Stranger in Town ms-26

by Brett Halliday

  It opened immediately to Shayne’s ring, and he was confronted by a precise little man with a perfectly bald head, wearing rimless glasses and a worried expression on his rather pale face. He wore neatly pressed brown trousers with a white shirt and neat bow tie, and a shabby corduroy smoking jacket, and had a shortstemmed meerschaum pipe in his hand. He looked up into Shayne’s face with soft brown eyes behind the rimless lenses and said nervously, “Yes? What can I do for you, sir?”

  “I’m Shayne. From Brockton. I spoke to you on the phone…”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Shayne. Of course. Come right in. Do come right in.” The professor led the way down a short hall to a living room some twenty feet square. It was comfortably though shabbily furnished, and gave the impression of disorder though of basic cleanliness. A black Scottie lay outstretched on the brick hearth before the firescreen and rolled incurious black eyes at them without moving his body.

  Professor Henderson paused in the center of the room, looking about vaguely as though surprised to find himself there. “I’m afraid… ah… you’ll have to excuse the appearance of things here. Bachelor quarters, you know. With Jean away this week. But do sit down, Mr. Shayne. You’ll find that chair comfortable if you don’t mind a few dog hairs.”

  The professor seated himself across from Shayne in what was evidently his favorite lounging chair, with a shaded reading lamp by its side, a low table holding a tobacco humidor and large ash tray, and littered with ashes and spilled flakes of pipe tobacco. A large book in brown leather binding lay upside down open in the middle on the wide arm of the professor’s chair. He sat bolt upright and removed the glasses that pinched the bridge of his nose and held them deliberately aloft between thumb and forefinger.

  “Now, sir. I understand you are a detective from Brockton.”

  “That’s right, Professor Henderson. We don’t want to alarm you at this point, but there does seem to be some question about the identity of the girl who was previously identified as Miss Buttrell. Have you succeeded in making a definite check on your daughter’s present whereabouts?”

  “I haven’t, Mr. Shayne. I put in another call to Roy Larch in Apalachicola after you telephoned, but his house doesn’t answer of course. The entire family is away on a cruise in the Gulf as I told you. And I have every reason to believe Jean is with them. Certainly,” he went on with nervous asperity, “the Larches would not have just gone on their cruise Friday if Jean had not arrived when they expected her. It simply isn’t like Roy and Maria. They have a daughter Jean’s age, you see, and Jean was to be company for her on the cruise. If anything had happened to prevent Jean’s arrival, they would certainly have contacted me before sailing without her.”

  “It would seem so,” Shayne agreed. “And for your sake, I hope you’re right.” He lit a cigarette and looked around the small room frowningly, got up to walk to the fireplace to inspect more closely a framed picture of two young girls on the mantelpiece.

  They were about seventeen and fifteen in the picture, he judged. The younger had a piquant, laughing face that brought a sense of bubbling gaiety into the quiet room. The other girl had a broad forehead and a serenely beautiful face. She was, undoubtedly, one of the most beautiful girls Shayne had ever seen.

  And she was also, undoubtedly, the girl in the white dress who had come up and spoken to him in the Brockton bar the preceding evening-the original of the photograph on the front page of the Brockton Courier-the girl who had been positively identified as his daughter by a man who said he was Amos Buttrell from the Roney Plaza Hotel in Miami Beach.

  The professor had risen and stood close beside Shayne. The sun-tanned top of his bald head came slightly above the detective’s right shoulder.

  “Jean and Jeanette,” he said softly. “Taken two years ago. Wonderful girls, both of them. Yet so different. Jeanette was completely irrepressible. So like her dear mother who left us three years ago. Such a comfort after Mrs. Henderson was taken. We were a close-knit trio, Mr. Shayne. The long shadow cast by their mother’s passing was just beginning to dissipate when tragedy struck again last month. When Jeanette was…” His voice faltered and he gulped audibly. “… when she was killed in a motor accident as I told you. It was a difficult blow. A terrible blow. Jean is all I have left. If anything has happened to her now…”

  Shayne continued to look straight ahead at the picture of the sisters. His eyes stung and he set his teeth together tightly. He turned away abruptly and went back to his chair and sat down. The professor remained before the fireplace, peering near-sightedly at the photograph with head lifted and both hands thrust deep into the patch pockets of his smoking jacket.

