Blood on the Stars ms-15

by Brett Halliday

“I don’t see how you can believe a thing like that of me,” Randolph said, genuinely hurt. “Every word I’ve told you is the truth.”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure there’s a word of truth in any of it,” growled Shayne. “You’ve had plenty of time to fix up a plausible story. If you are telling the truth and didn’t have any reason for feeling guilty about Lucy, why did you deny it so vehemently until she identified you?”

  Randolph shuddered and said in a low voice, “Because of Mrs. Dustin. I didn’t know how much of the telephone conversation this girl had overheard. If she knew it was I who went over to meet Mrs. Dustin outside the hotel-” He lost control of his voice for a moment.

  Dr. Price returned to the sick room and came back with his bag. “I’ve arranged for a relief for Miss Naylor at noon. Miss Hamilton is going to be all right with rest and the proper attention.”

  Shayne thanked him, and he went out. Randolph nervously resumed his story:

  “You see, I did keep that appointment with Mrs. Dustin. But it was too late, Mike. Someone else had kept the appointment before me. She was dead. Lying on the sand at the edge of the water right beside the bathing-pier.”

  “So you left her like that, too. Without giving an alarm.”

  “She was dead. I took time to make sure of that. An alarm wouldn’t do her any good. Look at my position again,” pleaded Randolph. Sweat popped out on his face anew and ran in little rivulets down his chin. “She’d been killed very recently. The blood was still fresh. I supposed the doctor was with Miss Hamilton already. I didn’t know but what she had revived and told her story. The police might already be on their way to the Sunlux to intercept me. And there I was with a corpse at my feet. Would anyone have believed my story?”

  “Probably not. No more than I believe it now.”

  “There you are. My one thought was to get away from there fast. Put yourself in my place, Mike. It might have been you who kept that appointment with Mrs. Dustin if you’d been here to answer your phone. As I said, I wasn’t sure how much the girl here had heard. I wasn’t sure she got a good enough look to identify me. Don’t you see how I was caught in a net of circumstantial evidence? I couldn’t help Mrs. Dustin any by letting myself be arrested. I hurried home and dug out those papers from my files and spread them around to give the impression that I’d been working on them all evening in case anyone dropped in-as you did.”

  Shayne nodded. “Leaving the windows closed so the room would fill up fast with smoke.” He got up and poured himself a drink of cognac. “Now that you’ve got that off your chest, suppose you tell me the truth,” he added casually.

  “Don’t you believe me?” Randolph asked in alarm.

  “It’s too pat. Everything fits too damned well.”

  “I can’t help that. It’s what happened.” Randolph’s tone was flat and final.

  “Maybe,” said Shayne unemotionally, “and maybe not. It leaves too many things unanswered. If you didn’t kill her, who in the name of God did?”

  “One of the jewel thieves,” suggested Randolph. “They knew she’d called you and was going down to meet you. They got there first to keep her from telling whatever it was she knew.”

  Shayne shook his head. “The big trouble with your story is that you have no witness to verify what you claim Mrs. Dustin said over the telephone. So far as we know, she may have said, ‘Mr. Shayne, I’ve found proof that the insurance man was behind that hold-up. I’m afraid to tell my husband because of what he might do in his present condition, but I’ll slip down and give you what proof I have while he’s asleep.’ Something like that would explain your desperate haste to get over there to silence her.”

  “Do you seriously suspect me of complicity in those thefts, Shayne?”

  “I don’t know. There’s some common denominator tying them all up in one bundle. Can you think of any good reason why I shouldn’t suspect you?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t,” Randolph confessed wearily. “I’ve thought about it until I’m going crazy. You can understand now why I was afraid to stay over there with Mrs. Dustin’s corpse and tell my story.”

  “If you’d killed her, your reason for keeping your mouth shut is even more apparent.”

  “That’s true,” said Randolph hopelessly. Shayne got up and began to pace the floor. Randolph rested his head on the back of the couch and closed his eyes against the grim features of the tall figure pacing the floor.

  After a long silence, Randolph asked, “What are you going to do, Mike? If you turn me over to the police, I’m sunk. They’ll tie Mrs. Dustin’s murder around my neck in a knot I’ll never get untied.”

