Dividend on Death ms-1

by Brett Halliday

  “What about Charlotte’s murder? What was the reason?”

  “Gordon-that’s Gordon.” Shayne pointed to the slain man. “He engineered that killing. He was determined to get one of his gang in here to keep a finger on things just in case I slipped up and let Henderson deliver the painting to Montrose. I was retained by Gordon to keep the masterpiece from reaching its destination,” he went on in response to Painter’s questioning look.

  “But Gordon didn’t trust me, so they must have called the Nursing Registry and gotten the name of the nurse next on the list to be called.” Shayne paused thoughtfully, then exclaimed, “By God, I’m glad that other nurse-the one who was on with Charlotte when I first came-had sense enough to get away without being murdered.”

  “Well?” Painter was getting jittery. “Go on-go on.”

  “The next nurse for call was Myrtle Godspeed. Gordon and his moll located her in a hurry and made her a proposition. They shipped her off to Cuba, and Gordon’s moll shot Charlotte, then hurried out to Myrtle Godspeed’s house and answered the call when it came for a substitute nurse.”

  Painter was holding his head in his hands. “Who,” he sighed, “was Gordon? And that guy who wasn’t quite dead?”

  “Gordon’s a New York racketeer who learned about the painting somehow, and came down here to snatch it. The not-quite-dead guy was his torpedo. They weren’t hooked up with Montrose and Julius at all-didn’t know anything about the hoax-nor care. They just wanted the painting.”

  “I’m getting things straight,” Painter muttered. “Who blasted you on the sidewalk that night? And why?”

  “That was Montrose and his little playmate, Oscar. I don’t know whether they tracked Charlotte to my apartment, or whether she put the finger on me for them. I suppose I’ll never know.”

  Shayne paused reflectively and lit a cigarette, then went on. “It was Montrose and Oscar that jimmied my door that morning and found Phyllis in my bed. You’ll find a jimmy out in Oscar’s tool box in his bedroom that’ll fit the marks on my door.

  “Montrose was worried as hell about that first murder and wanted to hang it on Phyllis-wanted to get her out of the way, anyhow, I suppose, to save trouble beating her out of her share of the estate. So when they found her asleep they slipped out without waking her-or so they thought-and phoned you while one of them watched the outside door. But she must have wakened when they were there and played possum, then slipped out the back way and down the fire escape before you got there.”

  “What about the girl now?” Painter demanded. “Where is she?”

  “I wish to God I knew. I expect she’s hiding out around town. She’s hiding from you. You were so hell-bent on tying her mother’s murder on her. She’ll pop up when the papers announce the case is broken wide open.”

  Shayne got up stiffly. “Is that all you want to know? You got it straight to hand to the reporters?”

  “‘I’ll do some checking first.” Painter’s eyes glittered with excitement. “There’s that phony nurse upstairs. And the body in the trunk. Man!” He smote Shayne’s shoulder in his excitement. “If it ties together like you’ve given it to me, it’ll be the biggest story of the year.”

  Shayne winced with pain and backed away from Painter’s enthusiastic hand. “Worth five hundred berries?”

  “I’ll say,” Painter exulted. He started out the door and met Pelham Joyce coming in. He turned back with a frown and muttered, “About that picture-I’d like to get that straight.”

  Shayne grinned at Joyce as he replied. “Better get Henderson’s statement on the painting. But here’s what happened. He picked it up in Europe for a genuine Raphael while he was on the Brighton payroll. In order to get it out of Europe and into this country, he disguised it as an imitation by painting over Raphael’s signature and putting ‘R M Robertson’ on top.

  “It was stolen from Henderson on his arrival here, and by a peculiar quirk came into my possession. I jockeyed with Gordon and Montrose, who were both after it, and got them together, each thinking they were going to buy it from the other. Montrose had Henderson here to identify it as genuine, and Gordon brought Mr. Joyce along as his expert.

  “Before the deal went through,” Shayne continued glibly, conscious of twenty thousand dollars in his pocket of which Painter knew nothing, “Henderson proudly scrapes off the name of Robertson and shows us what is supposed to be Raphael’s signature. But,” Shayne chuckled, “Joyce wasn’t to be caught napping. He thought the signature looked phony and insisted on scraping below it. Henderson did, and found Robertson’s name underneath.”

