Murder Is My Business ms-11 Page 16

  Shayne sighed, and replaced the papers in the briefcase. It was dynamite, right enough. Plenty strong enough to blow Honest John Carter right out of the mayoralty race, leaving Towne unopposed.

  Shayne sympathized with Lance’s wish to keep the evidence under cover until after the election. If it wasn’t made public until after Carter was elected, he would simply be removed from office and someone else would be appointed to serve out his term in accord with city statutes. Any danger of Towne’s filling the position would be definitely eliminated. Knowing Lance’s bitter hatred for Towne, Shayne could understand why he wanted the information handled that way. But if he waited until Towne was elected, the stuff wouldn’t be worth a penny to the new mayor. Before election, it was easily worth ten thousand dollars to him. It was as simple as that.

  Shayne poured himself a drink, and put a gun in his coat pocket. He tossed off the liquor, picked up the briefcase, and went out. He didn’t bother to look around for the shabby little man as he drove off to keep his appointment with Towne. It was unlikely that they would bother to tail him any farther.

  He didn’t have to wait at Towne’s front door this time. The Mexican butler recognized him with a nod and led the way back to the library. Towne was standing in front of the fireplace with his hands clasped behind his back. He nodded with a scowl, his gaze going to the briefcase Shayne carried. “That the stuff you described over the telephone?”

  Shayne said, “This is it. Guaranteed to knock Carter out of the race.” He set the briefcase down on a table, put his big hand up warningly when Towne stepped forward. “Let me see your end of the deal before you look at mine.”

  Towne laughed shortly. “I had to answer some embarrassing questions at the bank this morning when I drew out this second ten thousand.” He drew an envelope from his pocket, opened it to riffle a sheaf of bills before Shayne. “When the police investigated the money I drew out for Barton, they practically told the bank it was for blackmail,” he went on bitterly.

  Shayne said, “If you lived right, you wouldn’t be embarrassed by having to pay out blackmail.” He nodded. “I’m satisfied. Look it over and see if you are.” He unstrapped the briefcase and stepped back.

  Towne replaced the money in his pocket and went to the briefcase. He took the papers out and began studying them eagerly. It was dark and gloomy inside the library, with the windows closed and half covered with dark drapes. Shayne strolled to one of the end windows and pulled the drapes back to let sunlight slant in. The windows were set in steel frames, opening on a rachet arrangement operated by a hand crank.

  Shayne twisted the crank to open the window and let in a little fresh air. Towne was engrossed with the papers from Lance Bayliss’s briefcase. Shayne leaned on the low windowsill and lit a cigarette. It was very quiet there on the hillside above the city, inside the big stone house set off from its neighbors by a thick box hedge.

  Shayne smoked quietly for a time, and then asked without turning his head, “Are you satisfied it’s what I promised you?”

  “There’s enough evidence to put Carter and Holden behind bars the rest of their lives,” Towne told him exultantly. “I don’t know how you dug this up, Shayne, but-”

  “That doesn’t matter.” Shayne turned slowly. “Is it worth ten grand?”

  “It’s an outrageous holdup for me to pay you for this,” Towne asserted angrily. “You could be jailed for trying to withhold this from the government.”

  Shayne nodded calmly, but his eyes held a dangerous glint. He dropped his right hand toward the gun sagging in his coat pocket and drawled, “You’re not thinking of backing out, are you?”

  “I never back out of a bargain,” Towne said stiffly. He reached into his pocket for the envelope, tossed it toward Shayne. The detective caught it in his left hand. He opened it and took out the bills, fingered them lovingly while he counted the total.

  “Okay,” he said finally, straightening and replacing them in the envelope. He put the envelope in his left coat pocket and remained lounging back against the sill of the open window. “Now let’s start talking about something important.”

  “I haven’t anything else to discuss with you.” Towne half turned away from him.

  “We’ve got lots to talk about,” Shayne corrected him gently. “Like the price of domestic silver — and the Plata Azul mine in Mexico.”

  Towne’s wide shoulders stiffened. He turned slowly, and his eyes were murderous. “What do you know about the Plata Azul?”

