Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 29, No. 4, September 1971

Somewhere in that fear-wracked place a man lay hidden. A man who had killed and would kill again this night — unless Mike Shayne got him first...

I

The house was full of a darkness that was almost tangible. The killer had a feeling of swimming in darkness as if it had actual substance. Only the beam of the little pen-sized pocket flashlight punched a thin ray of light into the reluctant dark.

It was enough, and barely enough, to show the ancient, rusted japanned tin dispatch box in the recess behind the panel in the wall.

The killer’s hands grabbed the box and lifted it out. Old as it was, the metal was tough and the rusted lock resisted fumbling fingers. The killer turned. The box could be opened at leisure in a safer time and place. A screwdriver or chisel would turn the trick easily enough.

The beam of the little flash danced across the walls and floor of the incredibly cluttered room. It flicked the twisted face of the old man lying in his blood on the floor, and then moved on as if appalled at what it had revealed.

There was still life of a sort in the broken and bleeding body. When the light passed there was a scuffling sound as a limb scraped the floor and an awful gurgling shadow of a groan.

The killer kicked the old head — hard.

“Shut up,” he said in a thin, malignant whisper. “Shut up, you old devil.”

The old man didn’t hear. He had died in the middle of that groan.

The killer slipped out a rear door and cut through the yard of the house behind to the street. No one saw and no one would have cared if they had.

The big two-story frame and stucco house sat silent and dark. The neighborhood was old and turning into a slum. There was no one on the street and the adjoining buildings were, as usual at midnight, dark and silent too.

The candle the killer had lit just before leaving the house burned lower and lower. After what seemed a long time the flame touched the kerosene soaked rags that had been piled there to be ignited. Then there was light and fire in the house.

The fire engine from the Northwest Miami Station screamed into the street, and men broke down the front door with axes and brought their hoses and chemical equipment. They got the fire out quickly — but there was the body on the floor of the big room.

A prowl car came and the officers looked. Then Sergeant McCloskey of the Miami Homicide Squad came in an unmarked car with his driver.

“I don’t believe it,” McCloskey said when he looked at the corpse.

“Pretty awful, ain’t it,” one of the firemen said.

“Awful is right,” McCloskey said. “Whoever did in this old boy must have hated his guts. He looks like he’d been worked over by a whole tribe of Apaches.”

The sergeant had seen a lot of bodies in his years on the force. He thought he’d gotten hardened to the sight, but this corpse made him shudder in spite of himself.

“I don’t believe it,” Michael Shayne, Miami private detective, told his beautiful private secretary Lucy Hamilton. Shayne and Lucy and ace feature writer Tim Rourke of the Miami News were sitting in the big redheaded detective’s Flagler Street office. Outside the windows hot tropical sunshine beat down on the street, already crowded with mid-morning traffic.

It was still cool inside the high ceilinged office and the three friends were having coffee together. Shayne’s and Rourke’s cups were laced with good French brandy.

“If you don’t believe it,” Tim Rourke said, “then it just isn’t so. It just can’t be so, and by the way what is it that isn’t?”

“You’re fouling up your grammar or syntax or something.”

“A minor detail,” Rourke said. “Very minor indeed. So what are we talking about anyway?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shayne said. “But then I seldom do. What I have in mind is last night’s murder as described on the front page of your own paper this morning.”

“Oh sure. The John Wingren killing. What’s so unusual about another killing in Miami, the Magic City?”

“This one is unusual,” Shayne said. “The killer was really devoted to his work this time. According to the News, the old boy was killed three times.”

“A neat trick if you can do it,” Rourke added, and poured more brandy into his coffee. He considered also adding more coffee and then rejected the idea with a grimace. “Only I always thought it only took one killing for a murder.”

“Usually it does,” Shayne agreed, “only this killer was a real buff. It says here the old man was fatally shot.”

“That usually does the job,” Rourke said.

“Don’t interrupt. He was also stabbed to death.”

“Redundant, my boy. Absolutely repetitive.”

“On top of that,” Shayne continued, “he’d been viciously and brutally beaten and several major bones broken in the process. According to the coroner the beating alone could very well have brought about the death of a man that age.”

“Maybe there were three killers,” Rourke offered. He obviously didn’t care very much one way or the other.

“Next you’ll be claiming it was suicide,” Shayne said and drank the last of his coffee. “It’s an interesting case, but I’m glad this is one I’m not mixed up with.”

“You are,” Lucy Hamilton said. It was the first comment she’d made.

Shayne looked at her. The big redhead was still sleepy and the electric razor he’d used that morning had done a poor job on his face. He wiped sweat off his brow with the back of one big hand.

“I hope I didn’t hear that,” he said to Lucy. “I sincerely hope you didn’t say what I’m afraid you did just then.”

“You heard me right the first time, Michael,” Lucy Hamilton told him. “I’d just been waiting for the right moment to tell you.”

“Okay, Angel,” the big detective said. “I guess you better go right ahead and explain. I’ve got an awful feeling it’ll be just as much of a shock if I put it off.”

Lucy laughed at him. “Don’t look so huffy,” she said. “You know you could use a case right now, what with the inflation and all. It isn’t the first one I’ve got you either. Besides, Anna was so terribly upset. She really does need help and I just didn’t have the heart to tell her no. It would have been a cruel thing to do under the circumstances.”

“Of course it would,” said a highly amused Tim Rourke. “I agree with you one hundred percent.”

“Who’s Anna?” Shayne asked.

“Anna Wingren, of course,” Lucy Hamilton told them. “She’s the murdered man’s sole surviving relative. His granddaughter as a matter of fact.”

“Fascinating,” Rourke said. “You see now why you have to take the case, maestro.”

Lucy Hamilton ignored him. “Anna’s also a very old and very good friend of mine,” she told Shayne. “We were in college together. That was long before I met you or had any idea of moving to Miami. I ran into her here by accident a year ago and we’ve seen each other off and on since. So of course when she called me early this morning—”

“You went right ahead and signed up your boss,” Tim Rourke said.

“Shut up, Tim,” Mike Shayne said. “Lucy hasn’t had time to tell us about the missing treasure yet. Have you, Lucy?”

“What treasure?” Tim Rourke asked.

“How did you know?” Lucy asked.

They said it together, and it was Shayne’s turn to laugh at them. “The treasure,” he said. “When an old man who’s supposed to be rich lives like a miser and gets himself killed in the middle of the night in a big old house, there’s always a treasure involved. Usually it’s hidden some place on the premises. There’d be no point in knocking him off if his money was all safe in the bank, would there?”

“I suppose not,” Rourke admitted.

“Sure,” Shayne said. “Besides, if all this Anna Wingren wanted was justice, she’d wait for the cops to turn up the killer. If she wants me this early in the game, it has to be to find a missing treasure.”

“Which will pay your fee when you find it,” Lucy said.

“If I find it,” Shayne told them both.

II

When Mike Shayne drove up to the old Wingren home an hour later the police were still on the grounds. That didn’t stop the redheaded private detective from going on into the house. He’d been a close personal friend of Miami Police Chief Will Gentry for more years than either of them cared to remember, and the men on the force knew it. The uniformed officer at the door passed him in without question.

Sergeant McCloskey and a couple of men from the crime lab were in the big living room where the body had been found.

“Hello, Mike,” the sergeant said cheerfully. “How did you get mixed up in this one?”

“I’m representing the heir this time,” Shayne said. He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t have to.

“Another one of those hidden treasure deals, I suppose,” McCloskey said. He’d been in the business a long time himself.

“You know that would be privileged information,” Shayne said. “What happened here anyway, Mac?”

“We don’t really know very much about it yet,” the sergeant said. “You can see for yourself what a mess this place is. The other twelve rooms in the house are just as bad. Maybe worse. Anything hid in here could stay that way for a long, long time.”

McCloskey could have been right. The room they were in was full of furniture, bric-a-brac, miscellaneous property and just plain junk. There were four standing lamps on the big library table by the window. One was an antique designed to bum whale oil. Only one of the three electric fixtures had a bulb.

On the same table were old books, a Chinese rose medallion teapot, two bronze foo dogs, seven ashtrays full of cigar butts, a pile of Sunday newspapers dating back for years, and a carved soapstone Indian peace pipe.

The rest of the room matched. Over the fireplace mantel the heads of an elk, a moose and a mountain sheep hung in a row as if they watched the rest of the room.

“You could have something there,” Shayne said.

“I’ve run into some squirrelly types since I joined the force,” McCloskey assured him, “but I think this guy Wingren was the champion packrat of the lot. From the looks of it, he never threw anything away in the whole of his life.”

“What’s chances the killer got away with whatever treasure there was?” Shayne asked.

“I’ve got no crystal ball,” the sergeant said. “In this job there’s times I wish I had. In a clutter like this, it’s hard to tell, but I’ve got an educated hunch he didn’t have time to make much of a search. Besides Doc said the body was still warm when he got here. Couldn’t have been dead more than thirty minutes or so. That wouldn’t give the killer much chance to look around — unless he did it before he killed, that is.”

“How come you people got here so fast?” Shayne asked.

“The killer set a fire,” McCloskey said. “No doubt at all it was arson. Probably meant to burn up the whole shebang so it’d seem old Wingren died in the fire.”

“He’d burn the treasure too,” Shayne objected.

“Maybe there wasn’t any treasure, or he didn’t know about it,” the sergeant said. “Maybe he already had it. Maybe he just killed out of hate or some other motive. Or took a few bucks and a bottle of whiskey for a treasure. Men have been rubbed out for less in this town. Anyway, he set the fire. The old candle trick.”

“I guess,” Shayne said.

“We know,” the sergeant said. “With a little luck this whole shebang would have gone up like a torch. Only this guy passing saw the fire and called the hose and ladder boys. They found the corpse and called us. Just luck.”

“Who was this lucky passer-by?” the redhead asked.

“Guy by the name of Smulka. Jerry Smulka. Lives about four blocks on down the street. He was on his way home from the bus stop and saw the flames reflected through the front windows. The fire was in the hall toward the back. He ran back to the pay phone booth on the corner and called.”

“What was this Smulka doing out at that time of night?”

“He’s a security guard and was on his way home after finishing his shift. I’ll give you his address, and you can ask him yourself.”

