Tickets for Death

by Brett Halliday

  “In this case, because I’d hate to have anyone see me taking you in there. They might get the wrong idea. This dump,” he went on, jerking his head toward the flashy front lights of the building, “is what the Herald would chastely describe as a house of ill fame. After all, Phyl—unless you want to lose your reputation—”

  “Oh!” Phyllis sank back against the cushion. “Why don’t people tell me these things?”

  “Because you’re so sweet and innocent.” Shayne pinched her cheek and got out. “Mayme may still be so polluted she won’t be able to talk coherently. In that case I’ll be right back.”

  He went across the street and into the entrance hall. Curtains were drawn across the brightly lighted lounging-room and loud voices and laughter followed him up the stairs to No. 14. The door was closed and no light showed through the transom.

  He hesitated a moment with his knuckles doubled to knock, then tried the knob instead. The door opened easily.

  A musty odor, part gin and part human, struck him in the face. Mingled with it was a stale smell of indefinable sweetishness which caused the hairs at the back of his neck to prickle. He fumbled for the light switch, found it, but stepped back to close the door before turning on the lights.

  Light flooded a disordered room which was occupied only by himself. He stood back against the door while his eyes searched every nook and corner for the thing he expected to see.

  It wasn’t there. He went forward warily, glanced into the empty kitchenette, then went to the closed bathroom door. He hesitated for a moment, standing back from a little pool of blood that had seeped under the door. His face hardened into grim, gaunt lines as he took out a handkerchief and covered the doorknob.

  The sweetish smell of fresh human blood was strong when he opened the door. He found the bathroom light switch and snapped it on, stood staring somberly down at the corpse of Mayme Martin. Her body lay twisted on one side and there was something indecent in the sight of her naked legs below the hem of her slip.

  He stood rigidly in the doorway and took in every detail of the scene with cold, searching eyes. Mayme Martin’s throat was slit from ear to ear and the pool of blood on the floor was turning brown.

  There was an odd look of contentment on her features, which had been so distorted with anger and fear a short time before. There was nothing to indicate that she had struggled while the lifeblood drained from her body. A safety razor blade lay on the tile floor beneath the un-flexed fingers of her right hand.

  Shayne left the light on and closed the bathroom door with his handkerchief-filled hand. He mopped sweat from his face and stood staring around the living-room. His toe struck an empty gin bottle on the floor and it rattled loudly against the leg of a chair as he moved slowly forward.

  The hatbox which had been half packed on his previous visit was now empty and toilet articles and clothing were scattered over the floor as though thrown aside by someone hastily searching through them.

  Shayne went to the door without touching anything. He used his handkerchief to rub the inside knob clean, scrubbed the electric switch, then turned out the light and stepped into the hall. Here he carefully removed his fingerprints from the outside knob. There was no use trying to preserve the fingerprints of whoever had entered the room before him. His own prints had obliterated them.

  The doors of rooms along the hall were closed except the one at the head of the stairs where the redhead had accosted him in the afternoon. He dragged the brim of his hat low on the left side of his face, tucked his chin down, and went down the stairs. He bumped into a man coming through the front door and the fellow squared off with a surly curse, but Shayne brushed past him and out to his roadster.

  “What happened?” Phyllis asked eagerly as he got under the steering-wheel. “Was Mayme’s information worth coming for? Did she tell you anything important?”

  Shayne moved his head shortly and negatively, then relaxed behind the wheel and shoved his hat back from his forehead.

  A cry of dismay escaped Phyllis’s lips when she saw his face. “What is it, Michael? What happened up there?”

  “Mayme Martin isn’t going to do any talking—ever,” he said harshly. “She’s dead.”

  “Oh—” Phyllis pressed her hand against her mouth.

  “It looks like suicide on the surface,” he went on slowly, “but I think it was fixed to appear that way.”

  “You mean—murder?”

  He nodded and leaned forward to turn on the ignition. “We’d better get away from here in a hurry.”

  “But shouldn’t you tell the police, Mike? It might be hours before anyone will find her.”

  “Mayme won’t mind,” he muttered.

