Dividend on Death

by Brett Halliday

  Gentry spoke placatingly at his shoulder. “I’m trying to keep you out of trouble, you dope. But you’ve got to help a little. Mr. Painter’s not used to being treated like this.”

  Shayne stopped slicing bread. He turned and scowled at Gentry. “Isn’t that just too bad?” he grunted sarcastically. “What am I supposed to do in order to please Mr. Painter? Want me to get down on my knees and apologize for leaving my door locked and causing you two imitation yeggs the trouble of using a jimmy to get it open?”

  A puzzled expression came over Gentry’s beefy face. He sighed and spread out his hands. “Come into the living-room, for God’s sake, and let’s talk this over. There’s nothing for you to get humped up about, Mike. We didn’t jimmy your damned door.”

  “No?” Shayne cut two more slices of bread. Then he laid the knife down and turned around. His eyes were bleak. Painter backed out stiffly, and Gentry took Shayne’s arm with a relieved sigh.

  In the living-room, Shayne sat down and spoke to Gentry, disregarding Painter.

  “What the hell’s it all about? If you didn’t jimmy my door, who did?”

  Painter started a rush of words, but Will Gentry shut him off. “It’s this way, Mike. Somebody called Painter at eleven-forty-five, all excited, and said the Brighton girl was asleep in your apartment. He called me to meet him here and make the pinch official, and jumped in his car and rushed over from the Beach. We came up from the lobby together and found your door just like it is now. There wasn’t anybody here.”

  Shayne’s gaze went to the closed bedroom door.

  “No soap,” Gentry told him. “No sign of any girl in there. What sort of monkey business is it, Mike?”

  Shayne turned his gaze to Painter. “Man or woman that telephoned the tip?”

  “A man.”

  “I suppose you didn’t think to have the call traced.”

  Painter bristled up like a fighting cock. “Are you trying to teach me my business? Of course I had the call traced. It came from the public telephone booth in the lobby downstairs.”

  “Which leaves it wide open,” Shayne muttered.

  “Are you sure you didn’t make that phone call—just for a cover-up?”

  “Sure,” Shayne grunted with withering scorn. “And I jimmied my own door—after drowning the girl in the bathtub and grinding her up into Bologna. That’s what I’m about to make sandwiches out of.”

  Gentry groaned. “All right. Go on, you guys. I’ll stick around and gather up the pieces.”

  Shayne turned toward his friend with hunched shoulders. “I’m sick of this half-wit jumping me.”

  Painter got up, grating out an oath. He pushed himself in front of Shayne aggressively. “Where’s the girl?”

  Shayne said to Gentry, “You tell him, Will. I think I hear my water boiling.” He got up and went into the kitchen. He could hear a subdued murmur in the living-room as he poured the coffee water and made sandwiches. Then he took the drip pot, a cup and saucer, and the plate of sandwiches in to the living-room table. Painter watched him in sulky silence.

  Shayne poured himself a cup of coffee without offering either of them any, and bit into a sandwich.

  “Why,” asked Gentry, “did you bring the girl here, Mike?”

  “I didn’t bring her here,” Shayne denied wearily.

  Painter reached into his coat pocket and brought out a girl’s handkerchief and lipstick with a dramatic flourish. He laid them on the table and demanded, “How did these get into your bedroom?”

  Shayne’s bushy eyebrows curved upward. “Digging into my private life?”

  “They’re not what one would naturally expect to find in a bachelor’s boudoir.”

  “I don’t know,” countered Shayne. “If you make a thorough search you’re likely to turn up half a dozen assorted gewgaws like those. What the hell? Send your vice squad around if that’s what you’re after.”

  “And I suppose you have dozens of lace handkerchiefs initialed ‘PB’?” suggested Painter.

  “My memory isn’t so good,” Shayne told him amiably. “We’ll go in and check up if you’ll let me finish my coffee in peace.” He lifted his cup and drank heartily.

  “You’re stalling,” Gentry said. “That won’t get you anywhere. If she was here and isn’t now—where is she, Mike?”

  “I’m no good at guessing games.” Shayne grinned and bit into a second sandwich with gusto.

