Death Has Three Lives

by Brett Halliday

  “What a monologuist,” he groaned. “If you got anything out of that drivel—”

  “I got plenty out of it.” Michael Shayne’s voice was strong and he sounded sure of himself for the first time since Rourke had encountered him earlier. The reporter looked at him in utter surprise, but Shayne was driving away fast and going on briskly.

  “Doesn’t the Daily News sponsor a nightcap news broadcast at two o’clock?”

  “Yes.”

  “Know the man who does it?”

  “Sure. Dick Farrel’s on it now.”

  “Friend of yours?” Shayne snapped at him.

  “He owes me plenty of drinks.”

  “Good. I’ll drop you and you get hold of him. Have him kill some of the junk he’s getting ready to rehash over the air and do a story on Joe Agnew. Get in the salient things Agnew told us about Bristow. The way he acted in the cab demanding Joe’s name and number. And I wasn’t fooling about giving Joe some free advertising about his extra-curricular activities if anybody calls him at home at night to make an extra trip. Be damned sure you get that in. Such enterprise should be rewarded.”

  “Are you serious, Mike? Dick Farrel won’t like my telling him what to say on the air.”

  “I’m damned serious. Ram it down his throat, Tim. Get him tight and take the microphone away from him to do the broadcast yourself if you have to. But get that stuff on the air at two o’clock. That’s just eighteen minutes from now.”

  Timothy Rourke didn’t argue with him. Many times in the past, nearing the end of a case, he had seen this same change come over the rangy private detective. And each time it had happened, it had spelled out headlines for him the next day.

  All indecision had vanished from Shayne now. All doubts had been swept away. He was surging forward on the tide of some inner strength which grew out of an intense personal conviction that he now knew the answers to the questions that had previously bothered him.

  He pulled up hard at the corner of Flagler to let Timothy Rourke out, and his voice was harsh as he said, “I’m leaving it up to you, Tim. For God’s sake, don’t let me—or Lucy—down.”

  Rourke met his demanding gaze briefly and nodded. “Be seeing you.” He stepped out and slammed the door shut, stood on the curb and wonderingly watched the black sedan leap across the intersection northward.

  Chapter Seventeen

  A police car was just ahead of Michael Shayne when he swung into the block on 18th Street, slowing in to the curb in front of the house where Trixie had been strangled, and as Shayne drove past he saw a man getting out of the car and starting up the walk toward a uniformed man on guard at the front door.

  Shayne went on without pausing, all the way around the block, and when he turned the corner again the police car was pulling away ahead of him.

  Shayne parked two houses away from the one he wanted, got out, and went along the sidewalk briskly and up to the front door which no longer had a police guard. He opened the door and went in as though he belonged there, found himself in a small hallway lighted by a dingy bulb, with stairs leading to the two upper floors on his left.

  He climbed one flight, looked for a number on the first door and found it was 21. It was dark, but light came through the transom from number 23, and the sound of a radio being played softly.

  Directly across from the lighted door, Shayne stopped in front of 24 and tried the knob. It was locked, of course. But it was only a common indoor lock, and it opened easily with a skeleton key.

  He stepped inside the silent room and pulled the door shut behind him, switched on a pencil flashlight to orient himself in the chamber where death had struck earlier.

  It was an ordinary cheap bedroom, with neatly made double bed in one corner, veneered oak chest of drawers and chintz-covered easy chair, a straight wooden chair in another corner.

  Shayne got the straight chair and carried it back to a position against the wall beside the closed door. He sat in it and looked at his watch, switched off the light and got Will Gentry’s gun from his pocket and laid it across his knees.

  He would waste exactly fifteen minutes here, he decided. By that time, the Daily News broadcast would be on the air, and he couldn’t afford to wait longer than that.

  He didn’t actually expect anything to happen during those fifteen minutes. The chances were about a thousand to one against it. But he had these few minutes to waste, and there was that one chance in a thousand that he would have a visitor.

