Mink Is for a Minx

by editor Leo Margulies

  Myrna Mix was over forty now, and she had never been a beauty. She was a real actress, with all the hard life and hard work and hard insides it was difficult not to think about when you called anyone that. She was tall and going to fat. She had always been a big, mannish woman. The giggle sounded ridiculous from her.

  “Where were you?” Shayne said.

  “I drove into town to the summer theater,” Myrna Mix said. “I didn’t stay for the performance, though. That much I can’t do for my admirers. They’re such bad actors. So no one saw me from eight o’clock until I arrived back here about ten-thirty. Ally saw me then.”

  “Eight o’clock until ten-thirty to drive five miles?” Shayne said.

  “I made a few stops,” Myrna Mix said. “I drink, you know.”

  “No one saw you?”

  “Not until Ally did.”

  Shayne looked at Finch. “Then you were downstairs, too?”

  “Me?” Finch said in surprise. “I took a walk, Mike.”

  “On the beach?”

  Finch reddened. “No, along the road. Mike, I called you!”

  “So you did,” Shayne said. He studied all of them for a long minute. “Well, it seems that any one of you could have killed Pietro Corelli.”

  5.

  The next day Mike Shayne found out that not only could all the guests have killed Corelli, but that they all could have known the dead Italian. Finch was simply the only one who admitted having known Corelli.

  Shayne spent the morning studying the murder scene in the garden. He went to town and read the Coroner’s report. The only unusual facts in the report were that Corelli’s clothes were all new, and seemed to be Italian. The clothes had been wet and had smelled of salt water.

  It was in the afternoon that Shayne found out that all the guests had been either in Italy or in the war at the right time.

  “Yes, I was in the Wehrmacht,” Kurt Berger said. “I was a Hauptman—a Captain of Signals. I was exonerated of Nazism.”

  “It figures,” Shayne said. “Where did you serve?”

  “Norway, Poland, Russia, France, and Yugoslavia.”

  “You got around for a Captain of Signals,” Shayne said. “Italy?”

  “No, not Italy,” Berger said.

  Helpman admitted having been in Italy. “I was in Finch’s OSS outfit. I thought you knew. I didn’t happen to be on the Corelli mission.”

  “Tell me about the betrayal charge,” Shayne said.

  “The Partisans accused Finch, Olney, and Maltz,” Helpman said. “One or all. There was no proof, so the charges were dropped. It came damned close to a court-martial, though. The story sounded fishy.”

  “I didn’t know it was that serious,” Shayne said.

  “No one does,” Helpman said. “Ally likes being a war hero. Besides, if there had been any real proof at the time, he’d be in trouble with the Government now. And his business would be hurt badly. His friends in Washington have covered up even the accusation.”

  Finch burst into the room at that point. The industrialist was angry. “You’re a liar, Max! Those Commie Partisans accused everyone! What about Gerry Olney and Marty Maltz!”

  Helpman said to Shayne, “The Partisans admitted it could have been any of the three of them.”

  “And how about you?” Finch said.

  “I wasn’t on that mission,” Helpman said.

  Finch laughed. “No? But you came up with a message twice. I remember very well. You could have seen Corelli and turned him in. You had plenty of chance while you were crossing the lines!”

  “I never saw Corelli!”

  “You knew his name,” Finch said. “Maybe they picked you up and you talked, so they let you go.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Helpman said.

  Shayne did not believe Berger when Berger said he had never been in Italy. He asked Captain Masters to check with the German Government. Masters agreed, and said he would try, but that would take time. Masters had located Olney and Maltz, but had not reached them yet. Olney lived in Connecticut, and Maltz in Chicago.

  The other three guests turned out to have interesting pasts also. Myrna Mix, the famed actress, had been touring Italy in a USO Show at the exact time of Corelli’s capture. Her show had gone close to the front lines and had remained on tour for months.

  Sally Helpman had been a nurse in a field hospital near the front lines. She had met Max Helpman during the last year of the war, and they had been married by a chaplain at the hospital.

