Dividend on Death

by Brett Halliday

  Shayne hunched forward, resting his weight on his left hand. His lips slobbered blood, and his eyes were mad. Without getting up, Gordon lifted his foot and ground the heel of his shoe in Shayne’s face, toppling him over on his side. Then he got up and asked conversationally, “Well?”

  Shayne’s smashed lips drew back from his teeth. “About two more like that and I won’t be able to answer your foolish questions.”

  Gordon reached down and twined strong fingers in the detective’s wiry red hair. Jerking his shoulders up, he slid him over and propped him against the wall, sitting up.

  “What’s your hookup with the Brighton outfit?”

  “None.”

  “You’re still a Goddamn liar.” Gordon swung his foot back with an unpleasant smile.

  Shayne said, “All right. What do you want to know?”

  “That’s better.” Gordon sat down. “What have you found out about Henderson?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That kind of talk won’t keep you alive.”

  “Would you rather have me think up some lies?”

  “What arrangements have they made about the picture?”

  “Who is ‘they’? And what picture?”

  Gordon said, “Okay, mug. If you insist.” He leaned over and slugged Shayne with his fist. Then he stood up and deliberately kicked him into unconsciousness.

  Dick got up and came forward with gleaming eyes as the detective’s muscles relaxed and he lay soddenly still.

  “Go through him,” Gordon ordered curtly. He sat down and lit a cigar with steady fingers while Dick slid the automatic into a shoulder holster and knelt beside Shayne.

  Deftly, the youth’s fingers went through Shayne’s pockets and piled everything he found on the rug in front of Gordon.

  There were some small bills and loose change. A key ring and a loose skeleton key. A pocket knife and a sweaty handkerchief. The cablegram addressed to Mrs. Brighton which Shayne had taken from her room, and the telegram advising of Henderson’s imminent arrival.

  Gordon’s facial muscles twitched as he read the two messages. “And the bastard didn’t know anything about Henderson,” he growled, turning swiftly to the telephone to learn when the Pan American plane from Jacksonville was due.

  A string of oaths boiled from his mouth when he was informed that it had landed at the airport fifteen minutes previously. He cut them short to whirl on Dick. “Let’s get out to the airport. Maybe we can spoil their party after all.”

  Dick grabbed his cap and motioned down to Shayne. “What’ll we do with the body?”

  “Let him lie. We’ve got to get going. He don’t matter if we can reach Henderson.” They hurried out together, leaving Shayne lying on a carpet soggy with his blood.

  It was an hour before he stirred back to life. He groaned and tried to use his right arm to lift himself, the excruciating pain clearing his brain swiftly.

  He sat up with another groan, lifting his left hand and gingerly feeling his battered face. The blood had dried, and he decided he was all there, though much the worse for wear. With a terrific effort of will, he dragged himself painfully to his knees, then lurched up to his feet. Both eyes were puffed and black, and he couldn’t see very well, but he managed to make his way to the bathroom on wobbly knees, leaned against the lavatory while he turned on the ice water and soaked a bath towel.

  He winced and cursed as he bathed the dry blood from his battered face, grimacing at the grotesque image of Michael Shayne that grimaced back at him from the mirror. Then he drank several glasses of ice water and decided he might live.

  He looked like the wrath of God, all right, but aside from that he congratulated himself on being in pretty fair condition as he went back into the living-room.

  The pile of stuff from his pockets was still on the floor. Things blurred before his eyes when he tried to stoop down to recover them, and he had to get down on creaking knees to paw over them. He nodded without surprise when he discovered the two messages were gone, stuffed the rest of the stuff back in his pockets and reeled back up on his feet.

  People glanced at him in astonishment and got out of his way as he went to the elevator and down to the lobby.

  Carl Bolton was kidding the switchboard girl and he glanced up with incredulous eyes as Shayne weaved toward him. “For God’s sake, Mike! I didn’t know Joe Louis was in town.”

  Shayne tried to grin, but it hurt too much. He said, “Listen, Carl. You remember checking 614 for me?”