“I will. What do the neighbors say?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all,” McCloskey said. “Nobody saw or heard anything till the fire truck came. They just clam up and look like they want to spit on old John’s grave.”

III

The Wingren house sat on the corner in the middle of a plot of ground that had originally comprised four lots, or approximately a half acre. Unlike many old places it was not overgrown with brush, and the ornamental plants that run wild in the moist tropic climate. Old John had kept his land relatively clear. However, the place was shaded by big old mango and avocado trees. Particularly at night it would have been hard to see anyone prowling around the place.

It was by far the largest home on the block. This was only natural. Wingren had originally owned a couple of full city blocks and had built and sold smaller houses around his own place.

The neighboring home was an old frame stucco, now peeling green paint which had long needed renewal. It was a one-story house, considerably run down in spite of a neat flower bed fronting the street.

The door was opened as soon as Mike Shayne knocked.

“I already told you bums all I can,” a female voice said, and the detective saw an elderly, white-haired woman peering out at him.

“You haven’t told me a thing,” Shayne said. “I don’t even know what sort of a bum I’m supposed to be.”

“You’re another of them cops, ain’t you?” she snapped. “Sure you are. I can smell you bums as far as I can see you.”

“I’m not on the force,” Mike Shayne assured her. “I’m a private investigator.”

She stood there and stared up at him. Her old face was wrinkled with the lines of time and suspicion.

“You are here about the killing anyway?”

He nodded.

“Then I suppose Anna put you up to it. She’d be the one, wouldn’t she?”

Shayne was silent.

“Well then, mister, how you expect me to talk if you ain’t frank with me?” She made to slam the door, but the big man put his foot in the crack.

“Suppose I am working for Anna Wingren?” he said. “Just suppose that’s it. Why would it make any difference to you?”

“I didn’t say it would.”

“How do you know about Anna?”

“You are new around here, ain’t you?” she asked. “Who else would know about that family in the big house but old Jane Mullen? Sure, I know Anna since she were a snot-nosed kid playing under them trees there. Even if I ain’t seen her since she and old John had their falling out. She’s the only one in the world would care that he got his comeuppance.”

“How do you know so much about it, Mrs. Mullen?”

“Your friends them cops didn’t tell you much when you was up at the big house, did they? Well, no mind. I guess it ain’t no secret around here. I worked for old John for thirty years. Cooked and washed and cleaned for him, I did. Yes, and nursed him when he got old and sick. Nobody else in the world he could trust like old Jane. If only he’d sense enough to know it, that is. More’s the pity he didn’t.”

“You have some idea who might have wanted him dead then?” the big detective asked her.

“Ideas? Course I got ideas! So does everybody else ever knew that mean old man. Every living soul ever came close to John Wingren wanted him dead one time or other.”

“So?”

“Don’t look so surprised, you big cop. Ask around and you’ll find out for yourself. He was a mean man, John was. A nasty, mean old man.”

“Was he mean to you, too?”

She looked up at the big redhead out of beady, suspicious old eyes. “I ain’t talking about that. Think you’re going to blame something on me, don’t you? I know how you bums work it. Well, I ain’t going to take the rap for nobody. I said I used to work for John, not that I did lately. Oh, no. I wised up. I did, and good riddance to him. It’s two full years since I been inside that house.”

“What happened?” Shayne asked. “Did you have a fight with the old man?”

“You go on, get out of here,” she said. “Sure, I had fights with him. Everybody did. But ‘a fight,’ something big I’d want to kill him about? No, indeed. No. You ain’t going to make no murder suspect out of me that way. Now go on, get off my property before I call a real cop to put you off. You want I should do that?”

Mike Shayne stepped back and she slammed the door in his face.

“Old John wasn’t exactly popular with that one,” he told himself as he went on down the walk to the street. “Chances are if she knew who killed him she’d just want to pin a medal on the guy’s chest. Let’s hope somebody else around here will want to be a little more cooperative.”

The next house he stopped at was a duplicate of old Mrs. Mullen’s place, but whoever lived there had kept it up better. The place had had a coat of blue paint not more than a year or so back, and there was an expensive teevy aerial bolted to the side of the chimney.

An old man answered the door. He was thin. One of his legs had been broken and poorly set in the past so that he leaned on a heavy, old-fashioned natural oak cane to support himself as he talked.

“You here about old John being killed?” he said. “Come in. Come right in. I’ll gladly tell you anything I know, though it’s not much. It sure isn’t much.”

“You didn’t see or hear anything suspicious the night of the murder then?”

“Sure. Sure I did, mister, but not to do with the killing of old John. I watch out. This whole side of town is dangerous after dark.” The man’s face was intent, his lips pulled back in what might have been a smile or just a nervous affectation. His eyes fairly glittered. Shayne was wary. He’d seen just that look on emotionally disturbed patients in Jackson Memorial Hospital.

“Maybe you better tell me what you mean,” Shayne said. “By the way, I didn’t get your name.”

“Smith,” the old fellow said. “Just Smith. Buck Smith, to be exact. Corporal Buck Smith, used to be.”

He gestured toward the rock fireplace at the back of the room. Above it on the wall was a faded photo of a troop of cavalry in turn-of-the-century uniforms and a tattered guidon.

More to the point, a long rifle leaned against the corner of the mantel. Shayne recognized it as a government issue 1903 Springfield. He walked over to pick it up.

“Watch out now,” Smith said. “That gun’s loaded. You take care, mister. Wouldn’t want nobody hurt.”

“Neither would I,” Mike Shayne said. He checked the gun. It was loaded, all right, and when he sniffed the muzzle he could tell by the acrid tang that the weapon had been fired recently.

“It’s all right,” he told Smith. “I understand guns. How come you keep this one loaded anyway?”

“Because I got good sense, that’s why,” the crusty old veteran said. “Like I was going to tell you, this neighborhood has got real dangerous after dark. Prowlers. Hoodlums. Crazy kids with their dope. Robbers. I tell you a man ain’t safe unless he’s ready to defend himself.”

“Have you actually seen any prowlers?” Mike Shayne asked.

“Of course I have, mister. So has everybody this side of town, if they was honest with you about it. Sneaking, thieving, murdering prowlers. They comes round at night, but they leave old Buck alone.”

“Because you’ve got the gun?”

“Because I’m ready for him, that’s why. Had old John Wingren kept a gun he’d be alive right now, most like.” The old fellow started snickering.

“What’s so funny?”

“What’s funny is old John’s dead and I ain’t. All that money he stole and cheated from folks don’t do him no good now. No good at all. I told him I’d spit on his grave, and I will. I surely will.”

“You aren’t sorry he’s dead then?”

“Course not, mister. Nobody ever knew old John will be sorry he died. We’ll all be glad. You was talking to old Jane Mullen. I seen you come from her place. Didn’t she tell you?”

“Well,” Mike Shayne admitted, “I got to say she didn’t seem real unhappy about it.”

“You bet she didn’t. Not since he cut her out of his will,” Corporal Smith chortled. “Fight like cats and dogs they did, ever since that.”

“Recently?” Mike Shayne asked.

“Sure. Last night early she was over to his place again fighting with him. Yelling like a couple of wildcats they was. I could hear them going on and on.”

IV

When Mike Shayne left Buck Smith’s house he decided to go downtown and have a talk with his old friend Will Gentry, the rugged and highly efficient Miami chief of police. He needed some background information on the late John Wingren, and he figured the chief might have it.

He didn’t mention to Sergeant McCloskey what Smith had said about Jane Mullen being in the Wingren home the night before. Smith had regretted letting it slip out at all, Shayne had observed. After that one statement the old man had clammed up and said no more. The big detective had preferred to leave without pressing the old soldier any further.

Actually Shayne wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for at that point. After Lucy Hamilton had opened the subject, he had talked briefly to Anna Wingren on the phone. She had engaged him then for the purpose of finding her grandfather’s fortune.

“He’s supposed to be rich,” she had said. “I know he was the sort who never trusted banks. Whether he has stocks and bonds or jewels or cash or what, I don’t know, but I’ll bet any amount he had it hidden around the house.”

“Some folks think that’s safe,” Shayne had said.

“I begged him to keep it in the bank,” Anna said. “He wouldn’t listen to me any more than he did to Mother when she was still alive. He didn’t trust us, I guess.”

“You realize, of course,” Shayne said, “that if there really was a large sum of money in the house, the killer may very likely have found it and taken it away. It’s the most likely thing to have happened.”

“I know,” she said, “but if he did, then surely you’ll be able to find evidence of it. You don’t have to worry about your fee even in that case, Mr. Shayne. I’ll inherit the house and contents and that will be a good sum.”

“I wasn’t worrying,” Shayne said. “Not where any friend of Lucy’s is concerned. I just wanted to know how far you want me to go to find and recover any money your grandfather may have had in the house.”

“Go as far as you have to,” Anna Wingren had said.

That was where they had left the matter. Now Mike Shayne was beginning to think the case would turn out more difficult than he had expected. Old Wingren was widely hated. It meant any number of people would have had a motive to kill him. The motive might not have been concerned with his money. If it hadn’t been, then the money was probably still in the house. In time, a search and inventory would turn it up.

On the other hand, it would be stupid to wait weeks or even days for such a search to be completed. That would give time for the killer to cover his tracks if he did have the money. It boiled down to the fact that, to recover the money, Shayne was going to have to find the killer.

Chief Gentry was in his office and he greeted his old friend warmly. “So you’re looking into the Wingren business, Mike?” he asked. “Come along then. I was just on my way to homicide. Bill Ryan’s taking a statement from the fella that found the body.”

“Why now?”

“He’s a night watchman. We let him go home for his sleep last night and told him to come down for a formal statement this morning.”

When they got to the homicide division office the security guard, Jerry Smulka, had just signed the statement typed out for him by a secretary. He was a dark, slender man in his late thirties with heavy black eyebrows that almost met above the bridge of his nose.

While he waited, Gentry and Shayne read the formal statement. It was simple and apparently straightforward. Smulka had been walking home from his bus stop when his attention was attracted by flickering lights from inside the big house. He went closer and saw that they were flames from the back of the hall. He had pounded on the door and found it ajar, so he ran in calling out to alarm the resident. Then he saw the body on the living room floor. He couldn’t see a phone in the house — Wingren didn’t have one — so he’d run back to the corner to call the fire department.

“What did you do until the engines came?” Shayne asked.

