Brett Halliday - The Corpse Came Calling

The subdued sound of evening traffic coming in the open window was his only answer.

He walked aimlessly around the room, sipping the glass of cognac. After a time he got the Danube dinner check from his pocket and smoothed it out on the table. He drew his eyebrows down as he read Phyllis’s note again. He stood frowning at the piece of paper for a long time, then rummaged in a drawer for an airmail envelope.

He sat down with a clean sheet of paper and wrote:

Dear John: You should be able to bring out three sets of prints on the enclosed slip. They are mine, my wife’s, and those of a third party. Disregard mine (which are on file) and the lady’s prints. Wire me collect, immediately, anything you have on the third set.

He signed the letter Michael Shayne and addressed the airmail envelope to John Bascom, Dept. of Identification, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, D.C.

He folded the dinner check carefully inside the letter and sealed them in the envelope, then finished his drink and went out

He stopped at the desk and got a special-delivery stamp from the clerk, put it on the letter, and directed the clerk to send it out to the airport at once by messenger to catch the evening mail plane north.

The clerk promised to attend to it, then asked Shayne, “Did I do all right when I brought the cops up to your apartment, Mr. Shayne? After that other man dying in your office this afternoon, I guess I was jumpy.”

“You probably saved me from getting bumped off,” Shayne told him, and then asked curiously, “How about that dead man? You got me in plenty dutch when you told Painter he wasn’t wounded when he started upstairs.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Shayne. I swear I didn’t know. I didn’t notice a thing when he stopped here and asked for your office. That is, he was hunched over and hugging himself and he looked sick, but I sure didn’t know he was practically dead. If you’d told me what to say, you know I’d have done it for you.”

“Sure, I know you would. You didn’t tell them I was in, eh?”

“No, sir. I knew that much, anyway. They asked me when I’d seen you last and I pretended I didn’t remember.”

“You didn’t tell them about the girl you had sent up to my living-apartment?”

“No, sir.” The clerk was emphatic. “You know I never tell anyone anything about your affairs. I’ve been here long enough to realize how important it is to keep my mouth shut.”

Shayne told him that was swell, and not to neglect getting the special-delivery letter off.

The clerk was calling a messenger when he left the lobby. Shayne drove across the bay again, stopped at the Tropical Hotel just a block beyond the eastern terminus of the causeway. He strode through the lobby to the elevators and went up to 416.

He hesitated in front of the door when he saw it standing ajar. There was no light in the room. He knocked lightly but there was no response. He inched the door open and stretched a long arm inside, finding the wall switch.

When the lights came on he pushed the door inward all the way against the wall, then stepped inside and looked around the empty hotel bedroom carefully.

The room had the normal appearance of having been occupied by a man for several days, one who had gone out expecting to return soon. There were toilet articles in the bathroom, a folded newspaper on the bed, and an open Gladstone in one corner.

The newspaper was the previous Sunday’s New York Mirror. It was folded back at page fourteen, and a portion of the page had been cut out. A piece two columns wide and about eight inches long.

Shayne picked up the paper and studied it, seeking to find whether any portion of the cut-out item had been left to give a clue to the nature of the clipping. There was nothing to help him identify the portion that was gone, and he was laying the paper down when he heard a noise at the door of the room.

He turned his head slowly, making no other movement.

The blued muzzle of a service automatic showed in the crack. Then a hand and an arm became visible. Finally the figure of a man wearing a neat gray suit. He had steady gray eyes that looked at Shayne from beneath the brim of a Panama hat, and pleasant, strong features. He held the automatic in a firm grip as he stepped toward Shayne. He spoke pleasantly enough, though his features were set in hard, uncompromising lines.

“Turn around slowly and put both your hands flat on the wall above your head,” he commanded.

Shayne turned around slowly and put both his hands flat against the wall above his head. He said, “I don’t know who you are but I have a hunch we might get together if you’ll let me do some talking.”

The man behind him said, “You can talk all you want to, but don’t make a move away from that position.”

Shayne complained, “I hate to introduce myself to a man when he’s holding a gun on me.”

The telephone rang stridently from its stand on his left. He turned his head to see his captor step forward and pick up the instrument.

He was not more than two feet from Shayne, but he watched the detective coldly, the heavy-caliber automatic steady in his right hand. He said a crisp “Hello” into the mouthpiece, listened a moment, then said incisively:

“Pearson talking. I’ve been watching Lacy’s room from across the hall and just caught a man ransacking it. I suggest that you send a man-”

Shayne dropped his body low and to the left. His shoulder struck the speaker’s hips. The automatic went off once as Shayne’s big hand closed over it and prevented the recoil mechanism from closing. The two men went to the floor together and the telephone bounced off to one side.

Shayne drove his left fist to the point of the man’s jaw. He got up with the automatic in his hand, and Pearson lay on the floor motionless.

Shayne picked up the telephone and said, “Hello,” simulating Pearson’s curt tone as well as he could.

He stiffened with surprise when Peter Painter’s voice nagged at him over the wire. “What the devil’s going on up there? Everything under control?”

Shayne said, “Perfectly,” and waited to hear more.

“It sounded like a struggle,” Painter’s voice was reproving, as though he didn’t care for struggles. “What were you saying about catching a man in Lacy’s room?”

“Your stooge caught the wrong man,” said Shayne in disgust, resuming his normal voice. “Those dumb clucks of yours ought to know me by this time. He’s out cold, and I’ve got his gat.”

“My-stooge?” There was horror in Painter’s tone. “My God! Is that you, Shayne? Have you knocked Pearson out?”

“Why not? He walked in here and stuck a gun in my face without giving me a chance to explain.”

“You fool,” panted Painter. “Now you have stuck your neck out, Shayne. That isn’t one of my men. That’s Mr. Pearson, special agent from Washington. You can’t knock the FBI around.”

Shayne laughed angrily. He said, “This is a hell of a time to be telling me that.” He dropped the receiver onto its prongs and stood on wide-spread feet looking down at Pearson with a frown.

He shook his head, worrying the lobe of his left ear. He glanced down at the automatic still gripped in his hand, then slid the clip out and ejected the loaded cartridge from the firing-chamber. He tossed the unloaded weapon on the bed, walked over to Jim Lacy’s suitcase in the corner, knelt down, and began pawing through it.

Heavy feet trotted up to the door and stopped outside. Shayne straightened warily, then grinned at the worried face of the Tropical Hotel’s house detective.

He said, “Hello, Bowman. Come in and join the party.”

Bowman opened and closed his mouth twice before he was able to stammer, “Sounded like a shot from up here.”