Death Has Three Lives

by Brett Halliday

  No, Lucy told herself desperately. He can’t be really bad. Certainly I would know subconsciously if he were, and would be repelled rather than attracted by him. Whatever trouble he’s in must be the result of a prank or some sort of mistake, and I would be disloyal to Arlene if I refused to protect him for the short time he asked.

  On the other hand, his threat to smear her reputation in front of Michael Shayne if she admitted his presence to the detective rankled, and she conceded in her heart that it was not the act of an innocent lad. Still, it was a threat that had been born of desperation and of his lack of knowledge of Shayne’s real character.

  There I go, she muttered to herself despairingly, pretending I know Michael’s real character when the fact is that I’m not at all sure how he might react if Jack were to tell him a lot of lies about me. I should be sure that he’d disregard them, but I’m not. I simply don’t know. And I’m afraid to put it to the test. On the other hand, I’ll hate myself forever if I lie to Michael and let Jack stay hidden in the bedroom without telling him.

  Lucy still hadn’t made up her mind when the buzzer rang and she got up to push the button that would admit Michael Shayne to the apartment building.

  Chapter Two

  The rangy redhead was in a pleasantly relaxed mood when he appeared at the top of the stairs in front of Lucy’s door. He sailed his wide-brimmed Panama over her head into the center of the rug and grinned down at her, putting one big hand at each armpit and lifting her from the floor to kiss her lips lightly.

  She was flushed and confused when he set her down, trying to distinguish in her own mind between the sudden rush of passion that had drawn her briefly toward Jack Bristow a short time previously and the very real affection she felt for Shayne.

  Misinterpreting her blushing confusion, Shayne slid one arm over her shoulders and turned her back into the apartment. “A person would think that was the first time I ever kissed you, angel. You ought to be used to it by now.”

  “That’s just it, Michael. You’ve been doing it for years now, and I’m beginning to wonder if it means anything to you at all.”

  She hadn’t known she was going to say that. She could have bitten off her tongue after hearing the words if that would have recalled them. Long ago, when she first entered the half-intimate relationship of secretary and favorite female friend of Michael Shayne, she had sworn to herself that she would accept from him only what he freely offered of himself and would never seek anything more. She gazed up at him in stricken silence as he stopped abruptly and his arm tightened about her shoulders.

  “I don’t believe you really wonder, do you, Lucy?” Michael Shayne’s voice was curiously gentle. “I think you know just about how I feel.”

  She smiled wretchedly and nodded her brown head, eeling away from his encircling arm and avoiding his questioning eyes. “Skip it, Michael.” She made her voice light with an effort. “That just slipped out. I guess I’ve been sitting here alone too long wondering whether you were coming tonight or not. Brooding over a glass of diluted cognac.” She leaned over to pick up her glass in which the ice cubes had melted, drained off the watery residue with convincing gaiety. “Do you want yours straight tonight, Mr. Shayne?”

  He nodded. “As usual. Plenty of ice water on the side.” He spoke abstractedly, continuing to study her with speculative eyes while his left hand went up mechanically to roll the lobe of his ear between thumb and forefinger.

  Lucy knew that look and that gesture by heart. Just as she knew every one of Michael Shayne’s looks and gestures. He was troubled and thinking deeply, sorting things out in his mind with that damnable logic of his which sometimes frightened her and often infuriated her.

  Lucy sighed and turned to the kitchen. Somehow, the opportunity to tell Shayne about Jack Bristow in the bedroom had vanished. Why had she made that crack about sitting there alone wondering if he were coming? And why had she, tonight of all nights, done something to force the issue between them?

  She busied herself in the kitchenette for as long as she dared, pouring Shayne a full six ounces of amber liquor and fitting four over-sized ice cubes into a tall twelve-ounce glass, then filling it to the brim with cold water. She made her own drink very light this time, and was completely self-possessed when she returned to the living-room with a tray. Her mind was made up. This evening would be like all the other evenings she and Shayne had spent together in her apartment. She would be a reserved and pleasant hostess, making him comfortable and relaxed with good liquor and by being an attentive and responsive listener. After he left, around midnight it usually was, would be time enough to start thinking about Jack Bristow again.

