Stranger in Town Page 16

  “Wasn’t there an autopsy?” demanded Shayne.

  “There was not.”

  “Did you report your suspicions to the police?”

  “No, Mr. Shayne, I confess I did not.” Mr. Magner’s face was a tragic mask of fear and self-hatred. “I am in business here as you know. I freely confess it was weakness and fear that prevented me from speaking out. But it was easy to be silent. And so difficult to speak up. And where could I turn? It is a well-known fact that Dr. Winestock at the Sanitarium is the brother-in-law of our chief of police, Ollie Hanger. It was Chief Hanger who investigated Jeanette Henderson’s death personally, and who arranged to have me take charge of the remains. Who could I have trusted? Who would have listened to me?”

  “I’m beginning to get the picture straight. Having rubbed up against Ollie a couple of times, I see what you mean. And I heard today that the gunman named Gene is a sort of pal of his. All right. So you came to the conclusion that Jean here was likely in Harris’ car when it went into the ravine, but could recall nothing about it. What sort of lever did you figure that gave you against the Sanitarium?”

  “I was the only person who knew where she was picked up that night,” Magner explained simply. “The only person who could place her in the vicinity of Harris’ so-called accident. Because I realized at once it had probably been no more of an accident than the death of the Henderson girl a month ago. I assumed that Mr. Harris and the girl had actually gone to the Sanitarium together after asking directions from the filling station man, and they had somehow learned who Harris was. I even theorized that he might have gone there on official business and threatened prosecution. That would explain the accident. Having been successful in staging a similar accident a month ago, it seemed likely to me they would try the same method again. Criminals do, I believe, tend to follow a sort of pattern in whatever sort of crimes they commit.”

  A choked gasp from Jean’s throat brought both their heads around to her. She had one hand at her throat, and her eyes were wide and staring. “Jeanette,” she whispered as though in agony. “Jeanette! I… I’m beginning to remember. Oh, God in heaven, yes! Jeanette!”

  Shayne was instantly by her side, peering down into her eyes and to her contorted face. “Take it easy, Jean. Don’t try to make it come back. It will all come eventually.”

  “But I want to,” she cried out clearly. “I remember part of it now. It’s vague, like a nightmare. With parts that are clear and parts that are black. My little sister! I knew there was something terribly wrong. I knew there was. But she wouldn’t tell me. She wouldn’t let me help. She denied it, but I knew. Yes, she was pregnant. And she went to that place and they murdered her. They butchered my sister…”

  Her voice was rising angrily and Shayne clapped his hand over her mouth. He said grimly, “You’ve got to help us, Jean. Don’t go to pieces yet. Think back now to a month ago. You suspected your sister was pregnant though she denied it. Did you know she was going to the Brockton Sanitarium for an abortion?”

  “No. I don’t think I knew. It’s all clouded and indistinct. I remember her clearly. I remember I was worried when she wouldn’t tell me. And I remember…” Her voice dropped and she shuddered. “I remember now that she died. And it was an accident and I was almost glad. Because Father didn’t have to know and she didn’t have the shame of it. And then… oh, I don’t know. It’s mixed up. There was the Sanitarium in it. And a doctor. And then that man… Gene…” She broke down and sobbed frantically.

  Shayne patted her shoulder and told her again, “Take it easy. This is all adding up to tie in with Magner’s story. I’m sure you’ll remember more and more as we go on.”

  He turned back to the undertaker and said, “So you figured they had tried the same thing again with Randolph Harris and the girl. That she had somehow escaped death in the bottom of the ravine with him and got back to the road where you picked her up.” He nodded approval. “That makes sense. It gives them a damned good reason for arranging to have a man appear at the hospital and claim to be her father because she was a definite danger to them as long as she was alive and might regain her memory. And you saw a chance to pick up a piece of change by offering to keep quiet about where you had picked her up that night. So you tried to put the bite on them for ten grand. That right?”

