Dividend on Death ms-1

by Brett Halliday

  “I repeat that I do not seek to exculpate myself. I shall atone in the only manner left to me. Before my own conscience and before God I am guilty of what may well go upon the records as the most heinous crime of this century.

  “Phyllis Brighton must be hunted down and destroyed ruthlessly, and for that I must pass sentence upon myself. I go now to answer to God for what I have done.

  “JOEL PEDIQUE”

  Michael Shayne drew in a great breath of the fresh air flowing in through the open window as he read the concluding words and laid the sheets of paper aside. It seemed to him that he had not breathed since reading the first words. He was surprised to look up and see the bright sunlight outside. With the words of Pedique’s confession still ringing in his mind it had seemed to him that the room was full of darkness.

  The quiet of the death chamber was abruptly shattered by the wail of a rapidly approaching police siren. Shayne lit a cigarette and leaned toward the window where he could look down on the curving driveway in front of the house. A police car ground to a stop as he watched. Peter Painter was the first figure to get out. Shayne drew back from the window as the detective chief hurried up the front steps. He lit a match and applied the flame to Dr. Joel Pedique’s confession. The notepaper crackled, and the flames spread rapidly as Shayne crumpled up the sheets and fed them to the fire.

  The last bit of the document was reduced to ashes as Painter burst into the room.

  CHAPTER 12

  Painter’s eyes narrowed when he saw Shayne sitting by the window. He slowed his stride and approached the bed silently, stood by and looked down at Pedique’s lifeless body without a change of expression. Finally he turned his head and looked at Shayne.

  “Dead, eh?”

  “Or else he’s a good hand at playing possum,” Shayne replied.

  Painter snorted. He turned back and studied the doctor’s relaxed features and the articles beside him. “Suicide, eh?”

  “I was not a witness,” Shayne disclaimed.

  Mr. Montrose came and stood in the doorway. He looked shrunken, terrified, helpless. Shayne grinned at him and said, “You ought to be getting used to it by now.”

  Painter swung about and said to Montrose, “I’ve sent for the coroner. Nothing must be touched until he comes.”

  “Why don’t you and the coroner move your offices up here? Then you could keep a hearse backed up to the door and give these people real service.”

  “Why don’t you,” Painter snarled in thin-lipped rage, “go to hell?”

  Shayne shrugged his shoulders patiently. “It was just a helpful suggestion.”

  “I’ll get dressed,” Mr. Montrose quavered, “if you don’t need me for a minute.”

  Painter didn’t pay any attention to him. He advanced toward Shayne. “I’ve been looking for you all morning.”

  “I haven’t been hiding.” Shayne slouched back in his chair and drew deeply on his cigarette. Painter stood before him, spread-legged and flatfooted.

  “I’ve found out where Charlotte Hunt was last night before she was murdered.”

  “Not jealous, are you?”

  “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, Shayne.”

  “I don’t intend to do any.”

  Painter’s eyes blazed murderously. His fingers curled into claws by his side. He said, breathing hard, “I’ll read Pedique’s confession if you don’t mind.”

  “His confession?” Shayne lifted bushy eyebrows.

  “Don’t try to hold out on me. Montrose saw it.”

  “Mr. Montrose must have been seeing things,” Shayne told him softly. “Doctor Pedique left no confession.”

  “Now, by God-” Painter began to tremble.

  “Don’t go off the deep end,” Shayne soothed. “Doctor Pedique did leave quite a lengthy private document but it really wouldn’t interest you.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.” Painter’s anger spilled over into his voice. “Where is it?”

  Shayne pointed to the pile of ashes. “I was afraid you wouldn’t listen to reason, so I burned it.”

  “After reading it?”

  “Naturally.”

  Painter drew up a chair and sat down rigidly, as though he might fly into a thousand pieces if he relaxed. He said, “You’re either a fool, Shayne, or the Goddamnedest scoundrel it’s ever been my misfortune to encounter.”

  Shayne ground out his cigarette and grinned. “Take your choice.”

