The Uncomplaining Corpses (5 page)

“That’s what you say,” Shayne growled. “It’s what you want to think. It solved everything neatly—even to putting me out of your hair. I’m not taking this lying down.”

“But you’ll take it, Shayne. I’ve warned you time and again that you can’t play with fire and not be burned.”

Shayne turned his back on the dapper detective chief. There was a stir in the hallway outside, the babble of voices. The newshounds had arrived.

Shayne shouldered his way through them as they came trooping in. They shot questions in his direction and he answered them with a jerk of his head toward Peter Painter, who was waiting to be interviewed.

Outside the death chamber Shayne stood in the wide hallway looking down the length of it. The policeman whom he had seen pushing the young man across the hall now stood guard outside a closed door on the opposite side about halfway down.

The guard scowled and planted himself solidly in front of the door as Shayne approached.

“Can’t
nobody
go in here,” the man said.
“Chief’s orders.”

“Your chief’s orders don’t apply to me,” Shayne told him. “These people are my clients and I have a right to see them.”

“Your clients, eh?
Bad luck that is for them.
The lady in the bedroom yonder—she was your client too, I’m told.”

Shayne said, “This is going to be tougher on you than on me,” without rancor.

His knotted fist came up smoothly and without warning from his side. It struck the cop’s jaw solidly with all of Shayne’s hundred and ninety pounds behind it. The man in uniform went down with a surprised look on his face.

He stayed down without moving.

Shayne glanced around swiftly to see that he was unobserved, then dragged the policeman up to a slumped sitting position against the wall, opened the door silently, and went inside.

Chapter Five:
THREE UNPLEASANT PEOPLE

WHEN SHAYNE CLOSED THE DOOR BEHIND HIM, shutting out the hall light, he blinked at the dimness, waited a moment for his eyes to adjust themselves to the faint light cast by a pine log crackling on andirons in a tiled fireplace across the room.

It was a large sitting-room, he soon perceived, with French windows along one side and with open doors leading into bedrooms from two sides. He thought for a moment he was alone in the room. Then he heard the sound of heavy breathing coming from a divan set against the wall near the fireplace.

As he turned his eyes in that direction a trickle of resin gurgled out of the burning log and yellow flame spurted up. In the wavering light he saw two figures on the divan. The girl was sitting at the end next to the fireplace, legs stretched out in front of her. A slim-bodied young man in evening clothes
lay
full length on the divan with his head in the girl’s lap. His face was toward her and he was breathing loudly.

Her head was bent forward and she appeared to be staring down at him intently. Brown hair that was bobbed long enough to comb hung down, shrouding her face from Shayne’s gaze. Shayne was certain that they were both unaware of his presence in the room. He wondered if the young man in evening clothes was asleep, passed out, or neither. He wondered if they were brother and sister.

He said, “Hello,” and stepped toward them.

The girl jerked her head and the longish strands of hair were flung back from her face. Her eyes looked perfectly round and they glittered in the light from the leaping yellow flame. The young man’s head came up a second later, like a released spring. He swung his legs off the end of the divan and sat up beside the girl. His face looked yellower in this light than it had out in the hall when the cop led him away from his stepmother’s room. His mouth began opening and shutting again, but, as before, no words came out. It gave him the appearance of idiocy.

The girl smoothed her negligee and asked angrily, “What are you doing, sneaking in here? The police said we wouldn’t be disturbed.”

Her eyes were actually almost as round as they had looked from across the room. Her lashes were colorless and didn’t show drawn back tightly against whitish eyebrows. The effect was, extraordinarily, that of naked amber marbles set into the flesh above high cheekbones. Her cheeks were concave. Her nose and chin were narrow and pointed, giving her the look of a vixen.

Shayne dropped into a chair a few feet in front of the divan. He said, “I’m not sneaking. The policeman just happened to be mistaken.” He looked at the young man and asked sharply, “What’s the matter with him? Can’t he talk?”

“Of course he can talk,” the girl snapped. She nudged the young man with her elbow. “Say something, Ernst. He gets that way when he’s badly upset,” she explained more calmly.

Ernst gulped and smacked his lips loudly. He stopped staring at Shayne and asked, “What shall I say, Dot?”

