Brett Halliday - Dividend on Death

“It looks like it.” Painter followed him into the death chamber, exclaiming bitterly, “And you promised me there’d be no more deaths.”

“Justifiable homicide,” Shayne told him cheerfully. “Save the state plenty of money.”

D. Q. Henderson came slithering out of the library on hands and knees.

Painter jumped for him, but Shayne said, “Let him go. He was an innocent bystander. Better have your men watch the stairs and let no one down.”

Painter issued the order to his men who were crowding in, then he and Shayne surveyed the shambles in the library.

Dick was the only one of the quartet still alive. He was shot through the groin, and his body thrashed about on the floor while his eyes were like those of a cornered rat.

Gordon had died easily with a. 45 slug through his head.

Mr. Montrose was crumpled grotesquely over the table with his hands spread out toward the canvas as though he sought to clutch it to him in death.

Oscar had taken a lot of killing. The Luger had drilled him four times through the belly before it stopped him.

“Everything’s under control here,” Shayne said quickly. “There’s still a job to be done upstairs. Come on.”

He and Painter hurried out, and Painter gritted an order to his men to drag Dick out and try to patch him up. As he trotted to keep pace with Shayne’s long strides, he muttered, “You’d better start talking fast. There’s a hell of a lot of explaining to be done.”

“Wait till we clean it up.” Shayne was leaping up the stairs with Painter at his heels, a pistol in his hand.

Shayne ran down the corridor to the sickroom and threw the door wide open.

The nurse who was impersonating Myrtle Godspeed was crouched close to the door, her face haggard and frightened. Her hand dived into her expensive handbag when she saw Shayne.

He kicked her hand as it came out, and a pearl-handled. 25 automatic went spinning across the floor. Shayne grappled with her with his good arm, and snarled at Painter, “Get Julius Brighter on the bed. He’s the man you want.”

The pseudo nurse was sobbing and scratching. Shayne grimly pinioned her arms to her side and dragged her to the bed where a gaunt scarecrow of a man was putting up an amazing fight with Painter before the Beach detective chief got cuffs on his bony wrists.

“Put some cuffs on her, too.” Shayne shoved her into Painter’s arms. “She killed the other nurse, Charlotte Hunt, with that little automatic that I kicked out of her hand. Come on down to the library where we can be alone, and I’ll give you the whole thing so you can pass it on to the press.”

Painter’s detectives were crowding in by that time. He turned the two prisoners over to them with orders that they were to be kept separate and not allowed to talk. Then he followed Shayne down to the library where he faced the redheaded detective and grated, “There’s a gang of reporters in my office waiting for a story.”

Shayne sat down and lit a cigarette. “And what a story.”

“What happened?” Painter spoke curtly and gestured toward the bodies.

“I gave the whole outfit the double cross, and they each thought the other had done it. That picture on the table,” Shayne went on amiably, “is the Raphael D. Q. Henderson has been raving about having stolen from him yesterday in Miami. Only it’s not a Raphael-as Henderson will tell you now. Henderson is the bird who scuttled out on his hands and knees as you came in.”

“But what’s it all about?”

“That picture, mostly,” Shayne told him. He went on in a changed tone. “But I promised you information worth half a grand. Here it is.

“Montrose killed Mrs. Brighton. Or maybe it was Oscar who did the actual slitting of her throat. It doesn’t matter. Oscar did what Montrose told him to. And Montrose was hep to the fact that Doctor Pedique had Phyllis Brighton worked up to the point where she forgot things, and he knew I’d been called in to keep her from killing her mother. That made a perfect setup. After murdering Mrs. Brighton, Montrose slipped the murder knife in Phyllis’s room and spattered blood on her nightie.”

Painter made a sudden exclamation, and Shayne grinned at him. “I was one up on you there. I got hold of the knife and locked her door on the outside before anyone else got to her. That was the knife I sliced bread with in my kitchen while you watched me. A damned good knife, too.”

“But why,” Painter demanded witheringly, “did Montrose kill Mrs. Brighton-or have her killed?”

“To keep her from recognizing the sick man as Julius Brighton-and thus learning that her husband was already dead.”

Painter swallowed hard and complained, “You’re away ahead of me.”

“Julius Brighton,” Shayne patiently explained, “is Rufus Brighton’s brother. Rufus helped frame him on an embezzlement charge years ago which ended in his being sent to the pen. He was paroled a couple of months ago on account of ill health. He hated Rufus and saw a chance to switch identities when he got paroled.

“Here’s the way I figure it out,” Shayne went on while Painter made noises in his throat. “When Julius returned on parole he found his brother Rufus a very sick man. Well, Julius was sick, too. Montrose is in charge of things, and Montrose hates Rufus as much as Julius does. Together, they manage to get rid of Rufus. Either he actually dies or they kill him and slip Julius into his sickbed. They change doctors when they switch patients, hiring Pedique and Charlotte Hunt and hurrying to Miami, away from people who might discover the impersonation. Julius is a mighty sick man, and all sick men look alike to a certain extent. The girl hardly knows Rufus, and the boy doesn’t count. He’s half batty and doesn’t go near the patient. Do you get the picture?”

“Hell, no. What happened to Rufus Brighton’s body? How could they cover up a death and substitute another patient?”

“Easy. By changing doctors and nurses just before they start south. And by getting a doctor who was more interested in his private experiments of inducing insanity in normal persons than he was in treating a sick patient.”

“What about Rufus Brighton? You say-”

“Rufus Brighton’s body is buried in a trunk out on the beach. I dug it up last night and had a look. They were playing a waiting game and even had their getaway figured. After they had cleaned up, Julius Brighton would have pretended to die, and they had Rufus Brighton’s body ready to be substituted so they’d have all been in the clear no matter what sort of future investigation there was. Oscar dragged the trunk out of his room and buried it after I started snooping around.”

Painter slid limply into a chair. “How’d you get onto the switch?”

“I didn’t-at first.” Shayne put out his cigarette. “It had me plenty stumped. But there had to be some motive back of Mrs. Brighton’s murder. It began to make sense when Charlotte told me that Mrs. Brighton hadn’t been to her husband’s room before she was killed but had insisted that she see him a little later. I wondered why someone wanted her kept out of the sickroom.”

“But why the elaborate hoax?” Painter demanded.

“It gave them control of Brighton’s estate which they were converting into cash. But his estate has shrunk to a fraction of its value, and they knew about the painting Henderson was bringing across the border, and it was worth waiting for-or so they thought.”

“How about Hilliard? Was he in on it, too?”

“Hell, no. Doctor Hilliard stands so straight he leans backward. And he was in a tough spot. No wonder he couldn’t diagnose his patient’s illness. The old devil Julius has been deliberately starving himself to stay emaciated and so weak that he can’t have visitors who might recognize him. He pretends to eat, but throws his food out the window to the squirrels. I got that information from Charlotte, too. But she didn’t realize the significance of it.”