Call for Michael Shayne [= Case of the Missing Twelve Days]

Chapter eighteen Showdown at Marlin Key

Shayne was surprised to see that the time was only a few minutes to six when he went out of Masters’s front office. Clouds still covered the sun and darkness was coming on early. He got in his car and drove rapidly to the dock.

Sergeant Pepper was waiting for him, but the propeller of his one-engined plane was not turning. Instead, the sergeant was clad in a pair of greasy coveralls and was tinkering with the engine. It had started life as a Piper Cub, but Pepper had fitted it with pontoons and extra gadgets for scouting above secluded bays and inlets surrounding Miami to ferret out smugglers who crossed from Cuba and the Bahamas in small, fast boats.

To Shayne, the small craft looked frail and unairworthy, squatting awkwardly beside the dock like a queer species of grasshopper or water bug, but Sergeant Pepper was a youthful product of war flying, perfectly at home in anything air-borne, and his enthusiasm was contagious.

When Shayne reached the plane the sergeant looked up with a dirty-faced grin. “I’ll have her ready in a little while, Mr. Shayne.”

“You mean you’re not ready to take off? I phoned Gentry—”

“Yes, sir. He got word to me. I’ve been working her over all afternoon.”

“But didn’t Gentry tell you it was urgent? What seems to be the trouble?”

“The old girl’s digestion ain’t what it used to be.” The sergeant looked up and saw the bleak look in Shayne’s eyes. “Is it something important? The chief didn’t know exactly—”

“Don’t waste time on conversation,” Shayne told him. “Just get busy — get her in the air.”

“Yes, sir,” said Sergeant Pepper soberly. “Be about thirty minutes.”

Shayne groaned and began pacing up and down the dock, his ears tuned to catch the first sound of the whirling propeller. Clouds were gathering overhead, blackening the sky. The wind was fresh and humid, dampening his finger-combed hair.

It was forty-five minutes by his watch when he heard the sound that sent him trotting to the plane. Sergeant Pepper had shed his coveralls and a .38 Police Special showed on his hip. He held out a flat .45 automatic as Shayne came up.

“Chief Gentry said I was to loan you this and to see that you didn’t hurt yourself playing with it,” he said with a grin. Then, seeing Shayne’s somber face he added, “Sorry it took me so long, but I didn’t want to take a chance.”

“It couldn’t be helped,” Shayne told him, then asked, “Do you know Marlin Key?”

He reached into the cockpit. “I’ve got charts in here.”

Shayne detained him. “It might not even be charted. It’s very small and lies about six miles south of Mattewan Key.”

“I can find it without any trouble,” said the sergeant confidently. “I’ve flown over Mattewan lots of times.”

“Let’s go then.” Shayne stepped forward and gingerly eased his long frame into the open cockpit, hunched forward with his knees drawn up almost to his chin.

Sergeant Pepper gave the bobbing craft a shove away from the dock as he stepped lightly inside. He gunned the motor and they darted forward on the surface of the water for a couple of hundred yards, then rose smoothly, climbing in a slow spiral above the Devil’s Punchbowl.

The deafening noise of the motor subsided somewhat when they were high enough so the sound was not reflected back from a solid surface. Pepper checked his compass and made some adjustments of the controls, leveling off at about a thousand feet and then settling back to shout at Shayne, “Chief Gentry said I was to take orders from you. Do you want to tell me what we’re after, or is that a secret?”

Shayne shouted back, “How fast are we flying?”

“We’ll cruise at about ninety. I don’t like to push her too much.”

“Ninety is all right,” yelled Shayne. “I don’t think we could overtake them even if you pushed this thing to the limit. Three men in an express cruiser,” he went on to explain, “headed for a fishing-lodge on Marlin Key owned by one of them. They’re probably there by this time.”

“Will there be trouble?”

“One of them is a murderer,” Shayne told him as unemotionally as a man can speak while shouting to be heard. “I think he plans to kill the other two tonight and try to make a getaway in the boat tomorrow morning.”

Sergeant Pepper nodded gravely. “If there’s going to be shooting when we land, maybe you’d better tell me which one is the murderer.”

“Frankly,” said Shayne, “I don’t know myself. I think I know, but it could be any one of them. You’ll be more help if you don’t know what I suspect. Just keep your eyes open and your mouth shut and your gun ready. I’ll be putting the pressure on and we can’t trust any one of the three not to make a sudden play.”