“That’s enough,” Shayne grunted. “I just wanted to be sure you were human.” He transferred his attention to the girl. “You’re Dorothy
Thrip
, I suppose, and this is your brother Ernst.”

She nodded ungraciously. “We’ve both told the police everything we know. Now get out and leave us alone.”

“After a while,” Shayne promised, “you can be alone all you want. Right now I’m asking questions. I’m not the police. I’m just the fall guy who happens to be plenty on the spot because of the merry goings-on in this house tonight.”

“Then you haven’t any right to question us if you’re not a policeman. Get out before—”

“Shut up,” Shayne said. His eyes were murky with anger. He hunched forward a little, his big hands hanging loosely between his legs.

“There’s something screwy around here and I don’t mean only you two. Were both of you at home tonight when the killings were pulled off?”

Dorothy hesitated,
then
said, “Yes,” sullenly. “That is, Ernst was just coming upstairs when Dad shot the man.”

“And you were in here?”

“I was in my bedroom.” She gestured to the door behind her with a thumb as pointed and nearly as long as her forefinger.

“Alone?”

She bobbed her head. “I was undressing.”

“Was Carl Meldrum with you?” Shayne asked the question casually and she seemed wholly unaware that it held any significance.

“No. Carl had gone.”

“Don’t you generally undress
before
he leaves?” Shayne asked gently.

She blinked her eyelids down tightly and it was as though a shutter had been drawn over two amber lights.

Ernst lurched to his feet and snarled, “Damn you! What do you think you’re doing? Carl and Dorothy don’t—”

“Don’t they?” Shayne didn’t look at him.

Dorothy’s mouth was twisted in a tight smile of cunning. She let her eyelids slide up slowly. “How did you know about Carl? The other cops didn’t”

“I told you I wasn’t a cop. I’m the guy who knows a lot of things and who intends to find out a hell of a lot more.”

Ernst sank back onto the divan. His haggard face had an ineffectual scowl and his eyes were hot with suppressed fury. Dorothy put her hands down on the divan beside her and let her head lie back. Her round eyes looked down her nose at the detective, challenging him.

“Carl said good night to me at the door fifteen or twenty minutes before Dad caught the man in
Leora’s
room. Ernst was just reaching the top of the stairs when it happened.
That’s all either of us know
.”

“Neither of you is taking it very hard,” Shayne said.

“Why should we? She was so damned holier-than-thou—always
prissing
around—doling out a few dollars now and then when she had millions—”

“Which you’ll get now,” Shayne cut in sharply.

“Sure. Why not? God knows we deserve it for putting up with her hypocritical ways all these years. Believe me, mister, if I wanted to cut loose I could tell you plenty.”

“No,” Ernst panted. His mouth worked in that strange way and he finally yelled, “No, Dot! For God’s sake, do you want to—?”

“I’m not going to.” Dorothy tossed him a disdainful glance. It was stifling hot in the room. The burning log was dying down to smoking embers and furtive shadows danced in the corners.

Shayne lifted his gaze and saw Dorothy studying his face with a calculating look. He got up and turned his back to the divan, walked to the fireplace, and lit a cigarette. When he turned back Dorothy looked vaguely disappointed.

“I’ll leave you two to your own devices,” he said in a flat voice. “After I talk to your father and Carl Meldrum and find out how much you’ve both lied, I’ll be back for the truth.”

He stalked across the room to the door, turned the knob silently, and went out.

The policeman was still slumped against the wall in an attitude of peaceful repose.

Shayne went briskly down the hall, nodded to two cops on guard at the head of the stairs,
strode
down and out into the pale, washed daylight.

He got in his roadster and drove to the Palace Hotel on the beach, went in, and asked for Carl Meldrum.

The clerk told him 614, and he went up. Loud knocking brought no response. He tried three keys on a well-loaded ring before the door opened.

Enough of the day’s first light came in an east window to show him a bulky figure lying face down on the bed. He closed the door and stepped to the side of the bed. He was relieved to hear heavy breathing and to smell the stale odor of liquor roiling up as Meldrum breathed.

