“I never said Lucy was dumb,” snapped Shayne. “I didn’t say I thought she had used an elaborate or formal code. But I know she is trying to tell me something in this note other than appears on the surface, and her life may depend on my being smart enough to figure it out.” He looked down at the note in Lucy’s handwriting again.
“There are several awkward constructions. Not the way Lucy would phrase the same thought. Nothing you can put your finger on, but there they are. I tell you, she wrote it that way for a purpose. Near the end, she uses the word mazuma. Now, that’s a word Lucy never used in her life. I’d swear to it. Yet she uses it in this note to me. Why? I tell you she had a reason. But instead of helping me figure out the reason and maybe save her from suffocation, you both sit back and shake your heads indulgently and count the bank loot I recovered for you.”
His voice shook with anger as he finished. He sank into a chair and dropped the note on the table before them, finished his drink and threw the empty glass across the room where it shattered into tiny pieces against the wall. Then he buried his face in his hands and drew in a great shuddering breath.
Will Gentry looked over his bowed head at Timothy Rourke, and neither of his two best friends knew what to say to him at the moment. Rourke finally picked Lucy’s note up and studied it again with narrowed eyes, then shook his head helplessly.
“Blessed if I can decipher any secret message in it. Listen, Will. Don’t you have an ex-Army Intelligence officer on your staff who’s supposed to be a whiz at cryptograms and codes? Why not give him a whirl at her note?”
“Why, sure,” agreed Gentry. “He was major or a colonel in the last war. I’ll call him.”
“Nuts to your expert,” said Michael Shayne wearily, lifting his head and reaching for the single sheet of paper again. “I’ve told you Lucy is no expert. Anything in here is meant for me alone. Calling me ‘Dearest Boss’ wouldn’t mean anything to your code expert. He’d have no way of knowing she hadn’t written me hundreds of love letters in the past, any more than Switzer knew it. Don’t you see? Whatever she was trying to say, she had to put so Switzer would accept it as perfectly normal under the circumstances. But she had to trust me to get the nuances and put them together logically. And I’m failing her, God help me. My mind’s a goddamned blank on it.” He got up angrily and went to the wall cupboard for another glass and came back to splash it full of amber liquor.
“Better go easy on the brandy,” cautioned Gentry. “If you are so certain there’s something hidden in her letter, you need a clear head to find it.”
Michael Shayne laughed jarringly and emptied his glass in two fast gulps. “Maybe that’s what’s the matter with us. We’re all too goddamned sober and trying to use our so-called intellects instead of our instincts. The more you apply logic, the less you rely on inner knowledge. On hunches. Time and again in my own life, I’ve suddenly known something was true. I didn’t know how I knew it. It just was.
“Long ago, I would stop and question this inner knowledge,” he went on. “I would try to apply the rules of logic to it, and if they didn’t apply I would begin to question the rightness of my hunch. And, invariably, I’d discover later that my original idea had been right. Don’t ask me why it works that way.” He shrugged and poured himself another drink. “Lots of guys a lot smarter than I am have observed the same thing and wondered why. You get into the realm of metaphysics along that line. All I know right now is that I know there’s some concealed message in Lucy’s note for me. Not for you guys. Not for Mark Switzer. She knew he wouldn’t stand for it if it didn’t sound all right to him.”
Shayne paused to drain his glass of brandy, glaring at Will Gentry in defiance. “It’s here, Will.” He struck the sheet of paper with his fist.
“She calls me ‘Boss,’” he reminded the two men harshly. “She says it’s her last love letter when she never wrote me a love letter before. She ends that sentence: ‘My sweet.’” His harsh voice made a parody of the two words.
“That’s not Lucy Hamilton talking. Not under the greatest stress in the world. She’d never call me that. My sweet! It’s an adolescent phrase. But she used it for some reason. Because she expects me to realize it isn’t the way she would normally write to me, and thus she has used it for a special reason.
“Hell, there are a dozen more examples as you read on,” he continued fiercely. “‘Please don’t do anything to hurt him or we will die.’ And ‘mazuma!’ A word Lucy would never normally use. And then the corny ending, of course. ‘As you read these lines, please realize, Mike dearest, that I shall love you even to the very end. Even to the very end,’” he repeated savagely. “Unh-uh. Not Lucy.”
“All right,” said Gentry patiently. “I’m willing to accept everything you say. But where does it get you? Why did she write down those words and phrases you say she wouldn’t normally use?”
“To tell me something, damn it! Something I’m too dumb or too sober to get hold of.” He put the letter down on the table and emptied the cognac bottle into his glass. “I can’t do anything about my congenital dumbness but, by God, I can get drunk enough to maybe figure what Lucy was trying to say.”
He lifted the glass and started to drink from it, still staring down at Lucy’s letter. His features tightened suddenly in a look of intense concentration. He lowered the glass to the table, slopping some of the liquor out of it because his gaze was fixed on the penned words.
He said, “By God! I wonder—” and picked up the letter in both hands to study it intently.
In a choked voice, he demanded of the two other men: “Is there a Saltair Street in Miami?”
Chief Gentry shook his head doubtfully, but Tim Rourke showed alert interest.