  “You can’t deny that she was here,” Painter snarled.

  “I can deny any damn thing I please. And get away with it as far as you’re concerned.” Shayne turned away from the angry little man and asked Gentry, “Did you pick up anything on the lead I gave you this morning?”

  “Not a thing. We burned up the wires to New York for an hour. Pedique’s record is as clean as a hound’s tooth.”

  “I could have told you that,” Painter put in. “I checked on him last night.”

  “I’m not,” Shayne told him, “the slightest bit interested in anything you can tell me.”

  “What about the Brighton girl?” Gentry interrupted. “Was she here last night?”

  “You were here last night,” Shayne reminded him. “You didn’t see her, did you?”

  “You’ll have to talk fast,” said Painter with an ugly twist to his mouth, “to explain away this initialed handkerchief.”

  “I don’t intend to do any explaining. Make your own deductions and see what it gets you.” Shayne lumbered to his feet and carried the dishes into the kitchen where he rinsed them under the hot-water faucet and set them to drain. Whistling cheerfully, he brought out a fresh bottle of cognac and set it on the table.

  Painter stared angrily at the floor, and his Miami colleague watched thoughtfully while Shayne got down two glasses and filled them to the brim. He handed Gentry one of the glasses, ignoring the Miami Beach chief of detectives.

  He held his glass high and said pleasantly, “Here’s to more and bloodier murders.” After draining his glass and smacking his lips, he added, “If you birds are all through I won’t take up any more of your time.”

  “By God!” Painter burst out. “The voice over the telephone sounded a lot like yours. You’re just dumb enough to think that would be a smart stunt. It would cover you up nicely in the girl’s disappearance. Where were you at eleven forty-five?”

  Shayne sat down and lit a cigarette. He said gently, “None of your damned business.”

  Painter turned to Gentry and exploded, “We can drag him in on suspicion.”

  Gentry had been watching Shayne. He shrugged his shoulders.

  “He’d be out in an hour on habeas corpus. Nope.” He shook his heavy head. “I don’t think Shayne knows any more about where the girl is than we do. Come on.” He got up abruptly.

  Shayne grinned at them quizzically. “Come back any time. You never can tell when I’ll have a murderess sleeping in my bed.” He sat at the table and watched them go out.

  After a few minutes he went to the phone and called the clerk to ask if they had gone through the lobby. The clerk knew Gentry, and said they were just going out the door. Shayne hung up the phone and went into the bedroom. The covers were thrown back on the bed. He searched under the pillow and mattress, and on the dresser, for a note. There was none. Everything was in perfect order. He went through the bathroom carefully and through the kitchen. The night latch was on the kitchen door leading out to the fire escape. On sudden thought, he went into the living-room and found the .25 automatic gone from the drawer.

  Finally he went to the front door of the apartment and examined the marks carefully. The door had been expertly forced open by someone in possession of an excellent set of burglar tools. There was a Yale lock on the door, but a jimmy had spread the door far enough from the jamb to allow the insertion of a slender piece of steel behind the latch to force it back. The entire operation had probably taken only a few minutes and should have been noiseless.

  Well, there was nothing to wait around for now. He closed the doo
r and found it had been sprung a trifle but not too much to prevent the latch from holding. He got his hat and went down to the lobby.

  The hotel was a small one and had no house detective on its staff. The elevator boys said they had noticed nothing unusual in the vicinity of his room that morning. He described Phyllis to them, but none of them remembered seeing her go out. Anyone who wished to, of course, could enter and leave the building by the private side entrance.

  He went to the manager’s office, explained that his apartment had been burglarized, and asked that a thorough check be made of all employees to learn if any of them had noticed any suspicious persons loitering in the corridors. Then he went out and down to Flagler Street.

  Pelham Joyce had a studio on the second floor of one of the many arcades on Flagler. Shayne climbed the dingy stairway and entered a huge room overlooking Flagler. The floor was uncarpeted and dirty, littered with the accumulation of cigarette ashes and butts. There were canvases hung on almost every inch of wall space. An easel stood back from the front windows with a half-finished portrait on it, and there were a few chairs scattered about. Pelham Joyce sat in a rocking chair, his slippered feet resting upon the window sill.