  Shayne was sprawled back at one end of the divan with long legs stretched out in front of him. His red hair was rumpled and his tie slightly askew, the gauntness of his features softened and lessened somewhat by the indirect light from a floor lamp and the comfortable feeling he always had when alone with Lucy.

  He watched her without speaking and without moving while she leaned forward to set the tray on a low coffee table close to him and then seated herself on the other side of it. He lifted the cognac glass with knobby fingers and sipped meditatively for a moment, then said, “Give me a little more time, Lucy. I know I don’t deserve it, but I do need it.”

  She didn’t ask him time for what. She knew what he meant. In her heart she wanted to cry out that she couldn’t wait much longer, that she was sometimes frightened by the things she felt, that she was a woman of flesh and blood and of normal desires, and that if he didn’t want to marry her she wished he would say so and propose some other sort of arrangement.

  Instead, she crossed her nice legs and smoothed the shimmering blue hostess gown over her thighs and replied, “Of course, Michael.” Then changed the subject by adding, “Did you see Mr. Selkirk this afternoon?”

  There was the tramp of heavy footsteps in the hall outside, and a loud knock on her door before Shayne could reply. He lifted bushy red brows questioningly at her, and Lucy shrugged her shoulders to indicate she expected no visitors and had no idea who was there.

  She got to her feet as a second knock followed the first swiftly, went to the door, and opened it a foot to confront a red-faced and uniformed city policeman.

  There were others beyond him, she noted, arousing the occupants of the other apartments, and knew instantly why they were there. Panic flowed through her and caused a tight knot in her throat, but she managed to get her words out past the knot calmly. “Yes? What is it, officer?”

  “Sorry to bother you, ma’am. Is anyone in your apartment with you?”

  She clung tightly to the doorframe and the door with both hands while demanding, “Why do you want to know?”

  “We’re looking for a man,” the cop explained impatiently. “Traced him into this apartment house in the last hour and we’ve got to ask your permission to search your place for him.”

  “Do you suspect me of harboring a fugitive?” she asked hotly.

  “No need to get nasty about it. Maybe you are, at that.” The blue-coated policeman pushed forward against her with a leer. “If I was on the lam I’d not want a nicer place to lay up.”

  She didn’t hear Shayne behind her. Wasn’t aware that the redhead had moved from the divan until she felt his hand on her shoulder thrusting her aside roughly.

  The policeman jerked to an astonished halt when he was suddenly confronted by the blazing eyes and jutted jaw of Shayne instead of a shrinking female, and heard a harsh voice demanding, “What the hell do you mean by pushing into a private place and insulting a decent woman?”

  “Can it, friend.” Taken aback and on the defensive, the policeman adopted a blustering tone and made the mistake of reaching for his stick. “Keep your yap shut before I run you in for—”

  Balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, Shayne hit him full in the mouth. Lucy moaned faintly and covered her face with her hands as she saw Shayne’s fist drive forward and upward with the weight of his body behi
nd it.

  The officious cop staggered back and caught his heel on the threshold and went over backward in the hall with flailing arms. Shayne stalked grimly into the doorway and confronted a sergeant who came running from another room at the sound of the affray. The sergeant stopped with mouth agape when he saw and recognized Shayne. He said sharply, “What the hell is this? Get up from the floor and start talking, Morrison.”

  Morrison got to his feet slowly, spitting out two upper and a lower tooth with a curse, his beefy face as scarlet with rage as the blood trickling from his mouth. “That must be him, sarge.” His hand went to his holster. “Jumped me from behind the door and slugged me with brass knucks or something.”

  The sergeant snorted contemptuously and lunged forward to grab the half-drawn gun while Shayne lounged against the doorframe and watched the tableau, his features stony and controlled.

  “Get back, you fool,” ordered the sergeant. “That’s Mike Shayne. If he had used knucks you wouldn’t have any teeth left. Get down the hall with Langley and I’ll handle this.”

