Brett Halliday - Michael Shayne’s Triple Mystery

“Are you talking about Mr. Guildford, the attorney?”

“Yeh.” Shayne’s eyes were bleak. “Leroy P. Guildford, once a junior member of the firm of Leland and Parker. They specialized in criminal practice and defended John Grossman in 1930. He must have known of the existence of the liquor cache all the time, but it wasn’t worth much until the recent liquor shortage, and Captain Samuels wouldn’t play ball with him. After he killed Grossman, Samuels was his only chance to learn where the stuff was hidden.”

“Are you saying Guildford killed Grossman?”

“Sure. Or had Pug and Slim do the job for him. He brought Grossman out here last Tuesday, then went to Samuels and told him what had happened and suggested that with Grossman dead they might as well split the liquor.”

“But Grossman talked to you over the phone just this morning,” Gentry argued.

Shayne shook his head. “I knew that couldn’t be Grossman. He had to be dead. The only person it could be was Guildford, disguising his voice to lure me out here so he could get rid of the only two people who knew about the logbook and the liquor.”

“Why,” asked Gentry with forced calm, “did Grossman have to be dead?”

“Nothing else made sense.” Shayne spread out his big hands. “Captain Samuels knew where the liquor was all the time and he was practically starving and in debt, yet he never touched it. Why? Because he was an honorable man and it didn’t belong to him. Why, then, would he suddenly forget his scruples and sell a case? Because Grossman was dead and it no longer belonged to anybody.”

Gentry said gruffly, “My head’s going around. Maybe it’s this air down here.”

Back in the big room upstairs, Shayne knelt beside the bottles and straw. “Do you know where this came from, Myrna?”

“Certainly. Those men fished it up out of the lagoon this morning, all sewed up in canvas. They talked about it in front of me. I think they planned to kill me, so they didn’t care what I heard.”

“What did they say about it?” Shayne was shaking the bottles free of their straw casings and lining them up on the floor.

“It’s all in the bottom of the lagoon. A whole boatload. Just where Captain Samuels and his crew dumped it overboard as he described in his logbook. That’s why the authorities could never find any liquor here when they raided the place, the men said.”

Shayne got up with a bottle dangling from each knobby hand. He slipped them into the side pockets of his pants as Detective Yancey came hurrying in to tell Gentry excitedly: “We got the whole story from that man before he died. Grossman is dead, Chief. Buried in the cellar. And the real guy is—”

“I know,” said Gentry wearily. “Get to a telephone and have Guildford rounded up right away.”

“What are you doing?” Gentry demanded as he turned in time to see Shayne slide a third and fourth bottle into his hip pockets.

“Making hay while the sun shines,” Shayne said, stooping to get two more bottles from the floor. “With you horning in I won’t have any chance at all at that stuff under the water.” He put two more bottles in his coat pockets and reached for two more, looking wistfully at the remaining bottles on the floor. “This is the only fee I can collect on this case.”

Myrna Hastings laughed delightedly. “I can carry a few for you.”

Gentry turned away and said gruffly, “There’d better be a couple of bottles left for evidence when the revenue men get here.” He strode out, and Shayne began stacking bottles in Myrna’s arms.

“You owe me something,” he told her, “for the turn I got when I went back to my apartment and found the back door unlocked and the place burgled. I thought you were mixed up in it and your feature story was just a blind.”

She laughed as she swayed slightly under the weight of eight bottles. “I wondered if you’d suspect me after they found the key and I admitted that it was to the back door of your apartment. I’m afraid they thought I was an immoral girl. I hated to have them take the key away from me,” she ended gravely.

Shayne promised, “I’ll give you another one,” and they staggered out with as many bottles as both could carry.

Michael Shayne was asleep. Violent and insistent pounding on the front door of his apartment woke him with a start. He reached out a long arm and turned on the bedside lamp. An alarm clock on the table said 2:15.

He yawned and sat up in bed, a scowl bringing his ragged red brows together as the pounding went on, then swung long pajama-clad legs over the edge of the bed. Going to the door, he jerked it open.

“What in hell’s the idea?” he demanded.

A stocky man in police uniform had his heavy foot swinging toward the door. He stumbled off balance, caught hold of the door facing.

“Why the devil didn’t you say something,” he growled.

“You didn’t expect me to be sitting up waiting for you in the middle of the night, did you?” Shayne parried angrily. “What do you want, Frank?”

“Captain Denton needs you down at the Quarter. He’s got a stiff for you to identify.” Sergeant Frank pushed on into the room. “Put some clothes on, Shayne, and let’s get going.”

“Suppose I don’t want to go?”

“Why do you always make things tough on yourself, Shayne? All we’re asking is for you to come down and identify a murdered man.”

Shayne said, “All right.” He stood for a moment in indecision, yawning and stretching his arms.

Sergeant Frank was a young man, well built, with mild blue eyes and black, curly hair.

“What’s the trouble between you and Denton?” he asked.

“I hate his guts.”

The Sergeant chuckled. “But there’s no use bucking him. Besides, I thought murder was your business.”

After another brief period of hesitation, Shayne strode into the bedroom. In five minutes he came out settling his wide shoulders into a loose gray jacket, and the two men went down to a police sedan parked at the curb. Sergeant Frank slid under the wheel and Shayne got in beside him.

Shayne’s feud with Captain Dolph Denton of the French Quarter precinct went back fifteen years, and had been renewed last year when the red-headed private operator had come to New Orleans from Miami on a case, and had decided to settle in the city and open an office. It flared into the open during the investigation of the Margo Macon case, resulting in a draw that left each man backing away warily to measure his opponent. Since then, they had managed to avoid each other, but the bad blood still remained.

Sergeant Frank and Shayne drove in silence up Carondelet to Canal Street and on into the French Quarter. Frank turned off Royal onto St. Louis, and pulled over to the curb behind a cluster of cars at an alley entrance.

Shayne got out first and went directly to the spot where two white-coated men were kneeling beside a body. Glaring spotlights were trained on the corpse and a photographer was shooting off flashbulbs.

Captain Dolph Denton stepped forward aggressively from a group of men near the body. He was a big-girthed man with dark and brutal features. He accosted Sergeant Frank, who stood behind Shayne.

“I see you brought the shamus down, all right. Any trouble?”

Frank said, “Nope,” and moved on past Denton.

Shayne said, “What’s this all about?” His voice grated like a file drawn across rusty steel.

Denton’s black eyes bulged a trifle. He caught Shayne’s arm officiously and started to turn him toward the waiting group. Shayne brought his right forearm up in a horizontal position and struck his doubled fist a sharp blow with the open palm of his left hand. The blow drove his elbow into Denton’s potbelly.