  Shayne cleared his throat and said, “I can see they’re lovely girls, Professor. I certainly hope Jean is safe and this is wholly a false alarm. But as you said, it does seem quite a coincidence that both accidents happened near Brockton. What was your younger daughter doing in the vicinity when the wreck occurred?”

  “Jeanette?” The professor turned troubled eyes on him and slowly replaced his glasses. “She was on her way to visit a school chum in a small village beyond Brockton for a few days. Driving her own small car. I thought it was perfectly safe. She was seventeen and had had her own license for a year. A very careful driver, I thought. Never had an accident before. And then… like a bolt out of the blue…” He shuddered and pain contracted his ascetic features. He turned slowly and reseated himself, mechanically picking up the meerschaum and uncovering the humidor to dip the bowl inside.

  “I think the cause of the wreck was never determined,” said Shayne thoughtfully.

  “No.” The professor was carefully packing tobacco into the bowl with his thumb. He got a kitchen match from his pocket, struck it on the underside of the table beside him and drew flame into the pipe. “Your police theorized that she lost control of the light car on a curve and went over the bank. Some passing motorist rescued her from the wreckage and rushed her to the nearest hospital but she succumbed to an emergency operation without regaining consciousness. And he disappeared in the night without leaving his name or telling exactly what happened.”

  “I didn’t have any part in that investigation,” Shayne told him gravely as Henderson emitted a cloud of blue smoke that almost obscured his features. “Was there any possibility that the other motorist was somehow responsible for your daughter’s accident, and that motivated his abrupt disappearance after doing what he could for her?”

  “The possibility was mentioned. However, I believe a subsequent careful examination of her car proved conclusively no other automobile was involved. It didn’t seem terribly important to me at the time. No matter how it came about, nothing would have given Jeanette back to me.”

  “Were you perfectly satisfied with the treatment she received at the hospital she was taken to?”

  “Why not, Mr. Shayne? I had no reason to question… are you intimating, sir, that there was laxity in the care she received?”

  “I’m not intimating anything,” said Shayne bluntly. “I’m groping around in the dark. She wasn’t taken to the regular Brockton hospital, you know. But to a small private sanitarium on the outskirts of town.”

  “So I understand. Because her condition was obviously serious and it was much the closer of the two to the scene. At least, so I was informed by your own chief of police who came in person to break the news to me.

  “I’m sure the Sanitarium was closer.”

  “I was assured personally by your Chief Hanger that everything humanly possible was done to save the child, and that was a great comfort to me. If I should learn now that there had been negligence…”

  “I didn’t mean that,” Shayne cut in, realizing that such a suspicion could only arouse fresh sorrow in the parent. “You remember I asked you earlier if Jean was acquainted with a young Orlando attorney named Randolph Harris?”

  “I remember that question. Yes. And I answered that I was quite certain she was not.”

  “What about Jeanette? Do you think
she might have known him?”

  The professor was a little slower and less positive in his reply this time. “I’m quite sure I never heard his name before you mentioned it over the telephone,” he said stiffly. “But in all fairness, I must explain that Jeanette was not as close to me as her elder sister. She led a gayer life than Jean, and had a much wider circle of friends. It is possible he might have been among them and I was not aware of the fact.” He puffed more smoke from his pipe and sighed deeply. “It is exceedingly difficult these days to know just where to draw the line with young girls. They are so much freer today. Without a mother to exert a firmly guiding influence… it is exceedingly difficult,” he repeated. “Since the tragedy occurred, I cannot forgive myself for having weakly gone against my better judgment and allowed Jeanette to have her own car. Yet other girls her same age and in her social group did, and it was difficult to say no.” He smiled wanly. “It was always difficult to refuse Jeanette anything she had set her heart upon. And it was her own money that paid for the car. Their mother left each child a small cash inheritance to be absolutely theirs upon her death. It was her belief that girls needed the freedom and responsibility of having a certain sum that was their very own to do with as they wished. I’m sure her instincts were right,” he added gently, “and I cannot blame her for what happened.”