  There had been a policeman on duty ever since the murder until just a few minutes ago. If anyone had desired to get into the room, they would have been prevented from doing so. Now that the guard had been withdrawn from the front door, an attempt might be made.

  It was stifling hot inside the dark room. In the night silence, the radio from across the hall sounded inordinately loud.

  Shayne sat with relaxed muscles and waited. He made his mind as blank as he could, refusing to allow his thoughts to dwell on Lucy or what might be happening to her. He had done all he could now. There was this brief vigil to be kept, and if it fizzled out there was one further thing he could do. No use trying to plan further. No use trying to contemplate what would happen if he had guessed wrong and both plans failed. He refused to consider the possibility of failure. He had to be right. Too much depended on it for him to be wrong.

  He shifted position after a time, got out the flashlight to look at his watch. Eight minutes had passed. More than half the period he had allotted himself.

  He didn’t hear the man approach two minutes later. The radio across the hall drowned out the sound of footfalls, and Shayne’s first intimation of success came when the doorknob beside him was turned cautiously.

  He sat very still and waited, gripping the butt of the Police Positive hard in his big right hand.

  The door opened a cautious crack and there was a moment of hesitancy, then it swung wide and a figure stepped through swiftly and closed it behind him.

  Shayne’s left forefinger was on the wall switch and he clicked it down to flood the room with bright light, rising in the same motion to ram the muzzle of his .38 into the ribs of a white-faced and cowering young man whom he had never seen before.

  He was shabbily dressed and cringing with fright, with an improvised and bloody bandage wrapped like a turban around his head.

  Shayne stood glowering down at him, and said grimly, “End of the line, Allerdice. Where’s your pal, Mark Switzer?”

  “I don’t know.” The youth’s body was racked with sudden sobs. He slunk back to the bed and sank down on it, beaten and shivering like a whipped cur. “I haven’t seen him. Not since he shot Jack and beat me over the head and left me for dead, too, I guess.”

  He dazedly put his hand to his bandaged forehead, looking around the room furtively. “What happened up here? Who are you? I don’t know—”

  “Answer my questions fast if you want to stay alive. Did Switzer come up here alone?”

  “Yes. To see the girl. Jack had gone out and Mark made me stay outside to keep watch because I knew Jack and he didn’t. He came running out of the house just as Jack came up the street. I didn’t know he was going to shoot. I swear I didn’t. He acted insane. I never saw a man look like that. He pulled a gun and shot Jack without a word of warning. I yelled at him and tried to knock the gun up. Then he hit me just as a taxi pulled up in the street and Jack got in. I went down and he cursed and started to chase the taxi. I managed to stagger behind a hedge and then passed out. I came to and bandaged my head and saw a cop guarding the door here and didn’t know what had happened or what to do. I was to meet my wife here tonight. I don’t know—”

  “Your wife is dead, too,” Shayne told him coldly. “Switzer killed her just as he killed Jack and the girl. Where do I find him?”

  “Beatrice? She’s—Oh, God.” Hugh Allerdice slumped forward with his face in his hands and wept horribly.

  Shayne stood looking down at him for a moment without a tremor of pity on his hard face
. He pocketed the gun, took two steps forward, and swung the flat of his right hand against the side of Allerdice’s head. The youth sprawled sideways on the bed putting both hands up to fend off another blow.

  “I want Switzer,” Shayne said flatly. “I don’t give a damn about your wife or you. Where will he be hiding out?”

  “I don’t know,” wailed Allerdice. “I been passed out, I tell you. We just hit Miami early this evening. How did Beatrice—”

  “Where did you ditch Jack Bristow’s sister?” demanded Shayne. “You brought her here from New Orleans, didn’t you? To use her to force Jack to give up the money if he tried to hold out?”

  “Yes. It was Mark’s idea,” babbled Allerdice. “We didn’t know where Jack was hiding in Miami. I thought Arlene would know. I thought we were just grabbing her to get the address and then going to let her go. But Mark said no. He kidnaped her. I begged him not to.