“It’s in the statement,” Smulka said. “I didn’t know whether old John was dead or hurt or passed out, so I ran back into the house to find out. That’s when I saw he was dead. I just stayed there. If the fire had gotten close, I’d have pulled the body out.”

“But you didn’t have to?”

“No. The engines got there in a hurry.”

“You sound like you knew who the dead man was.”

“Sure. Everybody in that part of town knew who old John was. He’d lived there longer than anybody could remember.”

“Were you a friend of his?” That was from Chief Gentry.

“Friend? I don’t think that man had a friend in the world. He was a mean one, and folks knew it.”

“Did he have any special enemies?” Shayne said. “I mean was there somebody who maybe hated him so much they might want to see him dead.”

Smulka gave a cynical chuckle. “From what folks say that could be anybody ever did business with him. Mean and tricky, they called him.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“You mean can I say who might have killed him? Put that way, no. No — I can’t.”

“What about robbery? Did you see any signs the killer had been searching the place?” Gentry spoke again.

“In that rat’s nest?” The man was openly incredulous. “How would anybody tell?”

“He’s got a point there, Will,” Shayne said. “You ever hear that the old man had money hid there, Mr. Smulka?”

“No more than you hear it about any rich old goat lives like that,” Smulka said. “Me, I always figured anybody smart enough to steal all that money would be smart enough to put it in a bank.”

“Steal all what money?” Shayne said.

Smulka gave him a startled look. “How would I know, mister? Just what people said. They say one way or other he cheated everybody around the neighborhood. Just talk like you hear when people shoot their mouths off. Look, chief, can I go now? I got things to do.”

“You can go,” Gentry said.

Back in Chief Gentry’s office, Mike Shayne helped himself to a Havana cigar, a glass of good brandy and a comfortable chair.

“Not much to learn from that,” Gentry said.

“I don’t know,” Shayne said. “Maybe it’s just a hunch but that character seemed to know an awful lot about the old man for just a casual passer-by.”

“I wouldn’t figure that,” Gentry said. “You know how those old neighborhoods are. Gossip, gossip, gossip. People been there so long they know all about each other’s dreams even. Nothing to do but flap their mouths.”

“Somebody had more to do than that last night.”

“You don’t even know that for sure,” Gentry said. “The killer could have been a stranger. You know how those young punks from downtown prowl around looking for a place to break in and steal what they can.”

“I don’t think so, Will. That sort aren’t killers usually. Besides, why that particular house?”

“I know,” Gentry said. “You think it was a neighbor after the miser’s gold. Was there a lot of money in that house, Mike?”

“I don’t really know any more than you do. The dead man’s granddaughter seems to think so. At least she’s sure enough to hire me to find it.”

“I’ll pass the word to the boys to let you come and go as you like around there,” Gentry said. “Of course if you find the killer while you’re after the money I want to know.”

“Sure you’ll know. You know me, Will.”

“That’s just it. I do. I don’t want you holding out evidence again to suit yourself.”

“Your boys got any suspects yet?”

“Not exactly, Mike. This is a puzzler just because it looks like everybody in a country mile had some sort of motive. If there were witnesses they’d be hostile in court. We don’t even know for sure what killed him. He’d been stabbed twice through the back into the lungs. He was also beat up real bad, and shot.”

“Shot with what?”

“We don’t know. Ballistics says a soft lead slug apparently ricocheted off something and ended up in old John’s liver. In the process the slug was battered so they can’t tell even the caliber.”

“Could it have been from a rifle?” Mike Shayne was thinking of Corporal Smith’s gun.

“It could have been from anything. They think the bullet broke up on something hard and only part of it entered the body. The boys at the house are looking for the rest of it.”

“I see.”

“We’re looking for a young punk down the street who was seen near the house. If anybody has a reason to hate the old man, I guess he’d be it.”

“What happened to him?”

“From what we hear old Wingren hired him to fix a leaky roof on the house. The kid was newly married and out of work and needed money. The old man wanted a cheap job. Never got a permit for it or anything. The boy fell off the roof and broke both legs. One of them hasn’t ever healed right. The old man never gave him a cent in compensation, not even the wages he was owed for the work he did. Just laughed and told him to sue if he thought it would do him any good.”

“A real fine man, old John,” Shayne said. “From the sound of that it’s a good thing I never dealt with him myself. If I had you might have me on your suspect list. What’s the kid’s name?”

“Calvin Harris. We can’t find him. If you do, let us know.”

“I don’t know,” Shayne said. “After what you told me I might not want to.”

V

Mike Shayne went back to his own office after he left Chief Gentry’s. Anna Wingren was waiting for him there with Lucy Hamilton.

Anna proved to be a pleasant faced, almost pretty young woman with brown eyes and soft brown hair.

“I brought you a set of keys to the house, Mr. Shayne,” she said. “I got them from Grandfather’s lawyer and told him you were fully authorized to come and go as you please.”

“That’s fine,” Mike Shayne said. He sat down behind his big office desk and let Lucy Hamilton mix him a drink. “This may be a complicated case, Miss Wingren. In the first place, do you have any real reason to believe Mr. Wingren kept large sums of money on the place?”

“I think I have,” she said easily. “Ever since I can remember he’s said he has. He used to say he didn’t really trust any bank. It would make a nice treasure hunt for the family after he died, he’d say. I suppose he thought he was being funny.”

“Could he have been just kidding?” Lucy asked.

“Oh, no. He wasn’t that kind when it came to money. Besides, his lawyer believes it too. He says he has some of the old man’s property deeds and things like that in his vault, but not even all of those. Grandfather kept a small checking account for convenience, but the lawyer also believes there were very large sums of cash he hoarded somewhere”

“Any idea how large?” Mike Shayne said.

“Well, the lawyer. Mr. Roberts, made what he called an educated guess. The amount he named was around a quarter of a million dollars. I have to admit it shocked me.”

“Whew!” Mike Shayne said. “I don’t wonder. That much cash stashed some place in an old house is enough to bring all sorts of killers around. If that figure was talked about, it’s a wonder your grandfather lived as long as he did.”

“I’m afraid it wasn’t really a secret,” Anna admitted. “Mr. Roberts said he had the same sum mentioned once by Mrs. Mullen, who was grandfather’s housekeeper.”

“That would be Mrs. Jane Mullen who lives next door?”

“The very same. She worked herself to the bone taking care of grandfather for years and years. I’m afraid he treated her very shabbily too. All the while instead of paying her decent wages, he kept promising to leave her a fortune when he died. She isn’t even mentioned in the will. When she found that out, there was an awful fight between them.”

“That’s just fine,” Shayne said. “She already knows enough to tell people he has two hundred and fifty gees stashed in the house, and he goes and has a fight with her. Your grandfather was a real sharp man for a dollar, but I can’t say I think much of the rest of his brains.”

“I know,” she said. “I’ve had to live with that thought all my life. That’s the way he was though. Mr. Shayne, I know you have a rough job ahead of you. I’m offering you ten percent of any money you can recover for me. Is that satisfactory?”

Mike Shayne thought of ten percent of a quarter of a million dollars.

“That sweetens the pot,” he said.

“Michael would do his best anyway,” Lucy Hamilton told her friend, “but I think that’s very generous of you, Anna.”

Mike Shayne drove back uptown to the Wingren house. He got there before the afternoon traffic had really begun to build up on the streets. The house looked peaceful in the rays of the westering sun. The fire hadn’t burned enough to show from outside and the police who had been there a few hours before had gone about their business.

The door was the old-fashioned port, with a solid lower half and then a big pane of heavy plate glass so anyone inside could see who was on the step.

Mike Shayne put the key Anna had given him into the lock. It turned easily and the door began to swing open on well-oiled hinges.

The pane of plate glass showed an intricate network of spider-web cracks centered on a neat round hole. A split second before there hadn’t been any cracks. Then the glass broke into a thousand shards that flew into the hall.

The big redheaded detective reacted by sheer animal instinct, the same lightning fast reflexes that had saved his life many times before.

He finished pushing the door open and literally dove into the hall as if he were going into a pool His body lit flat on the carpet and he rolled to the side, pulling his big, black forty-five automatic from its belt holster as he did so. Before the door was fully open, his body was back against the side of the hall where it couldn’t be seen from the outside.

Shayne hadn’t heard the shot, but a big jet plane from the Miami Airport was thundering overhead at the time, and that would have masked the firing of a cannon.

Through the open door the street looked perfectly peaceful in the afternoon sun. There were no cars in sight anywhere. In fact, nothing moved at all but a couple of feisty little dogs chasing each other back and forth on the far side of the street.

Shayne made sure nothing moved before he got to his feet and brushed splinters of glass off his suit.

“I hadn’t expected that in broad daylight,” he told himself. “There’s sure somebody doesn’t want me nosing around in here, and that has to mean that if there’s a treasure at least he didn’t get to it yet.”

There was no way for him to tell exactly where the bullet fired at him had come from. It could have been fired in or near any one of half a dozen houses. For the moment he didn’t even try to locate the slug and dig it out of the wall. Chief Gentry’s boys could take care of that little chore later on.

The first thing Shayne did was make a tour of the big house. It was discouraging. There were a lot of rooms and all of them were full of furniture, collectible items and just plain hoarded junk.

There were two big, expensive freezer units in the kitchen and another in the back hall on the ground floor. All three were jammed full of food, much of it labeled as expensive cuts of meat. Shayne noted two ten-pound packages of frozen lobster tails.

“He must have thought he’d stand siege in here,” the big man told the empty room. “Enough food here so he could eat himself to death before anybody broke in.”

Shayne knew that to search the house properly he’d have to thaw all that food. Suppose the old man had frozen a packet of hundred-dollar bills in with the lobster tails? It would take an army of men weeks to shake this place down properly. In the end the house might have to be taken apart stone by stone and timber by timber.

For the moment Shayne contented himself with tapping on walls and floors, looking for a sliding panel or hidden compartment. He didn’t find anything. He hadn’t really expected that he would.

When he left the house he took a suitcase full of old books and locked it in the trunk of his own car. “If that guy shot at me is still watching he may think I’ve got the stuff I was after and follow me. If he does. I’ll get him sooner or later.”

