Brett Halliday: The Homicidal Virgin

No one answered him. Slowly, one by one, their eyes dropped from looking at him. Will Gentry chewed on his cigar for a moment and then said conversationally to Painter: “He’s your pigeon, Pete. I’m glad I don’t have to dirty my hands by taking him into custody.”

Henderson looked around at the ring of impassive faces slowly. He sat down jerkily and regained control of himself. “I don’t know what this fuss is all about,” he told them coldly and with an evil ring of triumph in his voice. “There is a statute of limitations that applies to a case like this. In the state of Colorado it went into effect some years ago… as I was very careful to ascertain on the best legal advice. So now I will have to ask you all to leave my house, reminding you that you are uninvited. Except you, Muriel,” he went on hastily and pleadingly, “I do hope and pray that you will listen to my side of it…”

She stood up and said coldly, “I have heard quite enough already. I’ll be happy to go with the others.”

Shayne said, “Wait a minute,” and the tone of his voice made them all stand very still. “The statute of limitations doesn’t apply to murder, Henderson.”

“It wasn’t murder,” he cried out fiercely. “The charge was suspicion of manslaughter… and to that charge, my friend, the statute of limitations does apply.”

“I’m talking about last night, not twenty-two years ago,” growled Shayne.

“But you know now why Gleason came here. That was the only thing that bothered Chief Painter before. All right. Now he knows. I hoped I could hide the truth, but… since I cannot, at least it will serve to clear me.”

Painter turned to Shayne angrily, and said, “The fact is, Shayne…”

“The fact is,” Shayne interrupted him blithely, “that Painter has been ahead of you all the time, Henderson. He put his finger on it from the first moment last night when he suspected that those first two attempts on your life had been planned by you as a build-up to last night so that you could shoot an unarmed man down in cold blood and claim self-defense. Remember, Petey, how you pointed that out yourself in this room last night?”

“I did, didn’t I?” Painter agreed in a pleased tone.

“But Harry Gleason wasn’t unarmed,” interjected Henderson. “He was carrying that twenty-two pistol you found on the porch beside him. The same one he’d tried to shoot me with in my car on Monday evening. Chief Painter’s own ballistic tests proved that, didn’t they, Chief?”

“Of course they did,” agreed Shayne. “And that’s exactly how Petey tied a noose around your neck.”

“Is it?” asked Painter with intense interest.

“Because Harry Gleason has an alibi for Monday evening when that twenty-two bullet was fired into your car cushion. He was drinking beer steadily in a bar in Miami from four o’clock in the afternoon until ten o’clock that evening. He never had that twenty-two in his possession, Henderson. You fired that decoy shot yourself just as you exploded the gas tank on your boat when you were at a carefully calculated distance from a rescue craft so you knew you’d be picked up before you drowned. You had it in your pocket last night when you went to the front door after inviting Gleason to come here and discuss payment of blackmail, and all you had to do was press his fingerprints on it after you killed him with a slug from your forty-five.

“For God’s sake, Henderson,” Shayne went on in a tone of deep disgust. “Painter has had you figured for this all the time and he already has a salvage crew bringing up the remains of your boat to get proof that there wasn’t any bomb at all, but just a gas tank that you blew up yourself.”

“Shayne is right, Henderson.” Peter Painter strutted forward officiously. “We’ve got you dead to rights for premeditated murder. I’m inviting you to be my guest for a few months until they hang you.”

“Why,” demanded Lucy Hamilton indignantly a little later while they were driving back to Miami with Rourke and Mrs. Gleason in the rear seat, “did you kow-tow so to Chief Painter and practically force him to take the credit for solving the case when you did everything yourself?”

Shayne grinned and reminded her, “We’re going to be in business here for a long time, angel. Cheapest way in the world to keep Petey in a good humor… and this time there wasn’t any money involved.”

“What’ll become of Jane Smith?” demanded Rourke from the rear.

Shayne chuckled and said, “Legally, I suppose Roy Combs will inherit his father’s money when Henderson hangs. So Jane will come out with just what she started out to get… and without murder on her mind.”