What Really Happened

by Brett Halliday

  Rourke glanced at him with feverish curiosity, but lifted his desk phone and asked for a number. In a moment he said, “Will? Mike wants to speak to you,” and handed the receiver to him.

  Will Gentry said sourly, “My God, Mike, where’d you pick up this pansy? He wants to put me on television.”

  Shayne grinned and said happily, “There’s millions in it, Will. In the meantime, check back with Detroit on Vital Statistics for ’33 and ’34. Find out if Wanda Weatherby had her baby there, and who is listed as the father. What sex and name, and what happened to the child.”

  He hung up and said to Rourke, “This could tie up. I’ve been wondering from the first what the hell could be a strong enough motive to cause a man like Gurley to want to murder a woman like Wanda Weatherby. This could be it.”

  “Not so fast,” the reporter complained. “You say Wanda had a baby in Detroit?”

  Shayne nodded. “I hope she had it there. Will has a Detroit police report that she was released from custody in ’33 because she was pregnant. That would add up perfectly for Miss Janet Gurley who is now on the verge of marrying into Nashville society.”

  “You think she and Jack Gurley were married in ’33?”

  “Whether they were married or not, if she could prove that Janet was her child and that Gurley was the father, think what a hold she would have on him. If they weren’t married, she could prove the child illegitimate. And if they were married and not divorced, Gurley is a bigamist.

  “Either way, there’s plenty of pressure on a man like Gurley who is trying so hard to be respectable and who evidently loves his daughter. With a motive like that to back us up, it wouldn’t be difficult to get a jury to convict Gurley.”

  Rourke demanded angrily, “For having a bullet put into the head of a bitch like Wanda who would desert her own child and then use her for blackmail?”

  Shayne raised his brows and his mouth twisted cynically. “Everything points to her being a bitch, all right. But the law has never declared an open season on women like her.” He stood up and went on gruffly, “You check the marriage license, Tim. If my hunch is right, this gives us three people with sufficient motive for murder. I still want a fourth.”

  “Donald Henderson?”

  “Yeh. The guy who has never even met Wanda—who suspects the accusation against him is a Communist plot and that anyone who goes along with it is a fellow traveler,” said Shayne sardonically. “Him, I’d like to throw the hooks into. I’ll check with you this afternoon.”

  Shayne went out swiftly and drove to a parking-lot near his office, went up in the elevator, and found Lucy Hamilton putting on her hat preparatory to going out for lunch.

  Lucy’s eyes sparkled with interest when she saw the look of intense concentration on his face. She asked, “What did you find out, Michael?”

  “We’re moving, angel. Did you contact the clipping service?”

  “Yes.” She removed her hat and fluffed out her hair, picked up a memorandum pad and read from it.

  “Wanda Weatherby wrote them from Los Angeles a little over a year ago, ordering a hundred clippings concerning J. Pierson Gurley and/or his family in Miami. They began sending them to her in weekly batches, and about six months ago sent her the hundredth one. She renewed her order at that time, but shortly afterward gave them a change of address from Los Angeles to Miami. They’ve continued sending the clippings to her ever since.”

  Shayne let out a long breath. He said, “I’ve got one more job for you before lunch. Come in here.” He strode into his private office, opened the Classified telephone directory, and picked up a pencil to run it down the agencies listed under Detective Service.

  He stopped halfway down the list and made a check mark, went on slowly, stopped again, tugged at his earlobe, shook his head slightly, and went on to another name which he marked clearly and without hesitation. He stopped near the end of the list to make another check mark, then handed the book to Lucy.

  He said, “Sit down at my desk and call each of these numbers I’ve marked. Ask for Ned Baker on the first one. Don’t talk to anyone else. If you get Ned tell him you’re—oh—Edith Lane. Anything that doesn’t sound too phony. Ask him if he has a flashlight camera, and tell him you’ve got a job coming up tonight, and ask how much he’ll charge to be on call between seven and ten o’clock to go some place and take a picture. Don’t tell him what the picture will be. But hell, you know what I mean. I want to know whether he goes for the job or not.”

  “You’re trying to locate the man who took that picture of Wanda Weatherby and Mr. Flannagan,” Lucy said with her usual efficiency.