  Paul Macadam had been a Lieutenant Colonel with an Intelligence unit just behind the lines across from Milan.

  “All right,” Macadam admitted, “I knew about Corelli. In fact I knew about the charge of betrayal. But I never met Corelli. As a matter of fact, I can tell you something more. When Corelli was captured, a hundred thousand good American dollars went with him!”

  Alistair Finch was furious when Shayne faced him with the omission in his story. Finch had said nothing about the money.

  “Look, Mike,” Finch said, “there wasn’t any money. I’m sure of it.”

  “Maybe,” Shayne said.

  Finch was beginning to smell very bad to the redheaded detective. It would not be the first time that a guilty man had hired him to try to make himself look innocent.

  “Damn it, Mike,” Finch said, “those Partisans always said every mistake was a betrayal, and that there was money involved. If Corelli had that kind of money from us, I’d have known it. If any money changed hands, it was the Partisans who profited. Those Partisans probably betrayed Corelli themselves. They’d have betrayed their own mothers for a hundred dollars.”

  Shayne was about to point out that Finch was protesting too much when Captain Masters came into the room. Masters was grim.

  “Anyone here know a Martin Maltz?” Masters said.

  “I do,” Finch said.

  “You did,” Masters said. “We just found his body out in the bushes.”

  6.

  Marty Maltz had been stabbed. The coroner said it was with the same kind of weapon that had been used in the earlier slaying. A long, thin knife. No one knew what Maltz had been doing in Westhampton.

  “I didn’t know he was anywhere near,” Finch said.

  “Neither did I,” Helpman said.

  “I did not know the man,” Berger said.

  “Sure you knew Marty, Kurt,” Finch said. “I introduced you a few years ago when Marty came to the reunion of the old outfit. Remember?”

  “Of course,” Berger said. “I had forgotten. He seems to have changed.”

  “Lost most of his hair,” Finch admitted.

  “He’s lost more than that now,” Captain Masters said grimly.

  After they had taken Maltz’s body away, Shayne stood on the curving driveway of the big house and tugged on his left earlobe. The big detective ran his hand through his thick red hair. None of the guests, of course, had a real alibi for this murder. Why had Maltz been killed?

  “Why did Maltz come here?” Shayne asked Masters.

  “We were looking for him,” Masters replied. “Our check found he was away on a trip. His wife thought he was in New York on business.”

  “What about the other man, Olney?” Shayne said.

  “He doesn’t know anything. Connecticut police checked,” Masters said. “He hasn’t been away from home in six months.”

  “Maybe they didn’t ask the right questions,” Shayne said.

  Shayne decided to visit Gerry Olney, ex-sergeant of OSS. He borrowed the car from Finch and drove off early next morning. The drive across Long Island was uneventful. But Shayne enjoyed the changing scenery as he passed from the marsh and sand of the South Shore to the flat farmlands further inland and then to the wooded and hilly North Shore.

  He drove into Port Jefferson a half an hour before the ferry was ready to sail for Bridgeport, and he had a sidecar in an elegant bar near the ferry dock. On the ferry the detective left his car to go and lean on the forward rail and watch the h
igh white cliffs of the North Shore fade behind as the ferry rolled lightly on the water of the open Sound.

  Shayne’s was the second car off the steep ramp in Bridgeport. He drove fast along the Connecticut parkway until he reached New Haven. Olney was in his office when Shayne arrived at the house. Olney’s wife called him and Olney said he would come right home. When the ex-sergeant arrived, Shayne saw that he was a tall, heavy-set, honest-looking man.

  Shayne introduced himself and explained the reason for his visit.

  “Anything I can do to help,” Olney said. “Marty Maltz was a good guy.”

  “What was Maltz doing at Finch’s house?” Shayne said.

  “I wouldn’t know, Shayne,” Olney said. “Like I told the cops, Marty and I wrote to each other once in a while—but I hadn’t seen him for a year or so. Maybe it was something Corelli told him.”

  “Corelli? He went to see Maltz?”

  “Sure. He came to see both of us,” Olney said.

  “Why didn’t you tell the police that?”