His next stop was at the address Gentry had given him for Calvin Harris. It was an apartment in a big old boomtime building. The paint was peeling and the door and window frames rotten with termite tunnels, but the rent was cheap and the rooms high-ceilinged and cool in the south Florida summer heat.

Mike Shayne spotted a police stake-out, a plainclothes detective sitting in an unmarked car watching the building, so he figured Harris probably hadn’t come home yet.

He was right. The apartment door was opened by an attractive young woman who admitted to being Mrs. Sally Harris. She wasn’t about to admit anything else, though.

Shayne gave her an appreciative grin. This young woman would have been a real stunner with new clothes and a few square meals to fill out her figure. He could see that times had been hard with the Harris family.

“No,” she said. “Cal ain’t here. I don’t know where he is and I have no idea when he’s coming back. Now will you get out of here and leave us alone?”

“What are you so mad at me for?” Shayne asked. “You don’t even know who I am. Maybe I just want to help Cal.”

“In a pig’s ear,” she said and gave him a bold and hostile look. “Nobody wants to help Cal. You’re just another one of them fly cops been coming around all day.”

“I’m not a cop.”

“If you ain’t a cop what are you here for? I tell you Cal didn’t kill old John. Not that he didn’t need killing, the way he treated people all his life, but Cal didn’t do it. I ought to know Cal. He’s my man. He ain’t the killing kind.”

“In that case he’s got nothing to worry about.”

“You oughta know better than that,” she said. “Poor folks like us have always got things to worry about. Anything happens like that old S.O.B. gets himself killed — who do the cops come after? Not old Jane Mullen. She’s got some money. Not any of the rich folks old John cheated. No. It’s a poor boy crippled up by that old devil’s meanness. You think I’m going to help you hound my man, mister, you’re crazy in the head.”

Her voice had a ring of sincerity that impressed Mike Shayne. The big man had dealt with enough hundreds of thieves and killers in his time to have developed a pretty reliable instinct for judging people. In spite of her obvious hostility, he liked this young woman.

“Now look,” he said. “I told you I’m not a cop. I might even be able to help you and Cal. Why not let me come in and talk about it?”

“The cops have already searched this place looking for Cal. He ain’t here.”

“I believe you. I said I just want to talk. I might even make you a business proposition.”

“That would be the day,” she said. “I ain’t open to no proposition.”

“Not you,” he said. “Cal.” He took a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet and gave it to her. “That’s earnest money. If Cal can help me, there’ll be more. Look, my name’s Mike Shayne. You can check me out. People will tell you I’m no phony.”

“Oh,” she said. “Mike Shayne, huh? I heard about you. Okay, I guess there’s no harm talking.” She tucked the bill into the front of her dress and opened the door wider to let him in.

The apartment was bare, but scrupulously clean. Shayne sat down in one of the two living room chairs, took off his battered felt hat and mopped his brow.

Sally Harris sat in the other chair.

“Okay, Mr. Shayne,” she said. “It’s your dime. Go ahead and talk.”

“I will get to the point,” Mike Shayne said. “We both know your husband’s in trouble. He had reason to hate Wingren and everybody knows it. The police want him. There’s an A.P.B. out for him right now. That means sooner or later they’ll find him. Then it’ll be all the tougher because he didn’t come in on his own. Hiding out always makes a man look guilty.”

“Well, suppose all that’s true? Then what can my Cal do?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He can get in touch with me. I think he can help me.” Shayne gave her one of his business cards.

“When you talk to him tell him he can call me at these numbers. Or he can come see me. I’ll be at the Wingren house most of the evening. I’ll watch for him. And I promise not to turn him in to the police if he isn’t guilty of murder. I don’t think he is, but if I’m wrong he can just stay away from me.”

“Cal didn’t do murder, mister. Still, I don’t understand. Help you with what? What can the likes of him do for you?”

Shayne took a chance. “I’ve been hired to look for money the old man was supposed to have hid out in his house. Your man knows the house. He worked for the old man and maybe knows how he thought. He can help me find what I’m after. If we do find it, I’ll see that Cal gets a part of my share. If we don’t I’ll pay him wages.”

Sally Harris still hesitated.

“Look,” Shayne said, “if you’ve heard of me, you know I’m Will Gentry’s friend. I promise you as long as Cal’s working for me I won’t let him be arrested. How’s that?”

He could see that that brought her to some sort of a decision.

“Okay,” she said. “If Cal talks to me I’ll tell him what you said. What he does then is up to him. You understand that?”

“I understand. That is fair enough.”

“Okay, but one thing more.” Her low voice throbbed with the intensity of utter sincerity. “My Cal, he’s had enough bad breaks. Crippled and out of work like he is. You treat him right, Mr. Shayne. Because if you don’t — if you cheat him like old man John did, or sell him to the cops, or hurt him any way at all — I swear to God, mister, you won’t get away with it. I’ll watch and I’ll get you. I’ll kill you myself. I want you should know that right here and now. I’ll kill you myself.”

“I understand. You can trust me,” Shayne said.

“I better be able to trust you. Else I’ll kill you.”

VI

By now it was well along in the afternoon and Mike Shayne was hungry. He hadn’t really eaten since breakfast, and on this particular day breakfast had been mostly coffee and brandy.

He found a neighborhood restaurant and ordered a double order of pork chops and hashed brown potatoes and a half of an apple pie. The food wasn’t very good but it was hot and filling, and eating gave him time to think.

He knew this was going to be a difficult case. Instead of having to go out and hunt for a suspect, he already had an overload of them. Everybody he’d run into all day was a suspect except Anna Wingren and Will Gentry. Even Anna could have felt she stood to gain her inheritance when her grandfather was dead. That left Chief Gentry.

Worst of all, from the detective’s point of view, it was probable that most of the neighbors not only had motive but also opportunity to have committed the crime. Any one of them could have sneaked up and broken into the big house the night before.

On top of all that Shayne knew that his primary job of finding the old miser’s hidden treasure would be almost impossible to accomplish without help. The only right way to go about it would be to take every one of the thousands of items piled around the big house and examine it separately. That meant taking it apart. Old John might have bought diamonds and hid them one by one, or put thousand-dollar bills between the pages of books or magazines. Shayne had no way of knowing. After that the whole house would have to be dismantled. That would take months.

The only way to find the stuff was by just plain luck, or with the help of somebody who knew where to look.

That somebody had to be the killer.

Mike Shayne figured the murderer hadn’t got away with the treasure, at least not all of it. Otherwise why would he have tried to kill the detective that afternoon? If he had the money, he’d be long gone out of town.

On the other hand, why set a fire and leave the house the night before? Why not stay and search for the hoard?

Somebody knew the answers to all the difficult questions in this case. Shayne meant to make that someone come to him and then get the answers for himself. His next job was to set the trap and see that the killer smelled the bait.

When he left the restaurant Shayne went straight to Jane Mullen’s house. This time he had to really pound on the door before the old woman opened it about halfway.

“What do you want?” she said in a peevish tone. “I already talked to you once.”

Shayne gave the door a hard shove that opened it wide and stepped into the room.

“I know you talked to me,” he told her. “Now let’s do it all over again, only suppose this time you tell me the truth.”

“I told you the truth.”

“Oh, no, you didn’t. Why didn’t you tell me you were over at John Wingren’s house last night?”

“You didn’t ask,” she protested feebly.

Shayne didn’t even honor that with an answer.

“Why you people lie like you do is past me,” he said. “You ought to know your own neighbors. Somebody sees everything you do. You can’t sneeze without somebody makes a note, and they talk. I know you were over there, and I know you and the old man had an awful fight.”

“Who says we did?”

“People who saw you and heard you.” The big man wasn’t averse to stretching the point a bit. “People who’ll swear you were beating him up. They’ll go on the witness stand and swear it.”

“Then they’ll lie,” she said.

“You can say that to me,” Shayne said. “I’m not a judge. I’m not a tough state’s attorney throwing questions at you. Oh, you can lie to me easily enough, Mrs. Mullen. But when your own neighbors get on the stand and throw those lies in your teeth, what can you do then? Can you lie to a jury? Well enough so a jury will believe you? Can you do that and will you bet your life that you can?”

“It ain’t no lie,” she yelled back at him. Her old face was contorted with a mixture of anger and fear. “I don’t care what nobody says. I didn’t kill John and I didn’t beat him up. How could I? An old woman like me—”

“Suppose you tell me what you did do then,” Shayne pressed her. “You were in the house all right. Don’t you try to deny that. If it wasn’t what they say, you better tell me now, and tell me the truth. Mind you. The truth.”

“All right,” she said. “I suppose I might as well. No telling what them lying neighbors will do to me if I don’t. I was up to the house, Mr. Shayne. It was early in the evening. Right after dark it was and John was alive when I got there and when I left.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Of course I am. It wasn’t me shot him, Mr. Shayne. I got no gun anyway.”

“Oh,” Shayne said. “So it wasn’t you that shot him. What do you know about his being shot?”

“Because that’s why he called me up there, you tarnation fool. Why do you think he’d let me in the house unless he was hurt first?”

“I don’t know,” Shayne said. “You tell me.”

“He came down here and told me to come. He needed help. I went back up to the house with him. He said somebody shot at him through the window. They missed him but the shot hit the heavy iron fire dog in the upstairs library and part of the bullet broke off and hit him in the back.

“I looked and sure enough there was a hole in his back. Twarn’t bleeding much though. I told him he needed a doctor. All he’d done was tie a towel around himself to stop the bleeding. He wouldn’t listen. Said he didn’t trust no doctor and one would charge him a fortune for tying up the wound, which I could do just as well.”

“The bullet was in his liver,” Shayne said. “Sooner or later it would have killed him unless a doctor took it out.”

“I thought something like that. I tried to tell him. The stingy old fool wouldn’t listen. That’s what we were hollering at each other about. I got real mad. I said he’d cheated me often enough. He could call a doctor now or die. I didn’t care.”

“But you didn’t think about helping him die?”

“Of course I didn’t. We was in the upstairs bath where he kept the medicine chest. I started to leave. He ran at me on the stairs to stop me and somehow he slipped and fell down to the landing. That’s all happened. I went on out. He was laying there cussing and groaning, but he sure wasn’t dead.”

Mike Shayne had a pretty good notion that old John Wingren might have been pushed down the stairs rather than “slipped and fell” but he wasn’t going to make a point of it right then.

