Brett Halliday - What Really Happened

“Suppose I say I haven’t?”

“Then I’ll have to call you a liar again,” Shayne said wearily. He turned slowly, keeping his hands in plain sight, expostulating. “This isn’t the way to play it, Jed. That Weatherby stuff is dynamite right now. I know you’ve been sitting up here this morning figuring the angles — now that she’s dead. But I’m telling you there aren’t any angles.”

“You’re telling me?” sneered Purly. His voice shook with anger and with the frustrations of years, but the round muzzle of the gun remained implacably trained on the redhead’s mid-section. “That’s funny. Right now I’m doing the telling. Do you get that, shamus? For once in my life—”

Every muscle in Shayne’s body went lax. He spilled to the floor like a rag doll and a bullet went over his head.

One arm shot out to grab a caster of the swivel chair. He jerked with all his might, tumbling the fat man out of it and on top of him. He got his left hand over the nickeled gun in a grip that held the hammer from falling onto the firing-pin, and lying flat on his back drove his fist into the plump face above him,

Purly grunted, and Shayne turned sidewise to dump his body on the floor, got to his knees to stare down at him, and when Purly blinked his eyes, Shayne hit him again.

This time, he lay still.

Shayne relinquished the revolver after carefully lowering the hammer and let it fall to the floor. He came to his feet and turned to the filing-cabinet without another glance at the prone figure,

He pulled out the bottom drawer and found several dozen cardboard folders, beginning at the front with one tabbed Theron, S. He thumbed through to Weatherby, W., and pulled it out. The folder was thin, and he circled Purly’s recumbent body to lay it on the desk. The contents consisted of two eight-by-ten glossy prints and the accompanying negatives.

The first was the picture of Ralph Flannagan and Wanda Weatherby, taken at the motel, much as the radio producer had described it. Shayne turned it face down after a brief glance.

His eyes narrowed and his features hardened when he looked at the other photograph. It showed Sheila Martin and Donald J. Henderson in a situation which would be described in a family newspaper as “compromising.” It was unquestionably a late photograph of Sheila, and the back ground was definitely Wanda Weatherby’s luxurious front bedroom.

The trenches in his cheeks deepened as he studied Sheila’s face and recalled her pathetic story of having been blackmailed because of a youthful and somewhat trivial indiscretion. He shrugged and closed the folder, tucked it under his arm, and went out.

He stopped at a bar for lunch and several drinks of cognac to wash the rancid taste from his mouth, and to consider every aspect of the case.

The two checks for $1000 from Wanda Weatherby and Ralph Flannagan were as yet uncashed. Last night he had given himself the pleasure of turning down five thousand from Jack Gurley, and it was now too late to retract that. He had also gallantly told Sheila Martin to keep her cash until he decided whether to accept a retainer from her. He had been sorry for her, and enjoyed the taste of her mouth. It didn’t taste so good in retrospect.

He got up from the table, strode back to a telephone, called his office, and found Lucy in.

“There have been two calls for you, Michael,” she told him rapidly. “I don’t know whether they’re good or not. Tim left word that no previous marriage is mentioned in Mr. Gurley’s application for a marriage license. And Chief Gentry called. He wants to talk to you about Helen Taylor and someone named Harold Prentiss and said to tell you that Wanda Weatherby gave birth to a daughter in Detroit in December of nineteen thirty-three, named Janet. Father unknown.”

Shayne said, “That’s swell, Lucy. Now that we’ve got the case solved, it’s time we started figuring where we’re going to collect a fee. Call Mrs. Sheila Martin and tell her she has until four o’clock to get the rest of that thousand together. In cash,” he added sharply. “I want it in my office by four. I’ll be along.”

He hung up and went back to finish his luncheon, and the food tasted better than before he telephoned. When he left, he walked purposefully down the street with Purly’s folder under his arm, glancing at shop windows until he came to the place he wanted.

The store he entered dealt in office equipment and had a display of the latest model Dictaphones and tape and wire recorders. An alert young clerk came forward with a smile. “What can I do for you, sir?”

“I’m interested in the latest portable recording-machines and would like demonstrations of various models.”

The young man was eager to oblige. He began showing the detective the different models of both wire and tape recorders, explaining that they both worked on the same electronic principle which Shayne made no pretense of understanding, and that each model was carefully designed to perform best some certain function that the others did less well.

“The tape recorders,” he confided, “provide the highest fidelity of recording. For that reason they are favored by musicians and for the recording of voices that are to be broadcast later. Radio studios and so forth. This small wire recorder, on the other hand, is used mostly for dictating purposes — where the dictation is to be transcribed later by a typist. It has an accurate timing device that shows you exactly how many minutes of the hour-long wire have been used at any time, and it is equipped with a forward and reverse foot pedal that leaves the typist’s hands free at all times. Here, try it yourself. It’s very simple to operate.” He set a small microphone on a table and turned a knob to start the wheels revolving.

“You set these two knobs at ‘Mike’ and ‘Record,’” he demonstrated. “Now say something.”

Shayne looked at the small microphone a dozen feet away, and frowned. “Don’t I have to talk directly into it?”

“Oh, no.” The clerk’s smile was indulgent. “Not with electronic recording. Just speak in your ordinary voice.”

Shayne said, “All right. I’m speaking. Will it pick that up?”

“Indeed it will.” The clerk reversed the motion and the wire whirred swiftly, rewinding on its original spool. He shifted one of the knobs from Record to Play and started the wire forward again. Shayne’s voice came from the machine with startling loudness and clarity.

When he completed the demonstration, the young man asked diffidently, “Aren’t you — I think I’ve seen your picture in the papers. Aren’t you Michael Shayne?”

Shayne nodded, and asked with interest, “How far away will the microphone pick up voices?”

“I was going to explain that, Mr. Shayne. In your profession, this machine would be wonderful because it has such a powerful microphone. If you turn the volume on full it will pick up the merest whisper as much as fifty feet away. From an adjoining room, even. And it has an attachment that allows you to make a direct record of both sides of a telephone conversation and for recording radio broadcasts by a wire directly from the machine. I should think this model would be perfect for a detective. It’s small and inconspicuous, you see, with a carrying case similar to a portable typewriter case. It plugs into any electric connection and is ready to go instantly. Here’s a booklet describing all the ways it can be used. Perhaps you’d like to look at it,” the clerk added as another customer came in.

Shayne thanked him and began leafing through the booklet as the clerk hurried forward to greet the new prospect.

The text was lucid, replete with illustrations, and highlighted with sketches of people laughing at hearing their voices played back at a party; others with men soberly listening to the recording of a famous speech from a former broadcast. It was indispensable to the busy executive — and for the creative writer who awakens in the night and records an idea on the machine at his bedside. There was even a method of splicing sections of wire to obtain hilarious results by interpolating one’s own heckling or comments into any recording at appropriate places, and at one’s own leisure.