  He craned his neck as Shayne entered, nodded, then went on interestedly watching the stream of traffic on the street below. He was a shrunken man with a huge bald head. His face was anemic and thin. He wore stained canvas trousers, a dirty shirt which had once been white, a polka-dotted Windsor tie fastened loosely about his gaunt neck, and a shabby velveteen smoking-jacket. His age was indeterminate, though Shayne had sometimes guessed him to be well past seventy. He had studied at the principal academies of art in Europe and had once achieved a small measure of fame for portrait work. But the boulevards of Paris and the absinthe which could be purchased there had sapped his strength and his skill.

  Shayne had known him for years; a bit of flotsam tossed up by Miami’s hurrying tide of humanity, dreaming and idling away the declining years of his life contentedly in the tropical climate which demands so little effort for continued survival.

  Shayne drew up a chair which had four whole legs and sat down beside him. Pelham Joyce waved a hand at the spectacle out the window. The hand was so thin it was almost transparent.

  “Fools. Going around in their private circles and each believing that today is important.”

  Shayne said, “Did you ever hear of D. Q. Henderson?”

  “Of course.” Joyce did not look at him. “A self-appointed Art critic who trots around the world pandering to the insatiate desire of pork-packer millionaires to be known as patrons of Art.” Each time Pelham Joyce spoke this last word, he invested it with the dignity of a capital A.

  “Men like Brighton?” Shayne spoke casually.

  “Exactly.” Joyce’s gaze fluttered, birdlike, over Shayne’s face. “Henderson picked up some good things for Brighton when the fool was building his collection. Brighton made the grand gesture of turning his collection over to the Metropolitan, and then I understand he tried to retract when he found himself without funds. The Metropolitan refused, of course—trust them to hang onto anything they get hold of—so I doubt whether Brighton is so patronizing toward Art any longer.”

  Shayne waited patiently until he finished. Then he asked, “Do you know if Henderson is still acting as Brighton’s agent?”

  “Don’t suppose Brighton can afford the luxury of an agent any longer.” Pelham Joyce chuckled toothlessly.

  “Don’t such agents sometimes trace and pick up for a song some unknown pictures by the old masters which later sell for a fabulous sum?”

  “That’s more newspaper talk than anything else,” Joyce mumbled.

  “But it does happen?” Shayne persisted.

  “Oh, yes. It was Henderson, I believe, who dug up an authentic Rembrandt from some ruins in Italy five years ago. It hangs with the Brighton collection now.”

  “How much,” Shayne asked, “is such a picture likely to bring?”

  “Whatever some damned fool will pay for it,” Joyce told him sharply. “A hundred thousand—half a million—two million. It’s rarity that counts with the collectors, not Art.”

  “They generally smuggle them into this country, don’t they?”

  “Of course.” Sharply. “No self respecting collector would think of paying honest duty on a rare painting.”

  “How,” Shayne asked patiently, “do they go about it?”

  “The simplest method is to paint over the original signature and daub on the initials of a well-known imitator of the master’s work. Then, I believe, they generally make a practice of boldly entering through Mexico to avoid the discerning eye of the New York authorities.”

  Shayne thanked him, and they sat together for a time while the old man grumbled about the decline of Art and the accompanying disintegration of all Artistic Integrity. But only for a few minutes. Shayne left the disconsolate old man and went down to the Ask Mr. Foster Travel Bureau. For some time he studied steamship routes from Europe to Mexico, and train and plane routes to the United States, jotting down a great deal of interesting information and firmly refusing the clerk’s pressing offer to arrange the details of a trip to any part of the globe. Then he went back to his hotel.

  From his apartment he called long distance and asked for the customs office at Laredo, Texas. When the connection was made, he talked to the man in charge at great length. With two one-thousand-dollar bills in his pocket, he gave no thought to the toll charge momently piling up. He hung up with the customs official’s promise of full-cooperation in the matter of notifying him if and when a Mr. D. Q. Henderson passed through the Port of Entry.