  “They didn’t ask me,” Olney said. “Frankly, Shayne, I didn’t want to get mixed up in a murder. Now that Marty’s dead, maybe I was wrong.”

  “Maybe you were,” Shayne said. Or maybe Olney had a better reason for hiding the fact that Corelli had visited him. “Tell me about Corelli’s visit.”

  The tall ex-sergeant shrugged. “It was a hell of a shock at first. We all thought he was dead. There was quite a stink right after the war. They accused one of us, or all three of us, of betraying Corelli and getting him killed.”

  “Did you?”

  Olney looked straight at Mike Shayne. “I didn’t. I don’t know about the other two.”

  “How did Corelli survive?”

  “He said that the Krauts who captured him were in a big hurry and turned him over to the regular Army instead of the Gestapo. The Krauts who had him didn’t know who he was, so they sent him to a labor camp in Germany instead of shooting him. He was lucky.”

  “Where had he been for nineteen years?” Shayne asked.

  Olney shook his head. “He didn’t say. He just wanted to know where Finch was, and what had happened to the money. He accused me of turning him over to the Krauts. I told him he was crazy. He said maybe, but he’d watch me. I told him to watch.”

  “He mentioned money?”

  “Yeh. There was rumor about a lot of money after the war. I never really believed it. We’d have known.”

  “You didn’t know? None of you?”

  “Not as far as I know,” Olney said. “But I was just the radio man.”

  “What else did Corelli say?” Shayne asked.

  Olney seemed puzzled. “Well, he asked about Steiner. That was funny. I didn’t know Corelli even knew about Steiner.”

  “Who was Steiner?”

  “That’s a good question,” Olney said. “No one knew for sure. It was top-secret hush-hush Gestapo stuff. I used to monitor calls from the high brass about Steiner. There was talk Steiner could have been a double agent. All we knew was that Steiner was the name of a Gestapo troubleshooter who operated near the front all the time.

  “There were all sorts of rumors who he could be; some even thought Steiner was more than one man. We’d get reports about him being on both sides of the line. One thing I know. He was a killer and the Kraut officers were scared as hell of him.”

  “What did Corelli want to know about Steiner?”

  “That was funny, too. He wanted to know if I knew where Steiner was. I told him I wouldn’t even know what Steiner looked like. I’d barely heard of him. Corelli said, of course, he had just heard of Steiner, too. He told me to forget he even asked.”

  “What about that betrayal in Italy?”

  “What about it?” Olney said.

  “Did any of you betray Corelli?” Shayne said.

  “No,” Olney said. Shayne had the definite feeling that the ex-sergeant was lying. Olney went on. “However, it would have been justified. We’d have died if he hadn’t got caught. That crazy Italian had planned a raid that was just about a suicide job. Finch tried to argue him out of it, but Corelli insisted.”

  “Corelli was captured before that raid?”

  “Two days before,” Olney said. “We were pretty damned glad, I can tell you.”

  “What else do you know about Steiner?”

  “Well, Corelli said—”

  That was as far as Olney got. The shot was sudden and low. A silenced gun. Olney did not fall. He straightened up instead, stared, and slid to the floor. There was a neat hole in the side of his head. It was bleeding. When Shayne bent over the man, Olney was dead.

  Shayne ran for the door. He reached the sidewalk and had a glimpse of a thin man sprinting around the near corner. Shayne ran after him. When he reached the corner a small grey coupe was already pulling away. Shayne went back to the house. He got the New York license plate, but he did not think that would do much good.

  In the house Olney’s wife was bending over the dead man. She blinked her eyes and stared at Shayne.

  “I’m sorry,” Shayne said.

  The woman blinked again. “He went through the war.”

  The woman was clearly in shock. Shayne called the police and a doctor. He found the name of the doctor in the Olney address book. The police detained him when they arrived. He told them to call Captain Masters, and after Masters had identified him they got his story and let him go. He gave them the license plate number of the grey coupe. Then he left.