  “Sure.” They moved behind a potted palm to avoid the curious stares of the hotel’s exclusive clientele.

  “Any dope on them?”

  Bolton screwed up his fat face and shook his head. “I been keeping tabs and I ain’t caught anything screwy. The daughter checked out yesterday. They rented one of those Drive-Yourself automobiles and took her and her bags off in it.”

  Shayne nodded. “Okay, Carl. Leave them alone unless they check out. You might tail them for me if they do.”

  “Yeah. I’ll do that. But what the hell’s it all about, Mike? You look like—”

  “Gordon owes me a pretty big bill,” said Shayne softly. “I aim to collect before he leaves town.” He went out, leaving Carl Bolton staring after him and scratching his head.

  Shayne took a taxi and went to his apartment hotel. Inside, the clerk started exclaiming about his appearance, and Shayne cut him short by asking curtly whether a package had been left for him.

  The clerk said there was a package in the safe. It had been left by the man who had picked up the envelope that morning.

  Shayne’s slitted eyes gleamed as the clerk got out a tightly rolled cylinder about two feet long. It was wrapped in heavy brown paper and tied with a cord.

  Inside his own apartment, Shayne took a water glass of Martell to clear his head, then opened the package Tony had left him.

  Beneath the brown paper was a tightly rolled canvas. Shayne spread the oil painting out on the table and considered it somberly.

  It didn’t look like so much to Shayne. There were some plump cherubs in the background, a bearded man lying outstretched on a rude couch with a woman bending over him holding what looked like a glass of wine to his lips. The coloring was quiet, harmoniously blended browns and grays.

  Shayne took another small drink, wondering if the unostentatious painting could possibly be at the bottom of a couple of murders. His gaze kept straying back to it, and he began to feel that he recognized the woman’s face. That worried him because he knew damned well that if the thing was an authentic old master it shouldn’t have in it the portrait of any woman who moved in Michael Shayne’s circles.

  He closed his eyes and concentrated on the problem, and things began to get foggy, and he was a freckled Irish lad kneeling by his mother’s side in a Catholic chapel, and there was the subdued drone of the priest’s lips and a ray of light coming softly through the stained glass of a window radiantly lighting the figure of a Madonna. He opened his eyes slowly and stared at the picture again. Curiously different, the features of the ministering woman were those of the Madonna he remembered from childhood. He leaned closer and looked down at a scrawled signature on the canvas. R M Robertson.

  He rolled it up carefully and rewrapped it, went down to the lobby, and told the clerk to forget about the package and about seeing him after receiving that call to The Everglades Hotel. The clerk said he would, and Shayne went out with the brown paper cylinder under his arm.

  Things were going around in circles before his eyes but he grimly made his way to Pelham Joyce’s studio on Flagler. He entered unsteadily and thrust the parcel at Joyce, croaking, “See what you make of it.”

  There was a dusty leather couch in one corner of the studio. Shayne made it there before his knees buckled under him. He stretched out painfully as the artist unrolled the painting and studied it.

  He nodded with pursed lips. “An excellent imitation of Raphael’s work. By Robertson, of course. By Jove, the man’s caught the very spirit
of the Master’s style—tone, color, harmony, excellence of composition. No mere reproduction, either. I’m positive I haven’t seen an original—”

  Shayne propped himself on one elbow and asked, “How does an expert go about telling that from a genuine Raphael?”

  “By the signature, of course.” Joyce pointed to it.

  “Suppose,” said Shayne slowly, “the bird who painted that had put a copy of Raphael’s signature on it and tried to palm it off as an original?”

  “That has been often attempted—unsuccessfully.” Pelham Joyce chuckled toothlessly. “There are many tests which may be applied. The age of the canvas, for instance. Quality and texture of the paint, the mellowing influence of centuries. For example,” he went on, turning to the painting carelessly, “this canvas will show obvious newness.” He turned a corner up to examine it. Shayne watched him silently.

  “Why, bless my soul,” Joyce muttered. “The canvas seems to have been treated to make it appear authentically ancient. But the pigments, of course, cannot be treated.” His voice trailed off as he leaned close to examine the painted surface.

