Brett Halliday - The Private Practice of Michael Shayne

A sharp rap on the outer door broke through Marco’s labored breathing. Painter barked, “Come in,” and the door opened to admit an excited detective sergeant with Timothy Rourke squeezing in behind him.

The detective rushed exultantly into the room, waving some crumpled sheets of paper.

“Here you are, sir. I found these in a desk in Mr. Thomas’s stateroom. Proof that the suicide note’s a forgery. Plain as the nose on your face.”

He spread the crumpled sheets of paper out in front of Chief Painter, each one covered with the damning scrawls of an amateur forger practicing Marsha Marco’s handwriting.

Marco moved close to the desk while Painter bent forward and scrutinized the sheets. Shayne winked at Rourke and faced Thomas who appeared frozen to his chair, but quite able to comprehend the meaning of this final blow.

“In your stateroom, eh?” Shayne said sympathetically to the millionaire. “How very careless of you. You might have gotten away with it if you’d been more careful.”

“But I didn’t-I don’t know-” Thomas sprang to life, and to his feet, wildly.

“Sit down,” Painter barked. “This pins it on you, Thomas. You forged that note to make it look like suicide when you pushed Miss Marco off the deck.”

“I didn’t,” Thomas cried in a choked voice. “Good God, I tell you I didn’t. Why should I?”

“You sonofabitch. You girl-murdering bastard.” Marco spoke in a low, deliberate tone, moving slowly away from Painter’s desk. “So that was your game. When I was playing ball-”

A bunched hand in his coat pocket swung up sharply. Shayne lunged forward, knocking him to one side, and the bullet went wild. The sergeant jumped in and wrested a revolver from Marco’s hand.

“That’s all right,” Shayne soothed the gambler. “He’ll burn for drowning Marsha, all right. We’ve got everything but the motive, and you can give us that.”

“You’re goddamn right I can. Marsha saw him kill Harry Grange. She ran down the beach, scared to death, and called me as soon as she got home. And I told her-”

“To keep quiet about it,” Shayne interrupted savagely. “You saw a chance to hang one on me and also have something you could blackmail Thomas with for the rest of his life.”

“But I didn’t. It’s all a mistake. I didn’t drown the girl, Marco,” Thomas protested once more.

“No,” Shayne agreed. “You didn’t. But that doesn’t help you a hell of a lot. You can burn for two murders in this state just as well as for three. Where did you ditch Larry Kincaid after killing him?”

“Kincaid? How-?” Thomas sank back into his chair laxly, his face white, an unclean drool oozing out of the corner of his mouth.

“How do I know you killed Kincaid?” Shayne laughed harshly. “I should have known from the beginning. That one bullet that had been fired from my jammed gun had to go some place. You didn’t know enough about guns to unjam it after killing Larry and use it on Grange, too. And you didn’t have brains enough to know a ballistic test would show my gun hadn’t killed Grange. It had to be you, Thomas. Marco knows more about guns. And he wouldn’t have sent his hoodlums after me to get that racetrack evidence if he hadn’t thought that first I’d killed Grange and gotten it. At first, he thought it would be a good stunt to get that evidence to blackmail you with, but later he found something better to hold over your head. You sent Chuck Evans to Jacksonville on the eleven o’clock train to send the message from Larry Kincaid to his wife. Larry had lost his nerve about meeting Grange himself, hadn’t he? He called you from my apartment and met you and told you he couldn’t go through with it. He had my gun and you figured out the whole plan in a flash. A perfect plant for a guy with my reputation.”

“All right, all right.” Thomas covered his face with his hands and rocked back and forth. “I did it. I killed them both. But I didn’t drown Marsha Marco. I swear to God-”

“Of course you didn’t. If I’m not mistaken, Marsha will be popping up out of hiding to refute the newspaper story being howled all over the city. And you might as well break that extra, too,” Shayne added, turning to Timothy Rourke.

“You bet.”

Rourke’s nostrils flared, his eyes stalking a window on the east side of the room. He leaned far out, thrust two fingers into his mouth and whistled two long blasts.

The sound was echoed down the street. The raucous shout of newsboys split the afternoon calm even as he pulled his head back in:

“EXTRA! EXTRA! MILLIONAIRE CONFESSES TWO MURDERS. EXTRA! THOMAS IS KILLER OF TWO. GET YOUR EXTRA HERE. MILLIONAIRE SPORTSMAN CONFESSES. PAINTER GETS FULL CONFESSION.”

“More newspaper history,” Shayne remarked gently to Peter Painter. “And I’ll take that thirty-two of mine back from you now, if you don’t mind. After Thomas takes you to Kincaid’s body and you get the bullet out of him, you’ll be interested to compare it with one shot from Marco’s gun.”

“But I thought-he said — your gun killed Kincaid.”

Painter was pulling a drawer open, taking out Shayne’s pistol.

Shayne reached over and took it from his nerveless fingers. “The Colt company really shouldn’t make their automatics with interchangeable barrels,” he said. “It makes it so confusing to detective chiefs. And you’ll enjoy knowing you had me plenty worried for a few hours about that ballistic test. Until I hit my stride on this thing, I was scared stiff that Marsha Marco had done the shooting and I had planted the evidence in my own gun. Drop around some day and I’ll show you how it’s done.”

While Painter gasped in astonishment, Shayne turned to Rourke and said, “Let’s go buy a paper, Tim. I have a burning desire to see my maiden literary effort in print.”

He linked arms with the newspaperman, and they walked out together.

Moonlight lay enchantingly upon the rippling surface of the Atlantic, made a path of molten gold leading out into the soft blue of early night where the running lights of a coastwise vessel rode the horizon. Tiny waves sluffed gently on the sandy shore, receded with soft, regretful sighs. Overhead, the lacy fronds of royal palms swayed in the faint breeze like giant feathers against the backdrop of night.

Dim globes high above the tables lining the boardwalk shone upon the diners, reflected a dancing glow from Phyllis Brighton’s eyes, lay softly upon her rounded cheeks.

Michael Shayne sat across from her, his angular features presenting a complex pattern of light and shadow. Hard, clean lines were accentuated by the lights.

Four sidecars were ranged in front of the detective. Phyllis’s fingers held the slender stem of a cocktail glass lightly. She lifted it and laughed.

“I know why you brought me here tonight, Michael Shayne.” Her voice was low, intimately challenging.

“You’re beautiful, Angel.” He lifted one of the four glasses and drank it with sincere approval.

“Don’t waste your blarney on me. I’ve been beautiful all this time and you haven’t given me a tumble. I’ve been studying your methods, Mr. Shayne, learning that things aren’t what they seem when your directing genius is behind them.”

“Can’t I take a girl out to dinner without an ulterior motive?” he protested.

“You could, but I seriously doubt whether you ever have.”

“You’ve got me all wrong, Angel. I’m still-practically twice your age.”

Laughter gurgled from her lips. “I don’t mean that way. I wish I could believe I was in danger of being seduced.”

Shayne shook his head sadly and reached for a second cocktail. “Such talk-from a mere infant. I’m-I’m appalled, Angel. Really I am.”