Brett Halliday - Murder by Proxy

“No such luck,” muttered Shayne. “No identical twins in this one.”

Lucy peered inside the Manila envelope and said, “There’s a note inside.” She withdrew a single sheet of paper with a typed message which she read aloud:

“Mike. I enclose two poses of Ellen Harris taken shortly before her marriage. Unable to locate a picture of the elusive Ruth Collins, but probably can, if you want me to keep trying. It’s signed, Jim,” she ended, dropping it to the desk.

Shayne grimaced and seated himself in his swivel chair. He leaned forward with his forearms on the desk, idly turning the cognac snifter in his hands. He said slowly, “I’ve always distrusted theorizing. But this one seemed to fit so damn perfectly. What else does fit?” he demanded. “Why did Ruth Collins disappear from New York last Monday afternoon, if she didn’t come down here masquerading as Ellen Harris? Where is she all this time, damn it? If that was Ellen Harris at the Beachhaven… and I guess there isn’t any doubt about it now… why did she set herself up as a sitting duck for murder? Don’t tell me,” he groaned, “that she loved her husband so much she set out deliberately to get herself bumped off, just so he could collect insurance on her and have his secretary, too. This, I refuse to accept.”

“I guess I haven’t got any new lead for today,” Rourke muttered morosely.

“Not unless Painter’s got one for you. Talked with him lately?”

“Just before I came here. For the first time in his life Petey cautiously admitted that all his clues had petered out. He’s about ready to mark it off as the work of a homicidal maniac.”

Shayne tossed off the rest of his cognac and set the fragile glass down gently. He lifted both of his palms to his face and said in a queerly subdued voice, “Both of you go in the other room. I’ve got thinking to do.” They looked at each other and Rourke shook his head and led the way out. Shayne sat there for a long time with bowed head and closed eyes. There was a faint smile of satisfaction on his rugged features when he got up and went into the outer room where Rourke was perched on the low railing, talking quietly to Lucy. They both looked up at him expectantly.

He said, “Call the airport, Lucy. Book me on the next jet flight to New York that has a vacancy.”

She nodded alertly and started dialling. Rourke slid off the railing and demanded, “Another brainstorm, Mike? You got another answer?”

Shayne said, “It’s a brainstorm all right.”

“What is it?”

Shayne shook his red head and said flatly, “No. I made a damned fool out of myself yesterday by jumping to conclusions without any proof.” He drew in a deep breath. “Think where I’d be today if I had let you call Painter and persuade him to hold Harris.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I shot off my mouth to you and Lucy,” Shayne growled. “I sat in there and guzzled cognac and outdid Sherlock Holmes with my deductive prowess. This one, I’m keeping strictly to myself.”

Lucy told him, “The first flight that has space will put you in International at four-forty this afternoon.”

He nodded and said, “Fix it. Then get Gifford on the phone.” He stalked back to his desk, picked up the cognac bottle and corked it tightly, deposited it in a drawer of a filing cabinet behind his desk. Turning back to see Rourke observing him from the doorway, he said with a wry smile:

“Mighty potent stuff… Cordon Bleu. Induces delusions of grandeur and pipedreams. I’m strictly off the stuff until I tie this case up in a knot.”

“Which you’re going to do in New York this afternoon?”

“Which I hope to do in New York this afternoon,” Shayne corrected him.

His buzzer sounded and he lifted the phone. “Jim? Those were mighty pretty pictures you sent me, but they were a real monkey wrench. No chance you made a mistake, huh?”

He listened a moment and nodded glumly. “All right, Mike Shayne rides again. You got a pretty good pipeline into the New York Police Department?”

“Couple of guys there will give me the time of day… if I pay for it,” Gifford told him cautiously.

Shayne grinned at the phone. “I know you better than that, Jim. Listen. I’m arriving by jet at International Airport four-forty this afternoon. Lucy will give you the airline and flight number. I want you to meet me, Jim. Wangle a duplicate set of Ellen Harris’ fingerprints from Headquarters. Miami Beach sent them up for positive identification of the body. And have a fingerprint man at the airport with you. It would be nice if you could bring along the same man who took the comparison prints from the Harris apartment in New York.”

“Would you like the Police Commissioner to come along, too?” Gifford demanded sarcastically.

Shayne said cheerfully, “Bring him, by all means, if he wants to come along. See you at four-forty, Jim. Lucy, give him the flight dope.”

He hung up.

“Won’t you give me an inkle, Mike?” pleaded Rourke. “You’re beginning to look as though you’d swallowed a whole cage full of canaries.”

“That’s the reason you don’t get even an inkle,” Shayne told him firmly. “I felt this same way yesterday afternoon, and look what happened.”

Jim Gifford, who met Michael Shayne with a hearty handclasp at the International Airport in New York that afternoon, was a big, smiling man with an intelligent face and an easy grace. They had known each other since the old days when both were operatives for Worldwide, and had retained a mutual respect and liking for each other after they both branched out on their own.

With Gifford was a short, somewhat stout man with an olive complexion, a bushy, black mustache and an affable smile. Gifford introduced him as Angelo Fermi, a detective on the New York police force, and he told Shayne as the three of them made their way out of the crowded terminal toward Gifford’s car in the parking lot, “Only inducement I could hang in front of Angelo’s nose to get him out here this afternoon, was that that you’d tell him how to get a Fermi show on television.”

Shayne grinned and told the New York detective, “You wouldn’t like it. If you ever watched my show, you’d know why I don’t.”

“I’d like the money that is in it,” Fermi told Shayne with conviction. “I have this idea for a series built entirely on the use of fingerprint evidence to solve otherwise insoluble cases. Everything authentic and taken from the records. I have been gathering material for twenty years, but I do not know how to approach the networks.” His liquid black eyes were hopeful.

Shayne said, very seriously, “I’ll tell you what, Fermi. If this thing comes off this afternoon the way I think it will, Brett Halliday will be up here getting the dope from you to help him make a book out of it. Brett is the one who knows all the T-V angles. You talk it over with him and he’ll give you the straight dope.” Gifford had stopped beside a plain, black sedan in the parking lot, and was opening the door on the driver’s side. Shayne let Fermi get in first, and followed him. “You’ve got a set of Ellen Harris’s fingerprints?” he asked as Gifford pulled out of the lot.

“Yes. And my kit in back.” Fermi hesitated, his dark eyes alertly curious. “Jim has not told me exactly why I am here with you this afternoon.”

Shayne spoke past him to Gifford at the wheel. “I want to go to Ruth Collins’ place on the West Side first. Will her room-mate be home?”

“I think so.” Gifford looked at his watch. “The only time I’ve been able to catch her there is between five and seven in the evening.”

“Are you the one who was assigned to check the dead woman’s prints in the Harris apartment?” Shayne then asked Fermi.