“Well, no.”
“Stop interrupting then, my good fellow. What I have to say is important. There’s a plot to overthrow the government of the Isles—”
“Did you witness the murder?”
“Yes, I spied on them, helpless to halt the terrible crime. They fixed it up to look like suicide by hanging, but that was a mere ruse to foil you easily fooled Americans. I saw them spirit her body away in the dead of night in a black sedan, and you, sir, must bear these tragic tidings to the Duke at once.”
“I’ll do my best,” Shayne promised, “but I’m afraid they’ll only laugh at my story.” He relaxed his jaw, suddenly conscious that his teeth were grinding together.
A door opened down the hall.
“There they come,” the little man whispered stridently. “The Gestapo. But I’ll outwit them yet.” He jumped up and scurried to the front door.
An orderly laughed indulgently as he approached Shayne. “Has Sherlock been plotting with you against the Gestapo?”
Shayne grinned and nodded. “He’s lost without Watson.”
“What was it this time? Last week he was working on a plan to save the President from assassination.”
“He appears to have succeeded.”
The orderly passed on, and the nurse came to the side door and beckoned Shayne. “Doctor Patterson will see you now.”
She led him through a small, neat office to a comfortable inner room with overstuffed furniture and smoking-stands.
A tall, bronzed man in a light-gray business suit met Shayne at the door. “Come right in, sir. I’m sorry you were forced to wait.”
Dr. Patterson was a youngish forty with strong, regular features and piercing blue eyes. He motioned Shayne to a comfortable chair and offered him a cigar. Shayne declined it and lit a cigarette, explaining with a grin, “I haven’t been bored in the interim, doctor. One of your patients entertained me.”
The doctor laughed genially. He exuded an air of good-fellowship and man-to-man camaraderie, but his blue eyes followed Shayne’s slightest movement, dissecting and analyzing the man before him with the cold impersonality and precision of a trained scientist.
“Now what can I do for you, Mr. Shayne?” His voice was rich and warm. “We’re entirely private here. Don’t hesitate to speak your mind freely.”
Shayne nodded. “I’d like to discuss a hypothetical case, doctor. A friend of mine.”
“Yes, of course. A hypothetical case.” Dr. Patterson leaned back and carefully placed the tips of his fingers together, frowning down at them. He made it quite evident that he suspected his caller of stalling. “So many who come to me wish to discuss hypothetical cases,” he added pleasantly.
“I’m a detective, doctor. A private detective. Michael Shayne is the full name.”
Dr. Patterson stiffened slightly and bent forward at the waist, his eyes full upon Shayne. “Ah, yes. I’m sure you’ll find it pleasant here. We have another guest with whom you’ll have a great deal in common.”
Shayne said, “I met Sherlock Holmes outside. I’m not applying for admittance, doc. I’ve come to discuss the case of a client.”
“I see.” The doctor’s manner changed abruptly. His gaze lost its probing impersonality, became shrewd and searching. He warned stiffly, “If you’ve been retained to effect the discharge of a patient you’re wasting your time and mine. This is strictly a private institution and no legal technicalities are involved. I prefer not to deal with intermediaries, Mr. Shayne.”
Shayne said, “If you’d let me speak my piece we’d get along faster. I want to talk to you about Mrs. Burt Stallings. You’re her personal physician, I believe.”
“Mrs. Stallings? Yes.” Patterson hesitated. “What information do you want concerning Mrs. Stallings?”
“What’s the matter with her?” Shayne asked bluntly. “You’re not a general practitioner. Why were you called in?”
“What is your authority for these questions?” Patterson parried bluntly. “I don’t make a practice of discussing my patients with an outsider.”
“I’m making an investigation for Stallings. He sent me to you. Call him if you want to verify it.”
Shayne’s voice and manner were so assured that the doctor did not call his bluff. He said reproachfully, “I don’t understand why Mr. Stallings didn’t come directly to me. But that’s neither here nor there. Mrs. Stallings had a mental and physical breakdown and I’ve been treating her for that. Though she might have recovered faster here at the sanitarium, her progress has been very satisfactory and I expect another few days to see a complete recovery.”