  “But, Michael! Just think—”

  He said, “No,” with savage intensity and swerved around a corner toward Biscayne Boulevard.

  Phyllis shrank away from him and he drove fast, looking straight ahead.

  “She’s dead,” he said after a time. “Nothing can change that. Can’t you see the spot I’d be in if I reported it?”

  “I suppose so. Still—no one could blame you.”

  He laughed shortly, swinging into the boulevard northward. “I’m damned glad Mayme Martin wasn’t murdered on Peter Painter’s side of the bay. Of course, I know Will Gentry wouldn’t suspect me of murder. But he’d want the answers to a lot of questions—answers I can’t give him right now. I wouldn’t blame him for not believing me. My story sounds screwy as hell, and he knows I never tell anything if I think I can make a fee by keeping still. He’d have to hold me, Phyl, and in the meantime there’s a job to be done in Cocopalm. We’ve got to get back there so fast no one will suspect we’ve been away—and sit tight until this thing is cleared up.”

  In a small voice Phyllis said, “All right,” and subsided against him.

  Shayne nosed the roadster into the mad racing parade going north toward the dog track and held it at seventy-five.

  Chapter Six: A GOOD PLACE FOR SNOOPING

  THE RACES HAD STARTED when they approached the track for the second time. Shayne slowed the car and grinned at Phyllis, who sat up straight and intent, cocking her dark head toward the racketing sound of the mechanical rabbit and the gleeful yelps of the hounds pursuing it around the oval track.

  He asked, “Want to stop and take in a few races while I go on into town and do some checking up?”

  Phyllis shook her head regretfully. “It’s no fun to go alone. Maybe you’ll be coming out later to watch for counterfeit tickets and I’ll come with you.”

  “It’s going to be lonesome at the hotel,” he warned her. “I’ll be too busy the next hour or so to have you trailing me.”

  “Oh, I expect to be ditched,” she told him resignedly. “I’ll grow old and gray sitting around waiting and wondering whether you’ll come back under your own power or be carried in.”

  Shayne grunted something unintelligible as he pulled up in front of the hotel and his headlights picked up two men standing together at the curb. They were Gil Matrix and Chief Boyle.

  As he leaned forward to turn off the ignition, Shayne murmured. “Don’t let anything slip about our trip to Miami.”

  She made a wry face at him and they got out together.

  The fiery little editor greeted Shayne by saying, “We were wondering where you had gone. Chief Boyle was getting nervous waiting for the next shooting to start.”

  “That ain’t so,” Chief Boyle said. “I just said to Matrix I reckoned you and your wife had gone out to the dogs.”

  “A good guess,” Shayne assured him. He took Phyllis’s arm and led her into the lobby. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll be back to report presently.”

  He rejoined the two men at the curb and asked, “Where could I find Grant MacFarlane this time of night?”

  Gil Matrix chuckled. “You’d better have your gun greased for a quick draw with MacFarlane He’s not going to like what happened to those two punks upstairs tonight.”

  “You shut up,
Gil.” Chief Boyle worried his underlip with his teeth. “You can’t prove Leroy and Taylor were working for Grant tonight. They could’ve been hired by anybody that wanted Mr. Shayne out of the way. Grant can’t help it if fellows like that hang around his night club.”

  “I reiterate,” Matrix returned ironically, “Shayne had better be ready to duck more lead if he insists on looking MacFarlane up tonight.”

  Shayne said, “I haven’t asked for advice. I just want to know where I can find the man.”

  “He’ll be at the Rendezvous, just north of the city limits,” Matrix informed him.

  “But you better not go out there,” Boyle interposed. “No need to stir up any more ruckus. Besides, I calculate it’s my duty to see you don’t go out of this city until there’s a coroner’s verdict on those two killings.”

  Shayne said, “The only way you can keep me away from the Rendezvous is by putting me in your jail.”

  “Well, now, maybe I’ll do that.” Boyle stepped back a pace, his eyes shifting away from Shayne’s hard gaze.

  The big detective laughed softly, his lips drawing back from his teeth. “It’ll be one of the toughest pinches you ever made, Boyle.”