“Yes. I’m sure there is, Mike. One of those streets far out in the Northeast section that cross Biscayne Boulevard and dead-end against the bay.”
Shayne whirled on Gentry. “The Northeast section! From Hugh Allerdice’s story, that’s about where Switzer ditched Arlene Bristow this evening. That’s it, Will! Get on the phone.” He snatched up the telephone and shoved it at the Chief of Police.
“Get men out there. Saltair Street and the bay. They’ll find a deserted house—and Lucy Hamilton.”
He grabbed his hat and long-legged it toward the door with Timothy Rourke trotting behind him while Gentry was getting headquarters to relay the information to them.
Though Rourke had never experienced a faster ride out the Boulevard than he had in Shayne’s black Hudson that night, there were already three radio cars clustered together in front of the boarded mansion on Saltair Street where it came to a dead end against Biscayne Bay when they arrived.
Searchlights were turned on the isolated house, and as Shayne pulled up behind the police cars, two uniformed men came around from the bay side of the house each supporting a slender feminine figure.
Shayne leaped out and ran forward to catch Lucy Hamilton in his arms away from her uniformed rescuer. Her face was streaked with dirt and tears, and she was sobbing with happiness and relief, and Shayne held her tight and kissed her lips gently and assured her.
“It’s all over, angel. Relax. You’re okay.”
“I knew you’d find me, Michael! I knew you would. I kept thinking—when he reads my letter—as soon as he reads my letter—he’ll know. But it was so long, Michael! I didn’t know when he’d show you the letter. I didn’t know how long we’d have to wait. And the air was getting worse all the time.”
“It’s all right,” Shayne reassured her gruffly. “It’s ended. I did get the letter, and I finally did figure it out. Nothing else matters now. It was damned clever of you, angel.”
“Too clever for me to figure out yet,” said Rourke aggrievedly, trotting along beside them with the letter in his hands. “Give me the dope on it fast, Mike. I got maybe twenty minutes to get a story in the early edition. How in the name of God did Lucy put it in? And how did you figure Saltair Street on the bay from this note?”
Shayn
e grinned down at Lucy and said, “It must have been plenty tough figuring out the right words on the spur of the moment while Switzer was watching you. I told you and Will,” he went on blandly to Rourke, “that a dozen things in the letter made me realize Lucy was trying to point the way for me.
“The payoff was her phrase. ‘last love letter.’ And at the end, the two significant phrases, ‘As you read these lines,’ and ‘to the very end.’ Add those up to the other curious words I pointed out that Lucy wouldn’t normally use: ‘Boss—my sweet—mazuma.’ All of them phony words or expressions for Lucy to use.”
“You said all that back in your apartment,” Rourke reminded him impatiently. “But how in the name of God do they add up to tell where we found her?”
“The last letter of each line,” said Shayne. “Beginning with the s on Boss and reading down. Last letter,” he repeated. “These lines. The very end.
“Read the last letter of each line, of course,” Shayne ended briskly. “Any moron should have figured that out in a minute, and if I hadn’t been so damned sober I might have done better. Go write your story, Tim. I’m taking Lucy home.”
Turn the page to continue reading from the Mike Shayne Mysteries
1
Michael Shayne’s first impression of the girl was her breath-taking loveliness. Not more than twenty, he thought, she had that illusive sheen of youthful vitality that would be replaced in later years by a more mature and steadfast sort of beauty, but right now it caused a catch in your throat just to look at her standing there hesitantly just inside the door of the drab bar-room.
She would be outstandingly beautiful anywhere, Shayne told himself. At a Junior League dance in a New York ballroom, or at a Hollywood premiere flanked by all the Monroes and Gardners and Lollobrigidas the film colony could dredge up to throw into juxtaposition with her.
But in these surroundings she was like a single American Beauty rosebud with the fresh dew of dawning on its petals rising gloriously out of a heap of stinking garbage.
Sure, it was fantastic for a guy like Mike Shayne to have such thoughts the moment he glanced up and saw her. He grinned inwardly at his own poetic imagery while he was conscious of the undeniable catch in his throat, the violent leaping of a pulse that he had long ago thought too atrophied to respond that way to the mere sight of a beautiful girl.
It was a dirty, drab, ill-lighted bar at which he sat alone in the middle booth with an almost-full four-ounce glass of cognac in front of him. A neighborhood sort of workingman’s bar which he had entered by the merest chance because there was parking room in front and it was dusk and he was wearied with a long day on the road and with the prospect of three more hours of steady driving before he could hope to reach Miami.
There were two shirt-sleeved men on bar stools drinking beer and discussing baseball statistics with the fat bartender. Two of the five booths along the wall were occupied. Two elderly men wearing leather jackets were in the first booth talking earnestly with a too-nattily-dressed, too-pallid-faced young man whom Shayne had put down at first glance on entering as a bookie or numbers runner.
The second booth was unoccupied, and a man sat alone in the rear booth, facing the door. He had a tall highball glass in front of him that was half-full of amber liquid in which the ice-cubes were melted. The way his eyes jerked up hopefully when Shayne entered the door and then dropped again listlessly to his glass told the detective that he was waiting for someone to join him, that he had been waiting for some time and was beginning to be apprehensive that the someone wasn’t coming after all. He had mild features and was middle-aged and bald. He wore a dark blue suit and black bow tie.
