Blood on the Stars ms-15

by Brett Halliday

  Chapter Nine

  TWO MINUTES FOR QUESTIONS

  Shayne sprang from the bed and switched on the light, caught Lucy’s limp wrist to feel for her pulse. He first thought there wasn’t any, and his blunt finger tip moved frenziedly around the spot where it had to be. He cursed himself for sitting outside drinking cognac and talking with Rourke while Lucy lay on the bed possibly with the life ebbing out of her.

  Then he felt a faint beat, regular and reassuring, but scarcely discernible under his touch.

  Racing to the telephone, he called the switchboard and asked for the house physician’s apartment. It seemed hours before the doctor in 482 answered.

  “Mike Shayne-in three-oh-six,” he said rapidly. “I need you fast. Don’t bother to dress. An accident-emergency.”

  “I’m already dressed,” said Dr. Price peevishly. “I’ll be right down.”

  Shayne was still barefooted, but he had got into his underwear and pants when he heard the elevator stop down the hall and brisk footsteps coming toward his door. He had the door open before the doctor reached it, caught him urgently by the arm and pulled him toward the bedroom, explaining swiftly:

  “It’s my secretary. Back of her head is smashed, but I felt a pulse.” He held up his bloody finger that had touched Lucy’s hair. “I don’t know how long ago. I’ve been out all evening. She was here alone.”

  Dr. Price was a bald-headed, dried-up little man with gentle blue eyes and a white goatee. He was fully dressed, except for coat and tie. He took in Shayne’s condition of partial undress and his explanation of the emergency with an expression of complete disinterest as he examined the patient.

  “Hot water,” Dr. Price said. “A large container. Be sure it boils.”

  Shayne whirled and trotted to the kitchen. He ran water from the faucet into a half-gallon boiler, the largest vessel the small kitchenette afforded, set it on the gas flame, then went back to stand in the bedroom doorway again.

  Dr. Price had the blood wiped away and the brown hair parted to reveal an ugly wound just at the base of Lucy’s skull when Shayne returned. He was probing carefully, and without lifting his head said, “Concussion. Not dangerous, but quite serious.”

  “How long ago, Doc?”

  “Half an hour, maybe. Watch that kettle and bring it in as soon as it boils. You can’t help by standing there gawking. And call my nurse in six-seventeen. I’ll need her in a few minutes.”

  Shayne stopped at the telephone and called the nurse. She answered sleepily, but promised to come down at once. The kettle was boiling when he went back into the kitchen. He carried it into the bedroom and asked the doctor whether there was anything else he could do.

  “A clean towel and washrag,” the doctor ordered.

  Shayne sprinted into the bathroom and took a wash-rag, three linen face towels, and a large bath towel from the cabinet and raced to the bedroom with them, then went into the living-room with his shoes and shirt in his hand and put them on.

  Pacing the room and tugging at his earlobe, he worried his mind for some clue as to what could have happened to Lucy. She was wearing a nightgown and a robe. Why were her bedroom slippers lying on the living-room floor instead of beside the bed, which would be the normal place for them to be? She had promised to wait in his apartment until he returned. Evidently she had gone to her room, undressed and made herself comfortable in the gown and robe and slippers, then returned to his living-room to wait for him. When he was so late coming home, maybe she had become anxious and decided to rest on his bed instead of going back to her own room so that she would know the minute he returned and find out whether anything had happened to him.

  Miss Naylor’s knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. She was tall and austere-appearing without any make-up and with night cream still smeared on her face. Her hair was done up in metal curlers, but she wore a clean starched uniform and seemed completely self-possessed, competent, and unaware of her personal appearance.

  Shayne took her to the bedroom. She went in and firmly closed the door. For a moment he glared at the door, then resumed his pacing.

  Half an hour ago, Dr. Price had said. He himself had been in the apartment almost that long before going into the bedroom. He didn’t let himself think that things might have been different if he had gone directly to the bedroom when he saw her slippers on the floor. It was a sign he was getting old. Ten years ago he wouldn’t have fooled around with cigarettes and a drink under such conditions.