  Shayne said, “Of course not.” He got out a small notebook and pencil. “Just to get everything perfectly clear… can you give me the name of the school friend Jeanette was going to visit when she had the accident?”

  “A girl named Lois Dongan. A very sweet child. One of Jeanette’s dearest friends. She lives with her parents on a farm near the town of Diston. Just a few miles beyond Brockton. She and Jeanette were both in the freshman class at Rollins, and she often visited here during the semesters.”

  Shayne made a note of the name in his book. “Would Lois be at home now, or at college?”

  “Why… at college. She lives in one of the dormitories there and only goes home for vacations.”

  “You don’t know which dormitory?”

  “No. The registrar can give you that information, I daresay. But what has this to do with Jean, Mr. Shayne? I can’t see any possible connection…”

  “Neither can I… at this point.” Shayne arose decisively. “But there are a couple of curious aspects that bother me. If you should get any definite information at all about Jean… if you think of anything that may be at all pertinent that you haven’t told me, please telephone me at once at the Manor Hotel in Brockton. Michael Shayne. You won’t forget that?”

  “Indeed not.” Professor Henderson got up in some agitation and Shayne turned to study the picture on the mantel again.

  “You have another picture of Jean I could take with me, Professor Henderson? A later one if possible.”

  “Why yes, I… I believe I do. If you’ll wait just a moment…”

  The professor bustled from the room and Shayne waited. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Henderson that he knew his daughter was not safely on a cruise with friends from Apalachicola. That he had seen her just the night before in Brockton, and that she was apparently consorting with a gang of hoodlums who took murder in their stride.

  It couldn’t possibly do any good to tell the professor now, he told himself. The old boy had suffered grief enough from the death of his youngest daughter. Time enough for him to find out about this elder daughter after the mystery was cleared up. Perhaps she was still suffering from amnesia and didn’t even know what she was doing when she fingered him for the three men. Could be she’d had her attack of amnesia before getting the bus for Apalachicola.

  Could be all sorts of implausible things, because there certainly didn’t seem to be any plausible answers at the moment.

  The only thing he had to go on was the very tenuous fact that Jeanette had been taken to the Brockton Sanitarium after her accident by a man who had hurried away without identifying himself, and a filling station attendant thought that Randolph Harris had asked directions to the sanitarium the evening before he had his fatal accident-the same night Jean had been brought to the Brockton hospital and left there by another unidentified man after what appeared to be another accident.

  None of it seemed to tie together at all. Except that all three of them lived in Orlando.

  Shayne turned slowly from the fireplace as Professor Henderson reentered the room carrying in his hand a glossy 5x7 print of Jean’s head and shoulders.

  Again, in this picture (a later shot and better likeness than the one on the mantel), Jean was serene and beautiful and unsmiling. There was an unpleasant constriction in Shayne’s chest as the professor handed him the print happily. “This is very good of Jean. Very like her. A lovely girl, Mr. Shayne, and a great comfort to me. If anything should happen to her…”

  Michael Shayne said gruffly, “I’ll do my very best to see that nothing does, Professor Henderson. Thank you for helping, and I’ll be in touch with you.”

  He stowed the photograph away inside his coat pocket and followed Henderson to the door.

  12

  Winter Park was a short drive from Orlando. A neat, pleasant village with the unmistakable atmosphere of a college town. Shayne went directly to the registrar’s office where he obtained, without difficulty, directions for finding the dormitory where Lois Dongan roomed. An obliging student assistant also checked Lois’ schedule for him, and he learned that the freshman was at that moment attending her last class of the day which would be over in about fifteen minutes.

