Dividend on Death

by Brett Halliday

  Mr. Montrose wet his lips and moved to Henderson’s side as the expert took up the roll and unwrapped it. The secretary was shaking with agitation, and his eyes glittered as Henderson carefully unrolled the picture on the table. Even Oscar seemed to sense something of the drama of the occasion. He heaved his body up and edged toward the table, planted his hands solidly to support his weight as he leaned forward to stare openmouthed at the not-impressive blending of soft colors on the canvas.

  Henderson’s breath made a queer little unmusical whistle as he studied the painting a moment, then he turned and nodded to Mr. Montrose. “This is it.”

  “I’ve kept my part of the bargain,” Shayne said to Montrose. “I’ll take that ten grand.”

  “Are you positive?” Mr. Montrose asked the art expert. He eyed the unostentatious painting with an air of faint disappointment.

  D. Q. Henderson said haughtily, “I stake my reputation as a connoisseur of Art on its authenticity.”

  Mr. Montrose leaned past Shayne and pointed a shaking forefinger at the painted signature. “That,” he quavered, “does not spell Raphael.”

  Henderson smiled indulgently. “Naturally not. This masterpiece would not have been allowed to leave the Continent had the truth been known. And it would cost a small fortune to enter an authentic Raphael through the customs. I, myself, saw to having Robertson’s signature painted over the original. You’ll find the old master’s mark plain enough when this bogus signature is scraped off.”

  “For Christ’s sake!” Shayne broke in harshly. “Are you stalling, Montrose?” He made a gesture as though to pick up the canvas.

  “Oh, no. No, indeed.” Mr. Montrose flutteringly stopped Shayne.

  “All right. Let’s see your money,” Shayne growled.

  Mr. Montrose sighed and dipped his hand in the inside breast pocket of his coat. He drew out a long unsealed envelope. His fingers lingeringly caressed the thick sheaf of bills as he riffled them under Shayne’s intent gaze, then slid them back into the envelope.

  “This is a tremendous responsibility I am assuming for Mr. Brighton,” he murmured. “Naturally, I wish to take—every—er—precaution.”

  “What more do you want than Henderson’s word?”

  Mr. Montrose held the envelope tightly in both hands. Oscar had stepped back two paces and his little eyes were fixed on Shayne’s uninjured left hand.

  “I should like,” Mr. Montrose said apologetically, “to see the bogus signature removed and the true one revealed.”

  “Why not?” Shayne reached out and tweaked the envelope from the secretary’s hands. Oscar stiffened, but no one paid him any heed.

  “Go on,” Shayne said to Henderson. “Scrape it off and show him. I’m not going to do a Houdini with the dough. But I’ll just keep a tight hold on it before half a dozen niggers jump out of the woodpile.”

  Henderson looked questioningly at Montrose. “As Mr. Brighton’s accredited representative, do you accept full responsibility?”

  “I do. Of course I do.” Mr. Montrose was shaking feverishly.

  “Very well.” D. Q. Henderson spoke with a solemnity befitting the occasion. He drew a penknife from his pocket and opened a small blade.

  “This, gentlemen, is an event such as few men of this generation have been privileged to witness.” He bent over the canvas and began scraping lightly and with extreme care over the surface of Robertson’s signature.

  Slowly, beneath the blade of the knife, another layer of paint began to appear faintly.

  Mr. Montrose’s breathing was hoarse as he bent almost double watching the knife blade. Bit by bit, in almost imperceptible degrees, the signature of Raphael began to show up beneath that of Robertson.

  Shayne took one backward stride and placed the envelope in his pocket. “That,” he said, “should satisfy you, Montrose.”

  The maid stuck her head in and said, “A Mr. Gordon and two other gentlemen.”

  While Mr. Montrose craned his head around, Shayne exclaimed, “My client. He’s a trifle late but he’s bringing his expert to be sure the painting is genuine and he isn’t cheating you. Bring them in,” he directed the maid.

  He moved toward the door and grinned at Gordon as the square-faced man strode in. Dick was a pace behind, his eyes queasy as they rested on Shayne’s face. Pelham Joyce came last, holding himself stiffly erect, his shrunken body swathed in a frock coat which might have fitted him when he was young.

  Shayne said, “Mr. Montrose and Mr. Henderson—D. Q. Henderson. My client, Mr. Gordon.”