Pepper nodded again to indicate that he understood, and Shayne continued in explanation: “One of the men is Arthur Devlin, wanted in connection with the Munroe and Brice murders. The others are a couple of friends of his who ostensibly believe him a victim of circumstances and are helping him avoid arrest. It’s my hunch that two of the trio don’t even know about Janet Brice’s murder, or they wouldn’t be trusting themselves on this trip with her murderer.”

As they droned steadily southwestward he went on to name and describe the other two men and to give Pepper a brief outline of the background for two murders, being very careful to keep his own theories about the case to himself so that the sergeant wouldn’t be any more suspicious of one man than of the others. This was imperative because he, himself, didn’t actually know. He thought he knew, but there was a gnawing doubt which wouldn’t let his belief develop into a certainty.

When he finished, he gave himself over to his own grim thoughts, which seemed to pound through his brain like the roar of the engine. Devlin was the obvious suspect if one accepted his entire amnesia story as a tissue of lies. Yet there was the evidence gathered at the Argonne House indicating that his client had been living with Marge Jerome and pretending to be her husband since the very next day after he was supposed to have sailed on the cruise ship.

But someone had been aboard the Belle impersonating him. Someone who had gained Janet Brice’s confidence and sent a radiogram to Doctor Thompson the next day signed with Devlin’s name. Whoever had done that could easily have sent the radiogram to Janet in Key West that lured her to her death.

Roger Morgan? Without his glasses Morgan would fit the description of Devlin obtained from the ship’s steward. Yet, so would Thompson fit the description — except for his mustache.

Morgan was the best bet for having passed as Devlin. Morgan had gone on a week’s vacation the next day, which would have given him an opportunity to jump ship in Havana and return to Miami without having to explain his absence — something a busy doctor could hardly accomplish.

Or had Devlin and Morgan connived in the imposture together? If so, why? So that Devlin could contrive to spend a couple of weeks with Marge Jerome, passing himself off as her husband? That didn’t seem feasible — yet there was the roll of bills. How did that enter into the plot? And the felt hat Devlin claimed he found in the death room which had not been worn there by either Devlin or Munroe!

And now there was the established fact that Thompson’s nurse was in reality Marge Jerome, a dope addict, wife of a jailbird, and ex-girl-friend of Skid Munroe, dope peddler.

Sergeant Pepper interrupted his musings by joggling his arm and pointing downward and ahead. “That’s Mattewan Key,” he yelled. “Over on the left — that tiny spot — that must be Marlin.”

The sun hung just above the horizon, free for a moment of the clouds, casting a red-gold sheen over the earth. Shayne nodded and leaned close to Pepper to shout, “Will you have any trouble setting this doodlebug down?”

Pepper shook his head and grinned. “Any place you say.”

“Stay about this altitude,” Shayne directed, “and fly directly over Marlin Key. If we see a boat there, go right on over as though the place didn’t interest us at all. If it’s possible, I’d like to land without them seeing us.”

Pepper nodded and turned his attention to piloting the small plane directly over the tiny spot of land in the vast immensity of water. Marlin Key swiftly took on form beneath them, a rock formation some two miles long and half a mile wide, curved somewhat to form a small lagoon near the center, close to which they could see the only building on the Key, a sprawling structure on the edge of the beach with what appeared to be a wooden pier extending out into the water.

Sergeant Pepper nodded excitedly when they were nearly overhead. “There’s a launch tied up at the dock. About a thirty-footer. It’s a good thing the sun came out from behind those clouds.”

“Keep right on going,” Shayne told him.

“It shouldn’t be too difficult to turn back and come up on the edge from the other side of the Key unobserved. The breeze is from the southwest, and if I make a wide circle to come back from the other direction and set her down a mile or more offshore, we’ll be down-wind and should be able to taxi ashore with a throttled engine they can’t hear.”

Shayne said, “It’s up to you. Make as wide a swing as you like, just so you get this thing down before it’s really dark.”

Pepper nodded confidently, glanced over his shoulder to be certain the Key was far enough behind them so the maneuver would be unnoticed, then began a slow, sweeping circle to his left.

The sun was gone by the time the arc was completed and the curtain of clouds which had lifted for the brief glow of sunset floated in again, closing out the spectacle. They were headed back toward the Key and about three miles due east of it. Pepper cut his motor and put the nose down in a long smooth descent into the wind, and darkness covered them when the pontoons touched water lightly, skipped into the air as though repelled, touched again and clung.