  “Holy smokes!” Painter ejaculated. “Then Henderson was trying to put one over?”

  “I think not,” Pelham Joyce broke into the discussion. “Mr. Henderson’s reputation is unassailable. I believe Henderson was absolutely honest in judging it a Raphael. An error in judgment rather than dishonesty.”

  Painter walked over to the picture and studied it with interest. “It’s already cost three lives-and it’s not worth a damn, eh?”

  “No one seems to be particularly interested in it now.” Shayne shrugged and said to Joyce, “Suppose we take it along with us for a souvenir?”

  “An excellent piece of work.” Pelham Joyce’s finger tips caressed the painting. His face lighted up. “There is a spot in my studio where I should love to hang it.”

  The coroner came bustling in as Joyce lovingly rolled up the painting and wrapped it in its covering.

  Shayne said to Joyce, “Let’s get out of here.” They went toward the door together, and Shayne said over his shoulder to Painter and the coroner, “We’ll both be on hand for the inquest.”

  They went out through throngs of Miami Beach policemen and got in Shayne’s car. He groaned as he set the car in motion, and gripped his underlip hard between his teeth. His shoulder throbbed with excruciating pain. His head lolled back against the seat as the car stopped. He muttered to his startled companion, “Flag a car and send me to the hospital. You hang-onto-the-Raphael.”

  CHAPTER 18

  It was hours later when Shayne came back to consciousness in the emergency ward of the Jackson Memorial Hospital. He gritted his teeth, sat up, and asked what time it was. A doctor came hurrying to his bed and told him it was four o’clock and that he must take it easy and get some rest until his strength returned.

  Shayne said, “Rest be damned. I’ve been here three hours already. Where are my clothes?”

  It was the same doctor who had treated his wounds when he was brought in from the midnight shooting. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “All right. Be stubborn. I warned you to take care of yourself the other time. You’ll carry this cast around for an extra month just because you horsed around when you should have been in bed.”

  Shayne chuckled and asked for a cigarette. Then he again demanded his clothes.

  The doctor shook his head and called an orderly to bring Shayne’s clothes. “But, what’s your hurry?” he argued. “We were going to move you into a private room as soon as you woke up. A night here with fresh dressings in the morning would fix you up as good as new.”

  “I’ve got a date,” Shayne informed him with a wide grin. He dressed with the orderly’s aid, and whistled expressively when he found the twenty thousand dollars intact.

  “You’re an honest bunch,” he grunted.

  The orderly gazed at the bills in respectful awe.

  “God in heaven! Who are you? The Secretary of the Treasury?”

  “Just a flatfoot trying to get along,” Shayne told him cheerfully. He put the money back in his pocket and his feet on the floor. A slight dizziness was the only discomfort he felt. “If you’ll whistle up a taxi, I’ll be set,” he announced.

  The orderly complied, eying Shayne with unmitigated respect as he went out.

  Shayne gave the driver his address and settled back comfortably. As they turned into Flagler he heard the newsboys shouting an extra. “All about the Brighton case! Three dead in final roundup!” Sha
yne had the driver pull up at the curb while he got a paper. He spread it out on his knees and chuckled while reading the lurid news account of the affair.

  Peter Painter was the hero of the day. According to printed accounts, he had fearlessly entered the fray single-handed and come out with three dead, one wounded, and two prisoners.

  Under questioning, the sick man in the upstairs room had confessed he was Julius Brighton, and that his brother Rufus had died in New York-insisting that he died a natural death, and admitting no regret over the attempted imposture which Montrose and Oscar, his former cell-mate, had helped engineer. The trunk containing Rufus’s embalmed body had been dug up on the beach. The bogus nurse had confessed nothing, but a ballistic test proved that her. 25 automatic had killed Charlotte Hunt.

  The real Myrtle Godspeed had made a telephonic statement of her innocent entanglement in the affair, and arrangements had been made to bring her back from Cuba to confront the woman who had inveigled her into accepting an expense-paid vacation in Cuba.