Chapter Six:
NO HEED FROM A HEEL

THE ROOM WAS IN PERFECT ORDER, the bed made and smooth except for the rumples around the inert body. The windows were closed and the sodden air somehow managed to give the room an atmosphere of disorder.

Shayne opened a window and stood for a moment looking down at Carl Meldrum. His eyelids were wrinkled and unhealthy-looking. His cheeks were puffed and florid. He wore a tuxedo and black tie, and his blunt chin rested against the bow.

Carl Meldrum groaned fretfully and tried to get his face out of the way of Shayne’s hard palm the first time Shayne slapped him. Shayne slapped him on the other cheek, cursing in a low monotone. He dragged Meldrum from the bed and placed him in a deep hotel chair where he slumped laxly. He began to whimper and little bubbles oozed out between his lips.

He seemed to be trying to open his eyes but wasn’t quite able to make it. A large vein throbbed in his forehead and the bubbles continued to form at the corners of his lax mouth.

Shayne tried slapping him again, with no result. His condition was evidently not altogether alcoholic. Shayne was familiar with all the symptoms of an alcoholic stupor and was frankly puzzled by Meldrum’s sodden condition. He knew that if he could get the slightest response from a drunk he would be able to slap him into some semblance of sensibility, but Meldrum had been whimpering and jerking ever since Shayne began working on him and he was no nearer consciousness than before. Shayne shook his head worriedly and wiped sweat from his forehead. It was hot work trying to slap life back into this senseless hulk. There was no doubt of
Meldrum’s being
drugged in addition to being drunk. He went to the window and leaned his elbows on the sill, looking out over the shimmering blue of the Atlantic Ocean, which was now touched with a red glow from the rising sun.

The
Herald
would be on the streets with Painter’s story by this time.
Early risers were rubbing their eyes and reading the headlines—many with astonishment and others with satisfaction.
Ten years in Miami had made him many enemies and few friends. A lot of people were going to nod sagely this morning and say to each other, “I see they got Shayne at last. He’s had it coming for a long time.”

He didn’t mind so much except for Phyllis. It was going to be tough on her.

He turned from the window with his face grim. Meldrum’s eyes were open. They focused imperfectly but there was life in them. They shifted in red sockets, bulging a little, as if the swollen sockets shoved them outward.

Shayne said, “Okay, Meldrum, come out of your fog.”

Meldrum’s thick lips moved in and out against his teeth but he didn’t speak. He lifted his right hand in a limp, despairing gesture, then let it drop. Wrinkled lids closed over his eyes again.

Breathing heavily through flaring nostrils, Shayne tangled his fingers in Meldrum’s hair. He crooked his elbow and lifted the man’s dead weight by a handful of hair. He dragged him into the bathroom and slid him to a sitting position in the tub. He turned the cold-water tap for the shower and stepped back, a frown creasing three vertical lines in his forehead.

Meldrum remained supine, lolling against the edge of the tub. Shayne tried the hot-water tap, holding his hand under the shower until it was too hot for him to endure.

Muscles twitched in Meldrum’s thick calves but he made no other movement. Convinced that the man wasn’t faking, Shayne turned off the water and left
him
bent over the tub.

He went into the bedroom and began ransacking it. At the end of half an hour he had a tiny address book for his work. The book had been lying in plain sight in the top bureau drawer on top of a pile of clean handkerchiefs. He took another look in the bathroom and grunted with disgust when he saw that Meldrum had not moved, then went back and sat down on the edge of the bed to thumb through the address book.

It seemed innocuous enough. There was nothing more incriminating than two or three dozen names and addresses scattered through it in alphabetical order. They were all feminine names, which was natural enough for a man of Meldrum’s type. Dorothy
Thrip’s
was next to the last name in the book. He slid the book into his breast pocket and his gray eyes roamed disconsolately around the room. An avid light gleamed in them when he espied a bottle of whisky on the bedside table. The top of it showed above the telephone.

A few long strides took him within reach of the bottle. He uncorked it, sniffed the bouquet, held it up to the light and saw that it was a little more than half full. He tasted a few drops, washed it around in his mouth, nodded his head, and drank a long draught. His hand touched the telephone when he set it back on the table.