  Gordon strode to the table and looked down at the painting suspiciously.

  “And this,” Shayne went on, taking Joyce’s arm, “is the well-known artist and art critic, Mr. Pelham Joyce.”

  Joyce nodded stiffly. Henderson held out his hand with a smile of genuine warmth.

  “Pelham Joyce? Gad, sir, I’m indeed pleased to make the acquaintance of so eminent a connoisseur.”

  “You honor me,” Joyce told him precisely. “What is this falderal about a hitherto undiscovered Raphael?”

  “There you are, sir.” Henderson stood aside to give Joyce access to the painting. Dick lounged in the background, his gaze interlocking antagonistically with Oscar’s.

  Joyce stood by the table and peered at the canvas as though he had never seen it before. His lips moved, and one word came worshipfully from them. “Raphael.”

  “I smuggled it in by painting the signature of Robertson over the master’s mark,” Henderson explained importantly. “I’ve just now scraped off the bogus name.”

  Joyce’s voice shook with emotion as he turned to Gordon and assured him, “A genuine Raphael.”

  Gordon asked hoarsely, “Do you guarantee it?”

  “There is not a shade of doubt concerning its authenticity.” Joyce spoke sincerely and confidently.

  “Very well.” Gordon’s lips were twisted in a snarl as he turned to Michael Shayne. “Much as I hate to do business with you—”

  Shayne stopped him with upheld hand, jerked his head toward the door significantly. Gordon hesitated, then followed him out into the hall.

  Beads of sweat stood on Shayne’s forehead as he held out his hand. This was the crucial moment. If Gordon paid without being noticed by Montrose—

  There was no difficulty. Guessing that Shayne was planning on a piece of private profit, but unwilling to forego the bargain, Gordon sullenly counted out ten one-thousand-dollar bills into the detective’s outstretched hand.

  Shayne thrust them into his pocket and went back into the library to lean over Joyce’s shoulder and peer at the painting. In the presence of the two experts, he muttered, “I don’t pretend to know a damned thing about art but the thought just struck me—in connection with that bogus signature painted over Raphael. How do you know positively this is an original signature? Why couldn’t someone have cleverly painted Raphael’s name over that of an imitator?”

  D. Q. Henderson swelled up like a pouter pigeon and began on a lengthy tale of how his eagle eye had detected the masterpiece in a ruined French chateau. There could be no possible doubt.

  But Pelham Joyce frowned as he leaned over the signature and studied it keenly. He exclaimed, “Henderson, I do believe this is a slovenly imitation of Raphael’s authentic signature. Good God, man! You’ve let your imagination run away with your better judgment. I must admit that I was taken in by my first cursory examination. But, my dear fellow,” he went on patronizingly, “you certainly should be familiar enough with the master’s signature to realize that this is not at all characteristic.”

  He pointed out certain minor discrepancies while Henderson choked and sputtered and rubbed his eyes, while Mr. Montrose pawed at him frantically, bleating, “What is it? What is it?”

  Gordon moved up behind Pelham Joyce and swung him about with a heavy hand on the artist’s withered shoulder. “Caught them trying to put something over on us, eh?”

  Joyce wriggled away without loss of dignity. “Let us have no mor
e hasty judgments, gentlemen. I’m sure all of us wish to ascertain the exact truth. Suppose we stand aside while Mr. Henderson again applies his penknife and discovers whether an unworthy imitator has superimposed the master’s mark upon his own signature.”

  D. Q. Henderson was dazedly moaning, “It can’t be. I tell you it’s impossible.”

  Gordon was glaring at Montrose, and he remarked acidly, “I certainly intend to know before I leave here.”

  “And I,” Mr. Montrose returned with equal acidity, “also intend to know before you leave here.” Each of them, thinking the other was the seller, glared with complete animosity and distrust.

  Mr. Montrose wet his lips, and his eyes flashed a signal to Oscar.

  Gordon moved slightly toward Dick as Henderson tremblingly opened his penknife again. Shayne stood in the background with a sardonic grin on his gaunt face, his left hand gripping the slack of Joyce’s coat behind the shoulders, his gaze mentally calculating the distance behind him to the hall.

