Brett Halliday - The Private Practice of Michael Shayne

She swayed back into her chair and covered her face with her hands. Shayne went to a window where he stood looking out.

Helen’s sobbing was loud in the little room. It rose almost to the pitch of hysteria, but Shayne kept his back stubbornly turned. Slowly the sound died to rasping, long-drawn sighs. She got up and left the room hurriedly.

Shayne remained at the window until he heard her re-enter ten minutes later. He turned to see that she had changed to a fresh dress, combed her hair, washed, rouged and powdered her face.

She said humbly, “Perhaps I deserved the things you said to me.”

“You did.” Shayne’s tone was uncompromising.

He went back to the needlepoint chair and dropped into it, stretched his long legs out in front of him.

“You’ve managed to mess things up pretty thoroughly for Larry.”

“I’ll make it up to him,” she cried. “I’ll-”

“If you have an opportunity,” Shayne grunted.

“Oh, why do you keep hinting of disaster without telling me what it’s all about.” Her eyes pled with him.

Shayne hesitated, then said deliberately, “From where I sit, it looks as though your husband tried to plant evidence that would frame me for a murder. Which is wholly your fault. You nagged him into trying to make a lot of money fast, and you egged him on with some nasty insinuations to make him sore enough at me to pull the frame-up.”

“But where is he? What-?”

“I don’t know. I wish to God I did. So far, he’s clear with the law. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep him clear.”

He paused, studying Helen with low-lidded eyes, then asked abruptly, “Are all your glad rags worn out?”

“My-what?”

Shayne made an impatient gesture. “Your evening gowns and wraps. You used to be a knockout when you got fixed up.”

“Why would they be worn out? I haven’t had a chance to wear an evening gown for four years, and-”

“Cut that,” Shayne growled. He frowned down at the worn, faded rug, tugging at the lobe of his left ear. “If you care a damned thing about Larry and want to help him, maybe I can figure out a way.”

“I’ll do anything,” she cried out.

“Anything?”

She colored and lowered her eyelids, then looked at him levelly and said, “Anything you suggest.”

“All right.”

Shayne stood up, sliding a bill-fold from his pocket and extracting a twenty.

“Spend some of that at the beauty parlor this afternoon-and get your glitteringest evening gown out of the mothballs. Can you arrange for someone to spend the evening with Dicky?”

“Yes. I can get a neighbor girl, but-”

“Don’t ask me any questions. I have only a glimmer of an idea. Maybe we’ll go stepping tonight-maybe not. I’ll call you. And if you hear anything from Larry, call me at my apartment pronto.”

Shayne stopped in front of the Miami News building on Biscayne Boulevard and went up to the city room. Amid the noise of clacking typewriters and through the acrid haze of tobacco smoke, he found Timothy Rourke hunched over a typewriter in one corner, pounding out copy with a rubber-tipped forefinger.

He looked up, and a delighted grin broke over his elongated face as Shayne drew up a chair and sat down.

“Hi there, Shamus,” Timothy said heartily. “Committed any murders since I saw you last?”

“No murders,” Shayne had to admit. He lit a cigarette. “Anything new on the Grange killing?”

“Not a damned thing. Petey Painter is running around hunting clues like a bantam with his neck wrung. I don’t think he’s looking very hard because he’s afraid he might turn up something that would point away from you.” Rourke’s wide grin moved his ears a trifle.

Shayne let out smoke to becloud the atmosphere further.

“He’s always picking a victim and trying to fit the crime on him. What sort of dope do you fellows have on Harry Grange, Tim?”

“Grange? Not much except the playboy angle. Wealthy socialite wintering at the beach.”

Shayne said drily, “Any fourflusher who can pay the tariff at a beach hotel is a playboy to you birds. What do you know about Elliot Thomas?”

“Now it’s Thomas, eh? What are you fishing for, Mike?”

“Damned if I know, Tim,” Shayne responded truthfully. “What am I going to catch?”

“I don’t know much about Grange, but Elliot Thomas isn’t any fourflusher. Not with a hundred-and-twenty-foot yacht riding in the bay, and running a string of bangtails at Hialeah. Those diversions spell ready money, my boy.”

“I didn’t know he raced horses.”

“Well, I’ll be damned! So, there are some things you don’t know?” Timothy Rourke stared at the detective in pretended amazement.

“What’s his stable?” Shayne asked without rancor.

“Um-m. I think he calls it the Masiot Stables. Last three letters of both names in reverse. He’s got old Jake Kilgore training for him. Quite a track character, old Jake is. I ran into him in Hialeah at a beer joint, drinking with Chuck Evans last week. The old boy was half-seas under and shooting off about a winner he had coming up.”

“That so? You don’t remember the name of the horse?”

“No. I bought the hot-bloods my last bale of hay years ago-betting on straight tips from the trainers.”

Shayne got up, letting smoke curl up past narrowed eyes.

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen Chuck lately?”

He spoke with offhand disinterest, but Tim Rourke knew him of old.

“What’s up, Mike?” he demanded. “You promised to let me in on anything when it breaks.”

“I will,” Shayne promised, “when it breaks.”

He sauntered out to his car and drove to police headquarters.

Will Gentry was out to lunch, and he left Marsha Marco’s handkerchief on Gentry’s desk with a note asking to have it compared with the one he had left to be analyzed that morning.

Arriving at his hotel, Shayne got the pistol he had taken from Marsha’s room and slid it into his hip pocket. He went in through the lobby and learned there had been no calls, went up to his apartment where he locked the door and settled in a chair before the center table. He took out both. 32’s and laid them side by side: his pistol, and the one he had brought from Marsha Marco’s room.

He poured a drink and studied the two automatics. They were of the same manufacture, identical except for different serial numbers and the nick in the butt of his.

He released the magazine in the Marco gun and found it fully loaded. Picking up his own pistol he worked with the jammed carriage for a moment, exerting his strength to force it open, and turning it in his hands to let the unfired bullet which had caused the jam drop out on the table.

He then released the magazine catch, pulled it out, and saw by the holes through the magazine that it held six cartridges. Adding the one that had been jammed made seven, showing that only one shot had been fired from a full magazine.

He laid both pistols down and took another drink, stared broodingly at them for a long time.

He aroused himself and slid the carriage on his pistol back to the mark where it permits the barrel of a Colt automatic to turn and be released, pulled the fouled barrel free from the other two parts.

Carrying it to a window, he carefully studied the barrel in the sunlight until he had assured himself there was no serial number or identifying mark stamped on the barrel itself.

Back at the table, he laid the folded barrel of his gun aside, and repeated the process with the Marco pistol.

Again he went to the window with the other barrel, to assure himself there was no possibility of proving which barrel belonged in which pistol.