Brett Halliday - The Uncomplaining Corpses

Gentry stopped and moodily watched him go into the living-room. Meldrum’s body had been taken away but there was still a group of policemen in the room.

They started to intercept Shayne but behind them Gentry shook his head and said, “No.”

Shayne went out to the elevator. He rang for a car and waited. There was no color in his cheeks, no expression on his face. He got in the car and went down, strode through the lobby without looking to right or left.

Most of the police cars were gone from in front of the building and the crowd had been dispersed. He got in his roadster and drove away slowly, keeping a careful watch behind him and making very certain that he was not being tailed.

He switched his radio to short wave and began picking up police calls when he hit the boulevard and turned south toward the city. After a couple of routine stolen car announcements, the police announcer droned:

“Supplementing description of woman wanted for questioning in murder as broadcast at twelve-three; supplementing description of woman murder suspect: This woman has been tentatively identified as Mrs. Michael Shayne-Mrs. Michael Shayne-wife of the private detective also being sought. Cover all known places frequented by this couple; cover the Shayne home address and any friends or relatives with whom either might communicate. Arrest either Mr. or Mrs. Michael Shayne. That is all.”

Michael Shayne lifted one sweaty hand and then the other from the steering-wheel and wiped them dry on his coat. He stared straight ahead down the almost deserted boulevard and his body jerked with craving for a drink.

The police announcement was Will Gentry’s answer to the scene in Mona Tabor’s apartment. A part of Shayne did not blame Gentry. He had a police job to do, and Shayne had made it tough on him.

But deep down inside a sick anger throbbed through Shayne’s body like the gnawing of a cancer. Will Gentry should have trusted him. Wasn’t there enough between them for that? He’d never let Gentry down in the past. Wasn’t that enough?

Evidently not. Sure, he had gone off his kazip and said some things he didn’t mean up there in the apartment. That shouldn’t have mattered either. A man says things he doesn’t mean Shayne felt wholly alone for the first time in his life. It wasn’t a good feeling. He had played a lone game in the past but there had always been that good inward feeling that he had one friend who was backing him to the limit and beyond. Well, he knew where Gentry stood now. That was something. Mike Shayne had never been one to sugar-coat distasteful facts. Part of his lone wolf tactics in the past had been the result of pride. There had been a savage thrill in playing fast and loose against every conventional morality and coming out on top against tremendous odds. That thrill was gone now. He was up against something different.

He wondered where in God’s name Phyllis was.

Despite the warmth of the Miami night he shivered. Wanting Phyllis was a physical pain that stabbed through the whole length of him. What had actually happened up in that apartment before the police came? He had lied about the time Renslow left the Tally-Ho. He didn’t know what time it was. He hadn’t looked at his watch. It had been an instinctive lie to gain a little time to think things out.

Had Renslow reached the apartment after murder was done? The pistol had been fired only once. He couldn’t be sure, of course, but it looked exactly like the automatic Dora had brought to his apartment to kill him with-the pistol that had disappeared from the desk drawer coincident with Phyllis’s departure.

Dora had fired one bullet from that pistol into the ceiling. Let them trace it to her If Phyl had gone to the apartment with Meldrum for his midnight interview and then been forced to resist an attack with the empty cognac bottle, why had she ducked out? That wasn’t like Phyllis.

Still, Shayne had seen too much killing to figure it that way. The reaction to violent death causes people to do all sorts of crazy, impulsive things.

Why in hell hadn’t he laid his cards on the table before Gentry? Those scraps of paper in his pocket were plenty to convict Buell Renslow of two murders. Was it because suppression of that evidence was worth a million dollars to Renslow? Was that the subconscious motivation that had prompted him to keep his mouth shut?

He didn’t know. Mike Shayne had always tried to be honest with himself. He tried now, but it was no go. He discovered that no man can honestly say what impulse motivates a certain action. Maybe he was willing to throw Phyllis over for a million dollars. Gentry thought so. Maybe Gentry knew him better than Shayne knew himself.

He was nearing the lights of downtown Miami and he slowed to get a grip on himself. He couldn’t go to his hotel. He hoped Phyllis would know she had been recognized and wouldn’t go there.

He turned off the boulevard at Third Street, and parked his roadster in an all-night parking-lot. On foot, he made his way to an obscure side-street hotel where he kept his hat pulled low over his eyes and signed the register as Horatio Ramsey. The sleepy-eyed clerk assured him it would be possible to get a bottle of cognac when Shayne shoved a five-dollar bill across the desk, and the detective went up to a second-floor room where he jerked windows open to let a night breeze drive out the musty air.

He then went to a wall telephone and called his apartment hotel. The switchboard operator was off duty after midnight and the night clerk took the call. Shayne got a funny gurgle over the wire when he said, “Mike Shayne talking.”

The clerk said nervously, “I see. Just a minute while I step inside and look that up for you.”

Shayne waited, frowning at the cracked and yellow plaster in front of him. After a couple of minutes the clerk’s voice came cautiously:

“Mr. Shayne, I was afraid to talk to you out there. The lobby-it’s full of cops and-”

“I know. They’re looking for me. What about Mrs. Shayne? Has she showed up or called?”

“Y-yes. That’s what I wanted to tell you. They just arrested her. They’ve been waiting all evening and they grabbed her when she came in. Some of them are staying in the hope that you’ll show up.”

Shayne said, “They’ll have a long wait. Thanks. Forget this call.” He hung up, scowling darkly.

There was a knock at his door and he opened it cautiously. A boy stood there with a package. Shayne took it, closed the door, and worried the cork of a cognac bottle with his teeth. He held it tipped to his mouth for a long time, then moved across to the bed and sat down heavily.

His mouth wasn’t dry any longer. At least he knew where Phyllis was. And, no matter what he had said to Gentry in anger, he knew the Miami police would make it as easy on her as they could.

He tilted the bottle again. He wasn’t cold any more. A fevered glow was spreading out from the pit of his stomach. His brain was beginning to work again. He wasn’t whipped yet-he still held a few trumps. Played right, he might start raking in a few tricks for a change.

Another drink would help him think things out. He took one, and it did.

Shayne ordered a pot of paste and the hotel clerk sent it up at once. Taking a sheet of stationery from a scarred writing-table in one corner of his room, Shayne spread the torn strips of Meldrum’s note out on the bed and went to work putting them together. It went much faster this time because he knew the words and letter combinations to look for. After laying every strip in its proper place, he carefully pasted them on the sheet of hotel stationery.

He took another drink and studied the result approvingly. Completed, the note clearly read: