Brett Halliday - The Uncomplaining Corpses

Shayne nodded reassuringly. He emptied his cup of cognac and stared across the pleasantly furnished living-room, catching together the threads of Mrs. Thrip’s story and balancing them against her husband’s story. It was evident that Mrs. Thrip knew nothing of her husband’s plan to pull a fake jewel theft.

After a long moment of thought Shayne turned to Leora Thrip and said, “This does put a different complexion on the case. I’m interested. I don’t take cases unless I’m interested, Mrs. Thrip.”

“Then you’ll take it?” Relief shone in the woman’s eyes. She glanced at Phyllis and Shayne caught a look of understanding, almost of triumph pass between them.

“I’ll take it under consideration, Mrs. Thrip. I’ll need to check up on Carl Meldrum-” He paused, drumming his finger tips on the chair arm.

Mrs. Thrip nodded. “I’m so relieved after telling you everything, Mr. Shayne. I feel sure you will know just what to do. It’s been such a horrible burden and it’s wonderful to shift it onto your shoulders.”

Mrs. Thrip stood up. Again she was a placid, middle-aged woman with neat gray hair and tranquil eyes.

Shayne stood up and told her not to worry. He went out of the apartment with her and to the elevator.

Phyllis was sitting before the coffee table when he returned. Her chin was cupped in one hand and she looked frightened. While Shayne poured a drink, she said mournfully, “The poor dear, reaching out for life and love before she became forty-and finding only disillusionment. It’s pitiful.”

“Tough,” Shayne agreed somberly. He stood behind her chair and rumpled her hair. “I’ve just been thinking-when you reach the dangerous age of thirty-nine I’ll be a decrepit fifty-four. You had no damn business marrying an old man, angel.”

Phyllis laughed and sprang up. She put her hands on his wide shoulders and stood laughing. “Don’t say things-like that, Michael. When I’m old I’ll have-all this to look back on.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

He put an arm around her and led her to the divan where he carefully set his glass on an end table and pulled her down beside him. She snuggled close and said, “It’s grand that you can do something for a woman like that. I felt like crying when she first came and told me how you had refused to take the case.”

Shayne lit a cigarette for each of them and put one between her lips. “And I suppose you promised to use your influence to get me to change my mind?”

“Not only that,” Phyllis admitted gaily. “I promised her you would. In fact, I collected a retainer in advance.” She zipped her hostess gown open a few inches and took out a folded check.

Shayne took it and spread it out on his knee, staring in open amazement at a check payable to Michael Shayne in the sum of one thousand dollars, signed by Leora Thrip.

“I told her your services came high but were worth it,” Phyllis explained guilelessly. “You can’t say I’m not starting out being helpful.”

“Yeh, a big help,” he muttered. He got up suddenly. “I’ve got to do some telephoning, angel.”

In the bedroom he called several numbers and asked for Joe Darnell. After half an hour without success, he stalked back into the living-room with a strange, set look on his face. He shook his head in response to Phyllis’s anxious queries and said dully, “We’ll keep our fingers crossed, angel. That’s all we can do now.”

Phyllis awoke to hear rain coming down softly outside the open window and the telephone ringing on the little table on her husband’s side of the bed. She nudged him and waited with a chill shivering through her as he groped for the phone. She sat up, urging him to hurry. It was the first night call that had come since their marriage.

It was like being a doctor’s wife, she thought confusedly, only worse. A doctor’s wife knew that an urgent call wasn’t taking her husband into danger, while a private detective never knew.

Shayne was saying, “Yep, Shayne talking,” then listened a full two minutes.

Phyllis could faintly hear a rasping voice that sounded excited, but Shayne finally ended the conversation by growling, “All right. Sure, I’ll be out but I don’t see what good I can do.” He clicked the phone down and Phyllis grabbed his arm.

“What is it, Michael? Do you have to go? It’s raining and you sounded hoarse this evening.”

Shayne patted her hand, then pulled the cord on a bed lamp. “It’s nothing important, angel. Mr. Painter just hates to think of me sleeping soundly while he’s out chasing down clues.” He yawned and flexed the muscles of his arms, threw the covers back, and grinned down at the absurdly little-girl features of his wife. “Nice of you to remind me of the danger of catching cold. Shows the true wifely instinct. To keep you from worrying I’ll fortify myself against the rainy night.”

He swung his pajama-clad legs over the edge of the bed and uncorked a cut-glass decanter by the telephone. He poured a glass full and half emptied it, filled it to the brim again, and got up to pad across the room in his bare feet and close the window. He turned back toward the bed and took another drink, set the glass down, and tugged at the lobe of his left ear with right thumb and forefinger.

“It’s important, Michael, and you are worried,” Phyllis accused. “You always pull at your ear when-”

Shayne took the glass up and emptied it, sat down on the edge of the bed, and shook a cigarette from a pack on the table. Phyllis lay back and snuggled under the covers, one hand reaching for a cigarette. Shayne lit both from the same match, stood up, and unbuttoned his pajama coat. Shrugging it from his big frame, he said over his shoulder, “Huh. Worried about going out in the cold and leaving my warm bed and ditto wife.”

Phyllis said severely, “You’re just trying to put me off the track with your compliments. You can’t fool me, Michael Shayne. You are worried.”

“You’ve got nutty ideas about the life of a private detective,” he growled as he got dressed. “We don’t deal exclusively in bloodshed and murder, you know. Nine-tenths of a private dick’s work is stuff like-well, checking on hubby to see if he’s stepping out, or finding out why little Johnny played hooky from school yesterday, or digging up sister’s suitor’s dead past.”

“You’re not fooling me a bit, darling.” Phyllis’s voice was honeyed. “You know you turn down routine stuff like that.” She kicked back the covers. “I’m going with you and-”

Shayne whirled away from the mirror where he was knotting his tie. “Get back in bed or get spanked, angel.”

“I won’t sleep a wink,” she warned him defiantly. “I’ll be pacing the floor thinking about those times you got yourself all beaten to a pulp.”

“Be sure to pace before the mirror,” he chuckled. “You look good enough to eat in those red pajamas. Besides, speaking as a bridegroom, I promise not to get my handsome face scarred.”

He turned back to the mirror to finish knotting his tie and Phyllis wrinkled her nose at his reflection in the mirror. When he turned around she was out of bed and standing directly before him.

“Is it a new case?” she wheedled. She touched his tie with a pretense of straightening it.

“Sort of.” He kissed her black hair and put her aside and went to the bedside table for his watch. The time was 2:21.

“It had better be a case,” she warned him. “It’s immoral for a married man to go out at two in the morning for anything except business.”

He went to a closet for his hat and belted raincoat, grinning out of the side of his mouth at her. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, angel. What’s left of me after being married to you for two weeks couldn’t be anything but strictly business.”