  “Every bit of it was Mark from the beginning.” He hurried on abjectly, straining away from Shayne. “I got to know him in jail and he kept talking about the money. I didn’t even know he’d planned that in the car on the way to the pen. I swear I didn’t or I’d have warned the other cop. But Mark hit him from the back before I knew.”

  “I don’t give one goddamn about any of that. What did you do with Arlene Bristow when you got here?”

  “I don’t know what Mark did. I swear I don’t. He didn’t trust me. I saw it more and more the closer we got to Miami. I saw he was crazy for the money. All of it. He was just using me to get it. Arlene and me. I would have helped her escape if I could. I would have done anything to get out from under and I think he realized it. But I’d told Bea to meet me here at this address tonight. I thought I’d get the money from Jack and everything’d be all right. That we could get away to South America.”

  “Cut out the explanations and tell me where Arlene is.”

  “I don’t know. I’m telling you. Here’s how it was. It wasn’t quite dark when we got here. He stopped out north on the edge of town and made me get out. He told me to wait there by the road until he came back. And drove off with Arlene. I didn’t have a cent, and I waited. About half an hour until he came back alone. He only said Arlene was put away safe unless we needed her to put pressure on Jack. I didn’t know then, you see, whether he meant to give me my half of the money or not. Jack, I mean. I trusted him in the beginning. But then when he never got in touch with Bea or didn’t send her any money or nothing, I just didn’t know. So I don’t know where Arlene is. Or where Mark is now. If he got the money from Jack—”

  “He didn’t get the money,” Shayne said flatly. He looked at his watch. A few minutes yet before two o’clock.

  He stooped and caught Hugh Allerdice by one thin arm, dragged him to the door and out, down the hallway and stairs to his car where he shoved him in the front seat and got behind the wheel.

  Five minutes later he dragged his sniveling prisoner down the hall at police headquarters, jerked open the door of Chief Gentry’s private office, and shoved him inside so he fell sprawling on the floor.

  “You get some of your tough cops to work on him, Will. If you can get anything out of him about Arlene Bristow’s whereabouts—that may be where Lucy is, too.”

  “Who is he, Mike? What the devil?”

  “Hugh Allerdice from New Orleans,” Shayne said shortly. “He’ll sob the whole sad story out on your broad shoulder, given a chance—and part of it may be the truth. In the meantime, Mark Switzer is still roaming the streets of Miami after killing three people tonight, and if he hasn’t killed Lucy and Arlene yet it’s just because he hasn’t got around to it.”

  Shayne slammed the door shut and strode down the corridor before Will Gentry had time to ask further questions.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Joseph Leroy Agnew was dreaming. It was definitely one of his better dreams. There was a girl in it who looked something like he remembered his mother had looked, but he Knew the girl couldn’t be his mother because then he wouldn’t have felt about her the way he did.

  They were in the front seat of a car, parked under two palm trees silhouetted against an intensely blue sky. The automobile horn started blaring when he kissed the girl, and it wouldn’t stop. As though some unseen hand were pressing it as a warning to him that he shouldn’t go any further with the girl in his arms.

  So he stopped kissing her, but the horn kept right on blowing. It was uncanny, that’s what it was. His sixth sense didn’t seem to be working very well because he couldn’t understand it at all.

  Then he rolled over in the double bed and his left hand encountered his wife’s warm, bare rump, and he woke up and the telephone beside the bed was shrilling insistently, and for a moment he was so sore when he realized it was the phone that had spoiled his dream that he thought he wouldn’t answer it.

  But Irma was awake now, too, and she shook him and reached out to turn on the light and he yawned and rolled over to pick up the telephone and mutter, “Whatsit?” into the mouthpiece.

  A man asked, “Is that Joe Agnew? The taxi driver?”

  Somehow, he thought he recognized the voice but couldn’t quite place it even with his sixth sense. He mumbled, “Yeh,” and his caller went on briskly, though in a lowered, confidential tone.