  Shayne kept on watching silently through puffed eye slits. The old man straightened up with a queer blending of bewilderment and anger on his face.

  “It appears,” he muttered, “that some fool has gone to great lengths to give this work an appearance of authenticity.”

  “What would be your opinion if you discovered Raphael’s original signature covered over by that daub of paint carrying Robertson’s name?”

  Pelham Joyce’s thin body trembled as he bent over the painting again.

  Sinking back, Shayne closed his eyes and said, “Do you recall our talk the other day? You told me that the easiest way to smuggle a valuable painting past the customs was to paint another signature over the original and declare it a reproduction.”

  Joyce heard him but did not answer. He wet his lips excitedly and breathed with agitation. He finally straightened up and turned glittering eyes on the detective.

  “Before God, my boy. If Raphael’s signature is beneath that daub which appears to have been superimposed upon the original, you have made a—a priceless find. Priceless!”

  “Do you know what the old boy’s original signature looks like?”

  “Of course. I have photographs of many of his famous pieces. By heavens, Michael Shayne, how did you come by this?”

  Shayne dragged himself up to a sitting position and told the aged artist all about it—as much as he knew and something of what he suspected. He went further and divulged an inkling of his plan of action for the morrow, under a pledge of secrecy. Pelham Joyce had an important place in those plans, and he cackled with enjoyment and understanding as Shayne explained exactly what he wanted done.

  Then Shayne got up and went away, leaving the painting in Joyce’s studio until he should call for it.

  The evening News was on the street when Shayne shambled out into the air. Up and down the block newsboys were shrilly shouting the headlined news of the bold daylight robbery of D. Q. Henderson, the famous art connoisseur.

  Shayne bought a paper and glanced at the story as he made his way to the nearest hotel. An unidentified man had held up Mr. Henderson as he left the airport, and stolen from him a painting upon which Mr. Henderson declined to place any certain value. There were no clues to the identity of the lone bandit. Shayne turned into the lobby of a small hotel where he wasn’t known and signed himself as Mr. Smith upon the register. Paying for a room in advance, he went upstairs and crawled between the sheets without undressing.

  CHAPTER 14

  HE SLEPT FOUR HOURS and woke up wondering where he was and why he hadn’t just gone on and died. He remembered where he was when he turned on the light, and he knew why he had kept on living when he remembered Gordon. Somewhat to his surprise he found that he was hungry, and his first act was to call down and order dinner sent up. Then he phoned the clerk at his apartment hotel while he waited for it.

  “There are two calls for you, Mr. Shayne,” the clerk told him. “Both of them important, I guess. One is from the Tropical Steamship Company. They left a message.”

  “Read it to me.”

  “Here it is: ‘Photograph identified by steward as Miss Mary Gray, disembarked this morning on inland vacation tour of Cuba. Can be reached through American Express.’ That’s all of that. The other call—”

  Shayne said, “Hold it. One thing at a time is all I can handle tonight. Get a cablegram off to Miss Mary Gray. Take this down. You are already involved in one murder and may avert other deaths by immediate co-operation stop. Cable my expense full particulars your reasons for sailing under assumed name who financed trip and why. Read that back to me.”

  The clerk read it back to him. Shayne told him to get it off right away and hold the answer when it came. Then he asked, “What about the other call?”

  “Mr. Painter called from the Beach an hour ago. He wants you to contact him immediately.”

  Shayne thanked the clerk and hung up. There was a light rap on his door.

  He went to it and opened it a wary crack. It was a waiter from the hotel restaurant with the meal he had ordered sent up.

  He let the waiter in and went back to the phone while the man set up a folding table in the center of the room.

  Peter Painter’s voice sounded irked and worried over the wire. “Shayne! I’ve been trying to get in touch with you on that fingerprint request you made this morning.”

  “Did you get something on Oscar?”

  “Plenty. He was released from the New York penitentiary three months ago after serving a sentence for manslaughter. He has a long record, but is clear with the law at present.”