The rest of the old woman’s story sounded reasonable to him, even the part about the wound feeling much less dangerous to the old man than it actually was. Besides, if she hadn’t been telling the truth, she probably never would have admitted knowing anything at all about the shooting part. That wasn’t the sort of story an old woman of her type would be likely to make up out of whole cloth.

“Suppose I believe you,” he said to her. “Not that I’m sure I do, but just suppose.”

“You better believe it,” she said. “I swear it’s the truth.”

“People swear all sorts of things to me,” Shayne said. “They been doing it for years. Did old John know who shot him?”

“He said he did, but he didn’t tell me. Said he’d settle that young feller’s hash by himself.”

“You sure he said a young feller?”

“Them was his exact words,” she insisted. “ ‘I’ll settle that young feller’s hash’ was his exact words.”

“Do you know if he had money of his in the house?”

“Everybody always said he had,” Mrs. Mullen said, “but Lord knows I never seen none. If he had it, then it was well hid for sure.”

“You say everybody thought he had it, though.”

“Sure. You know how people talk. You do believe me, don’t you, Mr. Shayne? I didn’t kill that mean old man. Maybe I thought about it a few times in the years gone, but I’m not a woman could go ahead and kill.”

“Well,” Shayne said, “do you have any idea who old John meant when he said ‘young feller?’ Has anybody you know been hanging around here lately? Acting suspicious? Anything like that?”

“Not like you mean, Mr. Shayne,” she said. “Of course there’s been young Cal Harris, but everybody knows what he’s doing.”

“I don’t,” Shayne said. “What does he do?”

“Oh, three — four times every week he comes by here and puts a curse on the old man. Course he don’t say, but we all know that’s it. He comes hobbling up the street on them two canes of his and just stands and looks at the big house with his face all black and hard. Cursing old John he was for sure.”

Shayne thought: “No wonder the cops are after that boy.” Aloud, all he said was: “Anything else?”

“Not unless you count Crazy Smith’s prowlers.”

“Who are they?”

“Lord knows. Old Corporal Smith says he sees them prowling all through here in the dark of the moon. Murdering, thieving robbers he calls them. Once in a while he even takes a shot at them with that old army gun of his. Never hit none, though. Not far’s I know anyhow.”

“Doesn’t anybody call the police when he shoots at things?”

“Lord no, Mr. Shayne. Ain’t no harm in old Buck. He just sees things. No crime in that.”

“Have you ever seen these prowlers? Last night for instance?” Shayne pressed her.

She turned her face away. “No. sir. I told you all I know about last night. You better believe me too, because it’s the Lord’s living truth. Every bit of it. Now go on and get out of here. Let an old woman get time to fix herself some supper. Get out now.”

Shayne could tell that was all she was going to say, so he left the house and walked across the street to old Buck Smith’s place.

The old veteran was in the kitchen boiling up grits and collard greens with fat pork. He let Shayne follow him back and sit at the kitchen table while he continued his cooking.

“Have a glass of cold buttermilk, Mr. Shayne,” he offered.

On his way to the kitchen Shayne had noticed that the old man’s Springfield rifle was missing from its place in the front room.

Mike Shayne accepted the buttermilk. He didn’t want it, but the gesture would relax the old man.

“I’ve just been talking to Mrs. Mullen,” he said. “She says you protect the block from prowlers.”

“I do what I can,” old Buck said. “Somebody’s got to watch out these days with all the young ones taking dope and fornicating out of wedlock and such like. Somebody got to be on the watch.”

“Too bad you didn’t see the killer go in or out of the big house last night,” Mike Shayne said casually.

Buck Smith was spooning out grits onto his plate. The big iron spoon clattered against his plate and he almost dropped it. At first Shayne thought the old man was going to faint. Then he pulled himself together.

“No, sir,” he said. “I sure didn’t. Man can’t be watching all the time. Dunno if I’d a done anything if I had. Oh, if I’d known it was a killer, then sure. But just a thief. Let him help himself. Old John had plenty and to spare.”

“You didn’t like him?”

“Nobody liked old John. A mean, grasping, hateful old scoundrel he was.”

“It’s a good thing somebody was watching last night,” Shayne said. “If he hadn’t raised the alarm before the house really caught. Some of your other houses might have burned too in that case.”

“I heard on the radio,” Buck said. “Funny it was that young Smulka raised the alarm. He got no cause to love old John either.”

Here we go again, Shayne thought. He said: “What do you mean by that?”

“Didn’t he tell you? Well, maybe he had no real reason not to let sleeping dogs lie.”

“Tell us what?”

“Why, twenty years back his old man and John was partners in a construction firm. This feller was just a boy then. Well, the firm failed but old John got his money out first like he always done. It was Smulka was ruined. Shot himself over it, he did. There’d been some hanky-panky on Wingren’s part, and Smulka might have gone to prison even.”

“No,” Shayne said. “He didn’t tell anybody about that. Not that I know of.”

“Like I say, maybe he felt no cause to.”

“What I came to say,” Shayne said, “if you see anybody in that big house tonight it’s me. So don’t fire that cannon of yours. I have been hired by old man Wingren’s granddaughter Anna to stay there a night or two and keep any more prowlers out.”

“Have some grits and greens,” Smith offered hospitably. “I suppose you mean keep prowlers out if they come looking for old John’s treasure. That there wicked old man lived up there with his stolen money. They’ll be coming for it now.”

“What money?” Shayne asked.

“All that he stole, of course,” Smith said. “Diamonds and rubies and gold pieces and the money he wrung out of widows and working men by usury and cheating. Like an old spider he was those years, sucking the blood and the money out of everyone’s veins.”

Old Buck Smith’s eyes glittered with a fanatic light. “They’ll be coming for it now. They and their ghosts. That old house will be full of them. You watch out, Mr. Shayne. They’ll be coming. Just like the devil come for old John’s soul last night. I seen him, Mr. Shayne, with his horns up black against the moon.”

VII

Mike Shayne went back up to the old Wingren house. This time he didn’t need a key for the front door, but just reached through the gaping hole where the glass had fallen out and turned the knob. The first thing he did was to correct that situation. He found some boards in the garage as well as a tool chest and nailed them over the inside of the door. At least anyone coming after him that night would have to break in.

Unfortunately that would be hard to prevent. Like so many old boomtime Miami mansions this one had several doors on the ground floor leading out to the grounds. They all had locks and chains, but nothing that would prevent a serious problem to a professional thief.

There was an old, brindled grey cat on the back steps. She wouldn’t come into the house, but lingered by an empty plate set there and obviously expected to be fed. Shayne put out scraps from the refrigerator and a dish of water.

“The old devil must have had at least one soft spot,” he said to the cat. “I guess you would have been it. Well, we never know.”

The cat accepted the food and drink with an air of regal condescension and then padded silently away into the dusk.

The electricity was still connected throughout the house and Shayne turned on lights in the upper and lower halls and in whichever room he was in at the moment.

He didn’t light up the whole building or turn on any exterior lights. It was part of the plan he’d formed that the killer should be able to get back into the building without too much trouble. Too many blazing lights might have scared him off.

Shayne was sure that by now everyone for blocks around would be sure that he was spending the night inside the house and also that he would be looking for hidden treasure.

Unless the killer had already made off with the treasure — and every instinct told Shayne that he hadn’t — that would prove a bait that couldn’t be resisted.

Shayne went back into the living room for the first time since that afternoon. When he turned on the light the three stuffed animal heads stared solemnly down at him from above the mantel. Shayne looked again. Someone had pinned a sheet of yellow note-paper to the nose of the moose in the middle.

He went over and pulled it down. Someone had printed a message in crude block letters, using a red crayon for a pencil.

“MIK SHAIN,” the message read, “GET OUT. I DON’T WANT TO HAVE TO KILL YOU.”

“Sorry, friend,” Shayne said to the ugly face of the moose. “I don’t want to be killed either, but I can’t get out of here just yet.”

There was no way of telling who had written the message. Anyone could have gotten into the house easily enough while he was gone during the afternoon. The paper had been wiped clean of any fingerprints or smudges he could have spotted without dusting professionally. He folded it and put it in his pocket.

Then he sat down, being careful to pick a chair that was out of line with the windows, so he couldn’t be watched from outside the house.

It was just getting dark, the brief tropic dusk that would last only minutes. He didn’t expect any attack until full dark had fallen. This would be a good time to do some hard thinking.

The thing that had him puzzled him the most was the fire that had been set inside the house the night before.

The fire department had positively identified it as arson. It was the old trick of a candle set to burn down and ignite kerosene-soaked rags. There wasn’t a chance in the world of this one being accidental.

Then why had it been set? Shayne would have expected the killer to spend the balance of the night hunting for the treasure. In that case the last thing he’d do would be to set a fire that would attract outside attention. And sup pose it hadn’t attracted attention, but had really set the big house ablaze. Pouf. Up would go the treasure in smoke along with everything else. Why take a chance like that?

Maybe the killer had already found the treasure and just wanted to cover his tracks and destroy all evidence. That would make sense, but not in connection with the shot fired at him that afternoon and the note left pinned to the nose of the stuffed moose head. Both those things indicated that the killer was still very much in the picture and wanted Shayne out of the way so he could get at the business of finding the money.

Either that or the killer was an utterly insane person whose actions were not limited by reason.

“None of it makes sense,” Shayne said to the uncaring moose. “On the other hand I know there must be a reason back of it all. If I could just see what it is.” Once again he tried to put himself in the place of the killer and think as that person must have done.

It didn’t work.

Then he heard the noise of steps outside the window. He was out of his chair like a flash, gun out and ready in his hand. The steps went past the window. They were unsteady and shuffling. Shayne began to relax.

When the knock on the front door came, Mike Shayne was in the hallway waiting.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“It’s me, Mr. Shayne,” someone said in low tones outside the door. “Cal Harris. Sally said I should talk to you.”

“All right,” the big redhead said. “Come in fast when I open the door.”

He turned the key and opened the door just enough for the young man to enter. Cal couldn’t move very fast. To walk at all he had to use two heavy oak canes. That accounted for the shuffling noise his feet had made outside the window.

“Stand still,” Shayne said. He frisked the man expertly. Outside of the canes he had no weapon more effective than a pocket knife with a two-inch blade.

“Why did you come?” Shayne asked.

