Brett Halliday - Bodies Are Where You Find Them

The story of Shayne’s automobile wreck was a four-line paragraph, the last of a dozen accidents reported during the night. It contained a brief statement that the hit-and-run driver had not been apprehended as the Herald went to press but that garages were being checked for a black limousine with a dented fender and radiator grill.

Shayne laid the paper aside and finished his breakfast. It was seven-thirty when he left the restaurant and started across the causeway to Miami Beach. Rourke’s extra of the finding of Helen Stallings’s body was not yet on the streets. Either the people in that part of town were late risers or strangely unobservant.

He would not let himself consider the unpleasant alternative that the body had been moved in the meantime. Even though this would take the pressure off him for a few hours, he had a feeling that he would start talking to himself if the body disappeared again. After all, there was little enough that one could bite into on this case, and access to the girl’s body was one of them. Without this evidence of a crime actually committed, Shayne decided he might as well grab a plane to New York and let the whole mess take care of itself.

THE PATTERSON SANITARIUM was a square, flat-roofed, two-story building of stuccoed concrete situated in the center of an entire city block on Miami Beach. A high, clipped hedge of intertwined Australian pines circled the block, effectually shielding the grounds from view. A heavy gate of oak timbers blocked the only entrance to the inner sanctum of a ten-foot coral wall immediately surrounding the building.

Shayne rattled the gate and found it locked. By the side of the gate was a rubber mouthpiece and an earphone above a button with the directions: Push button.

Shayne pushed the button and put the phone to his ear. He heard a metallic click, and a brusque voice said, “Hello?”

“Mr. Shayne. I’ve an appointment with Doctor Patterson.”

There was a brief wait, then the voice said, “Come in, please.”

An electric release clicked on the gate lock. Shayne turned the knob and went in, impressed and perplexed by the elaborate precautions to keep out unwanted callers. As soon as he was inside, however, he realized that the precautions must be for keeping the patients in rather than preventing the entrance of visitors. There were low board benches scattered around the enclosed lawn, and a dozen inmates of the institution sat on them and stared at him. Men and women alike wore white garments reaching to their ankles. Their dull, unfocused eyes told him that this was a mental institution rather than an ordinary private hospital as he had supposed.

One of the women patients, who was angular and heavybreasted, hummed the tune of an obscene song as he passed her. She stared at his figure with glazed eyes and suddenly stopped her humming to exclaim, “You big brute — you’re the cause of my being here.” Her voice was without inflection, a dull and meaningless monotone. The others looked on apathetically from their benches in the bright sunlight.

Shayne went up the walk into a wide white-tiled hallway. There were padded seats along the wall, no movable furniture.

A tall, thin-lipped woman looked out from a side room. She wore a nurse’s uniform, white and stiffly starched. She inquired, “Mr. Shayne?” and when he nodded, “Please have a seat. Doctor Patterson will be free to see you soon.” Her placid gaze rested on his face fleetingly before she turned away. Shayne had a feeling that she was puzzled by his presence, that her professional curiosity was aroused by her inability to diagnose the particular mental disorder which had brought him to the Patterson Sanitarium.

He turned away and sat down on one of the padded seats. The utter absence of sound inside the building was peculiarly forbidding. He caught himself straining his ears for the welcome sound of a car in the street outside — for any one of the multitude of unnoticed sounds which impinge upon our hearing every moment of the day and come to one’s attention only when completely absent.

Then he realized that the outer walls of the building must be soundproofed, and he stopped straining to hear.

He lighted a cigarette and the sound of a dull, muffled thumping came from the rear as he expelled smoke from his lungs. He glanced around but could see only the empty hall. The thumping continued, muffled and monotonous.

The palms of his hands were sweaty, and he was angered by a dryness in his mouth and throat. The unexplained thumping was more eerie than the silence it had supplanted.

A woman screamed somewhere inside the building. A ululating howl of inhuman ferocity knifing thinly through the air, rising to a shrill crescendo and descending jerkily to a minor key.

The thumping stopped, started again. Shayne looked down at his big hands and saw them bunched tightly into fists. He unclenched them, one finger at a time, forcing a rueful grin to his lips. He wondered why normal human beings react so strongly to abnormal mental conditions. It is silly as hell, of course.

He heard a slithering sound beside him and jerked his head around to see a gnomelike little fellow sliding up on the leather-covered bench beside him. He wore the shapeless white garment of a patient and held a fleshless finger pressed warningly against sunken lips to indicate silence. His features were wrinkled, and fleshless skin hung over the wrinkles in tiny folds. His eyes were very bright, gleaming with ferrety inquisitiveness.

Shayne fought back a desire to slide away and avoid contact with the strange creature. He took a deep drag on his cigarette and said, “Hello.”

The wizened features contracted still more into a frown. He shook his head and whispered, “Not so loud. They’ll hear you. I sneaked in to talk to you.”

Shayne didn’t say anything. The thumping sound had ceased.

“I know you,” his companion whispered. “I’ve seen your picture in the paper. You’re a detective — of minor fame.”

Shayne nodded agreement, still without answering. The man sounded sensible enough.

The little old man put his lips close to Shayne’s ear and whispered hoarsely, “I guess you don’t recognize me. No one does any more. I’m Sherlock Holmes.”

Shayne felt an odd desire to chuckle at his first conclusion. He said, “Is that so?” unintentionally lowering his voice to the same key as his companion’s. “Is Doctor Watson with you?”

“No. He remained behind in Baker Street to attend as best he could to any small matters. I’m in America on a secret and dangerous mission. I’m watched every minute, and if I’m caught talking with you it will be the end.”

An orderly entered the hall from a side door and tramped past them. He was a stocky young man with an unintelligent face. He glanced at the little man and winked at Shayne, then passed on.

Shayne’s companion seemed not to see the orderly. “Yes, indeed,” he insisted. “Our lives would not be worth a farthing if we were seen together.”

“Let’s just pretend we’re invisible,” Shayne suggested.

“It would do no good. They’re devils here. The Gestapo, you know.”

“Yes?” Shayne queried politely.

“I must confide in you. As a fellow member of the profession I have no course but to trust you. They murdered the Duchess last night.”

“So?” Shayne turned sharp gray eyes upon the little man. “You must be mistaken.”

“Am I not Sherlock Holmes? Have you ever known him to be mistaken?”

“Well, no.”

“Stop interrupting then, my good fellow. What I have to say is important. There’s a plot to overthrow the government of the Isles—”

“Did you witness the murder?”

“Yes, I spied on them, helpless to halt the terrible crime. They fixed it up to look like suicide by hanging, but that was a mere ruse to foil you easily fooled Americans. I saw them spirit her body away in the dead of night in a black sedan, and you, sir, must bear these tragic tidings to the Duke at once.”