  That was about all. It was enough. Shayne’s name was mentioned only casually, and not at all in connection with the solving of the case. “Which,” he told himself as he got out at his hotel, “certainly justifies a payoff.”

  He went in the side entrance and up to his apartment. A maid had cleaned up all the evidences of disorder left by Gordon when he searched the apartment.

  Shayne went to the kitchen and crushed ice cubes into a pitcher which he filled with water. He set it on the table with a large glass and a wineglass. Then he opened a fresh bottle of Martell and set it beside the pitcher.

  Drawing up a comfortable chair, he lit a cigarette and poured himself a drink. Sitting alone, he sipped the liquor and smoked meditatively while strength flowed back to his body.

  The telephone rang as he finished a second glass. He answered it and heard Painter on the wire.

  The chief of detectives’ voice was exultant. “Everything has worked out perfectly, Shayne. The reward will be paid to me personally. I’ll turn it over to you-privately-as soon as I receive it.”

  “Two and a half G’s?” Shayne questioned laconically.

  “That’s right. And thanks.”

  Shayne said, “Money talks,” and hung up.

  He went back to the table and finished his drink. He then took a sheet of paper out of the drawer and looked for a pencil. There wasn’t any. A lopsided grin spread over his face as he picked up the fountain pen which he had taken from the sickroom.

  He sat down and wrote across the top of the sheet:

  He nodded approvingly at the figures and poured himself another drink. Dusk was creeping in through the windows, but he didn’t turn on the lights. Suddenly he remembered something. He got up and went to the kitchen door. It was still bolted shut as he had left it the night of Charlotte’s visit. He unbolted it but left the night latch on. Then he went back to the living-room-to his cognac, his cigarettes, and his not unpleasant meditations. It grew darker in the room, then lighter as the street lamps came on. Shayne sat in a listening attitude.

  He sat like that a long time before he heard the sound he was expecting. The faint click of a key in the lock on the kitchen door.

  His back was toward the kitchen. He did not move except to reach out in the semidarkness and fold the sheet of paper upon which he had cast up his profits on the Brighton case. He heard the back door open softly, then light footsteps advancing hesitantly from the kitchen. He chose that moment to light a cigarette, still with his back turned, seemingly unaware of another presence in the room.

  The intruder stole upon him as he blew out the match. Soft hands were clasped over his eyes, and a laughing voice exclaimed, “Guess who.”

  Shayne did not move. He said lazily, “So it was you who stole the key to my kitchen door.”

  Phyllis Brighton leaned her cheek down against his coarse red hair for just an instant. Then she took her hands from his eyes and came around from behind him.

  “Pull the cord on the floor lamp,” Shayne suggested.

  She did, and faced him accusingly in the soft light. “You’re not even surprised to see me.”

  “Of course not. I expected you sooner. Sit down.” Shayne pointed to a chair and reached for his glass.

  Phyllis drew the chair close and sat down. Her eyes were bright and unclouded.

  “It’s a good thing I wasn’t sure it was you who had that key,” Shayne told her easily. “Else I would have known it was you who peeked in the other night-and I might have suspected you had killed Charlotte Hunt out of jealousy.”

  Her eyes dropped before his. “I saw plenty-to make me jealous.”

  “That’s what you get for sneaking in through kitchen doors at such an ungodly hour,” Shayne pointed out. “I was in a tough spot that night, but business is business. I got enough dope from her to solve the case.”

  Phyllis shuddered and said, “Ugh! Let’s not talk about it.”

  “I,” Shayne told her, “will be very happy to forget Miss Hunt. But where the hell have you been hiding?” He lifted his glass and took a long drink.

  Phyllis laughed with carefree pleasure. “Right here in a downtown hotel. I’ve seen you on the street twice. And, oh!” she went on exultantly, “I’m all cured. Just getting away from that horrible house has made me well. I haven’t had another single one of those spells of forgetting.”

  Shayne nodded. “That’s one thing that didn’t get into the papers. Pedique made a full confession just before he committed suicide. He was trying to drive you crazy, angel, with a mixture of drugs and hypnotism. I burned his confession.”