“Sally said I could trust you,” Cal Harris said. “Mister, we both figured that right now I need somebody I can trust.”

“You do indeed,” Shayne said. “Come into the main room here and sit down. Now, first of all, did you kill the old man?”

“Only if wishes could do it,” Cal Harris said. “I admit I hated him like everybody did, but I didn’t kill him. I don’t care what nobody says. I wasn’t in this place last night.”

He said that last so emphatically that Shayne decided to take a chance. “You were seen here,” he said.

“I know,” Cal Harris admitted. “Why do you think I ran and hid out? I was only on the grass outside, though, when old Buck saw me and shot at me. I was never in the house.”

Shayne thought hard. “Where was Buck when he shot at you?”

“Over across the street on his porch. I seen the muzzle flash when he fired, and I ducked around the corner.”

“Come on,” Shayne said. “I want to see about something.” He was remembering what Jane Mullen had told him earlier.

They went upstairs to the big bedroom where John Wingren had slept. Sure enough there was a small round hole in the window screen, and he could see where the projectile had struck the iron fire dog in the fireplace. A smear of lead and a chip in the iron marked the spot of ricochet.

“Buck Smith’s been lying to me because he thought he shot John Wingren when he fired at you,” Mike Shayne said. “But the old man was shot in this room through that window. No shot fired from Smith’s house could possibly have done it.”

Cal Harris was silent. He just watched and listened.

The big man got down and put his head by the mark on the firedog. He sighted from there to the hole in the window screen.

“Near as I can make out,” he said, “the shot that hit Wingren had to come from up in that big oak tree out there.”

The mass of the tree’s foliage showed as a dark blur against the reflected lights in the sky.

“Right from that tree,” Shayne said.

He saw the muzzle flash in the midst of the foliage and threw himself sideways and down on the floor. Even Shayne with his catlike, almost instant reflexes would have been too slow, if the sniper’s aim had been better. As it was, he swore afterwards he’d felt the wind of the bullet on his cheek.

Cal Harris swung one of his heavy canes and knocked the table lamp which Shayne had lit to the floor of the room, where the bulb smashed.

“Don’t move,” Shayne shouted. “With the light off he can’t see in here.”

He himself crawled swiftly to the window and peered over the sill. The tree from which the shot had come was a big one with low-hanging branches and bushes around its base. The sniper, whoever he was, could have dropped down easily out of sight of the window and made his escape in safety.

Shayne put his gun back in its holster.

“From now on we better stay away from windows,” he told Harris.

“Now you know I didn’t do any killing,” Cal Harris said. “I sure couldn’t have fired that shot.”

“I never did think you were guilty,” the detective said. “But this doesn’t prove anything except that if you did kill the old buzzard you had an accomplice. That, or maybe somebody else is cutting himself in on the act now.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Harris said in a discouraged tone. “I am innocent.”

“You don’t have to argue it with me,” Shayne said. “I don’t believe you’re the killer type. We’ve got to get busy and prove out a couple of things though.”

“Won’t somebody have heard that shot and call the police? What do I do then?”

“You leave the worrying about that to me. That shot was from a small caliber gun, probably a twenty-two. I barely heard it myself, and people around here seem to have wax in their ears when it comes to gunshots.”

“Then what do we do?” Harris asked.

“Partly we wait for him to come in after us. He may think that shot got me. If he does, he won’t wait long coming after you. That is, if he knows you’re here. Anyway, there’s something in here he wants. It might be evidence he left last night, but I think more likely it’s old Wingren’s money. Whichever, it’ll bring him in.”

“I haven’t any weapon,” Cal Harris said.

“You don’t need the kind of weapon you’re thinking about. I can do any shooting for both of us. I need the weapon you don’t know you have.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ll spell it out,” Shayne said. “What we need now is your brains. You knew old John. I didn’t. You’ve been in and out of this place a lot while he was alive. You know things about what sort of man he was, how he thought, how his mind worked — things like that.”

“I don’t know,” Harris said. “I think you’re giving me more credit than I deserve. Old John was a mean, cruel man. He never told a man like me how he thought of things or how his mind worked. He was just mean.”

“You’re right,” the redhead said. “He wouldn’t have told you a thing if he knew that was what he was doing. He told you without knowing it. Little things. Things he didn’t know he was giving away. Now tell me, boy — fast — where would he hide his treasure?”

“Uh. I... don’t—”

“Fast. Tell me.”

“In the big room downstairs,” Harris blurted out.

“Fine. Fine. Let’s go down there now.”

They went through the hall, where Shayne left the single bulb burning and down the wide flight of stairs. In the living room the detective turned off the light. Enough reflected light from the city came in through the windows so that they could make out essential details once their eyes became accustomed to the semi-darkness. Anyone coming up to the windows from outside would be instantly visible from within.

“Now, you tell me why you said this room,” Shayne said.

“I don’t know. It just came to mind.”

“I realize that. But why this particular room?”

“Well,” Cal Harris said hesitantly, “I guess maybe because it was his favorite room. He spent most of his time in here. Sometimes he even slept down here on the couch or even in a chair. He made me come early to work for him and when I’d knock he was always in here already.”

“So this was his favorite room. That’s good thinking. Go on from there.”

“Okay,” said an encouraged Cal Harris. “Now he was such a mean man he wouldn’t trust nobody or nothing. If he did hide something that meant a lot to him, like money, it would be where he could keep an eye on it. Leastwise where he could keep an eye on the hiding place. Otherwise he’d always be worried that somebody had got to it. Anyway, that’s what I think.”

“I think you’ve got a good head on your shoulders,” the detective told him. “Everything I’ve learned about human nature agrees with your line of thought. Now let’s take it one step further.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” Harris said. At the moment Shayne had spoken a big airliner, gaining altitude as it took off from the Miami Airport, had thundered by low over the house. The roar had drowned out the words.

“When the wind’s a certain way them things go over here one after the other like a train of cars,” Harris explained when they could hear again.

“I said take your line of thought a step further,” Shayne said. “If he hid something in this room, what sort of hiding place would it be? A safe in the wall? Under the floor?”

“Neither of them,” Harris said. “Leastwise not in this here room. I painted this one last time it were done and there’s not any hiding places back of them walls. I had to scrape old wallpaper off every inch and I ought to know. Not under the floors neither. Them had to be sanded down and varnished. I’d have located any such places even though I wasn’t looking for them.”

“I guess you would,” said a disappointed Shayne. “So now think hard and try to put yourself in the old man’s place. If you were him, now where would you hide something in here?”

They both sat quietly for several minutes, peering about the cluttered room in the semi-darkness.

That’s how they came to hear the footsteps coming up through the yard toward the windows.

Whoever was walking out there was trying very hard not to make any noise. At times the steps ceased completely as the prowler either stopped moving entirely or hit a patch of soft grass. Unfortunately for the two he stayed away from the windows.

Cal Harris eased himself over very quietly to where Shayne sat. “I can go in the dining room and see out the windows there,” he whispered.

Shayne nodded. “Be careful. Don’t let him see you,” he whispered back.

He himself wanted to stay in the room which probably held the hidden treasure. He figured that would be the room the prowler would most likely head for first and he preferred having Cal Harris out of the way in case of a fight.

Mike Shayne himself got quietly out of the chair where he’d been sitting and eased over to the window. Behind him he was barely able to hear Cal Harris leaving the room. In spite of his two canes, the partly crippled boy moved like a shadow. Once he was in the hall it was impossible to hear him at all.

By the time the big detective got to the window the prowler outside was out of sight behind some flowering bougainvillea vines and hibiscus bushes that grew against the old house to the left of the living room windows.

Shayne strained his ears, but just at that moment one of the big jetliners went roaring overhead. The sound he’d been trying to hear was somehow drowned out. He knew instinctively that it had been important, but there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

By the time he could hear again the footsteps outside the house had stopped. The prowler might have moved on, or merely be standing still. There was no way he could find out without leaving the house himself, and he didn’t want to do that. Instead he stayed right where he was. He could watch all entrances to this particular room until Cal Harris got back.

That set him to wondering. The crippled young man should have had time to look out the window of the adjoining room and be back by now. He strained his ears again, but it was impossible to hear anything but the muted voice of the city night like a background murmur.

Cal Harris had definitely been gone too long. Shayne wondered if he’d done right to trust his hunch and trust the young man to begin with. Maybe Harris had known where the money was hidden and taken the opportunity when he and Shayne were separated to go and get it.

The big man had a strong conviction that wasn’t so. He liked both Cal and Sally Harris from the start, and his ability to judge character had seldom played him false over the years. Still, he knew he’d be a fool not to check up and find out for sure.

His eyes were by now so accustomed to the dim light that he was able to move about the cluttered living room as silently as a drifting leaf in the wind.

Once he got into the hall he wished he hadn’t left the one small bulb burning on the stair landing. It let him see, but his eyes would have to readjust again when he got into another of the darkened rooms. He found the switch and killed that light, then paused a moment to get used to the dark again.

Another plane was roaring above the house. Shayne wished they’d use another flight pattern for a while. He was beginning to realize he’d need all five senses unobstructed to survive at all in this eerie house. A sense of indefinable but tangible menace was growing in his brain and body.

When the plane had passed he listened again. As far as his still partly deafened ears could detect, nothing was moving anywhere in the big house.

Shayne moved quietly down the hall to the door that led into the dining room. It was closed and no sound came from behind the panel. He touched the doorknob and turned it slowly so as to make no sound at all. Then he pushed the door open, stepped swiftly inside and to the side of the door. Every sense was alert to detect the slightest sign of danger.

There was none.

He looked around the room. It, too, was cluttered with furniture and even objects piled on the floor. The top of the big old dining table of carved Haitian mahogany was so littered that in the semi-dark it was like a bargain counter in one of the cheap tourist-trap stores on south Miami Beach.

Everything was there but the one thing Mike Shayne wanted to see. There wasn’t a sign anywhere of young Cal Harris. There wasn’t even the sound of his breathing, which should have been audible in the intervals when no plane was passing overhead.

Shayne didn’t try to call out. If Harris had been ambushed and killed or taken captive, the killer might still be lurking in this very room.

He would know Mike Shayne was in the house. The big man had gone to enough trouble spreading that word during the afternoon. He hadn’t expected the killer to be one step ahead of him, however.