  Shayne got into his car and lighted a cigarette. Maltz and Olney. Only Finch was left of the men Corelli had accused of betraying him. And Corelli was dead. Shayne could understand why Corelli would have wanted to kill Maltz and Olney and Finch.

  But who would kill Corelli, and Maltz, and Olney? And why not Finch? Unless it was Finch himself because there was more to the betrayal in Italy than had come out, and Maltz and Olney had known about it.

  Shayne put the car into gear and headed for the parkway into New York. On the way he stopped to call Masters. He asked the State Police captain to check on the whereabouts of Finch and all of his guests that afternoon. He asked Masters to send a picture of Corelli to the New York Police right away.

  Then he got back into the car and drove on toward New York. He wanted to find out how Corelli had come to the United States, and, if possible, where the Partisan leader had been for nineteen years. It might be a help.

  7.

  Michael Shayne reached New York in the afternoon and went to the Italian Consulate. The Consul was helpful. He did not know anything about Corelli, but he cabled Rome immediately.

  Shayne left to pick up the picture of Pietro Corelli at New York Police headquarters. Masters had sent it by messenger. With the picture in his hand, Shayne walked out into the shadows of the tall buildings.

  He walked through the city for the rest of the day, into the night, and all morning of the next day. He took five hours sleep in the Algonquin Hotel. By noon of the second day Shayne had checked every steamship that had arrived in the last month, every airline between New York and Rome, every terminal and pier. He had talked to crews and sailors.

  He learned absolutely nothing. No one had seen a man named Corelli, or one who looked like the picture of the dead man.

  The Consul had received prompt service from Rome. Nothing. As far as the Italian authorities in Rome knew, Corelli had died in the war. There was no record of Corelli’s reappearance.

  Shayne left the city and drove back to Westhampton. He had called Lucy Hamilton to tell her he did not know when he would return to Miami. It looked like a long case. Lucy said she would send his mail. Shayne drove fast to Westhampton.

  At State Police Headquarters, Masters was waiting. The Captain listened sourly as Shayne told him of his search for Corelli.

  “We checked that out two days ago,” Masters said. “All of it.”

  “Now you tell me,” Shayne said.

  “You didn’t ask,” Masters said, and grinned.

/>   “And the Connecticut cops forgot to ask Olney about Corelli,” Shayne said. He told Masters all he had learned from Olney.

  “I think he knew more,” Shayne said. “And I think the killer thought he did too. But what?” Shayne told Masters about the death of Olney. “What about our suspects? Did any of them take a long drive yesterday?”

  “All of them did,” Masters said, frowning. “When we checked we found that Finch went into New York to talk to his lawyer. Helpman says he drove out to Montauk just for a drive. Macadam drove up to Port Jefferson to take a sail on his yacht; he sailed alone. Myrna Mix claims she went to New York to talk to her agent. He says she showed up okay, but four hours late and drunk. Sally Helpman drove up to Wildwood State Park and swam alone all day. None of them drove a grey coupe.”

  “Fine,” Shayne said.

  “We got a report from Bonn on Berger,” Masters said. “Seems they were mighty interested. They’ve been watching Berger for years. Something about a little stealing back at the end of the war.”

  “Stealing what?” Shayne said.

  “Some German war secrets. They wouldn’t say what, because they have to clear it with Washington first. Otherwise, Berger’s record seems aboveboard. He was a Hauptman in the Signal Corps in all the places he says. He got around so much because he had friends in high places.”

  “That’s what he’d use as a cover if he was Gestapo,” Shayne said. He told Masters about the mysterious Steiner. Masters was interested.

  “I’ll get after Bonn again,” the State Police Captain said.

  “What about Corelli?” Shayne said. “He seems to have moved around a lot also, completely unnoticed.”

  “All we know is a man who looked like him took a flight to Chicago about six days ago. I figure he visited Maltz.”

  “Anyone see him in Westhampton?”

  “No one,” Masters said.

  “That sounds peculiar. It’s a small town. He didn’t just fly to Finch’s lawn.”

  “It’s mighty peculiar, all right,” Masters agreed. “Suppose you tell me.”