Brett Halliday: Michael Shaynes' 50th case

To meet that contingency he had decided to take the train back to Moonray Beach about thirty miles south, and get off there. He would get a room at the hotel, giving a fictitious Miami address, and while checking in he would mention something about having reached town on the earlier train from Miami.

In his room he would write a suicide note saying that he had started home that afternoon, but before reaching Sunray had realized he could not face his wife and daughter with the terrible weight of guilt he had on his conscience. He would intimate that he had been unfaithful to Ellie at the convention, and did not consider himself fit to go on living. And he would beg the forgiveness of Ellie and Sissy for what he was about to do.

He even knew exactly how he would commit the act. After writing the suicide note he would take off all his clothes and get in the bathtub and open the arteries in his wrists with a razor blade and let his life-blood ooze down the drain.

He was very careful to remain out of sight until the train came through. Sunray Beach had one night policeman who casually patrolled the streets at night in his police car, but he was just about the only local resident awake after midnight, and Marvin did not even see his car making the rounds while he skulked at the far end of the deserted parking lot at the depot, and he watched the dimly lighted station nervously as train-time neared, hoping that no one else had decided to catch the early morning train into Miami.

No car had driven up to the station and there was no sign of life there when he heard the oncoming train whistle loudly in the distance, a mournful, eerie sound in the night silence which sounded to him like a dirge for Marvin Blake who was soon to die.

He remained hidden in the shadow of a palm tree while the short train wheezed in, and was relieved when the single day coach stopped almost directly in front of him.

A trainman stepped down swinging an electric lantern, and Marvin stepped forward with his suitcase and climbed aboard without looking at the man.

The rear seat of the coach was vacant and he dropped into it with his suitcase beside him and leaned back with his hat tipped down over his face and with a dollar bill ready in his right hand.

The train pulled out toward Miami smoothly almost before he was comfortably settled, and he waited a long time, watching beneath the brim of his hat until he saw the conductor’s feet pause in the aisle beside him.

He extended the bill toward him and muttered sleepily, “One way to Moonray Beach, please.”

The bill was whisked from his grasp, and he kept his hand extended, palm upward, until the conductor dropped his change and receipt into it and moved away.

He waited until the train came to a full stop before getting up from the seat and stepping off the train. Moonray Beach was almost twice as large as Sunray, and there were half a dozen people standing around the station, but none of them so much as glanced at Marvin as he carried his suitcase briskly to Main Street.

He had vaguely hoped to find a bar open where he could stop for a few drinks before going on to the hotel, but in this he was disappointed. Everything was closed, and he trudged the block and a half to a dingy hotel which had known better times and was putting up a listless struggle against the competition of modern motels which had sprung up on the outskirts.

The small lobby was ill-lighted and empty except for an old man dozing behind the registration desk with a streak of tobacco juice running down his chin from the corner of his mouth.

He blinked rheumy eyes open and stood up slowly when Marvin rapped on the desk in front of him, and he yawned widely and reckoned he did have a vacant room when Marvin asked for one.

He signed a registration card, “Marvin Blake,” and added the name of the Miami hotel at which he had been staying. As he pushed the card back he said carelessly, “I came in on the ten o’clock train, but didn’t know I was going to be stuck for the night,” and the clerk nodded without interest and slid a key numbered 201 across to him and mumbled, “Right up at the head of them stairs.”

Marvin took the key and started to turn away, then hesitated and said, “I need a night-cap real bad.” He got a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and spread it on the counter. “That’s yours if you can scare up a bottle I can take to my room.”

The old man looked down at the bill avidly and said, “No place open in town this time uh night. Tell yuh what though, Mister. If you don’t mind a couple of drinks off the top of a bottle of Four Roses, I reckon I might fix you up.”

Marvin told him he didn’t mind at all, and the clerk went around behind the switchboard and came back with an opened fifth. The couple of drinks that were missing had been healthy slugs, but there was still more than enough left in the bottle to get Marvin drunker than he had ever been in his life, so he took it and shoved the bill over and picked up his suitcase in the other hand and went up the stairs to his room.

Inside, the room was fairly clean and as impersonal as every hotel room. Marvin set his suitcase down at the foot of the bed and took off his hat and coat, then carried the bottle of whiskey into the bathroom. He found two water-glasses there, and uncorked the bottle and poured one of them half-full. He was surprised to see how his hand shook as he did so, and he realized that he really did need that bottle.

He filled the glass to the brim from the tap, and stood there and forced the entire glassful down his throat without taking it away from his lips.

It hit the pit of his stomach like fire, and slowly spread through the rest of his body.

He poured the glass almost half-full a second time and added water, and carried bottle and glass back and set them on top of the bureau.

Then he unfastened his suitcase and opened it, and got out a pad of yellow, ruled paper and a fresh packet of razor blades.

He sat on the edge of the bed with the blades lying beside him and the pad on his knees, and got out his pen and wrote as firmly as he could: “To whom it may concern.”

He paused, staring down at the words, trying to get them into focus, angry because his hand was still so unsteady. He decided he needed another drink before he could get on with the job.

He went to the bureau and slowly emptied the glass again, shuddering convulsively as he did so, then sat on the edge of the bed again and laboriously began composing his death message.

Timothy Rourke, star reporter for the Miami News, awoke that next morning languidly and slowly, with an almost unbelievable sense of physical well-being flooding through him as he became pleasantly aware of bright sunshine and fresh sea air flooding through the open window beside his bed, and listened to the unexcited twittering of birds in a tree just outside.

He had no semblance of a hangover, no taste of dry asbestos in his mouth. He had no idea what time it was and, very happily, he did not care to know. He blinked up drowsily at the low ceiling of the motel room and consciously willed himself to drift into a self-congratulatory reverie that was half-sleeping and half-waking.

This, by God, was what happened to a man when he went to bed stone, cold sober, all by himself in his own monastic bed, and slept the entire night through without a single nightmare, without once waking to the taste of sour retching in his throat.

He ought to do this sort of thing oftener, he told himself sternly; and he wondered sleepily why he didn’t, and he vaguely pitied himself because he knew very well why he didn’t do it more often.

It was because he just didn’t have the requisite willpower. Last night, for instance, had required no will-power at all. It was purely accidental and not of his own volition that he had turned in at eleven o’clock without a drink in his belly except the two cocktails he had allowed himself at dinner in Jacksonville. He had held himself down to those two at dinner because he wanted to cover another hundred miles or so toward Miami before stopping to spend the night, and he did have enough common sense and willpower to keep himself fairly sober while driving on the highway, and it had given him something to look forward to as he drove southward through the night.