Counterfeit Wife (8 page)

Rourke got up and came over to him. “Maybe it accidentally locked itself,” he offered. “Let me try one of my keys on it. Nearly all these locks are the same.” He squatted beside Shayne, took out a ring of keys, and carefully selected one.

Shayne shrugged and settled back on his haunches to watch. Suddenly he stiffened; his eyes widened with surprise. This was not his Gladstone. He was positive his had been unlocked. He saw, too, that this was a little newer than his. The same color and size, but not quite so battered. He was certain of it when he looked at the leather straps. One of his straps was badly worn in one place where it had been buckled for years. Neither of these straps was badly worn.

“There you are,” said Rourke triumphantly. He removed his key and pressed the knob. The bag came open a few inches, and Rourke lifted the top half which had a center layer of leather snapped in place to separate the contents of the two sides.

Shayne saw the contents at the same moment Rourke did. Neat bundles of bank notes spread across folded clothing in the bottom of the Gladstone. The top bill on each bundle was a hundred-dollar denomination, and a single glance told both men they were looking at a lot of thousands of dollars.

Shayne glanced at Peter Painter. He was still standing with his back turned on Shayne’s sinewy and lanky body, waiting for him to get some clothes on.

Timothy Rourke expelled the long breath he had been holding, gently and noiselessly. He let the Gladstone close itself. His eyes burned more feverishly than before as he turned them on the grimly set face of the detective.

Shayne moved his head negatively and his bleak gray eyes bored into Rourke’s. He pressed the Gladstone shut with a click and said, “Just to save Petey further embarrassment, I’ll go in the bedroom to dress.” He stood up with the Gladstone in his hand.

Rourke sat on the floor and watched him speculatively. He didn’t say anything, and Painter didn’t turn around until Shayne reached the bedroom door and opened it.

Shayne reached inside, turned on the light, and hesitated an almost imperceptible second before stepping in and pulling the door shut. He stood looking down with blank amazement at the bloody and battered face of a man he had never seen before.

THE CORPSE IN THE BEDROOM

THE MAN LAY on his back, half on and half off the bed. Both arms trailed on the floor, the stiff fingers of one hand just touching a heavy ornamental vase which had stood on a shelf just inside the front door of the apartment ever since Shayne could remember. The vase lay in a pool of blood.

The man’s features were a pulp. He wore yellow silk pajamas which were blood-spattered. His face and the front portion of his head had been smashed by several heavy blows, and death must have come slowly and with great agony.

“Slocum. He did come back to sleep in the apartment after all,” Shayne muttered to himself.

The muscles in his gaunt cheeks quivered involuntarily. He was probably responsible for the man’s murder. He recalled the lie he had told Irvin and Perry about the source of the hundred-dollar bills they were interested in. It had seemed an innocent enough lie when he was desperately fighting for time, the best he could evolve on the spur of the moment. He hadn’t expected them to come to the hotel before morning, especially since the clerk had said Slocum hadn’t yet moved in. Even then, he thought they would only question the man, not murder him.

Yet there was mute evidence all about the bedroom that it had been one of the senator’s crowd looking for more of the same kind of bank notes. There was an overturned Gladstone on the floor, and clothing and toilet articles were scattered all about the floor and on the bed. There was no doubt that it had been done by someone looking for the rest of the fifty grand mentioned by Bates over the telephone from the Fun Club.

And Shayne suddenly realized that the money the murderer had been looking for was almost surely in the Gladstone he still held in his hand—the one the porter had given him at the airport. More precisely, Dawson’s Gladstone, for Shayne was convinced that the porter had got the two suitcases mixed up, somehow, while he was supposed to be changing one for the other at the last moment before Flight Sixty-two took off.

Shayne turned, opened the door, and went out, carrying the closed suitcase. He set it down near the bathroom door. Rourke and Painter looked at his stony features and naked body with questioning interest.

Shayne said, “One of you had better call the police.”

“Police?” Painter bristled and strutted forward. “If you’ve anything to say to the police, you can talk to me.”

Shayne gestured wearily, as though to brush the little man aside, and said to Rourke, “This is a job for the local boys. Homicide. And see if you can catch Will Gentry at his office.”

Rourke whistled shrilly, studying Shayne’s face, then went obediently to the telephone to make the call.

Painter echoed, “Homicide?” planting himself solidly on his small feet and thrusting out his chin.

Shayne nodded. “There’s a dead man in the bedroom.” He went over to pour himself a stiff slug of cognac.

Rourke was speaking rapidly into the telephone. Painter’s narrowed black eyes followed Shayne’s naked body to the center of the room, then he swung around to the closed bedroom door. He went toward it slowly, as though afraid of being hoaxed; as though he strove to convince himself this was another sample of Shayne’s morbid sense of, humor but he couldn’t quite succeed in doing so.

Rourke hung up and walked swiftly to Shayne just as Painter hesitantly opened the bedroom door and went inside.