“This breakdown,” Shayne asked, “it came right after her daughter’s return home—after the daughter clashed with her stepfather and filed suit against him for mishandling her father’s estate? Was that the cause of Mrs. Stallings’s breakdown?”
“It was a contributing factor.”
“But the girl withdrew her suit almost immediately.”
“After her mother had broken under the strain,” Dr. Patterson pointed out. “Too late to undo the consequences of her act.”
“But she’s going to be all right, is she?”
“Indeed, yes. She has responded to my treatment in a splendid way.”
“One more question, doctor.” Shayne leaned forward and his voice roughened. “Has your treatment included the use of drugs—hypodermics?”
“Certainly not.” Dr. Patterson started up indignantly. “What put that thought in your mind?”
Shayne stood up. He said casually, “Maybe Briggs is the dopehead over there,” then strolled out of the inner office.
There was no one in the anteroom. He hesitated there a moment, heard Dr. Patterson dialing a number in the other office. He stepped to a desk where there was an extension and lifted it cautiously to prevent its clicking.
A voice said, “Hello,” and Dr. Patterson said, “Let me speak to Mr. Bugler.”
The thin-lipped nurse came hurrying in. She glanced suspiciously at Shayne with the telephone to his ear. He grimaced at the instrument and cradled it gently, remarking, “No answer.”
He strode out into the empty hallway humming a careless tune. Bright sunlight on the grass and trees and the faint street noises beyond the wall were a welcome relief after the drear silence inside.
To the right of him and close by, he heard a “Pssst,” and turning his head toward the sound saw a skinny arm with a crooked forefinger at the edge of a latticework thickly covered with leaves and purple bougainvillaea.
Sauntering toward the latticework, he lit a cigarette and flipped the match away. The sepulchral voice of the gnomelike little man who had accosted him inside came from behind the screening vine.
“Pretend you are interested in the flowers while I deliver my final instructions.”
A grin quirked Shayne’s wide mouth. He obeyed instructions by leaning forward and sniffing a flamboyant, odorless blossom.
“The Duke must be notified at once, of course, but inform Scotland Yard that they must attempt no action. My life is in constant danger while I remain here.”
“Then why don’t you leave? Your work is finished, isn’t it?”
“Don’t you understand that I can’t leave?” the little man demanded with asperity. “I gained entry by feigning insanity and I’ve played the role so perfectly they think I am insane.”
“That,” Shayne agreed, “makes it tough.”
“And I couldn’t desert my post while the scoundrels are still plotting against the Kingdom,” the withered shade of Sherlock Holmes insisted. “I don’t know what new devilish stratagem is afoot, but I believe I have discovered why the Duchess was executed last night. They have substituted another female in the dungeon disguised as the Duchess. Soon I hope to have a clue. I’ll communicate with you by Code X 4 9 B X. The password is Audentes fortuna juvat. You may go now.”
Shayne said, “Thanks.” He turned away and went down the path. An orderly, smiling knowingly, came forward to unlock the heavy wooden gate.
“Sherlock is really on the job today,” the man said.
Shayne grinned and nodded, passed through the gate, and got into the rented car and cruised slowly south toward Arch Bugler’s roadhouse.
He passed a lad running along the street and shouting an extra. He stopped and bought a News, spread it out on the steering-wheel to study a blurred photograph of Helen Stallings’s crumpled body lying on the lawn as he had left it last night.
His left eyebrow twitched with satisfaction while his eyes raced over Rourke’s story. It was a relief to know that the body had been discovered on schedule, bringing the case out into the open and giving him something tangible to fight against. It also meant that he had no time to waste if he was to crack the case before Peter Painter locked him up on a kidnap-murder charge.
He hastily crumpled the newspaper onto the seat beside him and drove on at a faster speed.
There were no cars parked in front of Bugle Inn at this early hour of the morning, but the bronze entrance gates stood open and there was no uniformed doorman on guard.
Pulling up in front of the open gates, Shayne frowned at the sight of Donk’s bulky body placidly seated in a rocking chair in front of the main door.