  “I’m through letting you give me the run-around, Shayne.”

  This didn’t seem to call for any reply, so Shayne didn’t give it one.

  “You’re doubly implicated now,” Painter warned him. “Triply, by God. You can’t get away with destroying evidence in a murder case.”

  “But I have,” Shayne told him mockingly. “And the hell of it is you’ve got to play ball with me, Painter. You’ve got to have what I’ve got and you’re beginning to suspect that you can’t blackjack it out of me.”

  Painter waited a moment to get hold of himself before asking, “What was in Pedique’s confession?”

  “That’s something you’ll never know.”

  “Don’t push me too far, Shayne. I warn you. I’m willing to co-operate, you understand. But your attitude makes co-operation impossible.”

  “We’ll co-operate my way,” Shayne told him, watching the dapper little man from beneath lowered lids as carefully as any dry-fly fisherman ever played a heavy trout in a rushing mountain stream. He continued slowly. “I hold the winning cards and all you’ve got is a busted straight. I don’t have to bluff. Get this straight. I burned that damned screwy note of Pedique’s to keep you from making an ass of yourself. You’re under so much pressure to make an arrest that you would have rushed to the newspapers with a fool statement that the case was closed-and ruined everything-including yourself and my client. I’m not under pressure and I’m gathering up the loose ends. If you’ll sit tight for twenty-four hours I’ll hand you a story that will crack the headlines all over the country. I’m talking straight and for the last time. I was in Miami before you came and I’ll be here after you’re gone. If you’re smart you’ll play ball. You can glom onto all the glory when it’s over. I’m after something else. Is it a go, or isn’t it?” He stood up and waited.

  “Twenty-four hours,” Painter groaned. “They’re hard on my tail for some action. And this case won’t stand another murder, Shayne.”

  “There won’t be any more.”

  “The governor’s threatening an investigation.”

  “Hell, he’s always threatening an investigation. Stall for twenty-four hours.”

  Painter looked at his watch indecisively. “It’s after eleven now.”

  “Noon tomorrow.” Shayne edged toward the door. Painter nodded unhappily, and Shayne went out.

  He stopped just outside, stuck his head back in the door. “About co-operating-there’s one thing you might do.”

  “What?”

  “Get the chauffeur’s fingerprints and check with the F.B.I. and New York. I want to know if he’s an ex-con.”

  He went on down the hall with Painter’s growled assent.

  Driving to Miami, he parked in front of his apartment hotel and went in. The clerk told him Tony had picked up the envelope and there weren’t any messages.

  He went up to his room and fortified his aching side with a slug of brandy, then called the Nursing Registry. A pleasant voice answered the call.

  He said, “This is Mr. Shayne, private detective. I’m working on a case in which one of the nurses you sent out is more or less involved. I wonder if you could give me the name and home address of the girl you sent out on the Brighton case early this morning?”

  The pleasant voice asked him to wait.

  Shayne waited.

  “Miss Myrtle Godspeed.” The address was in the northwest section of the city. Shayne thanked her and hung up.

  He took another drink and went down to his car. There was no choice; he’d have to move fast now
, much as he wanted to be quiet. His shoulder gave him hell as he worked gearshift and steering-wheel with one hand. He begrudged the time that it cost him to drive to where Myrtle Godspeed lived, far out on Northwest 24th Street. There were three small stuccoed houses side by side in the block. The address he was looking for was the center house. He stopped his car, got out, and went up to the front door.

  The shades were down at the front windows, and no one answered his knock. He went around to the side and found a window through which he could look into the living-room of the small house. It was furnished and seemed to be in perfect order. Shayne went around to the back door and found it locked. He took a skeleton key from his pocket and opened it without any trouble. A woman came out the back door of the house on the west and looked at him curiously. She came across the yard toward him as he opened the door. He saw her coming and waited.

  She was elderly and fat with stringy hair and hostile eyes. “There ain’t anybody to home. What you want?” she greeted him.

  “I’m a detective,” Shayne told her. “Who lives here?”