  “Yes, I…” Mr. Magner’s face was flushed with shame. “It sounds so much worse when you say it out loud that way. I… I suppose I rationalized my conduct by telling myself I had no real proof. Nothing I could go to the police with. And I needed money so badly. Just enough to get away from Brockton with.”

  Shayne said, “I’m not sitting in judgment on you. Exactly what did you do about the situation?”

  “Well, I telephoned the Sanitarium first. From a pay-station and I disguised my voice. I spoke to Dr. Winestock and told him I wanted ten thousand dollars in old hundred-dollar bills for my silence. And I told him I would call again Monday to explain how the money was to be delivered, and then I hung up on him. And over the week-end I thought of a plan for getting the money that seemed safe to me. You see, they had no idea in the world who I was, and I didn’t think they could possibly identify me by sight. So far as I knew she…” He nodded at Jean. “… I thought of her as Miss Buttrell, of course, was safely out of their hands and in Miami, and she was the only person who could identify me. So my plan seemed safe enough.”

  “What was your plan?”

  “I selected that bar-room as the place because it is on the other side of town from me and not at all the sort of place any of my acquaintances might frequent. I went there Monday morning and took a list of three songs that are on the juke-box there, and when I phoned again Monday afternoon I had it all worked out in detail. I told Dr. Winestock he was to have a man go there at eight o’clock Tuesday night with the money in a long envelope. That he was to put three nickels in the jukebox and punch the numbers of the three songs in the order I gave him. Then he was to sit in a vacant booth and order a drink, and while no one was looking he was to fasten the envelope on the underside of the table with scotch tape, and then get up and leave. I planned to be there at eight and watch for the man playing the songs I had ordered. Then it would have been a simple matter to wait until he left the booth, sit down there myself and detach the envelope at my leisure. I was waiting in the rear booth, and was simply bowled over when she walked in the door. I simply sat frozen in my seat and died a thousand deaths while she walked back toward me.

  “Then… she stopped at your booth instead. I couldn’t hear what she said because Gene and that other big tough came in right behind her and… well, you know better than I do what happened then.”

  Jean spoke in a quavering voice as he finished, “It’s all come straight in my mind now, Mr. Shayne. It’s like a miracle, the way everything has suddenly clicked into place. I did go to the Sanitarium with Randolph Harris because of what happened to Jeanette. I remember it all. After we heard about her accident, I was in her room cleaning out her personal things and in her desk I found a slip of paper with the words, Dr. Winestock. The Brockton Sanitarium.

  “I remember how I sat and stared at it. I couldn’t believe it. The Brockton Sanitarium was where they had taken her after the accident for an emergency operation. But she had written it down there before the accident. As though she had had a premonition, I thought. But I knew that was silly and it couldn’t be a coincidence.

  “I didn’t tell anyone and I brooded about it for days. The more I thought… with my suspicions about her condition… the more I came to believe that she had intended going to the Sanitarium when she left home supposedly to visit Lois Dongan. And I knew that she had gone to visit a strange doctor in Orlando named Dr. Jessup a few days before, and that she was different and happy when she came back from seeing him. She had been dragging around and listless before that, and then perked up right after seeing him.

  “So I took a chance and went to see Dr. Jessup myself. I gave him a false name and told him I was a st
udent at Rollins and lived at Miami, and that I was… in trouble, and I’d heard from some of the other girls at Rollins that he could help get rid of the baby.

  “He was very stern at first and denied it and talked about professional ethics, and I wept and pleaded with him and he finally asked me how much money I had. I told him plenty, and then he talked some more and for a hundred dollars in cash he finally gave me a card with Dr. Winestock, Brockton Sanitarium printed on it, and his name signed in ink underneath.

  “He told me to show that card at the Sanitarium, and take nine hundred dollars in cash with me, and not let anybody in the world know where I was going, and that everything would be all right.