  The door to the apartment had been unlocked, he recalled. Perhaps she had thought of something she wanted to get from her own room while she waited for him, had gone out and left the door on the latch. She didn’t have a key to the door. But why would she have gone into the bedroom, gone to bed, without locking the door?

  The agony of trying to think without anything to begin with, with absolutely nothing that could give him any intimation of what had happened, was exhausting. He sank into a chair by the table. He poured half a water-glass of cognac and began sipping it slowly. He looked around the apartment with narrowed and speculative eyes. He knew every inch of it, every article of furniture and the exact position occupied by each one. He couldn’t see anything out of place-nothing whatsoever to indicate where the attack on Lucy had occurred.

  Anger rolled over him like a tidal wave as he began to realize the actual import of what had occurred. Someone had come here, brutally slugged an innocent girl, and then walked calmly out again. And he, by God, was sitting around like a fool, straining his ears for a sound, a significant word, from the closed bedroom, and not doing one damned thing about what had happened.

  He got up and stalked to the telephone, got police headquarters, and asked for Sergeant Harvey, who was in charge of the homicide squad.

  “Speaking,” Sergeant Harvey said.

  “Mike Shayne. There’s been an attempted murder in my apartment. Murder-maybe.”

  “Which was it? Make up your mind.”

  “The doctor will have to tell us that.” Shayne’s voice was edged with anger. “You got anybody around there sober enough to come over and dust for fingerprints-or is that too much trouble?”

  “Keep your pants on,” said the sergeant wearily. “We’ll be right over. Who is it?”

  “My secretary,” said Shayne shortly. “Miss Lucy Hamilton. I wish you’d bring Robertson if he’s on duty.” He hung up and again let his eyes roam slowly over every inch of the room, then strode out to the kitchen and tried the door leading onto the fire escape. It was locked, and the key hung in its accustomed place.

  Back in the living-room, he got the night clerk on the wire. The man asked anxiously, “What’s the trouble, Mr. Shayne? Someone hurt up there?”

  “My secretary. I’m afraid she’s pretty badly hurt, Jim. Was there anyone asking to see me this evening?”

  “Not a soul, Mr. Shayne. I haven’t seen Miss Hamilton go out or come in, either.”

  “She didn’t,” Shayne told him. “We had dinner here, and she waited for me when I went out. Notice anything particular about anyone coming in or out of the hotel while I was gone?”

  After a brief silence, the night clerk said, “Not a thing, Mr. Shayne. Mostly just the regulars. I’ll ask the elevator boy if you want.”

  “I’ll talk to him myself. The cops are on their way over, Jim. Send them right up, will you?” He hung up and went to the closed bedroom door and bent his head to listen through the keyhole. He could hear the low murmuring of voices, but could distinguish no words.

  He left the entrance door open when he went down the corridor to the elevator. When it stopped in response to his ring the door opened, the Negro boy asked excitedly,

  “What’s up, Mist’ Shayne? You all right? When I brung Doctor Price down-”

  “I’m all right. It’s Miss Hamilton. She was slugged in my apartment while I was out. Did you bring any strangers up here tonight? Anybody who asked for my room?”

  “Nobody that ast for you. No-suh. Coupla stranger
s, maybe. Nobody I noticed a-tall.”

  “Any friends of mine, then,” said Shayne sharply. “Anybody you may have seen around here with me before.”

  “Nobody ’cept that newspaper man. The long thin un-”

  “He came after I was back.”

  “Thass right. He sho did.” The elevator buzzer sounded. “I’se got somebody waitin’ at the bottom,” the boy said.

  Shayne nodded and went slowly back to his open door. The elevator returned to the third floor and stopped before he had entered. He turned to see Sergeant Harvey and two of his men get off and come toward him. They greeted Shayne with grave cordiality when he invited them in.

  “Well-let’s have it,” said Sergeant Harvey.

  Shayne explained briefly what had happened to Lucy Hamilton, ending with: “Doctor Price and his nurse are in there with her now. I hope she’ll be able to tell us what happened.”

  “You say she was dressed for bed?” the sergeant asked delicately.