  There was only the sound of nervous breathing as Henderson unhappily bent forward and scraped away paint to reveal a bold R M Robertson.

  He could not believe his eyes and he could not meet the accusing gazes fixed upon him as he straightened up and faltered, “By heavens, gentlemen—” His voice broke and he backed away as Montrose and Gordon took a simultaneous step toward him.

  “I’ve been duped,” he cried hoarsely. “This is nothing—a rank imitation.”

  Mr. Montrose screeched a shrill epithet at Gordon and jerked a table drawer open, fumbling for a pistol inside. Gordon threw a curse back at him as a Luger and a .45 came out of hiding.

  Shayne’s long leg shot out and neatly knocked Henderson’s feet from under him as his left arm jerked Pelham Joyce backward into the hallway.

  Inside the library a Luger barked murderously, and Oscar’s .45 thundered in reply.

  CHAPTER 17

  PETER PAINTER CAME HEADLONG through the front door as the reverberations died away in the library. There was the whimpering of an art critic, unwounded but too frightened to get up off the floor. Shayne grunted with pain as he gathered himself together in the hallway where he had tumbled with Joyce. His shoulder cast had broken, and his side was one numbing sheet of pain.

  Painter ran past him with a .38 in his hand, flinging questions and curses indiscriminately until he reached the doorway and cautiously peered into the library. He drew back and turned to Shayne with a subdued air. “What—happened?”

  Shayne was helping Pelham Joyce to his feet. Assuring himself that the artist was only shaken up, he went toward Painter, asking grimly, “Did they all cash in?”

  “It looks like it.” Painter followed him into the death chamber, exclaiming bitterly, “And you promised me there’d be no more deaths.”

  “Justifiable homicide,” Shayne told him cheerfully. “Save the state plenty of money.”

  D. Q. Henderson came slithering out of the library on hands and knees.

  Painter jumped for him, but Shayne said, “Let him go. He was an innocent bystander. Better have your men watch the stairs and let no one down.”

  Painter issued the order to his men who were crowding in, then he and Shayne surveyed the shambles in the library.

  Dick was the only one of the quartet still alive. He was shot through the groin, and his body thrashed about on the floor while his eyes were like those of a cornered rat.

  Gordon had died easily with a .45 slug through his head.

  Mr. Montrose was crumpled grotesquely over the table with his hands spread out toward the canvas as though he sought to clutch it to him in death.

  Oscar had taken a lot of killing. The Luger had drilled him four times through the belly before it stopped him.

  “Everything’s under control here,” Shayne said quickly. “There’s still a job to be done upstairs. Come on.”

  He and Painter hurried out, and Painter gritted an order to his men to drag Dick out and try to patch him up. As he trotted to keep pace with Shayne’s long strides, he muttered, “You’d better start talking fast. There’s a hell of a lot of explaining to be done.”

  “Wait till we clean it up.” Shayne was leaping up the stairs with Painter at his heels, a pistol in his hand.

  Shayne ran down the corridor to the sickroom and threw the door wide open.

  The nurse who was impersonating Myrtle Godspeed was crouched close to the door, her face haggard and frightened. Her hand dived into her expensive handbag when she saw Shayne.

  He kicked her hand as it came out, and a pearl-handled .25 automatic went spinning across the floor. Shayne grappled with her with his good arm, and snarled at Painter, “Get Julius Brighter on the bed. He’s the man you want.”

  The pseudo nurse was sobbing and scratching. Shayne grimly pinioned her arms to her side and dragged her to the bed where a gaunt scarecrow of a man was putting up an amazing fight with Painter before the Beach detective chief got cuffs on his bony wrists.

  “Put some cuffs on her, too.” Shayne shoved her into Painter’s arms. “She killed the other nurse, Charlotte Hunt, with that little automatic that I kicked out of her hand. Come on down to the library where we can be alone, and I’ll give you the whole thing so you can pass it on to the press.”

  Painter’s detectives were crowding in by that time. He turned the two prisoners over to them with orders that they were to be kept separate and not allowed to talk. Then he followed Shayne down to the library where he faced the redheaded detective and grated, “There’s a gang of reporters in my office waiting for a story.”

  Shayne sat down and lit a cigarette. “And what a story.”

  “What happened?” Painter spoke curtly and gestured toward the bodies.

