Brett Halliday - Michael Shayne’s Triple Mystery

Shayne looked at her frightened indigo-blue eyes. Her cheeks were deeply suntanned and her flaxen hair clung damply to her high forehead. She was slim, and wore a clean house dress flowered in blue.

Shayne said quietly, “What did you want to see me about?”

“You’re a detective, and Mr. Carson hired you to come up here.” She was calmer now, and she turned sideways in the seat to look earnestly into Shayne’s eyes.

“That’s right.”

“Tell me — what are you after, Mr. Shayne? I’m afraid.”

“It’s a private matter,” Shayne told her.

“I knew it.” Her voice rose with an intonation of triumph. “Harvey doesn’t think so. He believes it’s just something about the bank’s business, but I know better. It’s about Mr. Carson’s wife, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think Mr. Carson would want me to discuss it with anyone else.”

“You can’t tell me anything I don’t know already,” she said earnestly. “You can see why I’m frightened for Harvey. It isn’t his fault. She went after him from the very beginning. He didn’t know what to do. He tried to be nice to her because she was Mr. Carson’s wife, and — well, you know how a woman like that operates, Mr. Shayne.

“I don’t know why she picked on Harvey. He never encouraged her. I know that. She deceived her husband from the very beginning of their marriage. It’s common knowledge, but Harvey doesn’t think Mr. Carson knows — yet. But I knew what had happened as soon as he told me about your being here. A man’s bound to find out sometime.”

Shayne lighted a cigarette and puffed on it and didn’t interrupt her. Mrs. Barstow put a work-roughened hand on his coat sleeve.

“You’ve got to tell me what Mr. Carson’s going to do. Is he going to divorce Belle when you get the evidence? Harvey will go off with her if he does. He’ll leave the children and me for her. She has completely bewitched him.”

Shayne sighed heavily. “I met your husband this afternoon, and he hardly seems the type to desert his wife and children,” he said.

“He isn’t, Mr. Shayne. He’s a good man. He never looked at a woman in the ten years we’ve been married until she came along.”

“How long has this affair been going on?”

“Over a year now.” She turned her anguished eyes away from him. “Harvey began driving out to meet her nights and going to her house when Mr. Carson wasn’t there. She drinks with him — and Harvey loses his wits when he drinks.”

“Why are you telling me this if you think I’m here to gather evidence against Mrs. Carson and your husband?”

“You could find it out from anyone in Cheepwee,” she told him. “She gloats about her influence over men.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I thought you might talk to Harvey. If he saw what a terrible mess it was going to be he might come back to his senses. I don’t know. It just seems that I’ve got to do something. I did try a few months ago.” She paused, turning her eyes upon him again. “Do you know the other private detectives in New Orleans?”

“Some of them.”

“Do you know Mr. Jones?”

Shayne frowned thoughtfully, shook his red head, and said, “There are a lot of private detectives in New Orleans.”

“I suppose so,” she said wistfully. “I just wondered. I don’t know what to do. Since you’re in the detective business, I thought maybe you could advise me.”

“I’ll try to if you’ll give me the facts,” he said gently.

“Well — I went to see Mr. Jones about five months ago in his office in the Downtown Building. I got his name from the telephone book. It said he specialized in divorce evidence and domestic difficulties.”

Shayne said, “Jones — in the Downtown Building?”

“Yes. His initials are S. G. He had a dinky little office and not even a stenographer that I could see, but he seemed smart enough. I was just about crazy with worry about Harvey. I’d tried to talk to Harvey about Belle Carson and Harvey had warned me to mind my own business.”

“Why did you go to a private detective?”

“To try to get something on her,” Mrs. Barstow said viciously. “Something I could hold over her to make her leave Harvey alone. I felt like there had to be something — if a detective would go to work and dig it up. Anybody can see she’s nothing but a hussy. Lord knows how many men she had before she popped up here and married Mr. Carson.

“It wouldn’t surprise me any if she’d been married three or four times and poisoned her husbands. I told Mr. Jones that. I told him to go to Atlanta and check up on her. That’s where she came from.”

“And he took your case?”

“After I paid him two hundred and fifty dollars for what he called a retainer and expense money. Then I got a letter from him in Atlanta about two weeks later saying he was on the trail of something and needed a hundred and fifty more for expenses. So, I sent it to him. It was every cent I had saved. But I thought it would be worth it if I could bring Harvey back to his senses.” Her voice broke suddenly and tears streamed down her cheeks.

Shayne let her cry for a moment, then asked, “But nothing came of Jones’s investigation in Atlanta?”

She wiped her eyes with her bare hands and tried to control her voice when she answered, “I never heard any more from him. I waited almost a month and then wrote him a letter and mailed it to New Orleans. It came back with Address Unknown stamped on the envelope. Well, I thought maybe he was still in Atlanta and I waited another month before writing again. The second letter came back stamped the same way.”

Shayne sighed again. The muscles in his gaunt cheeks quivered and his gray eyes were bleak. He said harshly, “There are men who call themselves private detectives and prey on clients that way. Especially women. No reputable investigator would touch a case such as you took to Jones.”

She turned her surprised and tearful eyes toward him again. “Why wouldn’t they? If a woman is in trouble she needs help. Why shouldn’t a woman like Belle Carson be shown up for what she is?”

“The whole thing stinks,” Shayne said shortly. “Seems to me I’ve heard gossip about a person called Skip Jones — because he has a habit of collecting a retainer and skipping out with it.”

“I don’t understand it,” she said miserably, “unless S. G. Jones is the man known as Skip. That would explain—”

“He didn’t give you any indication in his letter as to the nature of his information about Belle Carson?”

“No. He just said it was what I wanted, and as soon as he got all the evidence for me I could make her do anything I wanted.”

Shayne said, “When I go back to New Orleans I’ll try to locate your Mr. Jones. You might be able to get some of your money back, but playing around with blackmail is dangerous stuff. If Jones has anything on her, I advise you not to use it.”

“But it wouldn’t actually be blackmail,” she contended. “I wouldn’t try to get any money from her.”

“With the kind of information your sort of detective might give you, you’re liable to get yourself mixed up in a libel suit.”

“Then — what can I do, Mr. Shayne,” she asked dismally.

“Let your husband go, if that’s the way he wants it,” he said irritably. “You’ll be better off without him. By the way, is this Carson’s first marriage?”

“I guess so. He was considered an old bachelor when he came here.”

“So Carson isn’t a native of Cheepwee either?”

“Oh, no. He’s only lived here four or five years. There was Miss Aggie Boaks who set her cap for him when he first arrived. People thought they’d make a match and everybody was right happy for Miss Aggie. Then Belle came along.”