  “It looks as though she had gone to her room and gotten ready for bed and then came back here for something-perhaps a book to read, or a magazine,” Shayne explained. “Or maybe she saw someone coming in my door and suddenly remembered she had left it unlatched, and hurried down here to put him out.”

  “You think she was attacked in here-or in the bedroom?”

  “We’ll have to get that from the doctor. I didn’t waste any time looking around the bedroom after I found her like that. It’s my impression, though, that there’d be blood on the floor if she was attacked in here.”

  “Might as well go over the whole place for fingerprints, Richardson,” the sergeant said to the younger member of the trio. “What’ll be legitimate besides yours, Mike?”

  “Lucy’s-she cooked dinner in here, as I told you. And Tim Rourke’s. No one else has been here the last few days except the maid who cleaned thoroughly yesterday.”

  The sergeant nodded thoughtfully. “Sure you’re not leaving anything out, Mike? Sure you didn’t know she’d be waiting for you like that when you got here?”

  “Slugged?” Shayne’s tone was outraged. “You think I knew she was lying in there slugged and didn’t call the doctor for half an hour?”

  “Don’t get sore, Mike. I’m figuring all the angles. Seems funny your horsing around in here with Rourke when maybe calling the doc earlier would have-”

  Shayne got to his feet slowly, his big hands flexed. “Go on. Say it out loud, you liver-hearted bastard.”

  “What the sarge means,” said Richardson, “is that you must’ve known she wasn’t in good shape or you’d have been in there a lot faster.”

  Shayne whirled on the fingerprint man, but Harvey’s voice brought him back to a sense of proportion. “Don’t be like a kid, Shayne. You’ve ribbed enough other guys in your time to take a little of it yourself.”

  “One more crack about my secretary and I’ll tear you limb from limb,” Shayne growled.

  “You got to admit that lump on your jaw isn’t more than a few hours old,” Sergeant Harvey said. “You’re not leveling with us, Mike.”

  Shayne stood very still and his hands slowly unclenched. “Yeh,” he muttered. “I know the whole thing sounds screwy as hell. But I gave you the story straight.” He sank back and lit a cigarette.

  Since finding Lucy on the bed slugged, he had wholly forgot his own disfigurement. Now he realized how things must look to the police.

  “I got tight over on the Beach,” Shayne resumed, “and rammed a concrete culvert on Delaware Road about midnight and got this. You can check that with a Beach cop named Rawson. He found me passed out under the wheel, and my car’s in the hotel garage banged up right now.”

  “What’re you working on now?” Harvey asked.

  “I’m not. I haven’t decided whether to settle down in Miami again or not. I’m sort of on vacation.”

  “For a guy who’s on vacation,” said the homicide man who stood beside the sergeant, “you’ve been sticking your nose into plenty of stuff the last few months. There was that deal Rourke was mixed in, and then the two stiffs in the Bay, and then just last week the Deland kidnap mess. And I heard down at headquarters that Painter was pulling you in tonight on the jewel theft at the Sunlux.”

  “He’d like to tie me in on that,” Shayne snorted.

  “There’ll be a nice reward for the man who gets his hands on those rubies,” Harvey commented placidly.

  Shayne nodded. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t turn a deal if they dropped in my lap.” He sprang to his feet as the bedroom door opened and Dr. Price came out.

  “She’ll pull through, I trust.” The doctor closed the door. “Concussion, all right. She’s still unconscious, but her pulse is stronger and I anticipate she’ll come out of it in fifteen or twenty minutes now.”

  “Enough to be questioned?” asked the sergeant.

  The physician frowned. “I don’t advise it. She must have absolute quiet. Recovery depends on mental as well as physical calm. Miss Naylor is preparing a hypodermic and watching her condition closely. I’ve instructed her to inject a strong sedative the moment she shows signs of returning consciousness.”

  “If you want Lucy Hamilton to feel mentally at ease, you’ll let her answer a couple of questions before you put her out again, Doc,” Shayne told him strongly.