  The woman shrank back from him, and her eyes clouded. “Miss Godspeed lives here. She ain’t-ain’t in trouble, is she?”

  “I don’t know,” Shayne said shortly. “Does she live here alone? And what do you know about her?”

  “She lives here all alone. She’s not-particular neighborly, but I ain’t got nothin’ agin her. But there’s been a lot of funny doings about here lately though-and now you’ve come to mention it, I ain’t so sure she’s living all alone, neither.” The old woman’s manner was intriguingly mysterious.

  Shayne lit a cigarette and said casually, “What sort of doings?”

  “People coming and going all hours of the night. Moving in and moving out till a body don’t rightly know who lives here and who don’t.”

  “How long,” Shayne asked, “has this been going on?”

  “A couple of days, now. Nights, rather. It ain’t like Miss Godspeed, neither.”

  Shayne nodded and said, “I’m going to have a look around. You might come in, with me so I’ll have an alibi in case anything is missing later.”

  He went inside, and the woman followed him curiously. There was no sign of disturbance within. Kitchen and bedroom were in perfect order. The bedclothes were rumpled and thrown back as from a hasty rising, and articles of feminine attire were thrown over the back of a chair. The neighbor woman stood in the doorway and pointed a blunt forefinger at a framed photograph on the dresser.

  “That there’s her picture.”

  Shayne looked at it. It was not a photograph of the girl who that morning had told him her name was Myrtle Godspeed. He nodded with pretended disinterest, went on poking about the bedroom without finding anything.

  In the living-room he found a gaudy folder from a steamship company extolling the beauties of the Republic of Cuba as a vacation spot. He noted the name of the line for future reference, and wandered about the living-room while the woman watched him as though she expected him to whip out a magnifying glass and get down on his knees. He shrugged his shoulders. “Everything seems to be in perfect order here. Nothing more I can do.” He hitched up his pants and stepped toward the bathroom, saying, “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go in here a minute while it’s handy.”

  The elderly lady looked embarrassed and hurried out the back door. Shayne didn’t go into the bathroom. He stepped into the bedroom and picked up the framed photograph of Myrtle Godspeed, slid it beneath his coat and held it pressed against his body with his injured arm. Then he went into the bathroom and flushed the toilet, sauntered out casually, and locked the back door under the watchful gaze of the neighbor woman. He gravely thanked her for helping him out, went out to his car, and drove to the downtown ticket office of the steamship company whose Cuban folder he had seen in the living-room.

  One of their boats had sailed from Miami for Havana the preceding morning, but the clerk could not recall any Miss Godspeed on the passenger list. At Shayne’s insistence, the list was checked with negative results.

  Shayne then produced his photograph of the nurse, and the clerk immediately recalled selling her a ticket two days before. She hadn’t given him her name, of course, and there was no way of determining what name she had used if she was aboard.

  The boat, however, was lying over in Havana that day, and Shayne arranged to have the picture flown over by airplane, and to have the crew asked to identify it. By this time his shoulder was worse, and his face drawn with pain as he went back to his hotel and in the lobby.

  “Mr. Shayne!” The desk clerk beckoned to him. “I just took an urgent telephone message for you. You’re to call 614 at The Everglades Hotel as soon as you come in.”

  Shayne thanked him and went to the switchboard and asked the girl to put him through. She did and he took the call from a booth.

  Ray Gordon’s metallic voice said, “That you, Shayne?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve got to see you at once.”

  Shayne grunted, “Okay.”

  “Come over here as quick as you can. I’ll be waiting.”

  Shayne said, “Okay,” again, and hung up. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his left hand as he left the booth and went out into the hot sunlight. Agonizing currents of pain spread from shoulder downward. He walked swiftly to The Everglades, keeping to the curb and protecting his injured side from passers-by.