“What goes?” whispered Rourke. “I saw that dough in the bag.”

Shayne held his glass to his lips, glancing over his shoulder at Painter’s stiff back just inside the bedroom.

“The stuff’s still there,” Shayne told him in a monotone that didn’t carry more than four feet, then added in a louder voice, “Damned if I know who the stiff is, Tim. The man who rented this apartment out from under me, for a guess.”

Rourke said, “That’s one way to get an apartment, Mike.” His voice was steady and he laughed at his own wit, but his hand trembled as he took the glass away from Shayne and put it to his own mouth.

Painter whirled and came back to stand accusingly in front of Shayne. “Do you intend to sit around here naked all day? And I thought you said that the man who had rented your apartment hadn’t moved in yet.”

“That’s what the clerk told me. It may be someone else entirely,” Shayne went on with a shrug of his naked wide shoulders. “Why don’t you have Henry come up to identify him?”

“I will.” Painter thumbnailed his little black mustache and his eyes were full of suspicion. “How long had you been in this room before we arrived? It’s my guess that man hasn’t been dead more than fifteen minutes.”

“For my sake, I hope the M.E. makes that at least thirty.” Shayne picked up the suitcase and went into the bathroom while Painter went officiously to the telephone and curtly ordered the desk clerk to come up to the apartment.

Shayne closed the bathroom door and quickly opened the Gladstone. He picked up one of the bundles of hundred-dollar bills and riffled through them, scowling deeply. They looked like ordinary bills, not new and not too old. Just like the two Dawson had given him at the airport. He couldn’t see anything wrong with them.

He judged there were about a hundred bills in each flat packet. There were five such bundles in the suitcase. That added up to the amount Bates had mentioned over the telephone to ex-Senator Irvin.

He didn’t have time to worry about the money now. He pushed it down under the neatly folded clothing out of sight, then pawed through Dawson’s belongings to find something he could put on without making it too apparent that the clothing was not his own.

The dough-faced man was a lot shorter than Shayne, and heavy around the waistline. The detective found a short-sleeved sports shirt that could remain open at the neck, with a short tail designed to hang outside the trousers. He pulled that on over his naked torso, selected a pair of light flannel trousers and stepped into them. Without a belt, they slid down on his hips so that the cuffs were low enough not to be conspicuous, and the sports shirt hid the fact that they weren’t up around his waist.

He knew that shoes would be hopeless, but was lucky enough to discover a pair of heelless beach sandals which clung to his toes and stayed on, though his heels extended a couple of inches beyond the soles.

Attired in this manner, he opened the bathroom door and scuffed out in time to see Henry back out of the bedroom. The night clerk’s face was white and he was wiping it with a handkerchief.

He said to Painter, “That’s Mr. Slocum. I certainly didn’t know he had come back to spend the night when I let Mr. Shayne come up, or I wouldn’t—”

“Or you wouldn’t have let Shayne come up to murder him,” Painter snapped.

“I didn’t mean that at all.” Henry glanced at Shayne. His answer to Peter Painter was voiced in a tone of hopelessness, but the sight of his friend gave him courage. He spoke out boldly when he said, “I’m positive Mr. Shayne didn’t do it. A burglar must have broken in, though I don’t see how.” He became the prim and efficient little man Shayne had known for many years. He examined the windows and the door to the fire escape outside the kitchenette, then came back to stand unobtrusively near the bathroom door.

Timothy Rourke was sitting at one end of the couch on the other side of the room, nursing the cognac bottle between his thin knees. He cocked his head and leered as Shayne came over to him.

“That’s a new outfit isn’t it, Mike? You know, I think I like it on you. Gives you a certain flair.”

Shayne said softly, “Shut up, you fool,” as he sank down beside the reporter. He took the bottle from Rourke, tilted it to his mouth and drank deeply just as the front door opened to admit Chief Will Gentry and members of the Miami homicide squad.

Gentry was a big, slow-moving man with a florid and honest face lined with worry. He looked at the two men sitting on the couch, then advanced stolidly, chewing on the soggy butt of a cigar and pushing his hat back from his perspiring forehead.

Shayne said, “Make yourself at home, Will. I’m holding open house, as usual.”

“With a corpse in his bedroom, as usual,” snapped Painter. “This way, men,” he told Gentry’s squad of experts.

Gentry didn’t look toward his fellow official from the Beach. He thrust his hands deep in his pockets and said to Shayne, “I thought you were on a plane and halfway to New Orleans by now.”

“That’s what he wanted us to think,” Painter said, strutting back from the bedroom door after Gentry’s men had entered. “I told you I smelled something rotten about that fast take-off. He quit the plane at Palm Beach, hurried back here and bludgeoned a man to death.”

There was a thick silence in the room. Timothy Rourke’s voice broke it when he said quietly, “Last time I heard it, Painter, you had Mike mixed up in a kidnap killing.”