Or was his first suspicion correct? Had Cal Harris made a bee line for the hidden treasure as soon as he left Shayne?

The redhead started a fast circuit of the room. He was watching for any sign of Cal Harris’ body. He was fully alert to counter any sudden movement within the room which might presage an attack. He was alert and prepared for anything — at least he thought he was.

His right foot came down on something hard that rolled and twisted under his weight. That foot shot out from under him.

He twisted his big body violently and flailed his arms to regain balance. In the dark one fist hit something that fell over with a crash. He twisted again to break his fall and then found himself on the floor half jammed under the big table.

The whole house shook as another climbing jet went out to sea right over its roof.

VIII

Mike Shayne got his gun out in an instant — half groggy as he was. Nothing happened. Nobody attacked him. The rest of the house was still as silent as it had been before his fall.

“Of all the damned fools,” he told himself. “Ready for anything. Bah.”

He groped about on the floor until he located the cause of his downfall. When he saw what it was his heart sank another notch.

He’d stepped on one of Cal Harris’ two heavy canes.

That meant Harris hadn’t deserted him and gone to look for the treasure. The cripple would never have left his cane just lying there on the floor. He needed both of them to move about at all easily.

There was only one conclusion. The killer was already in the house and had ambushed Cal. When Harris came into the room, he’d been bushwhacked and killed or taken prisoner.

Since Shayne couldn’t locate the body, he decided the young man must be a captive. That rearranged the detective’s whole priority list of objectives.

The first thing he had to do now was find and rescue Cal Harris. He was sure the killer would have had only one possible reason for taking the boy away with him, to torture him and force out of him whatever he might know about the hidden money.

If Cal Harris told, it would be the same as signing his own death warrant. If he couldn’t or wouldn’t give out any information to help the killer, it would probably amount to the same thing. This killer wouldn’t be the one to leave behind a live witness who might identify him at some future date.

Everything Shayne had learned so far tagged this one as smart, aggressive and utterly ruthless, not a man to take chances or leave loose ends lying around under any circumstances whatever.

Well, he wouldn’t find Harris by staying on the dining room floor. He had to get out of there and search the entire house. That wasn’t going to be easy or safe with a killer waiting and ready for him.

Shayne crawled over to the door and reached up to the knob. He opened the door with one swift motion and stuck his head out at floor level. It was a trick he’d used before in a tight place, and it had saved his life more than once.

Anybody waiting in ambush outside the door would expect the big man to walk out, not crawl. From a prone position Shayne could have spotted his feet, grabbed for the ankles and brought the man down while he was still peering into the open door for the bulk of a standing man. Once a killer had even fired two shots into the empty air where Shayne’s stomach would have been.

This time there was nobody in the hall. When Mike Shayne was sure of that he got to his own feet. He was holding Harris’ heavy cane, and had his big forty-five loose in the holster and ready for instant use if needed.

The worst part of the whole situation was that he had no idea at all where to start searching. There were at least six rooms on the ground floor where he stood, and two more stories above. The killer might be holding Cal in any of the rooms — and any one was so crowded and cluttered as to offer a fine setting for an ambush in the dark.

If the detective just went blundering about in the dark, he stood a very good chance of meeting the same fate as the young fellow had. If he tried turning on lights, he’d just alert the killer for sure as to his own whereabouts.

At that point Shayne wished old John Wingren hadn’t been too miserly to keep a phone. He wished he could put in a call to his friend Will Gentry to have the house surrounded by police so the killer’s escape would be cut off.

He didn’t dare leave the house long enough to find another phone and call for help.

Shayne decided to search the ground floor first. He didn’t think the killer had had time to carry Cal Harris’ unconscious body very far. He’d probably known that Mike Shayne was also in the house and been afraid of being surprised himself at any moment.

Of course he’d want to get the body out of the room where the attack had taken place.

Shayne was pretty sure he’d have heard the sounds of anything heavy being carried up to the second floor. The stairway was an old one and a couple of the treads were loose and creaky. It could have been done while one of the planes was overhead, but he doubted it.

The dining room was between the living room and kitchen on the left side of the hall as a person walked in from the street. There was what had probably been a butler’s pantry between it and the kitchen, but this was so narrow and so cluttered as to be little more than a hallway.

Shayne went on down the main hall toward the rear of the house. The door from the hall to the kitchen was open, and he went inside.

The first thing he checked was the door from the kitchen to the small porch at the rear of the house. That door was locked with its key and also secured by a heavy brass draw-bolt. No one could have gone out that way and shot the bolt from the outside.

As a matter of routine Shayne checked the passage through what had been the butler’s pantry. It was empty.

There was another big storage pantry or closet. Again a quick inspection showed it empty of everything except stacked cases and canned and bottled food, boxes of soaps and detergents and similar items. Old Wingren had enough stuff hoarded away to live for months without setting foot outside of his home.

There was another door set flush with the wall, back where the bulk of one of the big freezer units kept it in heavy shadow. Shayne didn’t want to turn on a light, and as a result he almost missed seeing that door.

He tried the knob. The door wasn’t locked. He pulled it open and stuck his head in. He knew instantly that this wasn’t just another closet. His head was in darkness, but it was a darkness full of smells and the sound of water dripping some distance away. A draft blew outward as he stood in the door, and he realized there must be a cellar of some considerable size — an unusual thing to find in an older type Miami home.

He still couldn’t see a thing. He stepped inside, this time being careful to slide his feet at floor level. His hand touched a wooden rail as he groped in the dark. He couldn’t see a thing.

Somebody could, though.

The only warning Mike Shayne had was from instinct. He didn’t hear anything or see anything. As long as he lived he’d never know what primal, purely sub-sensory impulse it was that made him flinch and try to draw back.

Whatever it was — it saved his life.

The piece of heavy iron pipe struck a glancing blow on the side of his head instead of a spine-shattering smash at the nape of the neck as it had been intended to do. The difference in point of impact was all-important.

For Mike Shayne, at the moment, it was no difference at all though. The skyrockets exploded inside his skull and then he went down into the deep, dark well of unconsciousness.

Dimly, in a far corner of the brain he felt himself kicked or tumbled down a short flight of steps. At the same time he thought he heard a voice calling, not nearby but a long way off. Then the pain rose to crescendo and the merciful blackness took its place.

When he began to struggle back up the long, long spiral stairway to full consciousness it was because of a thumping, a moaning, and a persistent tapping against the upper left hand part of his back.

At first he didn’t really want to wake up. It meant going back into and through all that pain again. Mike Shayne was a hard man to kill, though. He was even harder to put down and keep down. Way deep inside he knew that he had to come back to consciousness, and so he did it bit by bit and second by second.

His hands and feet were tied with what felt like clothes line and he was lying on his face on a dirty cement floor in complete blackness. A heel was jabbing at his shoulder and the moaning, mumbling sound he heard was someone trying to talk to him through a gag.

Shayne opened his mouth and groaned. To his immense surprise he realized that he wasn’t gagged.

“Stop kicking me,” he said to the darkness. “I’ll be all right again in a minute. Then I’ll see about getting loose.”

The inarticulate sounds redoubled in frequency and volume.

Shayne was thinking again.

“Stop that or you’ll choke,” he said. “Are you Cal Harris? If you are rap on the floor three times with your feet.”

He was answered by three raps.

Shayne managed to sit up. Whoever had tied him had done a careless job of it. Not only had he forgotten to gag the big man, but he’d used old and half-rotted clothesline instead of wire or strong cord.

The big man began to feel better. Given time, he was confident that he could work himself loose again.

First he managed to crawl over to where Cal Harris lay. It wasn’t easy in the dark but he got his head at the back of the boy’s neck. Some cloth had been stuffed in his mouth for a gag and then another piece of rag knotted at the back of the neck to hold the gag in place. Shayne worried that knot with his teeth until it came loose.

Then Harris was able to spit out the gag.

“Mr. Shayne,” he said, “I thought you’d never find me.”

“You were almost right,” Shayne said. “Why didn’t you bump or something to warn me when I opened the door?”

“He had a knife. Besides, I couldn’t be sure it was you.”

“What are you tied up with?”

“It feels like picture wire,” Cal Harris said.

“Then you better work on me,” Shayne said. “If we could sit up back to back you can get your fingers on the cord around my hands.”

“I can do better than that,” Harris said. “I’m lying on top of what feels like a Coke bottle.”

“Good boy,” Shayne said.

With much difficulty they managed to get into a sitting position, back to back. Shayne took the Coke bottle and managed to break it on the cement floor. After that Harris sawed at the bonds around Shayne’s wrists with a piece of the broken glass.

It was slow and chancy work. Harris had to be very careful not to cut Mike Shayne’s wrists.

“How did he get you?” Shayne asked as he worked.

“He was waiting in the dining room by the door. When I came in he grabbed me. I tried to yell but there was a plane going over.”

“So there was. I couldn’t hear you. How did he get in there ahead of you from outside?”

“He didn’t,” Harris said. “He was there already. I remember I could still hear somebody moving outside the window. I think he could too and he didn’t like it.”

“That’s fine,” Shayne said, “at least two of them.”

“Yes. After he hit you I heard a noise like somebody calling out some place in the house. I think that’s why he was in a hurry and careless when he tied you up. He had to go see. Anyway, he had a knife and he knocked me down. He asked where the money was and hit me. Then he brought me here and tied me. He was going after you, but we heard you on the kitchen floor over us.”

“Wonderful,” Shayne said. “Just fine.”

“All the time I remembered the way you looked when I left the living room. Just a dark column,” Cal Harris said, “in front of the fireplace. It looked like the moose head was yours. It made me think of old John.”

“Careful with that broken glass,” Shayne said. “What about old John?”

“He stood like that times when he didn’t know I watched. I think he prayed to that moose.”

“Nobody prays to a stuffed moose head,” Shayne said. “You must have been mistaken.”

“Anyway, I sure caught him talking to it a couple of times. What are we gonig to do now, Mr. Shayne?”

The last cord around the detective’s wrists cut through and he began to untie his ankles and then take the wire bonds off Cal Harris.

“Somebody just about broke my head,” he said. “The first thing I’m going to do is find him and do a one hundred per cent job on his noggin. You better wait here where you’re safe.”

“I’m not safe except with you,” Harris said. “You know that. Sally said you promised no harm would come to me. Besides, I might be of help.”