  “I don’t want any trouble with you, Shayne,” the big chief said. “But I guess I can round you up in case I want you.” He turned and hurried down the street.

  “You’re what Cocopalm has been needing,” Matrix said to Shayne as the chief passed out of sight. “There’ll be more headlines after you and MacFarlane shoot it out.”

  Shayne warned, “You’ll print one headline too many one of these days,” but the editor only laughed and trotted across the street on his thin, short legs.

  Shayne stood beside his car and watched Matrix with narrowed, speculative eyes.

  A sign in a lighted second story window directly opposite blatantly proclaimed: The Voice of Cocopalm. North from the two-story building were the three vacant lots which Hardeman had described.

  A tall, stoop-shouldered man passed in front of the lighted window as Shayne watched Matrix begin climbing a stairway leading up from the sidewalk. The man moved back into view as the editor entered the office. Shayne stood on the curb and watched them talking together. Matrix was gesticulating excitedly and the stoop-shouldered man kept nodding. Presently he took off a canvas apron that was tied around his waist and put on a hat and coat.

  Shayne strolled across the street and intercepted the man as he came hurrying down the stairs. The detective deliberately lurched against him, grinned widely, and put a hand on his arm. “Hiya, pal. Lishen, I got shome newsh—”

  “Not now.” The man put him off impatiently. “Tell it to the editor upstairs.”

  Shayne sagged back against the building and hiccoughed gently. He watched while the Voice employee got into a Ford parked at the curb and drove southward to the intersection where he made a sweeping U turn and drove swiftly north. When he was out of sight, Shayne muttered, “H-m-m,” and climbed the echoing wooden stairs. He pushed a door which opened into the lighted front office.

  The office was small and untidy, with a littered desk, a steel filing-cabinet, and a typewriter stand in the corner. Matrix was not in the office, but an open door led back into a rear room through which light shone.

  Shayne went to a north window and looked down across three vacant lots to the ground-floor Elite Printing Shop. He was standing at the window when he heard soft footsteps behind him. He turned slowly and saw Gil Matrix in the doorway regarding him with a twisted, unpleasant smile.

  “What are you snooping around here for?”

  “It’s a good place for snooping,” Shayne countered mildly. He turned away from the window and swung one leg over a corner of the editor’s desk. Matrix entered with short, jerky steps, his shoulders hunched slightly forward. “I thought you were in an all-fired hurry to have it out with Grant MacFarlane,” he said in a flat, grouchy tone.

  Shayne moved his head slightly and negatively. He took a cigarette from a pack in his breast pocket, lit it, and flipped the match away. He grunted, “I didn’t want to surprise him. You can never tell what fool thing a man will do when he is surprised and on the defensive. If I give him time to get ready for me the results will be more predictable—and fewer people are likely to get hurt.”

  “So that,” Matrix mused, “is why you spouted off to Chief Boyle and told him where you were headed. I confess I thought it was a dumb trick—at the time. I was beginning to wonder whether you were as smart as you were rated.”

  Shayne smiled. “You think Boyle will warn MacFarlane I’m on my way out there?”

  “I’m sure of it. One will get you a hundred that MacFarlane has already been told.”

  “I never bet against a sure thing.” Shayne hesitated, drawing on his cigarette, his eyes slitted and inscrutable, then suddenly he asked, “What came between you and Mayme Martin a few months ago?”

  Matrix swore softly and in complete surprise. His round eyes narrowed upon Shayne. “What do you know about Mayme Martin?”

  “Not much. I understand you used to be quite intimate with her and broke off quite recently—and suddenly.”

  “So—that’s where you were—getting acquainted with our pious psalmsingers here in Cocopalm,” Matrix snarled. His strange eyes were full of venom. “Because Miss Martin and I were old friends and lived in adjoining apartments the lecherous-minded citizens added up two and two and immediately put us in bed together.”

  “Were you?” Shayne asked guilelessly.

  “Why should I deny it? And why the inquisition? Are my morals involved in a counterfeiting case?”

  “I don’t know,” Shayne answered truthfully. “I am interested in knowing why you broke off with Miss Martin.”