“Keep out of this,” Painter barked. “Shayne’s mixed up in that, too. I’m sure of it. But he hasn’t got an alibi for this one.” He jerked a forefinger toward the bedroom.

“What did Henry tell you?” Shayne demanded.

“Him?” Painter looked scornfully at the night clerk. “He’d lie for you any day.”

“Suppose someone tells me what this is all about,” Will Gentry rumbled mildly. “Who’s the stiff this time, anybody here know?”

Peter Painter pounced upon the question and said, “The night clerk here says it’s a man who rented this apartment this afternoon. He gave the name of Leonard Slocum—from Mobile. The clerk didn’t think he’d moved in yet, so he let Shayne in with a passkey to bathe and change clothes—according to his story.”

“What time?” Shayne asked quietly.

“He
says
it wasn’t more than fifteen minutes ago at the time I questioned him,” Painter admitted. “But—”

“You can check with Joe, the elevator boy,” said Shayne.

“I will. Perhaps it was just fifteen minutes, or they may both be lying. Here’s the way I see it, Will,” Painter went on pompously, turning his back on Shayne and Rourke. “Whoever killed that man must have gotten spattered with blood. What do you think we found Shayne doing when we came in here?”

“Taking a drink,” Gentry grunted sourly.

“He was stark naked and drying himself after a shower. Now, Henry admits he came into the lobby in his stocking feet and wearing a pair of coveralls. I’ve checked carefully and discovered that’s all he
was
wearing.” Painter pointed to the coveralls and socks still lying in the center of the floor. “Now, I ask you, why would a man dressed only in a pair of coveralls enter a sleeping man’s apartment at three in the morning?”

“You tell me,” Gentry said.

“A man like Shayne, remember. A man who has had a lot of close contact with murder and knows it’s likely to be a messy business. I’ll tell you why. Because coveralls are a one-piece garment that can be stepped out of in a moment. Not even any underwear, you understand. Does he mind a little blood from his victim? Why should he? He’s naked. It’ll wash off in the shower.”

“Astounding,” murmured Timothy Rourke, reaching over to pluck the bottle out of Shayne’s hands. “There you have it, Will. Premeditation and motive and everything. This guy had rented this apartment right out from under him. So, Mike strips to the skin and slips on a pair of coveralls—Oh, my sainted grandmother! Sometimes you make me so sick I need a drink, Petey.” He took a long one.

“I told you to keep out of this,” Painter said angrily, half turning to glare at Rourke. “We’ll find a motive, all right,” he continued tenaciously. “It’s quite evident that Shayne used the ticket to New Orleans as a ruse to fix up an alibi for slipping back and murdering Slocum. Why else did he jump the plane and rush back here?”

“Suppose you tell us, Mike.” Gentry removed the sodden cigar stub from his full lips, contemplated the full inch of dead ashes at one end of it, and laid it on an ash tray. When Shayne hesitated, Gentry looked at him solemnly from under the crinkled folds of his lids.

Shayne gestured impatiently. “There’s no mystery about it. You know all about the Belton case in New Orleans that I was in such a rush to get to after the Leslie Hudson case was solved—by
me,”
he looked sourly at Painter. “But Painter had me tied into another murder on the Beach less than twelve hours ago, so I had to stay over and solve it for him. Just before the plane left I had a phone call from my secretary in New Orleans. She told me I was too late. The Belton case had gone flooey. And that took the pressure off getting back to New Orleans.”

“You say you had that phone call before the plane took off?” Painter pounced on his story and began to worry it like a terrier worrying a bone.

“You can check with one of the clerks at the terminal,” Shayne told him.

“Then why did you take off at all?”

“My bag was already checked,” said Shayne lazily. “I didn’t have time to think things over. But I did have time to think on my way to Palm Beach, and I remembered some unfinished business in Miami. I wanted to know more about a certain girl, so I came back to find out,” he ended serenely.

“Was she—” Rourke began.

“I’ve never known Shayne to take off all his clothes to commit a murder,” Gentry interrupted, “but I’ve heard rumors to the effect that he does sometimes to go to bed.”

“How did you get back from Palm Beach?” demanded Painter.

“Has Petey started running your department?” Shayne asked Gentry.

“He’s interested in your movements tonight from another angle, Mike. Better give it to him straight.” He took out a fresh cigar, examined the wrapper carefully, then lit it.

Shayne said, “I hitchhiked back from Palm Beach. The plane was a few minutes late and it was almost one o’clock by the time I got my bag and got out of the terminal. Happened to be an old fellow there who was driving down here, and I hooked a ride with him. It was almost two when he dropped me off on the outskirts of town.”

Gentry nodded and told Painter, “I don’t believe Shayne need be any further concern of yours on the kidnaping. If you’ve checked with National Airlines and know he actually rode as far as Palm Beach, he couldn’t possibly have been in that wrecked car.” He gave Shayne a despairing look and puffed on his cigar.