  “And if I don’t turn you in,” said Shayne harshly, “I’ll be handing you a chance to make a clean getaway.”

  “Let me make a deal with you,” begged Randolph.

  “I don’t make deals with a murderer-or anyone who may be a murderer.”

  “Let me say what I was going to. You’ve indicated that you think you know where to put your hands on the bracelet. That’s damned important to me-and to my company. Do you want to throw away a fat fee?”

  “No one ever accused me of not wanting money,” Shayne retorted.

  “Here’s your chance to grab some, then. Give me an opportunity to contact my company and get authorization to offer the customary twenty percent. That’ll amount to thirty-six thousand. Pay what you have to for return of the bracelet. I don’t care how much. The rest of the thirty-six grand goes into your pocket. Is that fair enough?”

  “What do you want from me if I agree?”

  “Your promise not to turn me in. At least not right away. You’re the only one who knows this horrible net of circumstances I got mixed up in. If you have me arrested now, I’ll never be able to fix up a reward deal-not from behind bars while I’m accused of murder.”

  The telephone rang. Shayne stalked to it and lifted the receiver, said, “Mike Shayne.”

  A voice said, “This is last call for bids on a ruby bracelet.”

  Shayne tugged at his earlobe. He glanced aside at Earl Randolph, grimaced, and said, “Twenty grand.”

  A chuckle came over the wire. “Get wise, shamus. We know twenty percent is regular.”

  “There’s got to be something in it for me.”

  “Why not? Say six grand to you. That’s good pocket money.” The voice became harsher. “Thirty grand. In cash on the line. Today.”

  “Wait a minute. I’ll check and see-”

  “If you can trace this call?” the voice broke in sarcastically. “Don’t waste your time. I’ll call back in fifteen minutes. Have an answer ready then.” There was a click at the other end of the wire.

  Shayne hung up and told Randolph flatly, “That was it. We can deal for thirty thousand.”

  “That leaves six for you.” Randolph’s voice was trembling. “If you leave me free to make the arrangements. That’s not much, I know, but I’ll add ten grand of my own. Give me a break, Mike. I swear I’m not guilty, but I can’t afford such a charge against me. Even if I do beat the rap, my reputation will be shot to hell.”

  Shayne crossed the room and poured himself a small drink. He sipped it reflectively, then went into the bedroom, leaving the door open. Lucy Hamilton was asleep again, and Miss Naylor was playing solitaire with the cards spread out on the empty side of the bed.

  Shayne stood looking down at the injured girl with a queer expression on his gaunt features. A look of tortured indecision. Miss Naylor glanced up at him and said quietly, “Doctor says she is out of danger. I imagine she can be moved to a hospital tonight.”

  “Why can’t she stay here?”

  Miss Naylor slapped a red queen on a black king. “I thought it would be a lot of bother to you.”

  Shayne said, “She isn’t any bother to me.” He went back into the living-room and asked Earl Randolph gruffly, “How long will it take you to get authorization and possession of the cash?”

  “A few hours,” Randolph told him eagerly. “Say two o’clock t
his afternoon.”

  “I’ll need some cash to pay my secretary’s doctor and nurse bills. Get out of here and be back at two o’clock sharp with the thirty grand in old twenties. I’ll take my sixteen grand in thousands, if you don’t mind.”

  Randolph bounded to his feet. “God, Shayne. You don’t know how I feel about this.”

  “Don’t think you’re buying immunity with ten thousand lousy dollars,” Shayne said savagely, “after half-killing my secretary. All bets are off if she has a relapse.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  SOMEBODY PULLS A FAST ONE

  At one-thirty that afternoon, Michael Shayne and Timothy Rourke were in Rourke’s office in the News Tower. For the last half-hour they had been going over the telegraphic and telephoned reports from three operatives of the Worldwide Detective Agency in New York, Ohio, and Colorado.

  Shayne shoved the mass of data aside and scowled angrily across the desk at the reporter. “It all adds up to nothing,” he growled. “Not a lead worth a damn on any of the three. I can’t get over King and Kendrick completely vanishing from sight almost immediately after collecting their insurance money. No trace of their bodies, even. And it doesn’t appear that anyone made any effort to trace them.”

