Brett Halliday - Dividend on Death

Her eyes wavered before his. Her right hand came up slowly from the table top, and then she swayed. Shayne cursed deep in his throat and caught her, spilling some of the cognac. He held the glass in his other hand to her lips and she swallowed obediently. A brief grin broke the hard intentness of Shayne’s look; he tilted the glass up and kept on holding her till it was empty. Phyllis Brighton choked and sputtered, and he let her down into the chair he had been sitting in.

“The first pint is always the hardest,” he told her cheerfully. “I’ll get some ice water.”

He drained the other glass, and setting them both on the table, went to the kitchen and fixed a small pitcher of ice water. Phyllis’s eyes were watering, and she was still sputtering when he came back. He poured a glass of water and handed it to her, pulled up another chair in front of hers so their knees touched when he sat down.

“All right,” he said. “Tell me all about it.”

“What can I tell you?” She shuddered helplessly. “I came here for you to tell me.”

Shayne lit another cigarette and said carefully, “What am I supposed to know, sister, that you don’t know?”

She set the glass down and gripped the arms of her chair. “Tell me I didn’t-kill Mother.” Frenzy lurked in the smoky depths of her eyes.

Shayne looked at the ceiling and sighed. “I’ve seen queer ones but this beats them all.”

The girl reached for the water glass with shaking fingers. “Can’t you see you’re driving me crazy?”

“Driving you, sister?” Shayne looked at her in mild disgust.

“Yes.” She choked over a gulp of water.

Shayne said, “You’d better fix up a coherent story if you want me to keep you out of jail when the coppers come.”

“I don’t want to fix up any story,” she cried wildly. “I want to know the truth. I don’t know what happened tonight. If I did it I’ll kill myself.” Her body vibrated like a taut wire in a wind. She fumbled with the catch on her handbag and brought out a pearl-handled. 25 automatic pistol.

“That,” said Shayne evenly, “would wind up the case beautifully. Go ahead.” He nodded toward the automatic.

She wilted suddenly and began to sob. Shayne reached out an immoderately long arm and plucked the tiny weapon from her fingers. His wide lips twitched and he ran fingers through his mop of carroty hair.

“God in heaven,” he fumed. “Let’s get together on this. What do you and what don’t you know? What am I supposed to know and what am I supposed not to know?”

“Did I-d-did I k-kill my mother?” she managed to get out between quivering lips.

“That’s the third time you’ve asked me,” he told her irritably. “Suppose you come clean with your end of the story. What do the police think?”

“I don’t know.” She wrung her hands and peered appealingly at him from beneath lowered lashes. “They asked me a lot of questions and told me to stay in my room.”

“Whereupon you sneaked over here to be comforted.” Shayne poured out two more glasses of cognac and pressed one into Phyllis Brighton’s fingers. Then he filled the water glass and put it into her other hand.

“Put the liquor down without taking a breath and follow it with a big gulp of water.”

She did as she was told, and her eyes grew brighter as the dose coalesced with the previous drink she had taken.

Shayne sipped at his glass and said, “Start at the beginning. From the moment your mother arrived.”

She swallowed hard and averted her eyes. “They wouldn’t let me go to the station to meet her. I just saw her a few minutes before dinner and then at the table. She was upset because Mr. Brighton wasn’t well enough for her to see him, and she went to her room to lie down after dinner. I didn’t feel very well and I-went to bed and to sleep and-and I didn’t wake up until you came to tell me what had happened.” She raised her eyes miserably to Shayne’s face. He was peering at the liquor in his glass.

He said mildly, “That’s the story you told the police. All right. It’s a good one. Stick to it. But you’ll have to tell me the truth if I’m going to help you.”

“I have,” she cried wildly. “That’s the absolute truth. Unless-unless-” She began sobbing brokenly.

Shayne said, “Ah?” and waited.

“You were there,” she reminded him. “I thought maybe you knew something else. I-sometimes I do things and don’t remember.”

“I’ve heard,” said Shayne to his glass, “of convenient losses of memory. But this is the most remarkable case I’ve ever personally contacted.”

“Don’t you believe me?” she asked wildly. She jumped to her feet. “If you don’t believe me it’s no use.” Her hand darted for the pistol.

Shayne caught her wrist and forced her back to the chair. “Hell, I don’t know what to believe,” he growled. “There’s a lot of angles-” His voice trailed off as he stared speculatively at her.

He emptied his glass and set it down with a thump. “You and I,” he told her, “have got to learn to talk each other’s language.” He took a handkerchief from the pocket of his robe and wiped the sweat from his face. His voice was faintly incredulous. “You don’t remember anything from the time you went to sleep and when we came crowding in your room?”

“No!” she cried, her eyes bright. “You must believe me.”

“What the hell are you worrying about then? Didn’t they tell you that your door was locked on the outside?”

“Yes.” She shuddered. “But they seemed to think there was something awfully peculiar about that.”

“What do you think about it?” demanded Shayne.

“I don’t-know what to think.”

His heavy brows came down fiercely over his eyes. Phyllis Brighton watched him apprehensively.

“Taking your crazy story for something to start on,” he said finally, “how long have you been having these spells of doing things and forgetting?”

“You do believe me!” She clasped her hands and looked almost happy.

“I learned a hell of a long time ago in this business not to believe anybody or anything-not even what I see with my own eyes. Let it pass. We’ve got to start somewhere. I asked you a question.”

“It’s been going on for months,” she told him breathlessly. “That’s one of the symptoms that Doctor Pedique has been treating me for. And the worst part is the way things that I really do get mixed up with things I’m just thinking about doing before I lose track.”

“Say that again. More slowly. It doesn’t quite make sense.”

“It’s-hard to explain,” she faltered. “When I wake up I sometimes have hazy memories of doing things. And when I check up, I find I really did some of the things I remember-and others didn’t happen at all.”

Shayne was staring at her with hard eyes, but his voice was soft.

“I’m guessing you’ve got some hazy memories about this evening that you haven’t mentioned.”

She jerked back as though he had struck her. “I-they’re so mixed up that I don’t know whether any of them are real or just my imagination.”

“That,” said Shayne glumly, “is what I was afraid of.”

“Are you-keeping anything back from me?”

Shayne nodded slowly and rubbed his chin. “Some things that don’t check up-yet.”

Phyllis’s eyes were very bright. “I remember, or imagined, some things about you.”

It was awfully quiet in the room. Outside, the drone of late-evening traffic sounded distantly faint. Shayne twirled his glass between heavy fingers and did not look at the girl. He finally said, “Yeah?” without raising his eyes.

He could hear Phyllis’s breathing quicken. “Did you see me before you came to my room with the others and wakened me?”