  He went directly to the elevator and up to the sixth floor; down the corridor to 614 where he knocked. The door swung open, and Shayne walked in. Gordon closed the door behind him. The gunman, Dick, stood in the center of the room, his thin body slightly crouched. His eyes were yellow slits, and there was an expression of greedy triumph written all over his pasty face. His right hand held a silenced Luger automatic. It was pointed at Shayne’s belly, and the youth’s hand was steady.

  Gordon said, “Get ’em up,” and Shayne lifted his left arm toward the ceiling.

  Gordon stepped close and felt all over him for a weapon without finding one. He said, “Loosen up, Dick, this mug’s clean,” then stepped around in front of Shayne, treading lightly on the balls of his feet.

  His face showed no trace of emotion, though lips were sucked back from his teeth.

  He said, “You lousy double-crossing skunk,” and smashed Shayne in the face with a rocklike fist.

  CHAPTER 13

  Shayne’s head was snapped back by the smashing blow, hitting the wall with a dull thump. He put his left hand behind him and pushed himself erect. A trickle of blood ran from his split upper lip into his mouth.

  He started to speak, and Gordon hit him again, a side-wise blow with his open palm. Shayne rolled his head with the blow and kept his feet. The youthful gunman slid down into a chair, stiffly watchful. He held the Luger carelessly trained on Shayne’s midsection, and there was an evil gleam of gratification in his yellow-tinged eyes.

  Shayne said, “This’ll cost you, Gordon.” His tongue licked out over his bloody lip.

  Another blow smashed him between the eyes, sent him staggering back.

  Shayne planted his feet wide apart, shaking his head slowly. “I don’t know what the score is. You’d better get your dope straight.”

  “I’ve got it straight.” Gordon slapped him with his open palm again. Shayne slumped back against the wall. Murderous rage flamed in his eyes, and his left hand was clenched into a fist, but he couldn’t disregard the covering Luger and the twitching lips of Dick.

  Gordon stepped back, surveying him implacably. “That’ll give you an idea what you can avoid by talking fast.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Shayne grunted. “Recite ‘Gunga Din’?”

  “Wise guy, eh?” Gordon stepped in and sloughed him again. Shayne’s left hand groped about for a support and found the back of a chair to hold him erect.

  He nodded jerkily. “Pretty wise.”

  “You’re not wise enough to take Ray Gordon for a ride. Playing both ends against
the middle don’t go, by Christ, when I’m in the middle.”

  “If I knew what the hell you were talking about,” Shayne muttered, “we might get together.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were hooked up with the other outfit when I called you in? Suck me for two grand, eh? No man can do that and live to enjoy it.”

  “I’m not,” Shayne told him, “hooked up with anybody.”

  “You’re a liar. You were over at the Brighton house this morning.” Gordon drove his hard-knuckled fist into Shayne’s face again. The big body of the detective rocked back and slowly toppled to the floor. He hit on his right side, and his teeth bit back a groan of anguish.

  Gordon drew back his right foot and kicked him in the belly. Shayne doubled up in agony, and Gordon kicked him in the face, saying flatly, “I’m just getting started.”

  Blood oozed onto the carpet from a long split on Shayne’s cheek. His left arm groped out, and he painfully lifted himself to a sitting position. Through puffed lips, he said, “Be careful you don’t start something you can’t finish.”

  Gordon sat down and studied him blandly. “I’d enjoy killing you, Shayne. But that wouldn’t do me any good. I can make you wish I had killed you if you don’t come clean with me.”

  “I never was very good at riddles.” Shayne spit out a mouthful of bloodied saliva on the rug.

  “Men don’t cross me up,” Gordon told him, “and live.”

  “Men don’t beat me up,” Shayne replied, “without paying for it.”

  “The hell they don’t. You’ve been playing around with lame-brains too long, you dim-witted cluck. Before I finish you’ll wish your mother hadn’t taken time off from work to lie down in a gutter-”

  Shayne hunched forward, resting his weight on his left hand. His lips slobbered blood, and his eyes were mad. Without getting up, Gordon lifted his foot and ground the heel of his shoe in Shayne’s face, toppling him over on his side. Then he got up and asked conversationally, “Well?”