They were at least a mile off-shore, on the far side of the Key from the lodge. The motor made little more noise than an automobile as Pepper taxied in carefully, guided by the lights of the lodge windows, to the smooth beach, losing speed gradually and expertly until he was able to leap over the side in a foot of water and turn the light craft so Shayne could step ashore on damp sand.

“If you’ll give me a hand,” said Pepper, “we can drag her up above waterline when I can throw a line around the rock and she’ll be safe for the night if a wind doesn’t blow up.”

With each grasping a wing-strut, they worked the light plane easily up onto the sand, moored her firmly, and Shayne led the way across the low coral ridge separating them from the lodge.

“All these men know me by sight,” he told Pepper. “I don’t expect any trouble at the outset — not until one of them realizes the game is up. You follow my lead and try to stay in a position where you can watch all three of them all the time.”

There was no sound from the lodge, and it was evident that their approach had gone unnoticed. Shayne stepped lightly across the porch, followed closely by Pepper, and opened the door without knocking.

The interior was a pleasant and cheery sight. A gasoline lantern was suspended from a low beam in the center of the long main room, shedding light on bright cotton rugs and comfortable chairs grouped around a table where the three men lounged with glasses in their hands and an unmistakable air of good fellowship in their attitudes.

A murmur of conversation ceased as the door opened and three heads turned to look at the intruder on the threshold. Devlin came to his feet first, his face flushed with anger. “Shayne! So you were double-crossing me — and you followed me here!”

Shayne’s coat was unbuttoned and hanging open, revealing the butt of the automatic in his belt. His gaunt face was impassive as he stalked into the room with Sergeant Pepper at his heels. “I followed you here, Devlin, but I don’t know about double-crossing you. You’re all three under arrest. You know what the charge is against you, Devlin.” He turned to Thompson and Morgan. “The penalty for aiding a murder suspect to escape is from one to ten years,” he advised them.

“Nonsense,” sputtered Thompson. “There was no question of escape. Art was simply going to remain here until you dumb cops got things cleared up and it was safe for him to return. Morgan and I didn’t relish the idea of seeing you frame a friend of ours for murder.”

Shayne shrugged and walked over to the limestone fireplace and leaned an elbow on the mantel. Sergeant Pepper remained unobtrusively watchful nearer the front door.

“Such a friendship is a beautiful thing,” Shayne said ironically. “Why did you run out on me, Devlin?”

“Why did I run out on you!” His face twisted spasmodically. “After the way I trusted you and put myself in your hands and you went straight to the police with everything I told you! Can you deny that I’d be in jail right now if I hadn’t got out of Miami when I did?”

“No,” said Shayne, “I don’t deny that. But who told you I was working with the cops against you?”

“Chief Painter admitted it to Tommy. He said you had promised to give me up to them whenever they wanted, and that you were gaining my confidence by pretending to look for evidence to clear me while you were actually building up a case against me.”

Shayne looked at Thompson in astonishment. “Painter told you that?”

“He certainly did. Boasted about it, in fact. Why else do you think I would have insisted on Art getting out of your apartment and coming down here?”

“How did you know he was in my apartment?”

“Chief Painter practically told me. I took a chance and called there, and Art answered the phone.”

Shayne said quietly, “Painter lied, Devlin, if he told Thompson that.” His glance strayed to Roger Morgan. “How did you get in on this?”

Morgan removed his nose-glasses and polished them absently. “How did you know we were here?” he countered.

“Your boss told me.”

“I see.” Morgan replaced his glasses. “Then I’m not giving away any secret when I tell you that Doctor Thompson and Devlin came to Mr. Masters for help against police persecution. They wanted fast transportation down here, so I ran them down.”

“Very kind of you,” said Shayne sardonically. “You risked a ten-year jail sentence just out of the kindness of your heart? Nuts. Why did you come, Morgan? After all this time — have you come to the conclusion that the man who blackmailed Lily Masters into suicide is one of these two?”

“Now see here,” Thompson began, and Morgan exclaimed, “Blackmail? Mrs. Masters? I don’t know what—”

“Isn’t that what she said in her suicide note? You were in love with her, weren’t you, Morgan? That’s why you withheld the note from the police and from Masters. Because it was actually written to you. Were you blackmailing her?”

“I was not in love with her,” said Morgan angrily, “and I certainly wasn’t blackmailing her.”

“I believe you were in love with her, and were afraid she had named you in the letter she wrote her sister. You couldn’t afford to let Devlin go aboard the Belle and get the information from Janet Brice, so you went in his place.”