  “Right. It’s the sort of thing you might go to a private dick for. Most of them in Miami wouldn’t touch such an assignment, but the three I’ve marked might not be too scrupulous.” He stepped away from the desk and opened the second drawer of the filing-cabinet and took out a paper cup and a bottle of cognac.

  Lucy dialed a number and asked to speak to Ned Baker. After a moment she said, “I see. No. I won’t leave my name. I’ll try later in the week.” She hung up and said to Shayne, “Mr. Baker is in Washington on business.”

  “I didn’t like Ned much for the job anyway,” he told her. “Try the next number I checked. Ask for Jed Purly.” He took a sip of cognac and sauntered over to the window overlooking Flagler Street, gazed down at the busy midday scene, and listened to Lucy dialing the second number.

  She said, “Mr. Purly? My name won’t mean anything to you, but this is Edith Lane. Do you have a flashlight camera you could use tonight?” She listened briefly, then said, “I see. The thing is, Mr. Purly, I’m not positive I’ll need you tonight, but I expect to. Yes. To take a picture?” Her voice thinned a little. “What do you care, if you’re getting paid for it? I thought that was what private detectives were for. What will your fee be? That’s right. I’ll want you to be handy where I can telephone you between seven and ten and give you instructions. How much? That seems awfully high. Well—why don’t I call you later this afternoon when I’m sure? Yes. Good-by.”

  She hung up and said to Shayne, “Mr. Purly is one private detective who hasn’t too many scruples. He’ll do the job for a hundred dollars and no embarrassing questions asked.”

  Shayne nodded soberly. “Jed would be my choice. But try the Worden Agency, too. Ask for Peter Enright.”

  Lucy dialed the number, got Mr. Enright, and began the same routine. But the tenor of her routine changed swiftly to the defensive as she apparently began avoiding direct answers to pointed questions. She said finally and stiffly, “Very well. If you don’t want my business, I certainly won’t force it on you.”

  She hung up and turned to Shayne with flushed cheeks. “He was downright insulting. Wanted to know who had recommended him for the job, who was I and what references I could give him and whether I wanted divorce evidence or what.”

  Shayne chuckled. “Good work, angel. That gives us only Jed Purly—if Wanda did use a detective instead of ringing in some friend. You run on to lunch. I’ll drop in on Jed before he gets away from his office.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Purly Detective Agency was only three blocks down Flagler in a three-story walk-up. The office was on the second floor, between an insurance agent and a mailing-service. The door opened and a tall, angular female stepped out as Shayne approached. She was adjusting a narrow-brimmed straw hat on her gray hair, and Shayne stopped to ask, “Is Purly in?”

  She said, “Yes,” with a rising inflection. “I’m on my way to lunch. If it’s something you think he’ll need me for—”

  “Oh, no,” Shayne assured her heartily. “I just want to see Jed on a personal matter.” He went on and opened the door, entered an empty anteroom, and crossed it to a half-open door on the other side marked Private.

  Jed Purly was a short, fat man with a fringe of grizzled gray hair that ran around the base of his moist, pink scalp. He was leaning back in a swivel chair behind a bare desk with his feet propped on it, w
atching with interest a small black spider swinging on a filament from the ceiling light fixture.

  He turned when Shayne entered, arched sparse eyebrows, and said, “Come in, Mike, my boy. Would that be a Black Widow, you suppose?”

  Shayne grinned and said, “If she is and bites you, bite her right back, Jed. That’ll teach her but good.” He lowered one hip to the desk and asked casually, “How’s business?”

  “Not bad. I do pretty good on the crumbs big shots like you can’t be bothered with.” Purly clasped his hands across his stomach and blinked benignly. “Sumpin I can do for you?”

  “A favor.” Shayne took out a cigarette and put flame to the end.

  “Always glad to co-operate,” Purly assured him affably. “What kinda favor, Mike?”

  “Some dope on one of your clients.” Shayne gave it to him straight, watching his face keenly beneath lowered lids. “Wanda Weatherby.”

  Jed Purly sighed and ran a palm slowly across his forehead, looked at the moisture on it, and said absently, “Hot as hell in here. Ain’t that the dame that got bumped last night?”