  Shayne said, “Wait. Let me think.” His head throbbed with pain, and it was difficult to think. This meant something. It was the link he had been looking for. While he tried to put things into their right places, Painter barked at him.

  “For God’s sake, Shayne, if you’ve got anything, let me have it. That art robbery at the airport has put additional pressure on me. It seems to tie up to the Brighton killings, somehow. I’ve got to give the papers something.”

  Shayne grinned at the phone. The angle was coming to him now. “Let ’em wait until tomorrow. Noon tomorrow. Promise them anything, but don’t open your mouth before I tell you to. I’m going to hand it to you, all sewed up in a bag. There’s only one piece lacking in the whole puzzle. You can get that for me. Get the warden of the New York pen on long distance and find out if Julius Brighton is still an inmate or whether he has been paroled or pardoned.”

  “Julius Brighton? What the hell?”

  “Don’t mess things up by trying to lame-brain your way into it now,” Shayne crackled. “Get that information and call me back here.” He gave him the number and hung up.

  The soup was thick and hot and good. The steak, however, was a mistake. It was quite tender, but not tender enough for Shayne’s bruised jaws to handle. After painfully wrestling with it for a time, he gave up and ordered another bowl of soup.

  He was finishing that when his telephone rang. It was Painter with the information that Julius Brighton had been released on parole, an extremely sick man, a week before Oscar’s release—with the additional information that Brighton was now being sought in New York for violation of his parole, not having reported to the parole officer for the past month.

  Shayne curtly thanked him and hung up while Painter was demanding to know what it was all about. He sat down, lit a cigarette, and stared at the wall. He had all the pieces, now. How the hell did they fit together? He closed his eyes and mentally tried to piece them together. It took him a long time. And in the end he had only a theory. It was a good theory but he wasn’t satisfied. There was one gruesome bit of proof lacking.

  He sighed, knowing he couldn’t put it off any longer. He had to know why Oscar wouldn’t let him in his room that first afternoon. He had to know what heavy object had been dragged out of Oscar’s room during the int
erval between his first and second visit to the garage apartment. A cobweb clinging to the sleeve of a pair of coveralls, dirt-stained knees, clean fresh beach sand in the cuffs of that pair of coveralls.

  His entire theory rested on that flimsy basis. He couldn’t hand it to Painter that way. He had to know.

  He got up and went out, his face grimly set. It was the showdown. He couldn’t put it off any longer.

  The cool night air felt good as he walked down the street to his parked car. It was where he had left it before receiving Gordon’s message earlier in the day. It seemed as though he had parked it there weeks ago.

  He got in and drove slowly toward the causeway, stopping at an all-night garage where he was known and borrowing a spade and a slender steel rod with a sharpened point.

  There was a pale arc of moon low in the west, and fleecy clouds overhead. A light breeze rippled the surface of Biscayne Bay as he drove over the causeway. It was past midnight and there was little traffic to bother him. By the time he reached the ocean drive and turned north, the breeze was freshening, whipping in whitecaps from the Atlantic. He drove more slowly, taking deep breaths of the salt-tanged air, subconsciously delaying as much as possible.

  He stopped his car beneath a palm tree a quarter of a mile south of the Brighton estate, took his steel rod and spade and made his way between two palatial residences to the water’s edge. There he turned and plodded along on the hard-packed sand. The tide was out, leaving a wide expanse of sloping wet sand which glistened in the faint starlight. He mentally checked each narrow strip of private beach as he passed until he knew, suddenly, that he was approaching the south boundary of the Brighton estate.

  A low stone wall ran down to a point some twenty feet away from the water’s edge at low tide. Shayne stopped at the wall and leaned his spade against the rocks. Through the wind-whipped fronds of tall palms the house could be faintly seen. One upstairs window showed a dim light. That, he reasoned, was the sickroom.

  Beyond the house, the garage and its upstairs apartment was dark. He took the pointed steel rod in his good hand and went to work, probing down through the beach sand at two-foot intervals, following along the upper tide-line to the north wall of the estate and then coming back with his probing a couple of feet east of his first row.