“So — I wasn’t aboard the Belle?” Devlin asked, his voice little louder than a mutter, as though he spoke to himself. “If you can prove that, Shayne—”

“Shut up,” Shayne growled. “I’m the guy who’s been double-crossing you, remember? Why doesn’t somebody offer me a drink?” he added.

The three men looked down as though surprised to see the glasses in their hands. Doctor Thompson smiled pleasantly and emptied his. “Sorry to be such a poor host. You and Morgan ready for a refill, Art?”

They both drained their glasses and held them out to Thompson. He asked Shayne, “Rye or Scotch? There’s plain water and ice.”

Shayne said, “Rye.” He looked across the room inquiringly at Pepper, but the sergeant shook his head. Shayne followed Thompson casually as he went through a door into a well-equipped kitchen and lit a candle in a wall bracket. “You seem to have all the comforts of home here, Doctor.”

“I keep the place stocked for emergencies — but I haven’t been able to get down at all this summer.” Thompson opened a refrigerator and took out a tray of ice cubes.

Shayne said, “Make mine strong,” and returned to the living-room.

Devlin and Morgan were sitting tensely erect in constrained silence while Pepper watched them from behind. Shayne crossed to the sergeant and whispered in his ear. Pepper nodded and took a flashlight from his pocket, disappeared into one of the bedrooms while Shayne strolled back to take up his position on the hearth.

“Where were you at twelve o’clock today, Devlin?” he asked abruptly.

He looked startled at the question and said, “Why — in your apartment.”

“Thompson telephoned you at eleven-thirty,” Shayne reminded him, “to tell you what Painter had said about me turning you in. Did you stay there after that?”

“I was afraid to go out,” Devlin confessed. “And Tommy thought I would be safe there as long as they didn’t know that I knew I wasn’t safe. Tommy couldn’t get away until after office hours at two o’clock, so I stayed until one-thirty.”

“Which you have no way of proving,” said Shayne harshly. “Where were you at noon, Morgan?”

“What’s that to you?”

Doctor Thompson entered with a tray of drinks, ice cubes tinkling pleasantly in tall glasses.

“Janet Brice was murdered in Miami between twelve and one o’clock — after your radiogram brought her from Key West,” Shayne told Devlin conversationally. “I just wondered if any of you had an alibi.”

“No!” Devlin got to his feet slowly, his face white and frightened, the injury above his ear an angry purple.

Roger Morgan said slowly, “Janet — Brice? I’ve been waiting to hear something like this.” He was on his feet, his teeth bared and a revolver in his hand. “Don’t reach for your gun, Shayne.”

Shayne didn’t move. He glanced casually over his shoulder at Thompson, who stood stockstill with the tray of glasses extended awkwardly in front of him. He said, “Now that we’re all cozy like this, Doctor, suppose you tell us why you employed a dope addict like Marge Jerome as your office nurse?”

“To hell with that stuff, Shayne,” said Morgan thickly. “If Devlin murdered Janet, it’s a cinch he’s also responsible for Lily’s death. I know all about his amnesia story — he and Doc Thompson cooked it up and I don’t intend—” There was a sharp report from Pepper’s service revolver and Morgan’s gun dropped to the floor. Shayne lunged forward and scooped it up while Morgan stood stupidly staring around the room.

None of them had seen Shayne’s quick nod toward the back of the room where Pepper stood. Shayne shoved Morgan into his chair and said over his shoulder:

“Nice timing, Sergeant. Keep on looking if you haven’t found anything yet. That was a dumb play,” he went on to Morgan. “Even if you did sign Devlin’s name to the radiogram and then kill Mrs. Brice, killing Devlin wouldn’t keep us from eventually learning the truth.”

Morgan laughed jarringly. “So he’s taken you in, too. What makes you think he’s so innocent?”

“I know he didn’t kill Janet Brice because he couldn’t have sent the radiogram to her. It was filed in Miami at ten-thirty and I was talking to him in my apartment on the phone at that time — and no calls were made out of my room.”

He paused while Thompson moved forward slowly with the tray of drinks. “Just put them here on the mantel for a moment,” he told the doctor, watching while Thompson set the tray down and took one of the glasses for himself.

“What was it you asked Tommy about Marge Jerome?” Devlin asked in the moment of silence.

“I asked why he employed her as his office nurse under the name of Miss Dort.”

“Is it a crime to give a girl a chance to rehabilitate herself?” asked Thompson. He sipped his cold drink with obvious enjoyment.

