Brett Halliday: Stranger in Town

“It’s a long story, angel. I stopped in here at a bar on my way home last night for a drink before dinner… and there was this girl. She came into the bar and… well, hell, Lucy, it’s too long a story and too crazy for you to understand.”

“But you did spend the night in Brockton on account of her?” Lucy Hamilton’s voice was suddenly icy.

Shayne grinned and took a drink of cognac from the glass in his right hand. “That’s right, honey-chile,” he drawled. “I sure did. All on account of her. And I’m sticking around for awhile hoping to get another look at her.” His voice became crisp. “Tell me this fast. Anything come up there at the office after I phoned you yesterday morning? Any new clients? Anyone whom you told I was driving back from Mobile who might have made a guess at my itinerary?”

“No. There’s been nothing at all. Until this man who showed up this morning. Is it trouble, Michael? Are you mixed up in… something?”

“I’m plenty mixed up,” Shayne told her grimly. “Write this down. The Manor Hotel in Brockton. Number four-ten. And, angel… that goon in the front office may be part of it.”

“Part of what?” wailed Lucy.

“That’s what I’d like to know. As soon as I hang up, you stay in my office and call Will Gentry. Tell him I’m out of town and you’ve got a suspicious character in the front office. Have him send a couple of men up to pick the guy up and go over him. Find out who he is and why. Then you go back to your typewriter and distract him until Will’s boys get there.”

“All right, Michael. Please… be careful.”

“In Brockton,” said Shayne, “it doesn’t seem to help much. Call Gentry now.”

“He probably isn’t what I think at all. It may just all be my imagination, Michael.”

“I know. But if it ties up with this thing here last night, he’ll be playing for keeps. Good luck.” He slammed down the phone and stood up. He had planned to phone down for a decent breakfast while he dressed leisurely in fresh clothes, but all thought of food was driven from his mind by this development.

He hurried to a suitcase and unstrapped it, got dressed swiftly and went out, leaving the cognac bottle standing uncorked beside the telephone. He had only one faint clue to work on. The Girl whose picture had been in the newspaper a few days previously. The local newspaper, he presumed, though the man from the barroom hadn’t stated specifically.

Downstairs the doorman directed him a block and a half down the street to the building housing the Brockton Daily Courier. It was a large, modern brick building with presses in the basement, advertising and make-up on the first floor, editorial offices on the second.

Shayne climbed a stairway and explained what he wanted to a spectacled girl on the switchboard and information desk. She motioned to a long table at one side where a week’s issues of the Courier were neatly stacked up.

Shayne started with yesterday’s paper, turning them swiftly and glancing at each front page for the picture he sought. If that didn’t work, he’d start back, going through the inside pages also.

But it worked. Her picture leaped out at him from the front page of the preceding Friday’s issue. Not too good a likeness in the somewhat smeared newsprint reproduction, but good enough for Shayne in whose mind her features were indelibly imprinted.

Heavy black letters over the picture asked: WHO IS SHE?

The caption beneath, in smaller letters was: AMNESIA VICTIM IN LOCAL HOSPITAL.

Shortly before two o’clock this morning, the girl pictured above presented herself at the front door of City Hospital in a dazed state of shock.

Sobbing and distraught, she was unable to give a coherent story of the events leading up to her appearance at the hospital, and had absolutely no knowledge of her own identity, with no memory whatsoever prior to a short time previously when she stated she had found herself wandering alone on some deserted stretch of highway near Brockton with no knowledge of how she came to be there or where she was or who she was.

According to her story, a passing motorist stopped his car to pick her up, and after hearing her story, drove her directly to the hospital entrance where he let her out and drove away at once without giving his name or any clue to his identity. He was driving a shabby coupe, she stated, either dark blue or green, and one of the popular makes, Ford, Chevrolet or Plymouth.

She could not describe his physical appearance in any detail, but said he was kind to her and she was very grateful for his help.

A physical examination disclosed that she had suffered a hard blow on the right temple from some blunt instrument an hour or so previously, which undoubtedly was responsible for her amnesia.

Dr. Jay Philbrick, who was summoned from his home to conduct the examination expressed his opinion that it was entirely possible she might recover her lost memory after the first state of shock passed, although he admitted that in many similar cases the victims had remained with no vestige of memory of past events for weeks or for months.

“The very best treatment for a case of this type,” Dr. Philbrick stated emphatically after his first examination, “is to place the patient in contact with familiar surroundings and with her own family and friends. Recovery is generally swift under those conditions, and there is little reason to fear this young lady will not be as good as new as soon as her memory is jolted by some familiar face or circumstance and begins to function again.

“It is of the utmost importance, however,” he concluded, “that she should be identified as soon as possible, and placed among friends.”

For this reason the Courier is running her photograph, taken last night by a staff photographer, on our front page with an appeal to our readers for any information that may lead to her identification.

A detailed description of the Mystery Girl follows: Age: about 20. Height: five feet four inches. Weight: 115 pounds. Fair complexion; blue eyes; naturally curly golden hair; no distinguishing scars or marks. She was wearing an obviously expensive white silk dress, sheer nylon stockings and bronze evening pumps, and no jewelry of any sort except a gold wrist watch.

It is particularly requested that the Good Samaritan who brought her to the hospital and left her there without identifying himself should come forward to tell the authorities where and under what conditions he found her, because the police theorize that she may have been the victim of an auto accident, and the spot where she was first found may help to pinpoint inquiries along that line. This theory, Dr. Philbrick conceded, is wholly plausible as a possible cause of the concussive blow she had sustained.

Shayne laid the paper aside with a frown creasing his forehead. Maybe that explained the crazy set-up-she was wandering around loose still a victim of amnesia. Maybe she had thought she recognized from out of the blankness of the past.

But they wouldn’t have released her from the hospital, would they? Unless she had recovered fully?

He turned the next day’s paper, shaking his head dubiously. On the front page, he found the answer. There was no picture this time, but a headline told him: AMNESIA VICTIM IDENTIFIED.

The girl who mysteriously appeared at City Hospital early yesterday morning suffering from advanced shock and complete loss of memory was identified early yesterday afternoon by means of the photograph which was displayed on the front page of the Courier as a public service.

Her father, Mr. Amos Buttrell, wealthy socialite of New York and wintering at the Roney Plaza Hotel in Miami Beach, drove here from that city after seeing his daughter’s picture prominently displayed on the front page of the Courier at a newsstand there.