  “I’m in a real bad jam, Joe. Need a cab quick as you can get here.”

  “Wait a minute,” protested Joe, glancing at the bedside clock. “It’s past two o’clock. Whyn’t you call one of the all-night companies?”

  “Be a good scout, Joe, and do a fellow a good turn. One of my friends told me you didn’t mind going out after hours on special trips. This is a special trip, see? Real special. My car’s broke down and the lady that’s with me—she’s real anxious to get home without anybody seeing her. Catch on? Call one of the regular companies, the trip gets entered in the log and all that. Have a heart, will you?”

  “Well—sure,” Joe agreed. He knew how it was, all right. A man out with some other man’s wife at two o’clock in the morning! Sure. He got it. Ought to be a nice tip in it.

  He asked, “Where you at?”

  “Hundred and Forty-Eighth off the Boulevard to your right about a block. I parked here, see, and now the damn engine won’t start.”

  “Take it easy,” said Joe with a grin. “Be out there in about thirty minutes.” He yawned again and replaced the phone, winked at Irma, and told her, “Some sport stuck with a dame that ain’t his wife.” He swung thin shanks over the edge of the bed and stood up to strip off his pajamas.

  “You ought to let a man like that fry in his own juice, Joe Agnew,” said his wife tartly. “Aiding and abetting adultery, that’s what it amounts to. You work hard enough all day long, you need your night’s sleep.”

  “Probably make as big a tip out of this one trip as I’d collect all day in dimes.” He was pulling on his clothes as he spoke, keeping his face averted from Irma so she wouldn’t see the sly grin on his face. Women were sure funny the way they resented a man getting a little bit of fun that didn’t rightly belong to him. Sometimes he thought they were that way just because they never got a chance to slip away and have some fun. Take Irma, now. He was sure she never had had another man except him. But he bet, by God, she’d like to. Way down deep inside, that is. He’d seen a look on her face sometimes when she’d be half-tight on two cocktails.

  You bet, she’d like to. But she didn’t dare. And so it made her mad to think of some other woman having a little fun outside of bounds.

  Far as he was concerned, he’d help a man out of a mess like that any time even without the expectation of a fat tip. Men had a way of sticking together, he thought, that no woman seemed to understand. He pulled on his hackie’s cap and felt in his pocket for his keys, told Irma, “Turn out the light, hon, and go back to sleep. I’ll be real quiet when I come back so’s not to wake you up.”

  He went out whistling softly to himself, let himself out the back door into the balmy night air that gave him a sort of lif
t as he breathed it in deeply. A thing like this gave a man a sort of good feeling of adventure. Wheeling a cab around the city all day was pretty humdrum business. Made you feel alive and sort of young again to get called out like this on a mission of an amorous nature.

  He had his key ring out as he approached the garage, and in the moonlight selected the flat key to the padlock on the door.

  He stopped and frowned when he found it wasn’t even locked. Now that was funny. He always locked it when he put the taxi up at night. Long as he could remember, he’d never forgot to lock it before. He tried to think back and recall why he had neglected doing it the evening before.

  Let’s see now. He’d been a little late getting home. Nothing really unusual. Well, maybe he had been a little excited about calling the police and all, he conceded as he opened the double doors wide and got under the steering wheel.

  Yeh. That must have been it. He’d been going over in his mind the story he would tell Irma. Sort of building it up a little bit, maybe, to make it sound more important than it really was. But that was just to please Irma. She always waited up for him no matter how late he was, and was always pestering him to tell her all the interesting things that had happened to him that day. She never could get it out of her head that hacking was just like any other kind of work. She’d ask him what important people he’d carried, how pretty were the women and did any of them make passes or invite him into their houses for a drink when he took them home.

  And generally he couldn’t think of anything much to tell her, but last night had been different and he’d been full of it when he put the taxi up and went in.

  He was so full of remembering about it now as he backed the cab out of the driveway to the street that he didn’t pay any attention to the dark automobile parked inconspicuously at the curb half a block away.