Brett Halliday - Michael Shaynes' 50th case

“How does he explain his fingerprints on the jack?”

“I don’t think Jenson’s bothered to ask him that. What the hell?” Rourke went on fiercely. “It’s his word against a white man’s. Who’s going to believe a damn word a ‘nigger’ says when there’s a white woman been raped and murdered? It’s what they want, Mike. You know that. All these Freedom Riders and northern integrationists haven’t helped things any. There’s going to be a lynching here tonight and there’s not one single solitary damned thing either you or I can do to prevent it. I’ll have to stay here to cover the story, God help me, but you’d better get the hell out of town, Mike, before things start to boil. There’s nothing you can do except to get your head blown off if you try to interfere.”

“What’s Jenson doing?” demanded Shayne. “Has he asked for help? Troops or the State Police?”

“You know what Chief Ollie Jenson is doing,” scoffed Rourke. “He’s sitting in his office quaking in his shoes and pretending nothing is going to happen. Damn it! If he gets troops in here or the State Police, he knows some of his neighbors will get shot. They’re the people who pay his salary.”

Shayne got to his feet slowly, his face set in harsh lines. “It might help if we could produce a substitute suspect.” He paused, tugging violently at his left ear-lobe. “I take it you still haven’t mentioned Harry Wilsson’s fingerprints on that glass to anyone?”

Rourke shook his head. “Leroy Smith knows I’ve got a set of matching prints, but he doesn’t know where I got it or who from. It’s not good enough, Mike. Wilsson is well-known and respected here. And all we can do, anyhow, is place him having a drink with her around eight o’clock. At worst, he’ll tell the same story he told you. The mob that’s forming out there in town doesn’t want a white man, Mike. They’re getting themselves worked up to kill a ‘nigger’ tonight, and that’s what they’re going to do.”

Shayne didn’t reply for a moment, then he asked incisively, “Do you know where Blake is?”

“I haven’t seen him since the chief drove him away from the station to take him to his daughter at the Wilsson house.”

Shayne took two paces to the telephone stand and leafed through the thin directory there. He lifted the phone and gave the Wilsson telephone number.

A woman’s voice answered and he asked, “Is Marvin Blake there?”

“No, he’s not. He was here for awhile with Sissy, but then he wouldn’t stay. He’s bound and determined he’s going to take Sissy away tonight… drive her up to Jacksonville where he’s got a married sister that’ll take care of her, though land’s sake knows I told him and told him that Harry and I would love having her stay just as long as she wanted, but he’s got his mind made up and you know Marv when he sets his mind to something. So he’s over at his house packing up clothes for Sissy to take with her to Jacksonville though I tried to persuade him to let me do it for him. You know, him going back to that empty house where, well… who is this calling?”

Shayne hung up without replying. He asked Rourke, “How do I get to the Blake house from here?”

Rourke told him. “Is something up? You want me…?”

“I want you to get out and circulate around town,” Shayne told him grimly, “and keep your finger on the pulse of things. I won’t just sit around and let things happen, Tim. You and I may have to make a telephone call to the governor if things get bad.”

He went out of the motel room swiftly and followed Rourke’s directions for reaching the Blake house.

There was a gleaming, late-model Mercury sedan parked in front of the house when he got there. He pulled up behind it and got out and went up to the front door. He found it ajar, and he pushed it open and walked inside. It was very still inside the house, and a quick glance into the kitchen and sitting room indicated that the lower floor was empty.

Shayne climbed the stairs leading up from the hallway. At the top of the stairs the door on the right was closed, and so was the next door on the left. Another door, beyond that, stood open, and Shayne walked to it and stopped on the threshold.

Marvin Blake sat across from him on the edge of a child’s bed that was strewn with an array of dresses and clothing. A suitcase sat open at the foot of the bed, and it appeared to be partially packed with Sissy’s things.

Blake sat hunched forward in a miserable posture with both elbows planted on his knees and his down-bent face resting in his hands. It was obvious that he had not heard the detective coming up the stairs, and believed himself alone in the house.

Shayne stood in the doorway and said quietly, “Blake.”

Marvin did not appear startled or surprised. He lifted his head slowly and stared dully at the redhead. His face was pasty-white and there were red blotches on his cheeks where his fingers had been pressed. He said, “Oh, it’s you,” in a dead sort of voice.

Shayne said, “I have to talk to you, Blake. Let’s go downstairs.”

Marvin turned his head to look at the strewn bed and the suitcase. “I’m packing up here. Sissy’s things. I’m going to take her away, you see. I have a sister in Jacksonville.” He spoke slowly and laboriously, forming each word with care as though it were terribly important that he make himself understood.

Shayne said patiently, “I know. And I think that’s fine. But right now you and I have things to talk about.” He stepped across the room to Blake’s side and took his arm and pulled him up to his feet. Blake did not resist, but he didn’t help much either. He reacted automatically to the authority in Shayne’s voice, shuffling along beside him and explaining in a low voice that sounded apologetic, “I don’t know what to take for Sissy and what to leave behind. She’s got so many clothes. Ellie always looked after that, and now she’s not here to do it, and I’ve got to do the best I can.”

Shayne silently shepherded him down the stairs and turned into the neat sitting room where the shades were drawn and it was dim and cool. He urged him toward a chair and helped him to stiffly lower his body into it, and then stepped back and got out a cigarette and lighted it.

He said crisply, “Listen to me, Blake. Pay attention to what I’m saying. Do you know they have a man in jail charged with murdering your wife?”

“Have they?” Marvin Blake showed a spark of interest, though it wasn’t strong. “I didn’t know that. I haven’t talked to anybody. I guess I’ve been up in Sissy’s room a good while. I’d keep looking at her dresses and I couldn’t decide…”

“It’s a colored man they have in jail,” Shayne told him strongly. “They haven’t any real evidence against him, Blake. Just that he appears to have been in town last night about the right time. That’s all. But they’re getting ready to lynch him for your wife’s murder. Do you want that, Blake?” Shayne’s voice was like a whip-lash. “Do you want another murder in Sunray Beach?”

Marvin Blake looked bewildered. He shook his head slowly, blinking his eyes at the detective’s harshly accusing voice. “I don’t,” he muttered. “Of course not. I don’t believe in lynchings.”

“Then it’s up to us to do something to prevent it,” Shayne told him. “Why don’t you start out by telling the truth about last night?”

“I have told you. Down at the railroad station.”

Shayne shook his head angrily. “I just got back from Moonray Beach where I checked your story. You didn’t register at the hotel until just before two o’clock this morning. The evening train from Miami gets there a little before ten.”

“I told you I stopped at a restaurant and bar and had some drinks and something to eat.”