He felt in his coat pocket and lovingly drew out a small lump of molded lead which fitted snugly into his cupped palm with four grooves for fingers to fit into it when he made a fist. It weighed several pounds and, innocently clenched in a man’s hand, converted a fist into a bludgeon capable of delivering a terrific blow with little effort.
He fitted it into his right palm and slid his doubled hand into his coat pocket, got out leisurely, and strolled up the walk toward Donk, who rocked forward to stare at him and then grinned with unconcealed pleasure.
TWELVE
“WELL, WELL, SO YOU CAME BACK for more, huh?” the big man greeted him happily. He got up, dusting ashes from the front of his vest.
Shayne stopped in front of Donk, keeping his bunched hand in his coat pocket, warning, “I still owe you for what you handed me last night.”
“You’ll be owin’ me more’n that pretty quick,” Donk promised. He flexed his biceps and blew on the big knuckles of his right fist.
“I’ve got other things on my mind besides taking you apart,” Shayne told him. “I want to see that bald-headed bartender who was working last night.”
“Baldy? He ain’t here. Don’t open till after noon.”
“Where does he live?”
“I wouldn’t know.” Donk’s heavy arms swung loosely at his sides. His eyes leered steadily at Shayne.
“Somebody around here ought to have his address.”
“Mebbe they have, but you ain’t gettin’ it. You ain’t gettin’ in to talk to none of ’em, see?”
Shayne’s eyes glowed hotly. He licked his lips and laughed, dropping his left shoulder and sliding his left foot forward.
Donk’s piggish eyes were fixed on the right fist bulging his coat pocket. When Shayne withdrew it, Donk let out a hearty snort of relief. “So you’re gonna spar with me, huh? Thought mebbe you had a gun. Seein’ as you ain’t—” His left lashed out swiftly at Shayne’s chin.
The detective swayed back, and the left missed. Shayne twisted forward, drove his weighted fist twelve inches forward into the big man’s belly. It sank deep into the flesh. Donk shuddered and hunched forward, dropping his guard.
Shayne set himself and lifted a battering uppercut to the unprotected chin of his opponent. Reinforced by the leaden weight, the blow had bone-shattering force.
Donk stood partially erect, and a glazed look of incomprehension spread over his small eyes. He collapsed and groveled on the walk, moaning with the pain of a broken jaw.
Shayne stepped over his barrel-like torso and dropped the lead weight into his pocket.
A scrubwoman was working on the floor of the cocktail room. Shayne went past her to Bugler’s private office in the rear. The chinless man who had trailed him from his apartment was sitting on Bugler’s desk munching a mouthful of peanuts. A sharp-featured young man sat behind the desk checking figures in a heavy ledger.
Shayne stopped in the doorway and said, “Hello, Johnny.”
The chinless man stared at him in complete surprise as his jaws worked mechanically on the peanuts. “Say—how’d you get in? Didn’t Donk—”
“I paid Donk back like I promised,” Shayne said softly. “You’re next, Johnny.”
Johnny slid off the desk and backed away, tugging at the blackjack in his hip pocket. Shayne rushed him before he got it free, drove him to the floor with a left over the heart and a right to the mouth.
He whirled on the bookkeeper and said, “Better not, youngster.”
The youth gaped at him, his hand reaching into an open drawer. A pistol lay on top of some papers inside.
“I’ll take the gun before you hurt yourself,” Shayne said. He reached out a long arm for the weapon, pocketed it, and lowered himself to the desk. “All I want is the home address of Baldy, one of the bartenders here.”
“B-Baldy? Y-You mean Dave Preston?”
“If he’s the bald-headed one, yeh.”
“I-I’ve got it right here.” The frightened bookkeeper nervously scrambled through the drawer for a memorandum book.
“Write it down for me on a slip of paper,” Shayne directed. He lit a cigarette and smoked lazily while the man wrote. He pocketed the slip of paper, lifted himself from the shining mahogany desk, and said, “If this isn’t right, you’re going to wish to God it had been.”