  Shayne nodded. “How many jobs did you do for her?”

  “Never heard her name till I read it in the paper this morning,” Purly told him promptly.

  Shayne’s nostrils flared. He took a long drag on his cigarette, blew out a cloud of smoke, said, “You’re lying, Jed.”

  “That’s no way to talk.”

  “It’s the way I’m talking. I haven’t time to horse around.”

  Purly shrugged almost imperceptibly. “Pretty busy, myself.”

  Shayne ground out his cigarette and stood up. He said, “Go right ahead with whatever you were doing. I won’t bother you while I look through your files.” He moved around the desk toward a wooden filing-case in one corner.

  When he was two feet beyond the man in the swivel chair, Jed Purly spoke thinly. “That’s far enough, bud.”

  Shayne stopped and looked over his shoulder as the chair creaked. Purly had a Bulldog .32 Ivor Johnson in his hand. His face remained outwardly placid, but a network of bluish veins showed in his cheeks. “I read the papers. All the time I’m reading the buildup they give you. You got Will Gentry and his cops in your hip pocket, and when you’re not spitting in Chief Petey Painter’s eye over on the Beach, you’re catching the slugs from some torpedo’s gat in your teeth and chewing ’em up for breakfast. Sure, I read plenty about how tough you are in the papers, Shayne. Miami’s one-man crime-buster, by God! But you don’t walk into Jed Purly’s office and push him around.” Jagged yellow teeth showed between thin lips in a snarl, and his eyes were venomous. “One slug in the belly will spill your guts just like any ordinary guy.”

  Shayne stood very still, watching Purly coolly over his shoulder. He said, “Wanda Weatherby was murdered last night, and I think you’ve got the evidence right here to convict her murderer. Don’t be a fool. If you don’t give it to me, you’ll eventually give it to the police.”

  “Suppose I say I haven’t?”

  “Then I’ll have to call you a liar again,” Shayne said wearily. He turned slowly, keeping his hands in plain sight, expostulating. “This isn’t the way to play it, Jed. That Weatherby stuff is dynamite right now. I know you’ve been sitting up here this morning figuring the angles—now that she’s dead. But I’m telling you there aren’t any angles.”

  “You’re telling me?” sneered Purly. His voice shook with anger and with the frustrations of years, but the round muzzle of the gun remained implacably trained on the redhead’s mid-section. “That’s funny. Right now I’m doing the telling. Do you get that, shamus? For once in my life—”

  Every muscle in Shayne’s body went lax. He spilled to the floor like a rag doll and a bullet went over his head. One arm shot out to grab a caster of the swivel chair. He jerked with all his might, tumbling the fat man out of it and on top of him. He got his left hand over the nickeled gun in a grip that held the hammer from falling onto the firing-pin, and lying flat on his back drove his fist into the plump face above him.

  Purly grunted, and Shayne turned sidewise to dump his body on the floor, got to his knees to stare down at him, and when Purly blinked his eyes, Shayne hit him again.

  This time, he lay still.

  Shayne relinquished the revolver after carefully lowering the hammer and let it fall to the floor. He came to his feet and turned to the filing-cabinet without another glance at the prone figure.

  He pulled out the bottom drawer and found several dozen cardboard folders, beginning at the front with one tabbed Theron, S. He thumbed through to Weatherby, W., and pulled it out. The folder was thin, and he circled Purly’s recumbent body to lay it on the desk. The contents consisted of two eight-by-ten glossy prints and the accompanying negatives.

  The first was the picture of Ralph Flannagan and Wanda Weatherby, taken at the motel, much as the radio producer had described it. Shayne turned it face down after a brief glance.

  His eyes narrowed and his features hardened when he looked at the other photograph. It showed Sheila Martin and Donald J. Henderson in a situation which would be described in a family newspaper as “compromising.” It was unquestionably a late photograph of Sheila, and the background was definitely Wanda Weatherby’s luxurious front bedroom.

  The trenches in his cheeks deepened as he studied Sheila’s face and recalled her pathetic story of having been blackmailed because of a youthful and somewhat trivial indiscretion. He shrugged and closed the folder, tucked it under his arm, and went out.

