Brett Halliday - Date with a Dead Man

“Why not? If the old lady decided he was what her daughter needed.”

Shayne stopped at another picture of Albert Hawley, evidently snapped at the same time but not quite the same pose as the one he’d seen in the Herald last night. He glanced at the story beneath the picture and found it had been taken just prior to Albert’s departure for induction into the army. There was a statement, attributed to Albert Hawley, to the effect that he expected no special consideration whatsoever while undergoing boot training, and that he felt it would be a privilege to accept the anonymity of army life and share the hardships of his fellow draftees as a part of Democracy’s challenge to the evil forces of Communism.

Shayne closed the folder with a sudden gesture and said, “To hell with it, Tim. None of this gives me the faintest idea why Leon Wallace vanished a year ago and Jasper Groat disappeared last night.”

“Groat? The pilot of the airplane?”

“Copilot, I think. That’s not for publication, Tim.” Shayne stretched his long legs toward the exit, and Rourke broke into a half-trot to stay beside him.

“Give, Mike,” he panted.

Shayne said, “It’s not official yet. But why don’t you get the story from Mrs. Groat… if she’s willing to give it? Tell her I sent you. But don’t print anything until I get in touch with you after talking to Mrs. Hawley.”

“You won’t get within a mile of that old witch,” Rourke warned him.

Shayne said flatly, “She’s going to answer some questions.” He stopped in the hallway in front of the elevators and pressed a button. “You check with Mrs. Groat and get a story from that steward, Cunningham, in the meantime. Human interest stuff. The celebration dinner the first night ashore after their rescue… which Jasper Groat did not attend. Why? And I want to talk to Joel Cross about that diary as soon as I get back from seeing the Hawleys.”

An elevator stopped and he got in, lifting a big hand to Timothy Rourke in farewell.

He drove back downtown, past his hotel and across the river, out Brickell Avenue toward Coral Gables and the Hawley residence, while he tried to piece together the bits of information he had gathered. What had happened to Leon Wallace a year ago? And what did Cunningham know about the missing gardener? Wallace’s name had brought an immediate reaction from Cunningham last night. That, coupled with Groat’s telephone call to Mrs. Wallace, indicated that Albert Hawley must have confided some secret about the gardener to the two men before he died. A secret that someone had paid ten thousand dollars to hush up a year ago. And now Jasper Groat had disappeared before he could meet Mrs. Wallace and divulge it to her.

Shayne shook his head angrily when the pieces wouldn’t fit into place, and began watching for Bayside Drive, which he knew was a short street, right-angling toward the bay and dead-ending there.

This was one of the oldest and pleasantest sections of the city which had successfully resisted encroachments of the boom period; the avenue was lined with beautifully landscaped estates, many of them running all the way to the bayfront, and most with huge old houses, set so far back from the street they could be only dimly glimpsed through luxuriant tropical foliage.

He slowed and turned right on Bayside Drive, found the entrance to number 316 guarded by high gateposts in a forbidding stone wall enclosing an area of several acres of grounds that long ago had been carefully planned and magnificently planted with exotic trees and tropical shrubbery.

There was a heavy chain suspended from one gatepost, but now unhooked from the other to allow entrance, and Shayne turned in on a gravel drive that curved back through dense vegetation that was now untended, giving a feeling of desolation and decay to the once proud estate.

The grass was untrimmed and what had once been a beautiful sunken garden on the left of the driveway had been allowed to run wild. It was a riotous mass of briers and flowers giving off a heavy fragrance that was almost stifling in the still hot air beneath interlocking branches that shielded the ground from sunlight.

Wherever else Leon Wallace was and whatever he was doing, Shayne thought grimly, he certainly hadn’t been earning his wages as a gardener at the Hawley place for at least a year.

The driveway curved from beneath huge Cyprus trees into bright sunlight that glared down pitilessly on a huge stone fortress of a house with cupolas and turrets and outside stairways of wrought iron that led up to second and third story balconies and embrasured windows. Shayne braked to a stop, directly behind a heavy black sedan that was at least five years old.

There was utter silence after he cut off his motor. The old house seemed completely withdrawn from the world and there was nothing to indicate that a single person lived behind the thick stone walls in front of him. He shivered, despite the heat, as he got out and climbed six worn stone steps to a wide veranda that had warped, unpainted floorboards. They creaked under his weight, and it was a welcome sound in the stillness. There was an ornate bronze knocker on the wide oak door, and he thumped it loudly after searching in vain for a more modern electric button to announce his presence.

He had a queer feeling that no one would answer the knock as he waited. There was a smell of desertion and decay that seemed to arise almost like a tangible effluvium from the untended grounds and the isolation of the old house, and his muscles twitched involuntarily when the door opened in front of him without warning and with the rasp of rusty hinges.

An ancient and wizened Negro peered out at him. His shoulders were bent and his hair was grizzled, but his eyes were very black and very bright and he wore a shabby but clean and freshly pressed uniform jacket of gray with a row of big, shiny brass buttons down the front and his voice was a soft admixture of subservience and dignity as he said, “Yassuh?”

Shayne said, “I’ve come to see Mrs. Hawley.”

“Nossuh. She ain’t receivin’ this mawning.” He started to swing the heavy door shut, but Shayne blocked it with a big foot.

“She’ll talk to me.”

“Nossuh. Not ’thout you got a ’pointment, she won’t.” The voice was the same mixture as before, but it was firm and unyielding.

Shayne kept his foot in the doorway. “Tell her I’ve come to talk about a gardener named Leon Wallace.”

Shayne thought he saw a flicker of apprehension in the black eyes, but the grizzled head moved from side to side gravely. “No one like that name here. No gardener neither.”

Shayne put his shoulder against the door and pushed. It opened inward, carrying the elderly servitor with it.

“I still want to talk about Leon Wallace.” A wide, high-arched hallway stretched the full length of the house in front of him. It was paneled in black walnut and there were no rugs on the polished parquetry floor. Two old-fashioned chandeliers, spaced twenty feet apart and set with low-wattage bulbs, lighted the gloomy hall dimly. The air inside the thick stone walls was at least twenty degrees cooler than outside.

The old Negro held onto the doorknob doggedly, interposing his slight figure in front of the detective’s bulk. “It ain’t fitten you should push in thisaway,” he continued to protest. “You wanna wait right yere, I go an’ ask Miz Hawley…”

A tall man carrying a briefcase in one hand and a panama with wide curling brim in the other emerged through a curtained archway on the right and demanded peremptorily, “What is it, Ben? You know very well that no one is to be admitted.”

“Yassuh, Mistuh Hastings.” The old man darted a harried look over his shoulder. “You explain to this gentleman how it is.”