  It was three o’clock. Shayne went down to the lobby and learned that the careful questioning of all hotel employees had brought no information to light concerning the burglarizing of his apartment. The manager was despondent and sympathetic, but Shayne assured him it did not matter particularly, since nothing of value had been stolen.

  Then he went out, got in his car, and drove across the causeway toward the Brighton estate on Miami Beach.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE BRIGHTON PLACE LOOKED MUCH THE SAME by day as by night. There was an atmosphere of oppressive gloom about the huge house which Shayne attributed to his knowledge of the unsolved tragedy of the preceding night. In the daylight, he saw that a drive led past the south side of the house to a large concrete garage in the rear. All the garage doors were closed, and it was impossible to tell whether there were any cars behind the doors or not. The upper portion of the garage appeared to be subdivided into living-quarters.

  There were no parked cars in the drive nor beneath the porte-cochere. Shayne parked where he had last night, got out, and went up the steps. He pressed the electric button briefly.

  The front door was opened after a short wait by the same maid who had admitted him previously. She looked more shrunken, and her eyes were red as if from lack of sleep. She recognized him, but didn’t seem particularly pleased to see him. In a dour tone she asked him what he wanted.

  Shayne told her he wished to see Miss Brighton. “Miss Phyllis Brighton,” he amended.

  “She’s not here.” The maid tried to close the door, but Shayne’s foot prevented her from doing so.

  “When do you expect her back?”

  “I don’t know.” The maid sniffed primly, a sniff of self-righteous indignation.

  “It’s important,” Shayne told her. “Haven’t you any idea when she’ll be here?”

  “No, I haven’t. She’s not been home since—since last night.”

  “All right,” Shayne said cheerfully. “I’ll speak to Mr. Brighton.”

  “Oh, no, sir.” The maid was aghast. “He’s ill. Very ill. No one is allowed to see him.” She pushed the door against Shayne’s foot.

  “Very well,” he said placidly. “I’ll see Doctor Pedique.”

  “The doctor is resting, sir. He’s not to be disturbed.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” Shayne bellowe
d. He pushed the maid back and the door open. “I’ll just prowl around and talk to myself.” He stepped past her.

  She pattered along after him. “I think Mr. Montrose is in the library.”

  “That’s just swell,” Shayne grunted. “I’ll see him after I get through talking to myself.” He went up the front stairway, and the maid followed him after a moment of hesitation.

  Shayne turned on her when he reached the top. “Which is Mr. Brighton’s room?”

  “But you can’t disturb him, sir. It’s strictly against the doctor’s orders.”

  “No doctor,” Shayne told her, “can keep me from seeing anybody I want to see. Show me his room before I start opening doors.”

  “Very well, sir,” she said in an exasperated be-it-on-your-own-head manner, and led the way to the end of the left wing. She knocked gently on a closed door and stood obstinately before it so that Shayne would have to move her forcibly aside to enter.

  The door opened a trifle, and a slender girl in a white starched uniform slipped out and closed it behind her. She was very young and small, with rosy cheeks and honest gray eyes.

  “What is it?” She looked past the maid at Shayne.

  “This—gentleman,” with a jerk of her shoulder toward Shayne, “insists on disturbing Mr. Brighton.” She slipped aside and glared at Shayne.

  “Oh, no.” The nurse shook her head decidedly. “It’s strictly against the doctor’s orders.”

  Shayne brushed past the maid and stood close to the nurse. The top of her stiff white cap was not as high as his chin. She looked up at him calmly.

  He said irritably, “I’m not going to eat your patient. I simply want to look at him. Certainly there’s no harm in that.”

  “I’m sorry,” she told him. “I can’t let you in.” The maid turned and stalked away.

  Shayne smiled beguilingly and patted the girl’s cheek. “Be an angel,” he urged.

  “You’ll have to get permission from the doctor,” she told him earnestly.

  Shayne chuckled. “Right on the job, aren’t you, sister? Where’s the nurse I saw last night? The tall one with the come-hither eyes and the sex appeal in every movement. Now, she’d let me in.”