  “That’s not too extraordinary,” Rourke pointed out. “Take James T. King. He broke all his home ties with friends and relatives after inheriting that unexpected wad of dough. He simply shook the dust of Ohio off his feet and started out to have himself a hell of a time. He and his wife went high-hat and deliberately cut themselves off from their old life. They could be right here in Miami today and we wouldn’t know it.”

  “All right for Mr. and Mrs. King,” Shayne agreed. “Roland Kendrick wasn’t a poor man suddenly made rich. All these reports from New York indicate that he had plenty of jack and was used to spending it. Men like that don’t deliberately cut themselves off from everything just because they collect on an insurance policy. Neither one of them made any profit on the ruby deals.”

  “There are some explanatory angles in the Kendrick case, too,” Rourke insisted. “Don’t forget that Mrs. Kendrick was murdered in the hold-up. And all those people contacted in New York and Westchester County appear to have been more casual acquaintances than real friends. None of them knew the Kendricks more than two years. If we could find out where they came from, what their past history was, I imagine we could put our hands on Kendrick without any difficulty.”

  “If,” Shayne echoed morosely. “They seem to have popped up suddenly as though they’d both crawled, full-grown, from under a flat rock.”

  “When people have as much money to spend as they did, no one bothers much about their antecedents,” Rourke observed sagely. “Like the Dustins.”

  “I was thinking about those reports from Denver,” Shayne said. “If he were to disappear today, we’d be up the same tree we are in trying to trace Kendrick. None of their friends in Denver seem to know much about their past, either. Why? It’s one more odd coincidence that doesn’t hook up.”

  “Not so odd about a mining operator like Dustin,” Rourke soothed him. “They move around a lot. Foreign countries and all that.”

  Shayne shuffled the papers on Rourke’s desk and glared at them. “It’s almost as if both Kendrick and Dustin were intentionally hiding their pasts. That could be more than mere coincidence.”

  “Still, I don’t see what it gets us. Mark Dustin hasn’t disappeared yet, and King, who did disappear, certainly led a blameless life until his lucky break in inheriting money.”

  “If we can trace the California lawyer who handled the estate of his uncle, we might get a line on King,” Shayne grumbled. He looked at his watch. “It’s time Mathews called in from Los Angeles.”

  The telephone rang as he finished speaking. Shayne said, when the operator reported, “Put him on,” and nodded to Rourke. He settled back in his chair. “Mike Shayne at this end, Mathews. Had any luck tracing King’s attorney or the uncle who died?”

  A frown gathered between his rugged red brows as he listened to the West Coast operative give his report. After a time, he said curtly, “Keep on trying there. I’ll make one more attempt to pick up something at the other end and call you back if I get a lead.”

  He hung up and said to Rourke, “Mathews isn’t having any luck at all. Nothing in the nineteen forty-three newspapers and nothing in the Los Angeles court records.”

  “We’re not sure it was Los Angeles,” Rourke reminded him. “That was just the impression of some of his Massillon friends, and you know how people are. Mention California and they immediately think of Los Angeles. It ain’t necessarily so.”

  Shayne nodded weary acquiescence. He lifted the phone, got long distance, and asked for a number in Massillon, Ohio. When he was connected, he said, “Mike Shayne in Miami again, Perkins. This is the last time I’ll come back at you, but we’re still unable to trace that California inheritance of King’s. I wonder if-”

  He stopped talking, and as he listened, his expression slowly relaxed. “Good!” he exclaimed after a time. “Good work. I certainly would like to speak to him personally.” He waited, covering the mouthpiece with his hand and told Rourke, “This is our first real break. Perkins has dug up a next-door neighbor who met the lawyer and heard him discussing the estate with King in forty-three.”

  Shayne jerked his hand from the mouthpiece. “Hello. Mr. Klinger? I see. Hank Klinger. I guess you know what we want, Klinger. That’s right. You think his name was either Norwood or Northcott. The lawyer? Right. The name of the uncle? I see. But you’re fairly positive it was Los Angeles. Not San Francisco or Sacramento or San Diego. That’s something. What sort of a man was the lawyer? Could you describe him-I mean how did he impress you at the time? A shyster or-?”