  Mention of Shayne’s name changed the patrolman’s surly attitude to one of abashed deference, for it was commonly known in Miami that the private detective and Chief of Police Gentry were close friends. After he slunk away, the sergeant asked Shayne, “What did the bigmouthed ape do to ask for what he got?”

  “Barged into my secretary’s apartment without any explanation and insulted her,” Shayne told him coldly. “What’s this all about?”

  “We’re hunting a killer we hoped we had cornered in the building. Slightly built young fellow. I didn’t know that was Miss Hamilton’s apartment,” the sergeant went on defensively. “You know how it is when you’re trying to work fast. Don’t mind if I take a look around, do you?”

  “I mind plenty,” Shayne told him coldly. “Miss Hamilton tried to tell your man there was no one here. Now, I’m telling you that she isn’t hiding anyone in her bedroom. That good enough or do I have to call Will Gentry?”

  “That’s plenty good for me,” the sergeant assured him hastily. He turned back to the others who were emerging from the other apartments empty-handed, and Shayne stepped back to slam the door shut violently.

  Lucy was huddled back on the divan and she watched Shayne with frightened eyes as he stalked back to pick up his drink. She had never seen him look so savagely angry, and having heard only his end of the colloquy at the door, she asked timidly, “Who are they looking for, Michael?”

  “Some punk they were tipped off was hiding here.” Shayne’s voice grated unnaturally. He shook his head and lowered the cognac a full inch in his glass before setting it down. “My damned temper,” he muttered disgustedly. “Going to get me in trouble sometime.” He grinned down at Lucy with an effort and touched the tendrils of brown hair at the nape of her neck with his finger tips. “I guess maybe I do like you a lot, angel. Something went all over me when that lout said what he did. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not,” Lucy told him sturdily. “I’m glad. But,” she added faintly, “I have to tell you something, Michael.”

  He dropped back onto the divan and got out a pack of cigarettes, his thoughts still on the incident at the door. “That’s the whole trouble with cops,” he muttered. “They take an ignorant Cracker out of the backwoods and give him a gun and authority to bulldoze his betters. He’s been kicked in the teeth all his life, and he immediately begins to take out all his accumulated venom on the general public I’ve told Will Gentry a hundred times—”

  Lucy wasn’t listening to him. She was biting her lip indecisively and looking at the closed bedroom door. “Michael!” she broke in. “I said I have something important to tell you.”

  “Okay. Tell it.” He waited quizzically.

  “It’s—I don’t know how to say it.” Lucy’s face was suffused with shame. Shayne’s words to the sergeant continued to echo in her ears: I’m telling you that she isn’t hiding anyone in her bedroom.

  “It—it all happened so fast,” Lucy said faintly. “I hadn’t time to think. I didn’t really mean to tell a lie, Michael.”

  “What are you talking about?” His grin changed to a frown of perplexity.

  “I’m trying to tell you the best I can. To explain why I didn’t—when that policeman came—just at first. Then things happened so fast I didn’t have a chance. You knocking him down and all.”

  “What the devil are you talking about?”

  “The man. He is in my bedroom, Michael.”

  It took the space of twenty seconds for her words fully to penetrate into Shayne’s consciousness. His perplexity changed slowly to incredulity to understanding, and to cold rage. He got to his feet slowly, and Lucy could not meet his gaze.

  “Do you mean that, Lucy? You let me lie to the sergeant? Use my reputation and friendship with Gentry to refuse them entry while you were hiding their man all the time?”

  Lucy nodded without looking up. Tears were streaming from her eyes. She winced as though from a blow with each word Shayne spoke. There was a brief silence and still she did not dare look up. Then the sound of Shayne’s heels striking hard on the floor as he strode to the outer door and jerked it open. She sat with bowed head and listened drearily to the sound of him taking the stairs to the bottom three at a time.

  Lucy didn’t lift her head until he returned. There were deep trenches in his gaunt cheeks, and his eyes were cold. He jerked his head in negation and said, “Too late. Sergeant Loftus and his crew have already gone.” He strode past her to the bedroom door and turned the knob.

