Brett Halliday - Counterfeit Wife

Shayne said, “Even rye will taste good to me right now.” He dropped down on the couch and looked around the room. There was a wastebasket beside Rourke’s desk and the trash was in it instead of around it. The ash tray on the desk held ashes and cigarette butts. Heretofore both had been strewn over the rug. Shayne grinned. “You’re getting to be a goddamned old maid about your housekeeping.”

“Yeah. I got used to having things clean at the hospital. I sort of like it.” His cadaverous face was sallow and his eyes bloodshot and weary. He shoved his chair back, went to the kitchenette, and returned with an unopened bottle of rye and two glasses. He handed the bottle to Shayne to open and went back to the kitchenette to get two glasses of ice water.

Shayne poured four fingers of rye in each glass and passed one to Rourke in exchange for a glass of water.

They touched glasses before drinking, and Rourke said, “Skoal” absently.

Shayne drank half of the rye and said, “I wish you’d get yourself a job so you could afford some decent liquor.”

“Three sixty-five a fifth,” said Rourke moodily. He walked to his typewriter, stared at the sheet of yellow paper half covered with typing, then pulled it from the roller.

“Another chapter of the Great American Novel?” asked Shayne idly.

“I’ve turned detective,” Rourke told him. “With you and Painter and Gentry going around in circles, I sat down and did some straight thinking.” He paused, then added, “Thanks for the tip on the Tower angle.”

“I figured you were the only person I could trust not to recognize my voice,” Shayne told him.

“Not that my denial did you much good,” said Rourke with disgust. “It didn’t take Gentry’s boys long to figure, from the old man’s description, that you were the visitor to Cabin Sixteen. They place you there about four-thirty.”

Shayne nodded equably. “Gurney was dead and Gerta Ross passed out when I arrived.”

Rourke slumped down in a chair with the sheet of paper in his hand. He emptied his glass of rye, took a big swallow of water, and said, “Dawson had time to rub Gurney out before he reported in at the Beach.”

“So did Hale and Deland,” Shayne suggested.

Rourke frowned incredulously. “So did thousands of other honest citizens. Why pick on those two?”

Shayne told him what he had learned at the Fun Club, about the call Gurney had received there, and the appointment he made with Gerta Ross to meet him at the Tower Cottages to get her share of the pay-off.

“Gerta practically corroborated that last night, as well as she could corroborate anything in her condition,” Shayne went on. “That makes it look as if someone had hired Gurney to snatch Kathleen Deland-and had to kill him after things went wrong to make sure he wouldn’t talk.”

“Dawson? He fits, Mike,” Rourke pointed out excitedly. “He was in a position to know that Emory Hale would pay off. By having himself appointed go-between, he was in a perfect position to glom onto the money without ever being suspected.”

“Then why did he try to jump town with it?”

Rourke thought for a moment. “To avoid paying Gurney his share,” he guessed. “Then, when he reached Palm Beach and discovered the switched suitcases, he was desperate. So, he hurried back to silence Gurney and turn up with that story of the hijackers.”

“Could be,” Shayne agreed. “That doesn’t explain the fifty grand in counterfeit bills.”

“Counterfeit? The stuff looked good to me.”

Shayne briefly described his interview with Marsten at the First National Bank that morning.

Rourke whistled softly. “Then Emory Hale must have tried to slip over the queer stuff. Maybe he’s one of the counterfeit gang himself. We ought to check on him, Mike-find out where he got the money.”

“Will Gentry is doing that right now,” Shayne cut in. “I’d like to know where Hale went last night when he left the Deland house after hearing Kathleen’s body had been found.”

“He acted pretty badly cut up,” Rourke said, frowning deeply. “I was there when it happened, you know.”

Shayne nodded. “I read Nora Fitzgerald’s account of it in the morning paper. Sounded like you’d dictated it,” he added, repressing a grin.

“Now look here, Mike, my story wasn’t-”

Shayne waved a big hand, and asked, “What was your impression of Hale’s departure?”

Rourke screwed his thin face into a grimace. “At the time, his grief and anger seemed genuine enough. He gave the impression of having to do something, of being unable to just sit there and wait. I know that Mrs. Deland was worried about him and sent her husband to be with him.”

“Did they leave the house together?”

“I don’t believe they did. I think Hale had already jumped in a cab-there were a couple loitering outside-and driven off before Arthur Deland came out. I’m pretty sure Deland took the family car. I’m not sure. That must have been shortly after two o’clock,” said Rourke, glancing at the typed notation he had taken from his typewriter.

“I’ve made up a sort of timetable here to keep the different things straight in my mind. This is the way I’ve got it set down. Deland left his house at ten-thirty with the ransom money. He met Dawson, as directed by the kidnapers, and turned the money over to him, returning home about eleven.

“We don’t know what Dawson did between eleven and twelve, but a little before midnight he was at the air terminal trying to get a plane out of town. And you obligingly furnished him a ticket on the midnight plane.

“Gurney and the Ross woman reached the airport a few minutes later. Failing to find Dawson, or any trace of him, they drove on to the Fun Club. Dawson quit the plane in Palm Beach about twelve-forty and made his way back to Miami somehow, after discovering the loss of the money. And the next we know of him is when he turned up at the Beach police station at three-thirty.

“In the meantime, the manager of the Fun Club, Bates by name, recognized one of the counterfeit bills and called Irvin to send his boys after you. You escaped with Gerta Ross, crashed in her car about one-fifteen, were picked up by Irvin’s gunmen and taken to his place on Thirty-eighth Street. Police discovered the girl’s body in the trunk of the Ross car about one-forty-five. They did some checking, and so forth, sent out a pick-up for the Ross woman some time later, and found her gone. Just about that time you were escaping from Irvin’s gunman and razor expert. Slocum’s body was discovered in your apartment about three o’clock, and the indications are that he was killed between two and two-thirty. In the meantime, Dawson arrived at the Beach at three-thirty-two-I checked that-and he told his story of the hijacking. You reached the Tower Cottages about four-twenty and claim you found Gurney dead. They say he was killed between two and four-thirty, probably between three-thirty and four.”

Shayne had been puffing on a cigarette, idly watching the smoke drift toward the ceiling. When Rourke stopped talking, he said, “The two murders we’re interested in right now are Slocum’s and Gurney’s. The important periods in those two murders are between two and two-thirty, and between three-thirty and four.”

“I thought you were convinced that Slocum was accidentally killed by Irvin or his men when they came looking for you after you got away from them,” objected Rourke.

Shayne sighed and admitted, “I’m not sure of anything any more. It would have been mighty fast work for them to reach my place and kill Slocum and get away before I got there.”

“Do you think Slocum was mixed up in this?”

Shayne moved his head negatively and slowly. “That would be too much of a coincidence. No. I think he was killed because he was in the wrong apartment at the wrong time.”