  He stopped at a bar for lunch and several drinks of cognac to wash the rancid taste from his mouth, and to consider every aspect of the case.

  The two checks for $1000 from Wanda Weatherby and Ralph Flannagan were as yet uncashed. Last night he had given himself the pleasure of turning down five thousand from Jack Gurley, and it was now too late to retract that. He had also gallantly told Sheila Martin to keep her cash until he decided whether to accept a retainer from her. He had been sorry for her, and enjoyed the taste of her mouth. It didn’t taste so good in retrospect.

  He got up from the table, strode back to a telephone, called his office, and found Lucy in.

  “There have been two calls for you, Michael,” she told him rapidly. “I don’t know whether they’re good or not. Tim left word that no previous marriage is mentioned in Mr. Gurley’s application for a marriage license. And Chief Gentry called. He wants to talk to you about Helen Taylor and someone named Harold Prentiss and said to tell you that Wanda Weatherby gave birth to a daughter in Detroit in December of nineteen thirty-three, named Janet. Father unknown.”

  Shayne said, “That’s swell, Lucy. Now that we’ve got the case solved, it’s time we started figuring where we’re going to collect a fee. Call Mrs. Sheila Martin and tell her she has until four o’clock to get the rest of that thousand together. In cash,” he added sharply. “I want it in my office by four. I’ll be along.”

  He hung up and went back to finish his luncheon, and the food tasted better than before he telephoned. When he left, he walked purposefully down the street with Purly’s folder under his arm, glancing at shop windows until he came to the place he wanted.

  The store he entered dealt in office equipment and had a display of the latest model Dictaphones and tape and wire recorders. An alert young clerk came forward with a smile. “What can I do for you, sir?”

  “I’m interested in the latest portable recording-machines and would like demonstrations of various models.”

  The young man was eager to oblige. He began showing the detective the different models of both wire and tape recorders, explaining that they both worked on the same electronic principle which Shayne made no pretense of understanding, and that each model was carefully designed to perform best some certain function that the others did less well.

  “The tape recorders,” he confided, “provide the highest fidelity of recording. For that reason they are favored by musicians and for the recording of voices that are to be br
oadcast later. Radio studios and so forth. This small wire recorder, on the other hand, is used mostly for dictating purposes—where the dictation is to be transcribed later by a typist. It has an accurate timing device that shows you exactly how many minutes of the hour-long wire have been used at any time, and it is equipped with a forward and reverse foot pedal that leaves the typist’s hands free at all times. Here, try it yourself. It’s very simple to operate.” He set a small microphone on a table and turned a knob to start the wheels revolving.

  “You set these two knobs at ‘Mike’ and ‘Record,’” he demonstrated. “Now say something.”

  Shayne looked at the small microphone a dozen feet away, and frowned. “Don’t I have to talk directly into it?”

  “Oh, no.” The clerk’s smile was indulgent. “Not with electronic recording. Just speak in your ordinary voice.”

  Shayne said, “All right. I’m speaking. Will it pick that up?”

  “Indeed it will.” The clerk reversed the motion and the wire whirred swiftly, rewinding on its original spool. He shifted one of the knobs from Record to Play and started the wire forward again. Shayne’s voice came from the machine with startling loudness and clarity.

  When he completed the demonstration, the young man asked diffidently, “Aren’t you—I think I’ve seen your picture in the papers. Aren’t you Michael Shayne?”

  Shayne nodded, and asked with interest, “How far away will the microphone pick up voices?”

  “I was going to explain that, Mr. Shayne. In your profession, this machine would be wonderful because it has such a powerful microphone. If you turn the volume on full it will pick up the merest whisper as much as fifty feet away. From an adjoining room, even. And it has an attachment that allows you to make a direct record of both sides of a telephone conversation and for recording radio broadcasts by a wire directly from the machine. I should think this model would be perfect for a detective. It’s small and inconspicuous, you see, with a carrying case similar to a portable typewriter case. It plugs into any electric connection and is ready to go instantly. Here’s a booklet describing all the ways it can be used. Perhaps you’d like to look at it,” the clerk added as another customer came in.