  “I went straight from his office with the card to see Randolph Harris whom I had met a couple of times at parties. I told him what I suspected and everything, and he got excited and said they suspected the kind of business the Brockton Sanitarium did, but never could get any proof. He said he thought they were hand in glove with the police department here and it wouldn’t do any good to make a complaint, but if we could get real evidence the State’s Attorney could go to the State Police and have it raided. And he asked if I was willing to take a chance helping him, and I said I was after what I knew had happened to Jeanette.

  “So we planned it for the next week-end,” she went on rapidly. “I had a week’s cruise planned with some friends in Apalachicola and was supposed to leave by bus Thursday afternoon. Instead I phoned Mrs. Larch that I couldn’t make it and for them to go on without me. And Randolph picked me up in his car that evening and we came to Brockton. I had the card signed by Dr. Jessup that I showed at the gate and they let us in. We had it all fixed. I was to say I was pregnant and he was my sweetheart, and he had nine hundred dollars in marked bills for the operation. So we went in and talked to the doctor in his office, and then they took me off into a side-room to wait while he made the final arrangement.

  “And I don’t know what happened in the office,” she went on with a shudder. “The first thing I knew two men came and grabbed me and hustled me out to Randolph’s car and hit me on the head and piled me in the back where he was already lying knocked out. They were Gene and Bill, I know now. I was dazed but not unconscious. I vaguely remember them driving away and stopping and putting us in the front seat and I kept on pretending to be unconscious but held onto the door handle. And they poured gasoline on the car and on Randolph, I guess, and steered it off the road. I fell out as it turned over, and everything went black. And the next thing I knew I was walking down the road and you stopped to pick me up,” she told Mr. Magner.

  Shayne said, “That’s it, then, Harris was absolutely right about calling the State Police in to clean up the mess. There’s a station just outside of town.” He got up and lifted the telephone calmly and told the operator: “Get me the State Police barracks, please.” A voice spoke through the receiver into his ear at the precise moment that a key grated faintly in the lock of his door ten feet away. He whirled toward the door and spoke in. a low, terse voice into the phone:

  “Hold the line open.” He rammed the instrument back into his hip pocket with the mouthpiece sticking up and clear, and moved in front of the telephone as the door opened and the big muzzle of a .45 preceded the bulk of Chief Ollie Hanger into the room.

  Sliding through the opening behind him with sinuous grace was Gene with a faintly pleased smile on his ascetic face and a short-barrelled .38 dangling negligently from his fingers.

  20

  SHAYNE SAID LOUDLY, “What the hell you mean walking in with a gun like that? You can’t use it here. This is the Manor Hotel, for God’s sake. In the center of Brockton. Room four-ten of the Manor Hotel,” he repeated with emphasis. “You’re finished, Chief Hanger. You and your chief abortionist from the Sanitarium.”

  “Yeh?” Hanger stepped aside stolidly with the muzzle of his gun steady on Shayne’s mid-section. “Don’t forget I’m still the law in Brockton, and if I shoot a man resisting arrest it’s nobody’s business. My God, you guessed right, Gene. The girl is here. But what in hell are you doing with these two, Magner? Didn’t know you were in on this. But maybe you’ll come in handy at that, and pick up a little business before the evening’s over.” He chuckled evilly and his big paunch jiggled up and down where it overflowed his belt.

  Michael Shayne said, “Mr. Magner has been giving us some interesting information about the way your friend murdered Jeanette Henderson a month ago. Eugene Forbes, I think your name is,” he went on with a slight nod in the direction of the tall man who stood, blank-faced, against the door with the gun still dangling from his fingers. “Of course,” Shayne continued conversationally, “You’re already stuck with the murder of that waitress this afternoon on Main Street, and I watched you run down Mule last night and kill him. So even without Mr. Magner’s cooperation, I had plenty on you.”

  “So you finally had to stick your big mouth into it?” said Chief Hanger venomously to the undertaker. “All right, by God. We’ll see just what…”

  “Can it, Ollie.” Gene spoke in a voice that sounded unutterably weary. “We’ve got the three of them here where we want them, and all the talking in the world won’t change any of that. You better do the job with your gun so it’ll be official.” He inclined his head slightly toward Shayne as he spoke.

