Brett Halliday - Michael Shayne's Long Chance

Denton squared his bulky shoulders and spoke directly to Inspector Quinlan. “I’ve been thinking things over, Inspector. I’ve been pretty much worried, thinking maybe there was a mistake made last night.”

“What kind of mistake?”

“In that suicide case. The Jordan girl. I think I might’ve — well, maybe I went off half-cocked. It’s been worrying me bad because it’s our job to see that justice is done no matter what we think about it ourselves.” Denton spoke in a self-righteous tone, and he sounded sincere.

“Go on,” said Quinlan impatiently.

Denton drew in a deep breath. “It’s this way, Inspector. The way it all happened, I might’ve jumped to a wrong conclusion. The girl was dying when I got to her, see? She was hysterical and kept moaning about not wanting to live because Margo Macon was dead. She kept saying it was her fault and that kind of stuff. So I — well, it sounded to me like she was confessing. And then she died without saying any more. But I’ve been thinking and thinking. She didn’t actually say she did it herself. Not in so many words. She could’ve meant something else. I just don’t want to have it on my conscience that maybe I was wrong and her confession cleared the real murderer — if it wasn’t her.”

“This,” Inspector Quinlan exploded, “is a hell of a time to be thinking about that. You might as well admit the truth, Denton. You saw a chance to grab some publicity and make my department look bad. By God, I’ll see that this is taken up—”

“Just a minute, Inspector,” Shayne interrupted smoothly. “It may prove that Denton’s mistake was just what we needed to crack the case. By giving the murderer a feeling of false security, perhaps he has made the mistake we needed.”

Quinlan turned his cold blue eyes on Shayne and demanded, “But what could have possessed the girl to commit suicide and say those things to Denton if she wasn’t guilty?”

“I think I can explain that.” Shayne looked at Henri Desmond. “Evalyn Jordan was in love with Desmond. God knows why, but she was. Desmond was playing around with Margo. He came to Margo’s apartment at ten o’clock, quarreled with her and threatened her when he learned she had another date later that night. Evalyn heard all that. She killed herself because she thought Henri had carried out his threat. Isn’t that a fact, Desmond?” Shayne’s tone was ruthless.

Henri Desmond shrank from the accusation. “I didn’t do it.” His voice cracked on a high note of fear. “I swear I never went back to her apartment.”

“Whether you did or not it explains Evalyn’s suicide. She saw herself as the central figure in an ugly scandal and murder. She was given to morbid spells during which she took dope furnished by you, Henri. You killed Evalyn Jordan just as surely as if you’d forced the poison down her throat.”

Shayne’s attention was attracted to the door, which was opening. A man came in quietly. He was well over six feet tall with a loose-jointed figure which carried an unpressed suit of clothes with the inelegance of a scarecrow. He had dark, saturnine features and deep-set, glowing eyes. He carried a paper-wrapped parcel under his arm and stepped forward to set it on the table with a thump.

Harry Veigle nodded to the inspector, who said with cold irony, “Come right in and make yourself at home, Veigle.”

“Thanks, Inspector.” Veigle grinned broadly as Shayne came forward to grip his hand. He complained, “It’s been dull around here the last few years without you, Mike.”

Shayne said, “That’s all over now.” He introduced Veigle to the others briefly, adding, “Mr. Veigle is one of the foremost authorities on fingerprint identification in the country. I’ve asked him here to make an experiment for me.”

He went to the table and unwrapped the empty cognac bottle which was smeared and crusted with the blood of the murdered girl. He said, “I have an apology to make, Inspector. I withheld this evidence last night after I found it in the girl’s apartment.”

Quinlan made a loud noise deep in his throat.

“I don’t blame you,” Shayne interrupted, “but here’s the way it was — if you’d got hold of that bottle last night I’d be in your jail charged with murder. It’s got my prints all over it — mine and Margo Macon’s. That right, Veigle?”

“That’s right. And one other set.”

“That’s what I had to find out,” Shayne went on swiftly to Quinlan. “I can explain how her prints and mine got on the bottle. We drank out of it that afternoon. But the murderer is going to have a hard time explaining how his prints got on it.”

From the other end of the table Denton scowled with black anger. “How’d you snatch it?” he demanded. “Where was it hid when we searched the joint?”

Shayne continued to Quinlan, “I discovered her body when I went to my room to clean up from the beating Denton’s strong-arm boys gave me. And I found this bottle. You can see where that put me. Right square behind the eight ball. Damn it, there’d never have been an investigation if I’d called the cops right then and turned this over to them.”

Quinlan said, “Keep on talking.”

“Veigle wants to make a little test.” Shayne looked slowly at the faces around the table. “He wants to compare your fingerprints with the third set found on the death weapon.” He turned to Veigle. “Got your stuff with you?”

“Sure.” He groped in a sagging side pocket and brought out a small tin case. He opened it and got out an inking pad and a dozen small rectangles of paper. “Pass these around and I’ll get the prints.”

Shayne started at the head of the table with Henderson. “Just write your name on it,” he said pleasantly. “That way, there’ll be no mistake.”

“I’m afraid there’s already a mistake,” Henderson protested austerely. “Surely I’m not involved.”

“Just for the record. We need enough extra samples to show there’s no hocus-pocus in Veigle’s comparisons.” Shayne passed on to Joseph Little and Edmund Drake. He paused beside Lucile Hamilton.

She turned a worried face up to him. “That bottle,” she whispered, “I remember Margo showing it to us. Do I — have to — sign my name, too?”

“I can’t force any of you to give us your prints,” Shayne said, “but refusal is going to look like an admission of guilt.”

Lucile shuddered and said, “Give me one — then.”

At the other end of the table Shayne grinned as he passed out slips to Desmond and Rudy Soule. “If you guys refuse, we’ll go take a look at the records.” He stepped back from the table. “I guess that’s all. Mr. Rourke was in Miami and I haven’t got around to suspecting Captain Denton or the inspector.”

There was tense silence in the room as Veigle moved from one to the other, deftly rolling their finger tips on the inked pad and transferring the prints to the slips of paper signed by each.

When he finished with Rudy Soule and started shuffling the slips in his hands, Shayne said hastily, “Why don’t you go in the next office to make your comparisons, Harry? You’ve got to be damned sure you’ve got evidence that’ll stand up in court — if you do find the right set here.”

Veigle nodded and said, “I’ve never lost a case in court,” and went out.

Shayne took a deep breath and said, “The fingerprints will only be the clincher. I think I know who the murderer is. I hope I can prove it.

“Two things about this case have puzzled me from the first: the telephone call Barbara made to her uncle’s hotel just before she died, and a photograph which was stolen from my hotel room at about the same time. That telephone message—” Shayne stepped closer to Drake. “You haven’t explained why she called you.”