Brett Halliday - Marked for Murder

“Because I didn’t have that much money,” Bronson confessed. “Contrary to general belief, I’m not a wealthy man. My wife-” He paused gloomily and licked his lips.

“Has she been gambling with your money?” Shayne asked.

“Yes,” the editor admitted despondently. “I knew she’d been frequenting Brenner’s clubs, but I hadn’t realized how deeply she had plunged until she told me Tuesday night.”

“So you figured you had twenty-five grand coming from him?”

“I suppose so.” Bronson was quietly thoughtful for a moment. When he resumed his recital his voice grew more and more spirited. “Not only had my wife lost more than that amount at his tables,” he said, “but I felt the entire situation was his fault. He was also under a certain obligation to me for doing my best to prevent Rourke’s article from being printed. He had offered me money before, but I had refused because I felt I was only doing my duty toward the community.” He signed heavily and added, “In this dire extremity I had to turn to him.”

“And you went to him at three o’clock and told him the whole story?” Shayne asked.

“Yes. Brenner pointed out that paying blackmail was never a sure way of ending such a situation, and suggested that I conceal two of his men in the back of my car and have them take care of the extortionist for good. I-agreed. I saw no other way out. I don’t understand how you made the contact there on the Boulevard, Shayne, with a police car to protect you when it was actually this man Smith, here, who had my pistol in his possession.”

Shayne looked over at Painter, who appeared to be in a deep quandary. He said, “Chief Painter was working hand in glove with me on the whole deal. We let you go ahead with your plan to rub me out so we’d have definite charges against Brenner’s men and force you into these admissions.”

“That’s right,” said Painter quickly. “I stalled by pretending I didn’t know anything about it until I got a ballistic report on your gun.”

“Have you suspected,” Shayne asked very quietly, “that your wife may just possibly be the blonde who knocked off those other three men-and the Rankin woman?”

Bronson started violently and exclaimed, “Good God-no! It’s impossible. I’ve told you the entire story. There’s no reason to suspect my wife of anything else.”

“But you do halfway suspect her of lying to you about the way Rourke got shot,” Shayne said calmly. “You don’t know yet whether she did it or not. What possible motive would she have had for shooting him unless he had learned she was a murderess and threatened to expose her?”

“No!” cried Bronson brokenly. “No. It’s too monstrous. It can’t be.”

“It isn’t a nice thought for a husband,” Shayne agreed. He said to Painter, “Shouldn’t we have Mrs. Bronson in to verify all this stuff her husband has been telling us?”

“By all means,” said Painter pompously. He pressed a button on his desk. A man appeared promptly in the doorway. “Take a couple of men to Walter Bronson’s house and pick up Mrs. Bronson. You’ll find her locked in her upstairs suite.”

“It isn’t locked now,” Bronson muttered. “I didn’t think it was necessary when I left at nine o’clock.”

Painter nodded to the man. He hurried away. Shayne leaned back and yawned. “That brings us to Mr. Smith and the lies he told about finding the pistol where Bronson dropped it.” Shayne regarded Smith for a moment. A sullen look was on his face and his skin looked slightly jaundiced. Smith was breathing through his mouth audibly.

Painter swung on Smith. “You’d better tell us the truth now,” he grated.

“I have.” His round light-blue eyes showed fright. “The way I figure it,” he drawled, “if he’s telling the truth, maybe it was his wife that dropped the gun. I couldn’t see for sure. Maybe I just thought it was him.”

“There’s an unusually bright moon,” Shayne reminded him. “But we’re interested in a few other things beside the gun. Who’s the blonde who was registered as your wife at the LaCrosse?”

Smith’s mouth took on a sickly grin before saying, “Suppose we weren’t married. Whose business is it?”

“Who was she?” Shayne insisted harshly.

“A-girl I happened to meet. You know how it is.” He didn’t look at any of the men in the room, but instead had his eyes on a spot on the wall behind Shayne.

“What’s her name?”

“I can’t tell you that. She’s a nice girl, see? It wouldn’t be right to drag her into this.”

“She’s already into it,” Shayne warned him. “She’s the one who visited Rourke’s apartment the afternoon he was shot and tore up his place looking for something.”

“I don’t believe it,” he said in his slow drawl, still staring at the same spot on the wall. “She was out shopping that afternoon, but-”

“You’d better give us her name and let us check.”

“Sure-if you think she’s mixed up in-” Smith swallowed hard. “Sure-her name’s Patsy Jones and she lives in Atlantic City. I haven’t got her address.”

“Who’s the Betty Green in Denver to whom you checked the trunk?” Shayne demanded.

“Betty Green? Oh, she’s a friend of Patsy’s. They roomed together here a month ago and she left her trunk with Patsy when she took the bus back to Denver. I just shipped it to her.”

“But you didn’t ship it,” Shayne snapped. “You checked it through on a ticket. Did Patsy Jones go to Atlantic City by way of Denver?”

“She-I’ll tell you about that.” His eyes flickered around, came back to the spot on the wall behind Shayne.

Shayne turned his head and saw an electric clock. Turning back, he asked, “What are you watching the clock for?”

“Maybe he has a date,” Painter put in sarcastically.

“With a blonde?” Shayne asked.

Smith rubbed his nose hard again and said sullenly, “No. I just don’t like clocks with second hands. They make me nervous going around so fast.”

“What about Patsy Jones?” Painter barked.

“Well-she thought she’d go to Denver to visit Betty first, see? And she bought a ticket. Then she decided not to go. So she just checked the trunk through on the ticket before she turned it in.”

“It must have been a damned heavy trunk,” Shayne said.

“It was.” Smith was sweating freely and he looked a trifle green around the edges of his mouth.

“What did Patsy want in Rourke’s apartment that afternoon?”

“I sure don’t know,” drawled Smith. “I didn’t even know she had met the guy. But you can’t tell about those blond dames.” He laughed nervously. “All of them will two-time a fellow. Maybe she’d been his girl and had written him some letters and wanted to get them back before she left town.”

Shayne asked, “What did Madge Rankin know that she was threatening to tell Timothy Rourke?”

“Madge-Rankin?” Smith’s mouth sagged open.

“Your former girl friend. The one you threw over for this Patsy.”

“Yeh, Madge,” Smith muttered. “I don’t know what you mean. Did she know Rourke, too?”

Shayne stood up and stretched his long arms. He said to Painter, “There’s one little thing we could be doing while we’re waiting for Mrs. Bronson.”

Painter bounced up with alacrity. “Of course. We might as well attend to it.” He strutted to the door behind Shayne, saying to the guard, “Keep these two men in here until I get back.”

As they went down the corridor, Shayne asked, “When you ran that test on Bronson’s pistol, did you use the bullets taken from Rourke’s body or the ejected shells?”

“The bullets, of course.”

Shayne stopped just outside the front office. “If you want a suggestion from me, you’ll have Captain Roderick check the ejected shells, also.” Painter looked at him blankly. “But the bullets were positively identified.” He caught himself up with a shrug and said lamely, “All right. If you think it’s a good idea.” He hurried down a side passageway to the laboratory to instruct the identification expert, returned in a few moments, and asked in a subdued voice, “Where are we going now?”