  “Sure,” snapped Shayne. “You go ahead and blast me, Chief. You don’t see Gene sticking his neck into a noose. You do the job and if there’s any kickback, you’ll get it.”

  “What about these others?” asked Ollie helplessly, looking from the girl’s erect figure to Magner who was shrunk back in his chair making himself as inconspicuous as possible. “I don’t mind a-tall gunning this goddamn snoopy shamus right here,” the chief went on. “But how in hell can I explain the others?”

  “I’ll take them out with me,” Gene suggested easily. “Another accident won’t be too many, and they got to be shut up. On your feet both of you.” He did not raise his voice as he issued the order. He hardly looked at either of them.

  “Don’t be fools,” Shayne said over his shoulder harshly to them. “Stay where you are. They can’t afford to start any shooting up here in a hotel room until you two are safely out of the way where he can finish you off at his leisure. No matter how much either of them wave a gun, don’t move out of your chairs.” He turned back to Ollie and asked, “About how far is it out to State Police barracks?”

  “About six miles, but it might as well be six hundred far as you’re concerned.”

  “Why, no,” said Shayne easily. “Six miles is just about a nice distance. In about one minute, give or take thirty seconds, they should be knocking on that door behind Gene. I told you you were through, Ollie. But if you’re smart and don’t pull that trigger before they get here, you should be able to beat a murder rap. Gene’s done all the actual killing thus far, the way I see it. Better let it stay that way.”

  “Don’t let him kid you, Ollie.” Gene came away from the door slowly and began raising his gun. “We checked at the desk and he hadn’t made any calls. He’s bluffing. He didn’t have time to call ’em before we got up here.”

  “How do you like this for a bluff?” Shayne didn’t look at Gene. He turned very slowly and stepped away from in front of the telephone so his back was to Chief Hanger. “That thing sticking up out of my hip pocket is the mouthpiece of a telephone… if you haven’t guessed. And it’s connected right now on a direct line to the State Police. They’ve been listening to every word spoken in this room since you two moved in, and if they’re the boys I think they are you’ve got twenty seconds left to figure what you’re going to tell them when they bust in.”

  Shayne heard a sibilant gasp from Ollie behind him as the chief saw the telephone in his pocket. Gene was four feet on Shayne’s right with his gun coming up fast and his face twisted in vengeful rage.

  As he spoke his last word of warning to the chief, Shayne dropped his body in a driving tackle toward Gene’s legs that put him beneath
the bullet that slammed toward him the instant he moved.

  Shayne laughed exultantly as his shoulder hit the gunman’s knees and drove him backward. The gun exploded again before he got a grip on Gene’s wrist and twisted it.

  The .38 slid across the floor and Shayne drove his right fist into Gene’s face as a thunderous knocking sounded on the door.

  Shayne got to his feet, dragging Gene up with him. He shot a look at the bewildered and frightened fat face of Chief Ollie Hanger who was hesitating while he tried to figure out the best move he could make under the circumstances, and who hesitantly started toward the door when a gruff voice barked outside, “Open up in there. State Police.”

  “Not yet,” Shayne snarled at him, lunging forward to drive the chief away from the door. His left hand gripped Gene’s shoulder and held him erect like a rag doll while his right fist slammed as monotonously as a piston into the bloody and smashed features that were no longer distinguishably human.

  He didn’t stop until two brawny state troopers smashed the door down and hurtled into the room. Then he dropped the blood-smeared mess of flesh on the floor at their feet and told them quietly, “I’ll go along with you peacefully, boys, and it’ll be a pleasure to plead guilty to assault and battery in any damned degree you want.”

  21

  IT WAS NEARING MIDNIGHT when Shayne finally approached Miami on the wide and well-lighted boulevard leading into the city from the north.

  There was still brisk traffic in both directions at this hour, and the lights of downtown Miami glowed a welcome for him ahead.