  Dr. Price tugged at his goatee and studied the detective thoughtfully. They had known and respected each other a long time, though there were no close bonds between them. “It might not upset her so much if you asked her a couple of questions in strict privacy,” he offered after a moment. “But I wouldn’t advise-”

  “You don’t quite get it, Doc,” Shayne said. “These cops think maybe I conked her. If they don’t hear the words from her, they’ll never believe I didn’t.”

  The doctor’s expression cleared. “I see. You mean to say you don’t mind them hearing anything she may say?”

  Shayne tugged at his earlobe and said softly, “I’ll be damned, Doc. I believe you were trying to cover up for me. Do you think I slugged her?”

  “I confess the possibility did enter my mind,” said the doctor with dignity. “I find a young lady in night clothes in your bed, a pistol on the floor where she appears to have dropped it, and every indication that she was pushed or slapped and tripped on the carpet, falling backward and striking her head on the radiator.”

  “Wait a minute.” Shayne advanced on him, his gray eyes glinting. “You say there’s a gun on the bedroom floor? And Lucy fell against the radiator after being shoved or slapped?”

  “I am not a detective,” said the doctor dryly, “but that is what I infer from the nature of her wound and the bloodstains on the radiator. Naturally, I assumed you either knew what had taken place or had drawn the same obvious deduction as I.”

  Shayne said, “I didn’t take time to look at anything in the bedroom. You got here so fast I didn’t even have time to go back in there to do any deducing.”

  “Lucky I was dressed and could come at once. Another ten minutes might have been too late. If it hadn’t been for some practical joker, the young lady might have been dead by now.”

  “What’s this about a practical joker,” asked Sergeant Harvey.

  “Some fool who called me about twelve-thirty and got me out of bed and a sound sleep. He insisted there was an emergency in apartment six-oh-three, and I got dressed and hurried up there. I confess I was annoyed when I found the place dark and rang the bell several times before I got an answer. Though not so annoyed,” he went on with a faint chuckle, “as the man who finally answered the door bell. He insisted there was no emergency in that apartment and that he definitely had not telephoned for a physician. He was quite rude about refusing me entrance, and finally suggested we were both the victims of a practical joker. He gave the impression,” the doctor concluded sedately, “that it would be distinctly embarrassing for the lady occupying the apartment with him if I were to enter.”

  “What kind of a joint is this?�
� demanded Sergeant Harvey of Shayne.

  Shayne disregarded the sergeant’s coarse humor. He asked Dr. Price, “Do you honestly believe it might injure Miss Hamilton to answer just a couple of questions?”

  “Probably not,” said the doctor frankly. “But I warn you she must talk very little and must not be excited. If she regains consciousness shortly, as I anticipate, I will withhold the injection until the moment she is able to talk. It will take possibly two minutes to take effect, and during those two minutes you may ask her any questions necessary.”

  Miss Naylor appeared in the doorway as he finished speaking and said quietly, “She’s on the verge of consciousness, Doctor. Shall I give her the injection now?”

  Chapter Ten

  A SPECIAL SORT OF CASE

  “I want to allow her about two minutes of full consciousness, Miss Naylor,” Dr. Price told his nurse. “Give her the injection the moment she is able to talk.”

  The nurse went back into the bedroom and Shayne hurried to the door, followed by two of the police officers. Miss Naylor was seated beside the bed with Lucy’s wrist in one hand, the hypodermic ready on a tray beside her. Lucy’s head was bandaged and her eyes were closed. Her face was waxen white, but her features were composed and she appeared to be breathing normally.

  Shayne moved inside the room to make way for Sergeant Harvey and Wentworth, his fellow police officer, and pointed to the corrugated wooden grip of an automatic showing from beneath the bed.

  “There’s the pistol the doctor mentioned. It looks like a Colt. 38 and is probably mine. I keep it in the top drawer of the dresser in here.” He was walking to the bureau as he spoke, opened the drawer and turned back with a nod. “My gun isn’t here.”

  Harvey was kneeling beside the bed. He slipped a pencil through the trigger-guard of the pistol and got up with it dangling by the guard. He sniffed at the muzzle and said, “It’s a Colt. 38. Hasn’t been fired. Did you or the nurse touch it, Doc?”