  “Practically everything,” Shayne assured him. “When Cochrane was murdered last night, we found a telegram in his pocket from an attorney in Mexico City stating that title to the mine passed to a certain Senora Telgucado twenty-five years ago on the death of her husband — to be passed on to his heirs.”

  “Interesting,” sneered Towne, “but hardly relevant.”

  “I think it is,” Shayne insisted. “You see, I visited the marriage-license bureau this morning and confirmed a hunch. You and the widow of Senor Telgucado were married less than twenty-four years ago.”

  “It’s a matter of record,” Towne shrugged.

  “But Carmela is almost thirty years old. That makes her your stepdaughter.”

  “Suppose she is my stepdaughter? I adopted her legally soon after we were married.” Towne’s voice was edged but restrained.

  “She’s still her father’s legal heir,” Shayne argued.

  “The Plata Azul mine legally reverted to her on her mother’s death.”

  “Perhaps it did.” Towne seemed uninterested. “While you were investigating my private affairs, you might have gone further to learn that I’ve been pouring money into that property for years without any returns. I was doing it for Carmela,” he added, “hoping I could make a real strike and turn her over something worth while.”

  “Without her knowledge?”

  “I’ve kept it for a surprise,” Towne said stiffly. “What’s your interest in it?”

  “I’m interested in its proximity to the border — and the fact that Mexican silver is worth only half the price of domestic silver — plus the fact that Josiah Riley was fired from your employ ten years ago after reporting your vein in the Big Bend pinched out.”

  Towne’s face was slowly being drained of color. “How do you figure those add up?”

  “They add up to fraud,” Shayne told him pleasantly, “when you consider the stamp mill you set up at the Plata Azul ten years ago, your ownership of a smelter here in El Paso where your Big Bend ore is processed, your revolutionary method of mining the Lone Star with steam shovels, and the fact that you went all out ten years ago to prevent Carmela from marrying the only man she ever wanted to marry.”

  “What do you know about the Lone Star mine?” Towne snarled.

  “Everything. I paid the mine a visit last night, Towne. I know the shaft is abandoned, and for years you’ve been scooping up the mountainside to get bulk to load into cars on top of refined ore you’ve been smuggling over the border from the Plata Azul. By shipping it to your own smelter here, you’ve been able to hoodwink the government into paying you the double price for domestic silver. Not only that, but every ounce of it came from the Mexican mine actually owned by Carmela, and you’ve defrauded her out of a fortune during these ten years.”

  Towne stood very straight and very still in front of Shayne. “You sound very sure of your facts.”

  “It’s the only answer that comes out right,” Shayne said wearily. “It’s tough, isn’t it, after you got rid of Jack Barton and Neil Cochrane after they had discovered the truth? You thought your secret was safe. And now, by God, here’s another guy popping up to plague you!”

  Towne moved aside and sat down heavily in front of the liquor cabinet by the fireplace. He opened it and withdrew the tequila bottle they had drunk from last night. He poured himself a drink with a steady hand and asked, “What do you mean about Barton and Cochrane?”

  Shayne glanced out the window into the sunlight. “After killing t
wo men, it must be tough to learn your secret still isn’t safe.” He took a step forward away from the window.

  Jefferson Towne stopped his glass two inches from his lips. He said stonily, “I paid Jack Barton, and I was prepared to meet Cochrane’s price. I told him so yesterday afternoon. I can also afford to pay you off. How much?” He put the glass to his lips and drank.

  Shayne shook his head and said mockingly, “Don’t kid me, Towne. I know how your mind works. Josiah Riley inadvertently tipped me off with an old border proverb: ‘Los muertos no hablan.’ You know it’s cheaper to kill a man than to pay blackmail. The dead don’t talk. That’s the only sure way to shut up a blackmailer. That’s why you killed Jack Barton Tuesday afternoon — and Cochrane last night.”

  Towne set his empty glass down. “Very interesting, except that you overlook a couple of facts. Jack Barton is in California spending the ten thousand I paid him — and I was in bed last night when Lance Bayliss shot Cochrane with Carmela’s pistol.”

