a business matter in another direction entirely, and if she ever found out the truth that it just wouldn’t be possible to live with her any more.”

  “He didn’t tell you the name of his lady friend or anything helpful like that?”

  “No, but he kept on talking sorrowfully about what a burden it was to be married to a woman whom he didn’t respect or love, and how wonderful it would be to be free again-feeling awfully sorry for himself, you know, and explaining it all to me so I’d understand why he wanted to drop me off in front of the hospital and drive away before he was seen.

  “And he kept on about it so much that I asked him why he stayed married to her if it was so terrible, and he told me I was too young to understand. First he quoted from the Bible or marriage service about people whom God had joined together no man should put asunder and it sort of disgusted me because I just don’t believe in that sort of… You know what?” she broke off suddenly, sitting erect and alert.