  Shayne’s voice fell. “I understand, Mr. Klinger. I think you may have been a great help and I certainly appreciate your co-operation.” He hung up and was moodily silent for a time.

  Rourke said, “For God’s sake, Mike,” impatiently.

  Shayne shook his head. “He’s not positive of very much except to swear it was Los Angeles. He remembers the Kings getting ready for the trip out there to claim the estate. The attorney advanced them cash to make the trip-and he and his wife distinctly remember Mrs. King being excited about seeing Hollywood and all the movie stars.

  “The lawyer, Norwood or Northcott or something like that, made quite an impression on Klinger. He remembers him well. Nothing of the shyster about him. A big, quiet, conservative man. The kind to inspire confidence. German extraction, perhaps. Spoke with a trace of an accent, but says he spoke impeccable English.”

  “Are you going to call Mathews again?” asked Rourke eagerly, “and have him start checking every law office in Los Angeles with that description.”

  Shayne shook his head. “I think I’d better call Mathews and tell him not to waste any more time or money out there.” He looked at his watch again, pushed back his chair and got up decisively. “And call the rest of them off, too. I’m becoming more and more convinced the answer to this thing lies right here in Miami and not in New York, Ohio, or California.”

  “Where you going?” Rourke demanded.

  “I’ve got a date with a couple of guys who may put me on the right track.”

  Shayne got as far as the door before turning back to say, “Why don’t you and Voorland meet me in Dustin’s suite at the Sunlux at three o’clock. Invite Peter Painter to come, too. That’ll make quite a quorum to wind this thing up-if I’m lucky.”

  “What about Randolph?” Rourke protested. “I’ve had a feeling all along-”

  “Don’t worry about Earl Randolph,” Shayne told him grimly. “He’ll be there with me for the kill.”

  He went down to his car and drove hurriedly to his hotel. It was just two o’clock when he went down the corridor to his apartment. Randolph was waiting outside the door, and greeted him nervously. “You said you’d be here at two o’clock to meet me,” Randolph complained. “
That nurse wouldn’t let me in.”

  “It’s exactly two o’clock,” said Shayne cheerfully, holding out his watch. He unlocked the door and went in humming to himself.

  Miss Naylor stood just inside the door with the gun in her hand. She said, “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Shayne.” There were dark circles around her eyes, but her eyes were bright with interest and excitement.

  “I thought you were to be relieved at noon,” said Shayne.

  “The nurse Dr. Price found-the only one available-was too young,” she explained crisply. “I was afraid she wouldn’t know how to use a gun.” She smiled and added, “Besides, I heard you say you’d be back at two.” Then she chuckled. “A nurse doesn’t often have the chance to get in on-well, this detecting business.”

  Shayne grinned and asked, “How’s our patient?”

  “Sound asleep. Coming along fine.” Miss Naylor looked from Shayne to Randolph, hesitated, then went back to the bedroom.

  Shayne noticed that the door was left open a crack. He went over and closed it quietly and firmly. He said to Randolph, “All set?”

  The insurance man nodded. He took a bulky envelope from his coat pocket and said, “Fifteen hundred twenties in here.” From his inside coat pocket he drew a thinner envelope. “And sixteen bills in here, just as you wanted it.”

  Shayne took the two envelopes. “Wait for me down in the lobby while I make some final arrangements.” When Randolph hesitated, he said, “The less you know about this telephone call the better off you’ll be if Painter puts you on the witness stand.”

  Randolph nodded mutely. His distended eyes were murky and weary, and his shoulders slumped as he turned and went out the door.

  Shayne opened the thick envelope and counted the twenty-dollar bills swiftly and carefully. He then opened the drawer of the table in the center of the room, took out a thick sheaf of pieces of paper cut the same size as the bills. He placed the sheaf of papers and the stack of bills side by side, pressed them down to more accurately gauge their depth, then lifted off enough of the paper to make it the same thickness as the bills. He placed the paper in the envelope Randolph had given him.