There were cigarette butts strewn on the floor of the room, and a pervading odor of stale smoke, spilled beer and human sweat in the thick atmosphere.
Not exactly the place Michael Shayne would normally have chosen for a pre-dinner drink, but when you’re trying to make time on the highway you don’t waste time turning off your route in a strange town to search for the perfect surroundings.
And there was a dusty bottle of Martel high on a shelf behind the bar. Shayne’s eyes gravitated to it automatically as a brief silence followed his entrance and the seven occupants of the bar turned their heads to regard him with the mild disapprobation any obvious outlander will receive from the clientele of any similar neighborhood bar throughout the country.
The silence continued when he asked the bartender for brandy, and drew his attention to the imported bottle high on the shelf which had stood unused so long it had been forgotten.
What kinda stuck-up was this, Shayne knew they were asking themselves. Any guy that didn’t order scotch-on-the-rocks or rye-and-water or bourbon-and-soda, for Crissake! Or beer, of course.
But he disregarded the withdrawn hostility of their watchful silence, finally managed to persuade the bartender to fill a four-ounce wine-glass with his favorite beverage and to provide him with a tumbler of ice water on the side. After some cogitation and scratching his third chin with a troubled forefinger, the bartender reckoned that would be worth about a dollar six-bits, and Shayne put two bills on the bar and carried his two glasses to the center booth. The low drone of conversation in the front of the room began again as he settled himself, lighted a cigarette and took an exploratory sip of excellent cognac.
He would be ignored now. He had been classified and pigeon-holed as a queer, but one who need not impinge on the little close-knit community of ordinary fellows with normal drinking appetites.
Michael Shayne’s second impression of the girl was that she was frightened. Terrified, was a better word for it. It showed in the quivering rigidity of her stance just inside the doorway, in the compressed lips that told of tightly-set teeth behind them, in the hands that were clasped into white-knuckled fists at her sides, in the wide blue eyes that surveyed the interior of the bar-room with stark fear.
From where he sat, Shayne could not see the reactions of the occupants of the booths to the girl. There was immediate silence as the door closed behind her, and the two men on stools turned to stare. The bartender’s mouth sagged open in ludicrous astonishment.
The girl’s wary, fearful gaze slid swiftly over the trio at the bar and focussed on the first booth. It remained fixed there for the space of ten seconds and then moved down to rest on the angular face of the red-headed detective from Miami.
Michael Shayne’s third impression of the girl was that she recognized him, that she had expected to find him sitting there, that he was the reason she had entered the bar.
It was preposterous, of course. He couldn’t have met her before. No male in his right mind would be able to forget a girl like that if he had ever seen her before.
And Shayne had never been in Brockton before. He was not, so far as he was aware, even casually acquainted with a single one of the 40,296 inhabitants which a huge sign on the outskirts had told him was the population of the city.
More than that: no one could possibly have expected to find him seated in this particular bar at this particular time. No one, again so far as he was aware, could have guessed that he even planned to choose a route that would take him through Brockton on his long drive from Mobile to Miami. And he hadn’t known he was going to select this bar for his patronage until the moment he saw the sign outside and the convenient parking space in front that lured him to stop.
So his third impression was more than preposterous. It was impossible. The girl could not recognize him. She could not have entered the bar looking for him. She could not be moving with that queerly tortured sort of rigidity of body muscles toward his booth, with widened eyes fixed on his face and with lips trembling as she sought to loosen jaw muscles so she could speak to him.
But she was doing just that.
She was younger, Shayne thought as she neared him through the murky atmosphere, a year or so younger than the twenty his first impression had been. Not more than nineteen, with the rose-petal coloring of a young girl trembling on the brink of mat
urity. Her face was very grave, her eyes wide and unblinking; and he knew again and with deep certitude that she was gripped by an agonizing terror that forced her to approach him.
Her body was slender and graceful, and she held her head erect, chin up-lifted, with a sort of regal grace that accentuated the clean young lines of neck and throat.
She wore a deceptively simple dress of creamy silk, hand-embroidered in jade-green at throat, waist and hem in a bold pattern that looked Mexican to Shayne. She had golden hair that was cut short and clung to her head in tiny soft ringlets that gave an illusion of height above her five feet three or four.
She moved quite slowly, with a sort of gliding motion that gave the impression each forward step was an effort, that only by concentrating on each muscle required for movement could she force herself forward at all.
Shayne sat quietly, both big hands cupping the glass in front of him, his eyes locked with hers as she drew near. There was more than sheer terror in her unblinking eyes. They questioned him, and they implored him to understand, and they begged piteously for forgiveness.
The hell of it was that Michael Shayne did not know what question they were asking—what they wanted him to understand—or what he was being asked to forgive her for.
Then she was standing directly beside his booth, and she leaned forward from the waist, slowly untwining the curled fingers of both hands to place palms flat on the table to support her weight as she bent close to him.
Death Has Three Lives Page 16