Майкл Бретт - Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 36, No. 6, June, 1975

Shrewer kept shaking his head, turning away from Grange toward the fireplace, hands trembling. “I’m an old man,” he said quiveringly. “Old. Not well…”

Then, suddenly, he had knocked a stone from the edge of the fireplace. He was reaching inside, into an exposed hole, clutching.

Grange stepped forward, pistol out, the barrel whipping at Shrewer’s wrist. Shrewer cried out in pain as the revolver he’d drawn from the hole bounced harmlessly to the floor.

“Step back now,” Grange said, motioning with his gun. The old man backed, eyes blazing again.

Grange glanced once at the hole Shrewer had exposed by knocking away the stone. He saw a folded white envelope. He took it out.

It was addressed to the board of directors of Shrewer’s real-estate firm; Grange knew from past investigation that it was the murdered youth’s hand that had addressed it.

Grange pulled out the letter. He glanced only at the beginning of what Noel Berry had written:

“Dear Sirs:

I am hereby, of honest necessity, compelled to report the following discrepancies found in the accounts of this corporation…”

Grange looked at Shrewer again.

Shrewer’s face twitched. “All right! Berry was too holy for his own good! Came to my apartment and told me he was going to submit that letter unless I reported the shortage to the board. Wouldn’t take what I offered him to forget about it. So I made him drive us up here in my car. I shot him, in the chest, then in the back — and buried him! The fool! Full of stupid self-righteous honesty! That was a lot of money involved. I worked hard to get it!”

Grange spoke softly, cooly: “But why did you keep this letter?”

“Because it tells how Berry had found the discrepancies. I was going to use it to fix the figures. But now—”

The old man’s face was white. His whole body was quivering. And quite suddenly he reached out for the fireplace poker.

Grange, motioning his gun, said, “I wouldn’t. I would just get your hat now and we’ll be going.”

Then he was directing the old man out, gun and letter in possession. And as they climbed the stone steps, Grange listened to familiar barking.

He would, he decided, come back to this town very shortly. But for different reasons now. He needed a rest. And a rabbit hunt in country like this would be a nice way to relax. Especially with a good dog.

There wasn’t one witness to the daring hotel robbery except for an old soldier who refused to fade away…

It was on the night of the Grand Gala Dance in the big ballroom of the Hotel International that some person unknown brought off a mass raid on the luxury first-floor rooms and carried off every decent piece of jewelry in sight.

The dance band drummed out its version of current hits. A few hundred sweating dancers stamped and twisted around the lofty-pillared room. Above their heads a daring hotel pirate worked swiftly and silently.

It was much later at night when a women discovered what had happened. She ran, white-faced and in tears, from room 17 and sought out the hotel manager, who was in his private suite enjoying a late supper.

A diamond necklace had gone from her jewel-box. She would have been wearing it, only a rope of pearls went better with her black velvet. It had been a wedding-anniversary gift and had great sentimental value. Yes, she had locked her door, and had the key in her bag. So how could it happen?

The hotel manager was destined to remember that Grand Gala Dance as a sort of nightmare without an end. As the night wore on, reports of thefts came in thick and fast.

A watch set with diamonds from room 13, a small diamond tie-pin from room 12, some real pearls from room 11, a gold cigarette-case from room 14, some diamond dress-shirt studs and links from room 10, three assorted rings from room 16…

The Grand Gala Dance should have ended in a glorious explosion of noise and color. Instead it fizzled tamely. Victims of the room raider had spread their tales of woe. It threw a wet blanket over the whole proceedings.

“My God!” the manager said wanly. “What the directors will say about this little lot I tremble to think. ‘Where was the security?’ they will ask.”

He looked at the clock on the office-wall. Past two a.m. His face looked grey and drawn with fatigue.

“A wide-open opportunity,” observed Detective-Inspector Marshall, who had come on the case personally instead of sending his Number Two, because there had been a bit too much hotel piracy just lately. “I mean… everybody in the ballroom for the Gala Dance, and those first-floor rooms — where the people with the money stay — unprotected. Wasn’t anyone patrolling the floor?”

The manager sighed. “One girl. She was in the room where the linen is kept when this fellow walked in and shut the door behind him. The girls said, ‘What do you want?’ And then he twisted her arm behind her back and pressed a pad over her nose and mouth. Chloroform or ether, I suppose.”

“But the girl’s given a description of him?”

The manager nodded. “A smallish, slightly-built fellow. Dark hair, thin, dark moustache, sallow. Probably Italian by the look of him.”

“Any sort of accent?”

“He didn’t speak.”

“A hotel this size usually has a house-detective. Don’t you have one?”

“Not at the moment. Unfortunately our house-detective went sick with appendicitis just recently, and he hasn’t come back yet. I didn’t get a deputy. Took a chance. Silly, perhaps.”

The C.I.D. man said: “We all make mistakes, Mr. Frensham. What about the hall porter?”

“Ah,” the manager said, his grim expression brightening a little. “Now, we might have a productive source in Billington. That’s his name — Billington. Old sweat. Salt of the earth. Most reliable fellow in the whole place. You’ll want to talk to him, Inspector. I already have, as you know.”

“Did he say he had seen this fellow the girl described — the slim, dark-haired Italian-looking chap with the small moustache?”

“Yes,” answered the manager. “At least, a man left the hotel who seems to fit that description. Could easily be the one, according to the time Billington saw him.”

“Did Billington say anything to him?”

“Unfortunately, no. It was quite late, and the old chap — he’s no longer young, you know — had been helping on cloaks. There was a quiet spell and the old chap was sitting down resting his legs for a bit.”

“I see. Is he here now?”

“Yes,” the manager said. “We’d better go and find him. He’s having a lie-down somewhere. Poor old devil’s tired out. Been on his feet about twenty-two hours. ‘Have a bit of shut eye,’ I told him, ‘then we’ll have another talk. You might have thought of something by then,’ I said. Come on, Inspector, let’s go.”

Billington, the hall porter, got up smartly from an upholstered chair in one of the residents’ lounges when the manager bustled in with Inspector Marshall. He stood very erect, almost at attention, his back ramrod straight, thumbs in line with the side-seams of his well-pressed trousers.

He had been a regular army man, finally a sergeant-major, and it stood out a mile. Clear eyes shining keenly from under formidable bushy eyebrows, a healthy weatherbeaten skin. Every inch the parade-ground disciplinarian, the square-bashing so-and-so. The hotel had found him invaluable in curing the staff of any slovenly, slipshod habits.

If the hotel was short on security, it couldn’t be faulted on spit-and-polish, thanks largely to ex-Royal-Sergeant-major Billington.