  Shayne shook his head. “Jack Barton never left for California. You bought a ticket and had someone get on the bus, just to make things look right if anyone checked up. And you drew the ten grand out of your bank and put one of them in the letter you had Jack write his parents before you killed him. But you should have had him address the envelope before you killed him, Towne. A man doesn’t forget his own address, but you forgot to put South in front of the Vine Street number. That one mistake is what cooked your goose. The delay in the delivery of that letter sent the Bartons to Dyer with the whole story when they thought the unidentified body from the river was Jack.”

  “But it wasn’t Barton!” Towne exploded. “They said so themselves after looking at him.”

  “Of course it wasn’t. You weren’t dumb enough to kill a blackmailer and throw his body in the river and hope to get away with it. You thought you were safe because Jack Barton was already buried in an unmarked grave in the Fort Bliss military cemetery.”

  Towne hunched lower in his chair. His face was livid, and his eyes were becoming mad. He leaned forward to tap an uneasy tattoo on the edge of the liquor cabinet. He said, “I don’t know which one of us is crazy.”

  “You were,” Shayne told him cheerfully, “to think you could get away with it. Though you almost did — until I thought about comparing the fingerprints of the body from the river with those taken from Jimmie Delray when he enlisted under the name of James Brown. Then I realized that you had put the soldier’s uniform on Jack Barton Tuesday afternoon and-”

  Towne’s hand darted inside the liquor cabinet. It came out clutching a sawed-off. 38, a replica of the pistol taken from Carmela Telgucado in Juarez. Shayne dropped to the floor as Towne whirled on him, and a bullet whistled over his head. He had his own gun out, but a heavier report from the open window prevented him from using it.

  Towne fell back with a. 45 slug from a police revolver in his shoulder, and his weapon clattered to the floor.

  Shayne nodded to the uniformed man leaning through the window covering Towne with a smoking. 45, and said approvingly, “That was nice timing.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Chief Dyer’s face showed up disapprovingly beside the sergeant’s. “What’s going on in there?”

  Shayne got up and strolled forward to pick up the. 38 Towne had dropped. He told Dyer, “Why don’t you come around by the front door, and we’ll let Towne tell us all about it?”

  Towne was crouched back against the wall, gripping his wounded shoulder with his left hand. He mouthed curses at Shayne while he kept an eye on the patrolman’s revolver. Shayne turned his back on him and broke the sawed-off revolver. He dumped four snubnosed bullets out on the table and examined them. The soft lead of each bullet was notched in the shape of a cross like the two taken from Carmela’s weapon.

  He dribbled the four bullets into Dyer’s hand when the police chief trotted into the library from the hallway. “There’s the rest of your case against him. He killed Cochrane with a duplicate of his daughter’s gun, after planting a recently fired empty in hers before he sent her across the border to lead Cochrane into the alley where he was waiting to kill him.”

  “That’s another lie!” Towne shouted. “I was at home. Bayliss has already confessed using her pistol to kill Cochrane.”

  “Bayliss,” said Shayne, “is in love with Carmela. Ballistics says only two of those exploded shells in her pistol were fired from it. That’s another place you slipped up, Towne. You knew a comparison test couldn’t be run on a dumdum bullet, but you forgot there are tests that prove which gun an exploded cartridge was fired from. You slipped an exploded shell from your gun into hers last evening — after you decided Cochrane had to die the same as Jack Barton died.”

  “I don’t understand it,” Dyer said peevishly. “Mr. and Mrs. Barton both said the body wasn’t their son.”

  “That body wasn’t.” Shayne looked at the chief in surprise. “Haven’t you been listening outside the window?”

  “Ever since you opened it,” Dyer growled. “I wasn’t going to let that evidence against Carter and Holden out of my sight until I knew Towne had it safely.”

  “I figured you’d be close,” Shayne admitted, “as soon as you put that tail on me. But I’m glad you stayed out of sight, because I wanted to push Towne into a corner where he’d feel like pulling his gun on me. I’d already figured he must have one just like his stepdaughter’s, but I didn’t know where he’d have it hidden.”

  Towne had stopped cursing. He sank into his chair, breathing hard. He reached for the tequila bottle and filled his glass to the brim.

  Dyer watched him curiously, and then sighed, “I still don’t get it about Barton and the dead soldier — nor Cochrane either.”

