Brett Halliday - Stranger in Town

“They tried to kill me. Why?”

“Because they thought… because I… because I stopped at your booth instead of going on to the right one beyond you. I couldn’t do it to him,” she tearfully pleaded with Shayne. “Don’t you see I couldn’t? He’d been so kind to me that night. And he looked so little and defenceless sitting there. And you were so big and… and, well, tough-looking. It just came over me all at once when I saw you both. I hadn’t planned it that way. But I knew they planned to do something terrible to him as soon as I told them which one he was, so I just couldn’t do it to him. You do see why I couldn’t, don’t you?” She was leaning far forward with glistening eyes that begged him to understand and forgive. In a moment Shayne thought she’d be on her knees before him.

He said, “I don’t see… yet. Sit back and relax and let me get one thing clear if I can. They brought you there to identify someone for them? And he was sitting in the booth behind me. But you didn’t want to put the finger on him, and so you picked me instead. Someone you’d never seen before. Is that the picture?”

“Yes,” she said gladly. “I know it was a terrible thing to do, but like I said, you looked, well…”

“A little better able to take care of myself with Gene and his pals than he did,” Shayne ended for her with a wry grin, recalling the meek little man he’d noticed sitting alone in the rear booth when he first entered the bar. “All right. So I did manage to take care of myself… no thanks to you. Who was the man you were supposed to finger for them?”

“I don’t know his name. He picked me up on the road and dropped me in front of the hospital that night.”

Shayne considered this a moment, tugging at his earlobe. “What did Gene have against him? Strong enough to cause him to try and kill me after you pointed me out as the man?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.” Jean Henderson shuddered and her blue eyes pleaded with Shayne to believe her. “I knew they might do something awful. I just felt it. From the beginning when they started in on me and kept after me to describe him. I kept telling them I didn’t know anything about him. And I don’t really. I just had one good look at his face when he stopped to let me out at the hospital. When they first asked me, I made the mistake of admitting I had seen his face. But I didn’t describe it to them. I kept saying he was just sort of ordinary. But that’s why they took me to the bar last night. Because I had seen his face once. Please tell me what it’s all about,” she begged. “Why did they keep me locked up in a room? What happened to my… to the man who said he was my father and took me away from the hospital?”

“Let’s finish up last night first. What happened to you?”

“I got away from them. I saw my chance when you started fighting and Bill came running in to help Gene and the other one. He had stayed outside, you see. To keep me from running away. I was supposed to point you out and then turn and go out to Bill again. He had a car waiting and was going to take me away while Gene and Mule ‘took care’… that’s what they called it… of you.”

“So you ran out?” Shayne prompted her. “What then?”

“I didn’t know where I was. Not even what town I was in. I didn’t have a penny. I just ran up the street to get away. And I came to a little hotel sign with stairs leading up off the street, and I ran up. There was a dirty lobby and a really nice old clerk. I made up a story about being on a date and having a fight with a man and running away. And I offered him my wristwatch if he’d give me a room for the night. So he did. And I signed the first name I thought of, Marion Smith from Miami. And went to bed.”

“And this morning you walked down the street and stopped at a restaurant where you saw a Help Wanted sign in the window, and applied for a job as waitress?” Shayne supplied for her.

“Yes, I… I didn’t know what to do. I was hungry and desperate. You don’t know what an awful, desolate feeling it is.” Tears ran down her cheeks and she struggled to hold back her sobs. “I’m not anybody. I don’t know where to go or what to do. And with those men after me…”

“Why didn’t you go to the police at once? That’s what they’re for.”

“I was afraid to. I don’t know just why, but from things Gene and Bill said, I think they’re in with the police in Brockton. They didn’t seem a bit worried about any of the things they did. And that awful fat Chief of Police! I couldn’t bear facing him again.”

“When did you meet Ollie Hanger?”

“At the hospital. When Mr. Buttrell came to take me away. He was there with Doctor Philbrick. I was scared even then and felt there was something wrong. I just didn’t think he was my father. But he insisted that he was, and I was so dazed and frightened, and so happy to have somebody recognize me that I didn’t protest. But later, after Gene and Bill had me locked up, I thought about it a lot and it seemed to me Chief Hanger was awfully anxious to have me go with Mr. Buttrell. I don’t know. They didn’t say anything out loud, but I had the impression they knew each other and were sort of in it together. That’s why I was afraid to go to the police.”

“You were probably smart,” Shayne told her somberly. “Before we go back any farther, tell me what happened after Mr. Buttrell took you away from the hospital?”

“He was awfully kind. And fatherly, I guess, in an oily sort of way. He had a car waiting, a blue Buick sedan, and said we’d drive straight back to Miami to have my doctor examine me. And we drove out of Brockton and stopped at a drive-in place where he got a bottle of beer and a chocolate malted for me. I thought it tasted funny and sort of bitter, but I wanted it and drank it down. I began to feel dizzy and sleepy before we even drove away… and that’s all I remember. Until I waked up in that locked room all by myself, and I haven’t been out of it since, until last night.”

Michael Shayne took a long drink of his diluted cognac and set the glass down firmly. “It’s all over now. You have nothing to be afraid of, and you’ll be home with your own father soon. You believe that, don’t you? You trust me?”

She said, “Yes,” gladly and without hesitation. “Back in the restaurant when you said you were my brother, I had the strangest feeling of peace and happiness. I just didn’t know how you could be, but it came to me that maybe that was why I’d picked you out last night in the bar. And I wish you were my brother,” she added impulsively.

Shayne acknowledged the undoubtedly sincere compliment with a grin. “Your name is Jean Henderson,” he told her slowly. “You live in Orlando with your father, Professor Henderson. You’re a student at Rollins College where he teaches. Does that bring anything back to you?”

She knit her brow fiercely and put her fingers up to her eyes. He watched while her lips moved inaudibly, and he knew she was repeating the name to herself over and over again. When she looked up at him and shook her head, her face was blank, her eyes frantic with disappointment and fear again. “It just won’t come back. Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“It will,” Shayne told her cheerfully. “Stop trying so hard. Think about other things. It’s all there. Locked away in your subconscious mind. There’s just a physical block caused by your head injury between conscious memory and your unconscious. Let’s go back now to what you do remember. What is your first conscious memory?”

“It was night and dark and I was alone stumbling down a strange road,” she said in a low monotone as though she had repeated it often before and the lines were memorized. “I had a dreadful headache and I was bruised all over and I didn’t know who I was or where I was or how I’d gotten there. I just didn’t… know. I kept walking and after a time a car came up behind me and it stopped when I waved and a man jumped out and asked me what was the matter? And I tried to explain to him how it was. And he was nice and didn’t ask many questions and helped me into the back seat and said I needed a doctor. And he drove on in the dark for what seemed a long time, and there were the lights of a town ahead and he said it was Brockton and he’d take me to the hospital and drop me off at the door, and he asked me to promise to let him drive away without being seen and not to tell anybody what he looked like or anything about him. And I promised, but I asked him why, and he said it would just ruin everything for him if his wife found out he was out in that direction that night because she thought he was somewhere else. And he sounded sad and frightened and I felt sorry for him and promised. Because he had been kind and stopped on the road to pick me up, and he stopped in front of the hospital and I got out and he drove off fast, and I waited until he was out of sight before I went in.”