  “Because she got to sopping up more gin than was good for her. She was pickling her brains and her intestines with the stuff and she got sore when I told her she was beginning to look like an old hag—which she was.”

  “What happened to her after she moved away from next door to you?”

  “She gravitated to the gutter,” Matrix said bitterly. “Last time I saw her she was cadging drinks out at the Rendezvous and had a grudge against the world in general and me in particular. I’d still like to know where the hell she fits in.”

  Shayne sighed and carefully eased ashes from his cigarette onto the floor. “So would I.” He cocked his ear to the sound of firm, authoritative steps climbing the echoing wooden stairway. “You’re about to have another visitor,” Shayne pronounced. An interested gleam came to his gray eyes.

  Matrix nodded sourly. He jammed his hands deep into his pockets and paced the narrow confines of the office and back. He shouted, “Come,” when the footsteps stopped outside and a knock sounded on the door.

  A rotund, ruddy-featured man of medium height came in. He carried a stiff straw hat in his hand and had a rosy, perspiring bald head with a fringe of gray hair all the way around. He wore a Palm Beach suit with a gaudy shirt and gaudier tie. A round pot-bottom belly preceded him importantly into the newspaper office. He stopped, evidently abashed, and looked inquiringly at Shayne, then pursed his full pink lips and spoke in a rounded tone, “Ah—Mr. Matrix—I hoped to find you alone.”

  Matrix said, “Come on in, Mr. Payson. I’ve just been having a few words with the detective. Mr. Payson, this is Mr. Shayne, from Miami.”

  “The detective, eh?” Payson asked heartily. He followed his belly toward Shayne and held out a fat, perspiring palm. Shayne lounged to his feet and shook hands while Matrix explained:

  “Mr. Payson is one of the largest stockholders of the dog track and chairman of the board. He has been having apoplexy since the counterfeiting, which accounts for his rosiness.”

  Payson said, “Ahem,” with a deprecating sidelong glance at Matrix. “I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Shayne. We depend upon you, sir, to diagnose this unusual case. I may say that the entire community is depending upon you to take immediate and drastic steps. I need hardly point out what a
calamity it would be to Cocopalm if the track were forced to shut its gates. It’s one of our greatest tourist attractions, not to mention the hundreds of local families supported directly or indirectly by our payroll.”

  “And not forgetting the dividends—which have been sadly curtailed,” Matrix put in with a sardonic grin.

  Payson chuckled. “Ha ha. Amusing fellow, isn’t he, Mr. Shayne? He flaunts a determined cynicism while actually he’s one of our most aggressive civic boosters.”

  Shayne said, “If you want to talk privately to Mr. Matrix, I’ll be going along.” He dragged his big frame up from the desk.

  “No, don’t go,” Matrix interposed. “Payson and I can talk in the back room. There’s something else I want to take up with you before you go.”

  “Don’t leave on my account,” Payson concurred. “My business with Gil will take only a moment. I don’t wish to slow the—er—wheels of justice, shall we say?”

  He followed the editor through the door leading into the printing-shop and closed the door. Through the single wall Shayne could hear the older man talking at length in a low, guarded voice, but could distinguish no words.

  At length Matrix said sharply and disagreeably, “All right, Payson, but it’s against the principle that has made the Voice what it is. You know our slogan—all the news without fear or favor.”

  Payson’s voice droned again placatingly, until Matrix interrupted, “I told you I would—let it go at that,” and jerked the door open.

  Payson came back into the office smiling in some constraint. He mumbled something to Shayne and went out the front door, closing it firmly behind him.

  “The old goat,” said Matrix viciously. “A pillar of the church, by God, and he practically controls the bank that holds my mortgage.”

  Shayne grinned at the dynamic little editor’s vitriolic emphasis. “Suppressing a juicy bit of scandal?”

  “Exactly. The old so-and-so has a good wife and two fine kids here in town, but he has evidently got himself tangled up with a wench in Miami. I was in Miami on business this afternoon and saw him on the street. Now he’s in an uproar because I was going to print the news as a local item. Seems he told his wife he was making a business trip up the coast. If I had that mortgage paid off I’d print it whether or not. That’s the sort of small-town stuff I’m running up against all the time here.”