Glancing at Johnny, who lay very still on the floor, Shayne started for the door. Turning abruptly, he went back. “There’s something else. Where does Arch keep his markers?”
“Markers? I don’t know what—”
“IOU’s,” Shayne interpreted irritably. “His record of gambling-debts of birds who couldn’t pay off.”
“Gambling? I don’t know anything about that. You’ll have to ask Mr. Bugler.”
Shayne reached out and circled the young man’s neck with his big fingers. He was breathing hard, and his hands tightened relentlessly about the bony neck. “I haven’t any time for the run-around. Start remembering—quick.”
The clerk writhed in Shayne’s grasp, choking and sputtering incoherently.
Relaxing the pressure on his windpipe, Shayne asked savagely, “Did that stir up your memory?”
“Y-Yes. I g-guess I k-know what you mean. Those old accounts. They’re locked in the safe. I h-haven’t a key.” The trembling sincerity of his voice was genuine.
Shayne took his hands from the man’s throat and stepped back. “All right, but you’ve seen them. How much has Stallings got on the cuff with Bugler?”
“St-Stallings?”
“Burt Stallings,” Shayne growled. “He did some heavy plunging when Arch had his games running in the back. How deep is he in?”
“I don’t know—exactly, that is. Ten or fifteen thousand maybe, roughly.”
“Roughly is good enough,” Shayne said on his way out.
Donk was sitting up moaning, one hand pressed against his broken jaw, the other against his stomach. The detective laughed and said, “It’ll heal in a few weeks, maybe,” and went through the bronze gates to his car.
Dave Preston’s address was one side of a small double house on an inconspicuous side street. A baby came toddling to meet Shayne when he rattled the knob and pushed the door open. An anemic woman followed the baby into the hall and caught the child up into her arms. She pushed stringy hair back from her face and demanded, “What is it?”
“I’m looking for Dave Preston.”
“He’s asleep. You’d better—”
“This is police business,” Shayne said.
Panic showed in the woman’s eyes. She compressed her lips and said, “He’s in the back bedroom. This way.”
Shayne followed her through a littered living-room to a bedroom darkened by drawn shades. The man on the bed was snoring. Before closing the door Shayne said ge
ntly, “There’s nothing for you to worry about. Your husband isn’t in any trouble—yet.” He closed the door, shutting her out.
Going to the windows, he jerked the shades up. The sleeping man rolled over and stopped snoring when sunlight flooded the room. He raised himself on one elbow and blinked at the tall redheaded figure.
Shayne sat down on the foot of the bed. “Remember me?”
“Yeah. What d’yuh want here? You’re the bird that was mussed up last night—claimed it was an accident. I heard later Donk had bounced one off you.”
“That’s right. I asked you about a girl who had been in for a drink at noon or a little after. The one you doped. Your memory had better be in better working order this morning than it was last night.”
“Look here, I don’t know nothing.”
Shayne balanced the pistol he had taken from the young bookkeeper carelessly on his knee. His gray eyes were cold and remorseless. “If you figure you’re any good alive to the lady and that cute kid outside you’d better start knowing something. You’ve found out who I am by this time. You know I don’t talk just to hear myself spout off. This game of marbles is for keeps, buddy.”
“Don’t point that at me.” The bartender’s face went ashen. “I know you’re Mike Shayne. I’ll tell you anything.”
“Start talking, then. About the girl you fed a Mickey Finn. Know who she was?”
“Sure. It was the Stallings girl. I’d seen her around lots.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. Who told you to give her a knockout slug?”
“Nobody. I—didn’t know what to do with her. She’d drunk a lot of cocktails and then started raving out loud about her stepfather and Arch. There were a lot of other people there and I didn’t know what she might say next.”
“Was she alone?”
“Yes. I didn’t see anybody with her. She came in asking for Arch about two-thirty.”
“And he wasn’t there?”
“No. I told her he wouldn’t be in till evening but she said she’d wait. She acted funny, and after she had a few drinks she got loud and started cursing like a trooper.”
“She made a phone call, didn’t she?”
Bodies Are Where You Find Them Page 12