  He went back to his car and drove the short distance to the dormitory, parked outside in the shade and settled himself comfortably with a cigarette behind the wheel, hoping Lois would appear as soon as her last class ended.

  Boys and girls passed on that sidewalk as he waited, some gaily chattering groups of three or four, but mostly in couples. The girls young and buoyant in short skirts and bright scarves on their heads, the boys young and grave in unpressed slacks and T-shirts.

  It was the extreme youth of all of them that Shayne noted particularly. They looked like high-school kids to him. Yet he knew they must all be seventeen or older. It seemed to him that these were mere children compared to the seventeen-year-olds of his day. He, for instance, had been on his own for two years at that age, doing a man’s work and drawing a man’s pay. Many of the girls he had gone to school with had been married at eighteen, settled matrons by the time they reached voting age.

  It was a distinct pleasure to watch them passing by, and he tried not to think of Jeanette Henderson as having been one of them only a month ago. And Jean, too. She would be a Junior, he assumed. He wondered idly how she had obtained leave from her classes to go on a cruise in the Gulf, and mentally noted that as one more question he should ask.

  Twenty minutes had passed and he was working on his third cigarette when a group of eight or ten girls appeared from the direction of the college, and turned opposite his car onto the walk leading into the dormitory. Shayne slid from under the wheel and overtook them in long strides, calling as he approached, “Are any of you girls Lois Dongan?”

  They paused in a group and turned to look at him curiously, and one girl detached herself from the others and said, “I’m Lois. Who’re you?”

  She smiled as she spoke, which took away any hint of impudence, and Shayne smiled back, liking her at once. She was taller than most of her companions, and had a pleasant, well-tanned face. She was solidly fleshed without any excess fat, and stood flatly on low-heeled shoes with a nice look of candid curiosity in her brown eyes. A sensible girl and a trustworthy one, Shayne decided immediately, recalling Professor Henderson’s statement that she lived on a farm beyond Brockton. She had a self-reliant air of confidence that pleased him. He took off his hat and explained, “My name is Michael Shayne, Miss Dongan. Professor Henderson in Orlando suggested you might be able to answer a few questions for me.”

  The professor’s name brought a slight cloud to her sunny features, though he
r eyes were as candidly curious as before. After lingering glances at the tall, red-headed stranger, the other girls withdrew and went on toward the building.

  “What sort of questions?” Lois asked quietly.

  “About Jeanette. I understand you were her best friend.”

  The girl’s underlip trembled almost imperceptibly. “What… do you want to know about Jeanette?”

  “Could we sit in my car while we talk? It won’t be quite so public,” Shayne urged as another group of girls came down the walk toward them.

  She compressed her lips and then nodded. They went side by side to his car and Shayne opened the door on the right for her to get in. He went around to the other side, and saw her studying him intently as he got under the wheel.

  “Shayne?” There was a question and a slight tremor of fear in her voice. “Michael Shayne. Aren’t you a private detective from Miami? I’m sure I’ve seen your picture in the papers.”

  Shayne said, “That’s right, Lois. I’m investigating Jeanette’s… accident.”

  She caught her underlip between her teeth and turned to look straight ahead through the windshield. In a moment, she asked in a strained voice, “What is there to investigate?”

  “That,” said Shayne, “is what I hoped you’d be able to tell me.”

  “She had an accident. She died,” said Lois in the same strained voice. “What else is there?”

  “There was another fatal accident near Brockton last week. Perhaps you heard about it. A young lawyer from Orlando named Randolph Harris.”

  Watching her profile carefully, Shayne thought he detected a faint expression of relief on her face. She turned to look at him and there was only curiosity on her face now. “I remember reading about it. What has that to do with Jeanette?”

  “Weren’t they rather good friends?” Shayne asked bluntly.