“It’s no crime,” Shayne agreed, “but it’s queer about her being Skid Munroe’s girl — and the one whom Devlin chose to take up with while supposedly suffering from amnesia.”

“Marge?” Devlin whispered hoarsely. “Your nurse, Tommy?”

“Didn’t you see her when you went to his office today?”

“I — didn’t go to his office. He met me at Bert Masters’s office.”

“Give me a drink,” Morgan said.

“Just a minute,” said Shayne, “and we’ll all have one.” He looked across the room hopefully and stepped away from the mantel, saying, “Get something, Sergeant?”

“I think it’s what you need.” The three men looked at Pepper, saw him pass a folded newspaper to Shayne.

The silence in the room was tense for a moment. The three men at the table looked at each other, then Morgan got to his feet with a loud oath and picked up one of the three glasses remaining on the tray.

Shayne whirled in time to see him lifting it to his lips. “Drop it, Morgan!” he shouted.

The man’s hand jerked with fright and the glass fell to the hearth and shattered at his feet.

Shayne strode forward grimly, slapping the folded paper

against his thigh. “I’d prefer to see Doctor Thompson drink one of these first,” he said flatly. “How about it, Doctor?”

“I have a drink,” said Thompson, holding his glass high. “I suggest that these are specially good.” Shayne took one from the tray and held it out to him with a half smile on his wide mouth. “I’ll trade with you, Doctor.”

“Very well.” Thompson shrugged and extended his half-full glass to the detective. In accepting the full one in return it slipped from his fingers and crashed on the floor.

Shayne nodded. “I didn’t really need that added proof, but it verifies the suspicion I’ve had ever since I learned about this humanitarian trip to your lodge. You came loaded with enough poison to kill a dozen men, didn’t you, Doctor? I forced your hand by walking in on you, and you took a desperate chance to get rid of the three of us at once, hoping to cope with Sergeant Pepper later.”

“Poison?” The doctor’s laughter was easy and unforced. “If you’ll hand me that other glass—”

“No.” Shayne blocked his way as he moved toward the tray. “I’ll save that one for chemical analysis. You really did an admirable job of covering your tracks all the way,” he went on, unfolding the newspaper Pepper had found in one of the bedrooms, “but I’ve realized all along that this lonely fishing-lodge would have been the perfect place to be landed by a seaplane from Havana and remain in seclusion while you grew back the mustache you shaved off as a disguise while you impersonated Devlin on the Belle of the Caribbean.”

“You must be insane,” said Thompson. “Heavens, man, I have such a heavy practice that I haven’t been able to get away for even a quiet week-end all summer.”

“So you took pains to tell me in the kitchen a moment ago. One of the most curious things about this whole affair has been the ransacking of your office files early this morning — by a burglar who took great pains to destroy all your records for the past two weeks. That made me wonder if perhaps there were no records for the first week after the Belle sailed — and you had pulled the job yourself to conceal that fact if an investigation turned in that direction.”

“That is utterly absurd. I explained how I was called away by a fake call—”

“I know,” said Shayne pleasantly, “you were very adept at explaining a great many things. Let’s see what you can do with this.” He held the unfolded newspaper in his hands. “A copy of La Prensa, Havana, Cuba, June twelfth. The date the Belle of the Caribbean touched at Havana and a passenger who called himself Arthur Devlin disappeared from on board. You might try telling us how it got in your bedroom here.”

“I — it’s some sort of put-up job,” Thompson burst out. “It doesn’t prove a thing. It might have been planted here.”

“Just as your felt hat was planted in the bedroom last night where Skid Munroe was murdered after he had come there by arrangement with Marge Jerome to buy ten thousand dollars’ worth of drugs from you?” Shayne taunted him. “We’ve checked your blood group, Thompson, and it coincides with an analysis of the sweat in that hat. Marge has already told her story — and don’t forget the manager got a good look at you when you asked for Skid Munroe. Your cabin steward on the Belle will recognize you, too, as soon as we shave that mustache off again and take your glasses away from you—”

Shayne was thrown aside as Thompson, without warning, lunged at him, reaching wildly for the glass of liquor remaining on the mantel.

But Sergeant Pepper had quietly moved in as Shayne spoke and had a grip on Thompson before he could get his hands on the glass of poisoned liquor he had destined for one of the others.

When Thompson was prostrate on the floor with handcuffs locking his wrists behind his back, Shayne told Devlin and Morgan, “I don’t know about you two, but I’m going to take a chance on one of those bottles in the kitchen.” Without a word they followed him out of the room.