Shayne lifted the receiver and asked for room service,
then
ordered two enormous breakfasts sent up to the room. He replaced the receiver and looked at his watch. He was surprised to find that he had spent nearly two hours working with Meldrum. He took another look in the bathroom. Meldrum had apparently not moved a muscle.

Thirty minutes later two white-coated men brought a wheeled service table laden with food. Shayne said, “Mr. Meldrum is in the bathroom. Just leave everything covered and we’ll serve ourselves.” He took a card from one of the men and signed
Carl Meldrum
to the breakfast charge.

Carefully arranging the table for two people, Shayne sat down and ate more than half of both breakfasts, his ears keen for a sound from the bathroom. When he finished, two sets of silverware had been used. He covered the table and wheeled it to the door, opened the door and peered out, and seeing no one in the hallway wheeled the table out.

Back in the room he stood for a moment tugging at the lobe of his left ear, then went to the bathroom again. From a small ice-water spigot above the lavatory, he saturated a towel and slopped it over Carl Meldrum’s face; wet it again and wrung ice water over his hair and face. Meldrum moaned quietly and turned his head, but his eyes did not open. Shayne repeated the process for twenty minutes without effect.

There was a knock on the door. Shayne dried his hands hurriedly and answered the knock. A postal messenger had a special delivery for Carl Meldrum.

Shayne signed
Carl Meldrum
on the dotted line without hesitation, closed the door and locked it, and sat down on the bed with a blue envelope of heavy paper held gingerly in his hands.

It was addressed in ink. The return address was
M. Tabor,
and a post office box number at the Little River Station. It had been mailed less than an hour before.

Shayne opened it carefully to preserve any fingerprints and drew out a sheet of folded blue notepaper. He read:

I have just seen the morning Herald and I would be dumber than I am if I couldn’t put two and two together. They add up to four and a tough lay for you. You should have come clean last night instead of lying to me. I’ve fixed it so you can say you were here from one o’clock on. Don’t try to beat me out of my split when the
Thrip
girl gets the money coming to her.

Mona

Shayne read it twice, then put the note in the envelope and slid it into an inside pocket.

He took a last look in the bathroom and saw that Meldrum was inert in the tub. He shook his head, felt the man’s pulse to reassure himself,
then
shoved him down in the tub until his feet rested against the other end.

Shayne didn’t bother to lock the door when he went out of the room. He drove along Fifth Street, where newsboys were getting rid of their morning
Heralds
in a hurry. Their raucous calls reached his ears faintly but he drove on to the causeway without stopping to buy a paper.

In Miami he drove straight to the side entrance of his hotel, parked at the curb, and got out. He went in through a private entry and climbed the service stairway two flights to his old apartment, which had been retained as an office.

A thin-faced legman for the
Herald
was camped in front of his door. Shayne shouldered him aside and shook his head at the reporter’s questions. He put his key in the lock and went in, slamming the door shut behind him with unnecessary force. He went straight to the telephone and called Phyllis in their new apartment one flight up.

When Phyllis answered, he said, “Hello, darling, I’ve been up to my neck in work. I’ll be home pretty quick.”

“Thank goodness you still have a neck all in one piece,” she answered.

“You’re not worried?” His voice was anxious.

“Of course not.
But hurry—I have breakfast ready.”

Shayne grinned and said, “Okay,” and hung up. He looked at his watch. It was nine o’clock. He lifted the receiver and called the hotel desk clerk and asked if there were any messages.

The clerk said, “A telegram came five minutes ago. I was just going to send it up.”

Shayne said, “Send it up to my third-floor apartment. I’ll wait for it. Don’t send
any
messages to my living-apartment.”

The clerk said, “Yes, Mr. Shayne,” and in two minutes a boy was at the door with the telegram.

Shayne stared at the yellow envelope quizzically,
then
ripped it open.

It was a telegram from Mr. Sorenson, an executive of a New York insurance firm which for three years had retained him on an annual basis as special investigator for their southern district. The message tersely quoted a clause in their contract and advised him that he was no longer connected with the firm as of that date.

Shayne crumpled the yellow paper in his big fist and tossed it into the front drawer of his desk. He went out and up the one flight of stairs to his living-apartment.