  “Thank God.” Tears swam unashamed in the girl’s eyes. She reached out her hand, and Shayne gripped it tightly. “You’ve been-wonderful to me,” she breathed.

  Shayne grinned, released her hand, and patted it. “You’re the kind of kid men like to be nice to.” He swung up awkwardly and went into the kitchen, saying, “By the way, I’ve got something here that belongs to you.”

  He opened the refrigerator and took out the hydrator, brought it in to the table while Phyllis watched with wondering eyes.

  “Don’t look,” Shayne said.

  Phyllis obediently closed her eyes while Shayne dug under the lettuce with his left hand and brought out the shimmering pearl necklace.

  Going around behind her chair, he dropped it down over her head. His hand strayed toward the curling tendrils of hair on her neck, but he jerked away before touching her, and his face was expressionless as he moved from behind her.

  She opened her eyes wide, and her hand flew up to the necklace. “But these are yours,” she exclaimed. “They were your-what do you call it-your retainer.”

  Shayne sat down and shook his head. “No, darling. Tough as I am, I can’t take a retainer from you.”

  “But you’ve earned it,” she implored, lifting the pearls from her neck and thrusting them at him. “It’s little enough for what you’ve done. I know it was you who did all the work on the case.”

  Shayne pushed the pearls back toward her. A diabolic grin lurked at the corners of his mouth. His fingers closed over the folded sheet of paper and crumpled it up. “I’ll get along,” he assured her.

  Phyllis didn’t say anything. She stared at him bright-eyed, seemingly struggling with words which would not form themselves.

  Shayne poured himself another small drink and said slowly, “You and the boy are the sole heirs, eh?”

  “I-suppose so.”

  Shayne toyed with his glass. “The estate isn’t very large. I imagine Montrose has been stealing from Brighton for years, getting even for the raw deal he felt Rufus handed Julius.”

  She made a little gesture and said, “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I have enough money for the present.”

  Shayne drank some cognac. He said, “I just wanted you to know-after all the ruckus is cleared up and forgotten, there’s a genuine Raphael in the possession of an artist friend of mine which belongs to the estate. It’ll be wort
h a pretty good pile of dough.”

  “A Raphael? But the papers said-”

  “The papers,” Shayne told her, “don’t know a hell of a lot of angles on this case. It’s genuine, all right. I had Pelham Joyce paint a bum ‘Raphael’ on top of the new signature Henderson had put on for smuggling purposes and then a second fake ‘Robertson’ on top of that. That made four signatures piled up on each other. Only two were scraped off by the time the shooting started. The bottom signature is authentic.”

  Phyllis drew in her breath unevenly. “You’re a remarkable person-and I owe you a lot.” Her fingers crept out and touched Shayne’s hand.

  Shayne drained his glass. He said, “It’s fun being nice to you, angel.” Then he patted her fingers and went on with a grin, “It’s been a good case. There’s only one thing I’ll always regret-that those two mugs busted in on us just when they did that first night.”

  Phyllis stood up. There was something very close to adoration in her eyes. She said breathlessly, “You needn’t-regret it any longer.”

  Shayne looked up at her for a long moment from beneath raggedly bushy brows. “What are you trying to say?”

  She returned his gaze bravely, color flooding her cheeks. “Must I-draw you a blueprint?”

  Shayne lurched to his feet. Phyllis swayed toward him. Her eyes were clear and unashamed.

  He caught her shoulder with his sound hand and turned her toward the door, muttering, “God help me, I almost weakened once before.”

  He let go of her in the doorway. She stood rigid, her back toward him. His lips brushed the top of her hair, and he said huskily, “Wait a minute.”

  She stood like that without turning while he strode back to the table and picked up the pearls. He came back and slid them over her head, growling, “Go out and grow up. Then come back, and we’ll do something constructive about it-if you still feel the same way.”

  Her hand went up to touch the pearls. “But you-you can’t afford to take cases for nothing,” she faltered. “And the newspapers didn’t even give you a line of credit.”