  The door did not budge.

  Shayne turned angrily and demanded, “Did you lock him in?”

  “No,” faltered Lucy. “There’s a bolt on the inside. He must have closed it.”

  Shayne turned and thundered his fist against the door. When this brought no response, he shouted hoarsely, “Unlock the door before I break it down.”

  He paused and there was complete silence in the apartment. Shayne waited for no more than ten seconds, then took one step back and crouched a trifle, drove his shoulder against the edge of the door.

  Flimsy wood splintered under the impact, and the door flew open. Lucy sat motionless on the divan, the back of her hand pressed tightly against her mouth when Shayne implacably stalked inside the dark bedroom. She realized now that she didn’t know whether Jack was armed or not.

  She heard Shayne’s heavy footfalls inside the bedroom, then an exclamation and a leap forward. She sat scarcely breathing, waiting for the sound of a struggle, some word from Shayne or Jack.

  There was nothing for the space of at least half a minute. Then the sound of Shayne’s measured tread returning across the bedroom. His features were set in an expressionless mask and his voice was toneless when he re-entered the room.

  “So, you really pulled a fast one, Lucy. He’s gone. The window screen opening onto the fire escape is ripped open and I heard running footsteps in the alley below, but it was too dark to see anything. So we’ve sent a murderer out on the streets of Miami to kill again if he wants to just because I was fool enough to trust you.”

  He strode past her to the telephone, lifted it, and dialed the number of Miami police headquarters.

  Chapter Three

  Lucy Hamilton sat frozen to the divan for a long moment while Shayne waited to be connected with the police. His back was toward her, shoulders squared and stiffly uncompromising.

  He mustn’t, she thought suddenly. I mustn’t let him do that. Not for my sake, but for his.

  She was on her feet with the thought, across the room and clawing at the hard-muscled arm holding the receiver while she cried out, “No, Michael. Not the police. You’ve got to listen to me. Don’t you see what it means?”

  He remained unmoved and immobile, her voice and her clawing fingers having as little effect as the buzzing of a mosquito.

  “Hello,” he barked into the phone. “Mike Shayne talking. Who’s handling—”

  That was as far as he got. With s
trength and courage born of her desperate need, Lucy dropped to her haunches and seized the telephone cord with both hands, yanked back with all her weight, and jerked it loose from the box. She went sprawling on her back as the cord came free, and lay there looking up into Michael Shayne’s face with an expression of horror at her own temerity, mingled with grim determination.

  “You have to listen to me, Michael,” she gasped, her pointed breasts rising and falling rapidly behind the tight bodice, the shimmery blue fullness of her skirt billowed up to expose bare knees and a brief expanse of thigh. “I won’t let you call the police. I won’t let you do it.”

  Shayne looked down at her for a moment with an expression of icy detachment. He slowly replaced the disconnected receiver on its prongs and said wonderingly, “You’re being stupid, Lucy. A little delay won’t help him much.”

  “You’re the one who’s being stupid, Michael Shayne.” Tears of rage and mortification ran down Lucy’s cheeks. She struggled up to a sitting position and tugged her skirt down to her ankles. “Just because you’re angry at me, you’re acting like a college boy. You just said a little delay won’t help much.” Her voice rose sharply, “Don’t you realize what the Tribune would do with a story like that? Mike Shayne’s secretary confesses hiding murderer with help of the detective who used his friendship with the Chief of Police to refuse admittance to local officers. Good heavens, Michael, they’d get your license. Drive you out of business in Miami.”

  “Is my license more important than letting a killer escape?” His voice was remote and cold. He looked down at her with loathing which he made no effort to conceal.

  “It’s not only you, Michael,” she wailed. “They’ll nail Chief Gentry to the cross, also, because you used his name to send those men away.”

  She reached one hand up to him imploringly. “Stop a moment and think about it,” she pleaded. “Jack Bristow is shot in the stomach and certainly can’t get far from here. They had traced him here and must be searching near by for him. What help would your information be now? It would just verify what they already know.”