  “Cochrane was comparatively simple,” Shayne told him. “A sudden decision without any previous planning. You see, Cochrane had finally figured out the secret of Towne’s two silver mines. Remember that Barton had hinted part of the truth to him, and the Free Press ran a story on the Plata Azul not long ago. Cochrane added them up the same way I did, and realized that Towne was just using his Big Bend mine as a blind to get Mexican silver from the Plata Azul into the country and smelt it as domestic silver. Then he checked into the Plata Azul and discovered it didn’t even belong to Towne. He thought if Barton had gotten ten thousand, he could do as well or better. What he didn’t realize was that Towne would kill a man rather than pay blackmail.”

  “What about Barton? I don’t see-”

  “Let’s finish up Cochrane first,” Shayne said. “He sent Cochrane away with a promise to pay off. Carmela had overheard Cochrane mention Lance Bayliss’s name, and she insisted that her father tell her in what connection. So Towne began improvising. He spun a story about Lance being in Juarez, but warned Carmela he had paid Cochrane not to tell her, so when she phoned Cochrane his denial wouldn’t upset things. She made a date for Cochrane to take her to Papa Tonto’s, and Towne planted one empty cartridge under the hammer of her gun. He hid in the alley until they entered it, stuck his gun against Cochrane, and pulled the trigger. Carmela shot twice at him without recognizing him in the darkness. Is that right, Towne?”

  Towne had drunk half the tequila in his glass. He said, “It seemed like a good idea.”

  “It was,” Shayne approved, “for a makeshift plan of murder. Nothing like as foolproof or elaborate as your other plan.”

  “Barton?” Dyer guessed hopefully.

  Shayne nodded. “And a young soldier whom Towne induced to enlist under an alias. Jimmie Delray had been working in the Plata Azul,” he went on conversationally. “Did he suspect what was going on there, so it was really killing two birds with one stone when you used him in your murder plan?”

  Towne drank some more tequila. He nodded absently. “That’s where I got the whole idea. He wrote me he was quitting down there and was coming to El Paso to give himself up to the army. I recalled he looked a little like young Barton, same build and all, and I saw a way to get r
id of them both.” He spoke in a faintly regretful tone.

  “He had already planned to kill Barton,” Shayne explained to Dyer, “but he needed a positive way of getting rid of the body so it could never be identified. He fed Delray some hocus-pocus about catching spies, and got him to enlist under an alias. That was necessary, because he wanted Jack Barton to be buried in Delray’s uniform and he couldn’t afford to have it shipped home where his mother would immediately know it wasn’t her son. It was safe enough as long as it was buried here. Delray had just enlisted and no one knew him. In Delray’s uniform, with his identification tags, after being choked and hit on the head and run over, the body looked enough like the unknown recruit to get by.”

  “Wait a minute,” Dyer protested nervously. “I still don’t quite get the bodies straight. Who was the naked man in the river?”

  “That was Jimmie Delray. The soldier. The one Josiah Riley actually saw Towne murder by the river. He stripped the uniform off him and put it on Jack Barton, whom he must have had tied up at the time, keeping him alive until dusk, when he planned to kill him just a few minutes before he laid the body in the street and drove his car over it.”

  “So he did all that,” Dyer muttered, “by himself?”

  “It was smart and damned near perfect,” Shayne said wryly. “He reported it at once as a traffic accident, and expected it to be accepted as one. With Barton’s body safely buried in a soldier’s grave, he knew the crime could never be proved against him even if Barton did disappear and he was suspected. With no corpus delicti, he was safe.”

  “It might have worked if it hadn’t been for the autopsy,” Dyer exclaimed.

  “That’s right.” Towne’s voice was thick with drink and self-pity. “That’s when things started to go to hell. What made you suspicious?”

  “A letter from Jimmie Delray to his mother — and being acquainted with you ten years ago,” Shayne told him grimly. “It didn’t make sense — you rushing to the telephone like an ethical citizen and reporting an unwitnessed traffic fatality. It was out of character — particularly with you trying to win an election. If you had accidentally run over a soldier, I knew damned well you’d keep right on driving without reporting it.”