Brett Halliday - One Night with Nora

Shayne was fishing a cigarette from the pack in his pocket when a woman’s voice spoke from his left. “Maybe you’d prefer to share my breakfast, Mr. Shayne?”

He turned his head slowly. She was curled up on a rose silk divan against the opposite wall. She was young and startlingly beautiful, with hair so black that it shone with a glossy, bluish sheen in the sunlight. By contrast, her face appeared unnaturally white, relieved only by the bright-crimson gash that was her mouth. She wore a white nylon gown beneath a sheer silk dressing-gown, belted tightly around her slender waist. Her feet were bare, and a pair of white satin slippers lay on the couch.

Propped against fluffy colorful cushions, her right arm dangled over the side of the couch, and she held a highball glass in her left hand. A bottle of whisky, and ice cubes in a silver bucket, stood on the coffee table beside her. As he stared at her in astonishment, she lazily lifted the glass to her lips, and returned his gaze with frank curiosity over the rim of it.

“Nonsense, Ann.” The gruff asperity of Margrave’s voice was muffled by the food in his mouth. “I’ve told you a thousand times that no sane person would touch the stuff before lunch. You’re turning into a lush, and I don’t like it.”

Shayne shifted his chair to a vantage point that included them both in his range of vision. He saw an expression of rebellious hatred cross the girl’s face and disappear, leaving her features as white and placid as before.

Margrave swallowed, took a drink of black coffee, and said, “My daughter has an idea it’s smart and modern to get half-tight at breakfast and try to stay that way all day. She simply doesn’t understand that no man could conduct business in that state. You tell her, goddamit.”

“On the contrary,” Shayne told him gravely, “I think it’s an extremely good idea.” He lifted a goblet of ice water from Margrave’s breakfast table, emptied it into the silver pitcher, and went across to the girl, saying, “Will you pour, Miss Margrave? Or, is it Miss Margrave?”

A mischievous light twinkled in her eyes. “It is,” she answered, “but anyone who defies my father and drinks with me at breakfast must certainly call me Ann.” She set her glass down and reached toward the bucket. “Ice, Mr. Shayne?”

“A couple of lumps, and make it Mike.”

Standing with his back to Margrave, he looked down with interest and pleasure at the sinuous body of the girl as she put ice in his glass and poured whisky over it. She was in her early twenties, he thought, long-limbed and lithe.

Margrave cleared his throat loudly and warned, “You’ll need a clear head for this business, Shayne. I have no intention of paying out good money for nothing.”

Ann Margrave paused uncertainly, with less than an inch of liquor in his glass. Without turning his head, Shayne said, “That’s right. You haven’t hired me yet, have you? So I’m just a guest, Ann, and you needn’t spare the horses.”

The mischievous twinkle in her eyes spread over her face and she poured more whisky. She looked up at the wound on his head and said, “Maybe you do need a big one.”

Shayne grinned at her. “You should see the other fellow,” he told her lightly, and turned back to the table with the glass half filled. “I always like to get certain things straight in the very beginning,” he went on to Margrave. “I get paid for results in my work, and the way I achieve those results is entirely my affair.” He sank into his chair, took a drink of liquor, and asked evenly, “Do you want to discuss your partner’s death? Or shall I just have this drink and forget the whole thing?”

Margrave opened his mouth to reply, closed it slowly, turned his eyes away from Shayne’s hard gaze, and dug his fork into a triangle of stacked pancakes. He deluged it with syrup and bent over his plate to put it in his mouth. After chewing and swallowing, and chasing it down with a large swallow of coffee, he said, “I do want to discuss Ralph Carrol’s murder — to retain you on the case. I merely thought, that is, I learned a long time ago that if I take one drop of liquor in the morning I’m knocked out for the rest of the day,” he added defensively.

“Some people are like that,” Shayne conceded. He set his glass down and lit a cigarette, then asked, “Why call me in, Mr. Margrave? What makes you think I can do more than the police?”

“The police!” snorted Margrave. “They’re hamstrung! They’ve had their orders already, you can be sure of that! What have they accomplished thus far? Nothing! And they won’t!” He pointed his empty fork at the redhead. “You’re different. At least I’ve heard you are. They say when you take a case you follow through come hell or high water, no matter whose toes get stepped on.”

“Whose toes,” asked Shayne with interest, “are the police avoiding this time?”

“Their masters’, of course! The entrenched power of illimitable wealth. Big Business. My partner was assassinated, Shayne, because he dared to stand up like a man and challenge the Vulcan Chemical Corporation of Delaware. That is lèse-majesté in these United States.”

“Wait a minute,” said Shayne. “Are you implying that the Miami police department takes orders from Vulcan?”

“Not directly, of course. But good God, man, let’s not quibble! It is the power of monopoly that has been challenged. When Ralph Carrol could not be bought off or frightened off, he was removed, as an object lesson to any individual who has the integrity and courage to stand up against the entrenched interests.”

Shayne settled back and said, “You’d better give me the whole story.”

“I shall.” Margrave hesitated with his fork ready to stab the last wedge of pancakes. Suddenly, he placed it on his plate and pushed the plate aside. “It’s common knowledge and a matter of record which can easily be verified. Carrol was a research chemist — a genius. He was hired by Vulcan when he graduated from college six years ago and placed under a slave contract to labor in their laboratories with hundreds of other bright young men, all seeking new ways of enriching the corporation. He worked diligently, on a miserly pittance, for more than five years. He developed various processes, over that period, which earned millions for the corporation.

“A year ago Ralph Carrol paused to take stock of the situation. He wasn’t embittered, you understand. He had accepted the position with Vulcan, fully realizing that he was placing his brains and ability at their service, in exchange for the salary they paid him. But was it a fair exchange? What did the future hold for a man like Ralph Carrol?”

The monologue rolled out smoothly and without pause. It was clear to Shayne that this was a rehearsed speech, which Margrave had delivered often.

“A continued pittance! A few thousand dollars doled out to him each year in exchange for ideas which were worth millions! In the end, after years of faithful service and giving his all to the corporation, a miserly pension. Enough to keep body and soul together until he died.

“That is what Ralph Carrol clearly foresaw in the future, sir, as he stood at the crossroads of his life and took stock. He had no capital to fall back on, only his supreme confidence in his own genius and ability.

“To make a long story short, he resigned his position and came to me for advice. We formed a partnership and I set him up in a small laboratory of his own. And there, in six months’ time, on his own initiative, and spurred on by the knowledge that he would be allowed to retain a fair share of the profits in any new discovery made by him, he justified my faith and his own by perfecting a new plastic, which will undoubtedly revolutionize the industry. It is worth millions,” Margrave went on impressively. “Once we get into large production, all the previous plastics will become obsolete. You can easily see the tremendous stake a firm like Vulcan has in such a discovery. You can easily understand the lengths to which they might go to suppress the new process or to gain control of it for themselves.”