Shayne thought that over. “I guess you might as well come along. If I leave you here he’d just as likely come back.”

They groped around on the floor and found the cane Cal Harris had brought and the other one Shayne had been holding when he was slugged. For himself the big man took the length of iron pipe that had been used on his head. His gun was gone, of course. Add that to the killer’s knife, he thought, but didn’t mention it to Harris.

“Did you recognize the killer?” he asked.

“No, I didn’t. It was dark and I was half stunned and scared of his knife. Besides, he had a stocking over his head for a mask. His voice was muffled like. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t anybody I know, though. Where are we going now, Mr. Shayne?”

“We’re going back to the living room,” Shayne said. “I think you’re right about the hiding place being there. Are you sure it wasn’t a woman caught you instead of a man? A woman pretending to be a man, I mean?”

“To tell you the truth I’m not real sure of anything. Like I said, it was all quick and dark and I was scared. I just don’t think it was anybody I know, though.”

They were both standing on the small landing at the top of the basement stairs. The kitchen door was locked, but that was no problem for Shayne. The killer had taken his gun, but in his haste and in the dark had left the key ring of passkeys and delicate lock-picks which the detective always carried.

Even in the pitch dark he had the door open in less than fifty seconds. After the cellar, the reflected night light through the windows made vision easy in the kitchen.

They didn’t have long to look about.

There came a sudden pound of running feet on the second floor above their heads and what sounded like the thud of blows. A voice or voices cried out. Then there was the thud of a heavy fall and feet on the stairs coming down.

Shayne bolted for the door to the hallway, hit a patch of grease on the dirty floor and felt his feet shoot out from under him. He lit all sprawled out and skidded into the side of the heavy old gas range, almost knocking himself out. The sound of running feet was drowned by the roar of jet engines coming in low overhead.

By the time Cal Harris had helped Shayne back onto his feet the house was once again silent.

“What’s going on?” Harris asked.

“I’m busy making a damn fool of myself,” the redhead said. “Just shut up and let me do it. I’m doing a real fine job so far.”

“It ain’t your fault,” Harris said. “Old John was a dirty old man.”

“Come on. Let’s go back to the living room. That’s where we were headed for. No reason to change our minds now.”

They went quietly and cautiously up the hall, not seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary. The living room door was shut but not locked. Shayne eased it open very quietly.

At first the room seemed to be just as he had left it only a few long minutes before. Then he made out a deeper shadow where no shadow was supposed to be, and a very slight flicker of movement in the darkest part.

He was across the room with the speed and concentrated ferocity of a big jungle cat making its leap to kill. This time nothing tripped him or slowed him down. He was across the big room and had his hands on a wiry figure that twisted and fought under his grip. Fingernails raked his face and feet kicked viciously at his shins.

Then the sheer bulk and hard muscled in-fighting skill of the big man prevailed. The figure under his hands stopped its struggling.

“I’ve got him,” Shayne said. “Hurry up, Cal, and put on one of those lights. Let’s see what we got.”

“Cal?” said the figure in his grip. “Oh, help, Cal. Help me!”

Cal Harris jumped as if he’d been stabbed.

“Let her go,” he yelled, forgetting all about any need for silence. “Mr. Shayne, that’s my Sally you have there.”

“Oh, hell,” Shayne said. “Put on the light. Just one bulb now.” He didn’t let go of the figure which now felt strangely soft in his grip.

When Harris lit one of the small table lamps they could see that it was indeed Sally Harris in Mike Shayne’s grasp. In a man’s sport shirt and slacks and a pair of penny-loafers and with a kerchief she could easily have passed for a boy even on the street on a dark night. Shayne let go of her.

“What are you doing here?” he said in a weary tone.

“I told you today I wasn’t going to let Cal get hurt,” she said. “I followed along to see that no harm come to him and you didn’t get him arrested.”

“Right now I’d feel better if it was possible to get you both arrested, fast,” Shayne said. “Then I could get on with my job. Was that you fighting upstairs just now?”

“It was,” Sally said. “Some man jumped me. I think he wanted to kill me. He had a knife. Is he the one you’re after?”

“I think likely he is,” the redhead said. “That is, unless they just made this place into a motel for escaped lunatics. How did you get away from his knife?”

“I kicked him in the face,” Sally said simply. “He didn’t like it. Then I run down here.”

“So you did,” Shayne said. He had a feeling nothing was going to go right for him tonight.

“Was it you prowling around outside earlier, honey?” Cal Harris asked.

“It sure was, lover,” she said. “I heard you squawk through the window to the next room, so I come in looking for you. When you wasn’t there I went upstairs and called you.”

“That was what the killer heard when he tied you up,” Harris said to Shayne.

“Did he tie you up?” Sally asked. “He must be tough.”

“Just lucky,” Shayne said. “If you don’t mind telling a dumb old man, how did you get in here? I thought I had the doors all locked tight?”

“You did. I didn’t use a door. One of the windows to the library across the hall was unlocked. I just opened it and came on in. It didn’t make a sound, just like it’d been greased to slide easy.”

“It probably was,” Shayne said. “I guess the killer fixed it that way before he left last night so he’d have an easy way to come back. These are old double-hung windows. He could take the screws out of the lock so it wouldn’t hold. I’ve seen it done before.”

“You’re a smart man,” Sally said.

“Only when I’m not busy being a damn fool,” Shayne told her. “Now one more question. Be sure you don’t answer unless you know. Was it a man or woman you fought with upstairs?”

“It was a man,” Sally said. “I’m absolutely sure. I heard his voice and his hands were rough and square like a man.”

“That’s fine,” Shayne said. “Now I know what this is all about. I wasn’t sure before. A couple of things had me puzzled. Now they all fit together. I know who he is and what he did — and why he did it.”

“Well, then?” Cal Harris said.

“Well what, boy?”

“Well, why don’t we go get him? I mean, if you know who he is and all, hadn’t we better grab him and turn him in?”

“There’s plenty of time for that,” Shayne said. “He won’t go far because he hasn’t got the money yet that he’s after. Even if he did, the police can get out an all points bulletin and catch him like in a net. Once they know who they’re after, the cops can always run a man down.”

“Let’s us do it anyway,” Sally Harris said.

“Why us?”

“Because it’s us he tried to kill,” she said. “Because there might be a reward, and me and Cal need the money.”

“You and Cal get part of my reward,” Shayne said. “About ten thousand dollars of it, if I’m right.”

They both looked at him and gasped.

“You leave that killer to the pros,” Shayne said. “You forgot a couple of things. This guy’s killed once already. He’d do it again. You can bet on it. He’s tough and hard and desperate. And most important of all—”

“What?” Cal Harris interrupted.

“He’s got my gun.”

“Exactly,” said a voice from the doorway. “I have your gun.”

IX

The figure in the doorway was a slender man in dark, turtleneck sweater and slacks and rubber-soled shoes. He had a woman’s nylon stocking over his head and face for a mask. He also had Mike Shayne’s big forty-five Colt’s automatic held in his right hand and pointed at the three people standing in front of the fireplace.

“You always keep coming here,” he said, “so I guess what I’m after must be in this room. After I get you all tied up, I’ll find it.”

“Too bad for you you didn’t find it last night,” Shayne said. “You should have used a bigger gun. Then none of this would have happened.”

“What do you mean?” Sally asked.

The masked man waved the gun at them. “Go on and tell her, shamus. I’d like to know how much you really do have figured out. I don’t think you’re so smart. If you were I wouldn’t have you under the gun right now. Would I?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Shayne said. “I figured more than you think. You’ve been prowling around here watching this place for a long time to see where John hid his money. Only you never found out. Old man Smith saw you, though, and took a couple of shots at you. That hurried you up. Last night right after dark you climbed the oak tree outside the bedroom upstairs and shot the old man with a twenty-two. That’s too small a gun except for a crack shot.

“He was wounded by the ricochet. Then he fooled you. He went and called Mrs. Mullen. While you watched, she came up and fought with him. After that she went away, but you didn’t dare break in right then. It was still early and somebody might see.

“You went off to your job for a while. You work alone and nobody knew you got there late. Probably you figured you’d have to try another night. Am I right?”

“Just go on talking, shamus,” the masked man said. “I ain’t talking. You are.”

“Then you came back by here on your way home. What happened? Did you break in again?”

“You know so much I might as well finish it for you,” the killer said. “You ain’t going to tell nobody anyway. The old fool was hurt and scared. He saw me on the street and called me to come in and help get him to a doctor. I helped okay. I put him out of his misery.”

“You beat and stabbed him to death,” Shayne said, “but you were still scared of the neighbors. You set that fire so you’d have an excuse to be in the house. You went back out and discovered the fire, didn’t you? It gave you your alibi for the killing. Then you figured to come back tonight for the money. You even fixed a window so you could get in. Right?”

“You know too much,” the man said. “Now you all know too much.” He leveled the gun at Shayne.

“He’s going to kill us all,” Cal Harris said.

“Oh,” Shayne said, “Mr. Smulka only thinks that’s what he’s going to do.” Under his breath he hissed at them: “Scream.”

“What did you say?” Smulka asked. “You’re going to die, shamus.”

Sally Harris caught on fast. She opened her mouth for a wild, eldritch screech that roused every cat and dog for a mile around. When that girl screamed, she was a champion.

In spite of himself Smulka jumped. Shayne jumped too.

The big man bent his knees and dove for the killer — going in low like a football tackier.

Smulka got off one shot. He was used to a twenty-two, not a forty-five and the heavy recoil of Shayne’s souped-up handloads almost broke his wrist. The slug went high and smashed the nose of the hanging moose head. The head fell off the wall.

Shayne’s tackle cut Smulka down like an all-American taking out a high school substitute. One big hand got the man’s wrist and twisted until the bones cracked and the big gun fell from nerveless fingers. Then Shayne sat up and slugged the killer with an overhand right. Smulka went out like a light.

“My God,” Sally Harris said.

She wasn’t looking at Smulka on the floor. The wild shot had smashed the nose off the moose head. Tightly wrapped bundles of currency were falling out of the cavity onto the rug where the big head lay. Some were fifties, some hundreds, and some thousand dollar bills. The head must be full of them, the big redhead thought.

Mike Shayne said to Cal Harris, “I guess you were right, boy. I reckon old John Wingren really did pray to the moose.”