Brett Halliday: Date with a Dead Man

“But he didn’t,” she said calmly. “As soon as you left the room he muttered something about another appointment and hurried out. I had no idea that he had done anything to Beatrice,” she went on virtuously, “because I thought you’d gone directly to her and that he couldn’t possibly have done it. But I have no intention of lying to protect a murderer.”

Peter Cunningham made a strangled sound in his throat and whirled on her with big hands opened menacingly. “It’s all a pack of lies. Jasper Groat was my best friend, and I didn’t have nothing against the Meany dame.”

Shayne said, “He’s the only possible one, Will. Cross had no motive for Groat’s murder. Hell, he was tickled to death to buy the diary for his paper. But Cunningham had to kill Groat to cash in on the Leon Wallace story. And then he had to kill Beatrice when he learned she was waiting for me in my apartment. I practically handed her to him on a silver platter,” he ended moodily. “I’d given him my address the night before, and then he heard me tell Lucy over the telephone that I had a stop to make before I saw Beatrice… I even mentioned twenty minutes. That gave him all the time he needed to get to her and break her silly neck. Look at him carefully, Will. Don’t you see he fits Matthew’s description of the killer better than either Cross or Meany? No wonder Matthew got balled up this morning and couldn’t positively identify either of them. Put Cunningham in a line-up and see what happens.”

When the inner office was finally emptied, Michael Shayne stood for several minutes at one of the windows overlooking Flagler Street with his back to the open door into the reception room. He was listening intently for some sound from the outer room, but could hear nothing.

After a time he sighed and went to the water cooler where he nested a paper cup inside another and filled it with cognac. He ran cold water into another cup and carried them to his desk where he ranged them carefully in front of the swivel chair and sat down. He lit a cigarette and took a sip of John Exshaw and hesitated a moment with his forefinger poised over a button on the desk. Then he squared his shoulders and pressed the button firmly.

When Lucy appeared in the doorway, her brown curls were disarranged and there was a stricken look on her face. She paused timidly and said in a small voice, “I’m sorry, Michael.”

“Sorry for what?” He grinned expansively.

“For the horrid things I said last night. Because I was a fool not to trust you as you begged me to. Oh, Michael! Can you ever forgive me?” She ran to him suddenly and leaned over his chair and buried her face in his shoulder, her slender body shaken with tearing sobs. He put one arm tightly about her waist and said gruffly, “There’s nothing to cry about, angel. We pulled it off okay.”

“But why didn’t you give me some hint last night?” she sobbed. “Why did you let me go on thinking you planned to destroy the diary just so Mrs. Meredith would get the money instead of the Hawley family?”

“Because you’re a lousy actress. You never would have been able to put it over if you’d known the truth.”

“What do you mean by that?” She pulled back and stood erect, still circled by his comforting arm.

“Don’t you realize that your tantrum was the absolute clincher in getting that agreement signed? I had to make her believe I was going to destroy the diary. She certainly wouldn’t have agreed to pay out a quarter-million bucks for me to prove that Hawley is still alive so he can be jailed as a draft evader. And when you believed it so strongly, you convinced her I was just the rotten sort of heel she could do business with.”

“You knew the truth when you got her to sign that paper, didn’t you?”

“Knew is too strong a word. I had a hunch, let’s say. And I had nothing to lose. If my hunch was wrong, all I had to do was tear up the agreement and forget the quarter-million.”

“When did you first realize it was Leon Wallace who died on the raft and not Hawley?”

“I think it first came to me as a possibility when he replied to my wire signed by his wife… refusing to show his face in Miami. And then when I read the diary… noticed that after the death-bed confession Groat no longer called the dead man Hawley, as he had referred to him previously. Instead, he said, ‘The soldier died…’ I wasn’t sure how significant that was, but I realized what it could mean. And then everything fitted. It was the only reasonable explanation for the one thing that had bothered me from the beginning… a divorced man making a new will leaving everything to his ex-wife even though she remarried. Particularly a man divorced under those circumstances… just as he was being drafted. Normally, he’d be plenty sore about that.”

“Do you really think you can collect on that agreement?” Lucy asked in an awed voice.

“It’s absolutely airtight the way it’s worded. No one can deny that I provided…” Shayne paused to grin at Lucy and clear his throat before quoting one of the phrases she had torn out of her notebook “… the necessary evidence to prove in court that her ex-husband was the legal heir to his uncle, Ezra Hawley, on said Ezra Hawley’s death. She’ll pay up all right. But let’s not start spending all of it, angel. If you agree, I thought we might sort of split the take with Albert’s mother. Somehow, I feel sorry for that old lady. All that trouble and expense she went to just to keep her no-good son out of the army. And then there’s Mrs. Wallace with a pair of twins living on a farm in Littleboro. It was her husband’s death that threw Ezra’s estate to Albert and Matie, so it seems only fair that she should get a goodly portion of the proceeds.”

“Oh, Michael, you’re… wonderful.” Lucy’s eyes were starry as she flung her arms about his neck and kissed him warmly on the mouth. “You make me so ashamed for accusing you of trying to steal money from the Hawley family last night. When all the time you were just doing it for them… and for poor Mrs. Wallace.”

“Well, not exactly just for them,” evaded Shayne. “I think we might hold out a few bucks as a reasonable fee. At least enough to buy that mink coat and blue convertible we talked about last night. Unless you still feel you don’t want to be compromised…”

Her arms tightened about his neck and she whispered ecstatically, “Oh, Michael,” and he knew she didn’t in the least mind being compromised that way.