Brett Halliday - Stranger in Town

Shayne shrugged impatiently. “Mind stepping outside with me where we can keep this private?”

“Why, yes Mister.” The words were drawled out slowly and provocatively. “I reckon I do mind.” He turned his head slowly to rake his glance across the reinforcements behind him. Two more chairs thudded forward, and the dice players got to their feet.

He turned back, and white teeth showed in his dark face in an insolent grin. “You a copper, or what?”

The pimply-faced boy with the pool cue stepped two paces to one side and two paces forward so he stood directly on Shayne’s left. The others were lazily drifting forward.

Shayne said wearily, “Cut out the tough kid stuff, Lomax. You either talk to me here or we go down to headquarters and talk.”

“Hear that, fellows?” Will Lomax seemed vastly amused. “This here one’s real tough, I guess. Out-of-towner, too.” He swung back to sneer at Shayne. “What you carrying that says I go down to headquarters?” Out of the tail of his eye, Shayne saw the lad on his left set himself solidly and heft the heavy cue. He stepped forward fast and hit Lomax full in the face, knocking him sprawling on his back on the floor. At the same moment he whirled and ducked a wide swing of the cue stick and drove his left fist into the pit of the swinger’s belly.

He collapsed with a grunt and the cue clattered to the floor. Shayne kicked it into a corner and turned to face the other six.

The five on their feet had halted uncertainly in their advance. Two of them were fumbling in their pockets where Shayne supposed they had switch-blades concealed. Will Lomax was sitting up on the bare floor with blood gushing from his nose and a look of wild hatred on his twisted face.

“Get wise to yourselves, punks,” Shayne advised them shortly. “Push me just a little bit more and I’ll take all of you in.” He strode toward them contemptuously and they sidled backward, glancing uncertainly at each other, bereft of leadership with Lomax ungallantly sitting on the floor holding a handkerchief to his bleeding nose.

Shayne stooped over him and caught the lapels of his leather jacket in his left hand and lifted him to his feet. He held him at arm’s length and told the others, “We’re going out to sit in my car and have a talk. First one of you comes through the door, I’m driving in with Will. Stay inside, and he may come back all in one piece.” He turned and went through the open door, dragging Will Lomax behind him. He heeled the door shut, pulled the dark-featured youth upright and shoved him across the porch toward his car. “Just forget about how tough you are, Sonny,” he advised him coldly. “I’m going to get some answers if I have to beat them out of you.” Lomax shambled ahead a few steps and then whirled about with clenched fists, sobbing, “Goddamn you. Goddamn you to hell! You goddamn smart bastard. Just because you’re bigger’n me…”

“That’s it exactly,” said Shayne coldly. “Just because I am bigger, you’ll take it. Get in the front seat there and tell me about you and Jeanette.”

He gave him another shove and the young man’s defiance crumpled. He walked slowly to the car and got in, sat bolt upright on the far side of the seat with handkerchief still pressed to his nose as Shayne got in beside him. “Who are you,” he asked sullenly, “and what you want to know?”

“I’m a friend of Professor Henderson’s for one thing. I want to know all about that trip you were taking with Jeanette when she was killed a month ago. She was under-age, you know, and there’s a legal phrase for it. Contributing to the delinquency of a minor. I don’t want to hurt the professor by having it come out in the open, but that’s up to you.”

“What do you mean?” mumbled Lomax. “Jeanette and I never… you got no right to say that. What trip you talking about?”

“The pre-marital honeymoon you and she had all planned. Don’t waste time denying it,” Shayne went on wearily. “I know you were in her car with her that night near Brockton. I want to know exactly what happened.” Will Lomax turned incredulously as he spoke, and slowly took the handkerchief away from his nose where the bleeding was reduced to a mere trickle. Shayne had a definite impression that there was gladness and relief in the black eyes. That this wasn’t the question he had expected and feared, and the boy’s voice confirmed that impression as he spoke.

“You’re nuts, Mister. I wasn’t near Brockton that night and I can prove it. I didn’t even know anything about it until I saw it in a paper two days later. Sure, I dated her sometimes even if her old man did treat me like dirt under his feet, but I hadn’t seen her for a week before she had the accident.”

“Were you waiting for her to join you some place that night?”

“I sure wasn’t.” Will’s upper lip curled away from his teeth and his voice had a note of jeering triumph. “I was in R.O.T.C. camp at Gainesville when it happened. You can check on it easy enough. Bed-check at nine every night and not a damned pass from camp for two whole weeks. I don’t know what kind of bee you got in your bonnet. We were both sore because I had to go for spring training the same time as her vacation, and she was going to visit with a girl in Diston. Name of Lois Dongan. You can ask her.”

Shayne didn’t bother to tell him he had already asked Lois. Will’s voice and manner bore the strong stamp of truth. It would be a simple matter to check his statement, of course. He’d be a fool to make it if it weren’t true.

“If you weren’t the one she was going off with,” said Shayne harshly. “Who was it? Who else was she playing around with while you were in camp?”

“Damn you,” Will snarled angrily, and braced himself to swing an ineffectual fist at Shayne’s face. “There wasn’t nobody else. Jeanie and me were…” He stopped and swallowed hard. “We were in love, damn it. She never looked at another man. I don’t know who in hell you are, but you sure ain’t going around fouling up her memory with such stories. You do that and I’ll get you, by God, if it’s the last thing on earth I do.”

“What about Randy Harris?” Shayne demanded.

“Harris?” The youth’s jaw fell open slackly. “Never heard of him. Wait a minute. You mean that lawyer over in Orlando that got burned up in his car last week? What about him?”

“You sure Jeanette wasn’t two-timing you with him?”

“Sure I’m sure, Mister.” Will’s voice was sullenly dogged. “She wasn’t two-timing me, period. She was my girl and we were going to get married as soon as she was eighteen.” He took on a sort of youthful dignity as he said this, and his hand reached out to unlatch the door.

Shayne made no move to stop him as he got out. He stood beside the open door and said, “I’m going back inside now. Some of the fellows are going to be pretty sore about the way you barged in on us and threw your weight around. Tough as you may be, I wouldn’t stick around Winter Park after dark if I was you.”

He held his head high and walked stiffly away toward the farmhouse. Shayne sighed and started his motor and backed out the driveway.

Despite his disinclination to do so, he couldn’t help believing Will Lomax. But the hell of it was, he also believed Lois Dongan. She hadn’t, he realized, stated flatly that Will Lomax was the man Jeanette had planned to stay with during the period she was supposed to be visiting Lois. In fact, Lois had admitted that Jeanette had not told her who she was going with. Knowing that Jeanette and Will were supposed to be in love and engaged, Lois had assumed Will was to be her companion. But it might have been anyone else at all. Jeanette probably wouldn’t have told her closest friend the truth, Shayne decided as he drove morosely back to Winter Park. Lois was young and sentimental, and it had seemed perfectly all right and romantic to her to help Jeanette go away with the man she was engaged to marry, whereas she might have refused to lend herself to the scheme had she known the man was someone other than Jeanette’s fiance.