  “I gave the whole outfit the double cross, and they each thought the other had done it. That picture on the table,” Shayne went on amiably, “is the Raphael D. Q. Henderson has been raving about having stolen from him yesterday in Miami. Only it’s not a Raphael—as Henderson will tell you now. Henderson is the bird who scuttled out on his hands and knees as you came in.”

  “But what’s it all about?”

  “That picture, mostly,” Shayne told him. He went on in a changed tone. “But I promised you information worth half a grand. Here it is.

  “Montrose killed Mrs. Brighton. Or maybe it was Oscar who did the actual slitting of her throat. It doesn’t matter. Oscar did what Montrose told him to. And Montrose was hep to the fact that Doctor Pedique had Phyllis Brighton worked up to the point where she forgot things, and he knew I’d been called in to keep her from killing her mother. That made a perfect setup. After murdering Mrs. Brighton, Montrose slipped the murder knife in Phyllis’s room and spattered blood on her nightie.”

  Painter made a sudden exclamation, and Shayne grinned at him. “I was one up on you there. I got hold of the knife and locked her door on the outside before anyone else got to her. That was the knife I sliced bread with in my kitchen while you watched me. A damned good knife, too.”

  “But why,” Painter demanded witheringly, “did Montrose kill Mrs. Brighton—or have her killed?”

  “To keep her from recognizing the sick man as Julius Brighton—and thus learning that her husband was already dead.”

  Painter swallowed hard and complained, “You’re away ahead of me.”

  “Julius Brighton,” Shayne patiently explained, “is Rufus Brighton’s brother. Rufus helped frame him on an embezzlement charge years ago which ended in his being sent to the pen. He was paroled a couple of months ago on account of ill health. He hated Rufus and saw a chance to switch identities when he got paroled.

  “Here’s the way I figure it out,” Shayne went on while Painter made noises in his throat. “When Julius returned on parole he found his brother Rufus a very sick man. Well, Julius was sick, too. Montrose is in charge of things, and Montrose hates Rufus as much as Julius does. Together, they manage to get rid of Rufus. Either he actually dies or they kill him and slip Julius into his sickb
ed. They change doctors when they switch patients, hiring Pedique and Charlotte Hunt and hurrying to Miami, away from people who might discover the impersonation. Julius is a mighty sick man, and all sick men look alike to a certain extent. The girl hardly knows Rufus, and the boy doesn’t count. He’s half batty and doesn’t go near the patient. Do you get the picture?”

  “Hell, no. What happened to Rufus Brighton’s body? How could they cover up a death and substitute another patient?”

  “Easy. By changing doctors and nurses just before they start south. And by getting a doctor who was more interested in his private experiments of inducing insanity in normal persons than he was in treating a sick patient.”

  “What about Rufus Brighton? You say—”

  “Rufus Brighton’s body is buried in a trunk out on the beach. I dug it up last night and had a look. They were playing a waiting game and even had their getaway figured. After they had cleaned up, Julius Brighton would have pretended to die, and they had Rufus Brighton’s body ready to be substituted so they’d have all been in the clear no matter what sort of future investigation there was. Oscar dragged the trunk out of his room and buried it after I started snooping around.”

  Painter slid limply into a chair. “How’d you get onto the switch?”

  “I didn’t—at first.” Shayne put out his cigarette. “It had me plenty stumped. But there had to be some motive back of Mrs. Brighton’s murder. It began to make sense when Charlotte told me that Mrs. Brighton hadn’t been to her husband’s room before she was killed but had insisted that she see him a little later. I wondered why someone wanted her kept out of the sickroom.”

  “But why the elaborate hoax?” Painter demanded.

  “It gave them control of Brighton’s estate which they were converting into cash. But his estate has shrunk to a fraction of its value, and they knew about the painting Henderson was bringing across the border, and it was worth waiting for—or so they thought.”

  “How about Hilliard? Was he in on it, too?”

  “Hell, no. Doctor Hilliard stands so straight he leans backward. And he was in a tough spot. No wonder he couldn’t diagnose his patient’s illness. The old devil Julius has been deliberately starving himself to stay emaciated and so weak that he can’t have visitors who might recognize him. He pretends to eat, but throws his food out the window to the squirrels. I got that information from Charlotte, too. But she didn’t realize the significance of it.”