Death Has Three Lives

Chapter Nine

Lucy Hamilton landed on hands and knees in loose sand at the foot of the embankment, less than ten feet from the edge of the water. After the violent crash caused by the gray sedan landing upside down in the bay directly in front of her, there was almost utter silence as she crouched there trying to orient herself — trying to realize exactly what had happened — trying to think what she should do next.

Michael Shayne hadn’t planned it to end like this. She knew that definitely. He had planned and hoped to capture the man alive after she tossed the package into his car.

She had realized, from what Michael told her when handing her the package, that it contained some sort of bomb or explosive apparatus instead of seventy thousand dollars. He had warned her explicitly against pulling the small knob protruding from the side until the instant it left her hands, and had emphasized the fact that she must immediately fling herself over the edge of the Causeway after releasing it.

But there were two things Shayne hadn’t been able to take into account while planning how to entrap the man. He hadn’t known the driver of the car would accelerate so fast the moment the bomb landed, or (even if he did and thus lost control of the speeding vehicle when the explosion occurred seconds later) that the accident would occur at a point where there was no guard fence along the edge to hold the car on the roadway.

So Lucy knew miserably that she had failed in her mission as she crouched in the soft sand thirty feet below the roadway. The gray sedan had sunk without a trace in the deep ship channel of the bay which paralleled the Causeway here, and there didn’t appear the slightest chance that the driver could be rescued alive. So, for the second time this same evening, a man who might be a murderer and who certainly had some guilty knowledge of murder had died through some fault of hers before he could be questioned.

She shuddered at the thought and tried to thrust it into the back of her mind. On the Causeway above her, she could hear cars stopping now, shouts and excited voices as occupants leaped out and converged at the point where the sedan had gone over.

At the same moment, she heard a second sound. From out on the surface of the bay to her right. The loud splashing of oars, and then the low voice of Michael Shayne calling urgently, “Lucy! Are you there, Lucy?”

She scrabbled to her feet and saw him plainly. Bending his back into powerful oar strokes that were driving a light skiff toward the shore twenty feet ahead of her.

“Here, Michael.” She kept her voice low so it wouldn’t be heard above, but sent it floating out over the water so he would find her. So, this was the way he had planned it, she thought dazedly as she plowed forward through the sand to intercept him. He had been offshore in a rowboat all the time. Pacing himself to the speed at which she progressed, waiting for the sound of explosion that would tell him the blackmailer had fallen into his trap.

The prow of the rowboat came in fast to ram against the sand directly in front of her just as the beams of two flashlights flashed down over the side of the embankment ahead of them and men began sliding down to the point where the gray sedan had gone under.

“In here quick, Lucy,” Shayne ordered, standing and stretching out his hand to take hers. The moment she stepped inside, he shoved off hard and swung the prow about to row toward the excited group at the foot of the embankment ahead.

He spoke low and urgently. “Sit quiet and let me do the talking. We’ve been for a midnight row. I know the man went over the edge and is probably drowned. Tell me just this. Did everything go as planned? Anyone see you before the accident? Anything to hook you up with it?”

“I don’t think so. There were no cars close when he pulled up. It was awful, Michael. If he hadn’t pulled away so fast. There was a loud explosion and then suddenly the car went over.”

“I guessed how it happened.” They were very close to the group by the water’s edge now. Shayne stopped rowing to call loudly, “What’s the trouble? From where we were out on the bay it sounded like a car went over.”

“Just what happened.” Several voices began to babble excitedly. “Deep water here. No one really saw it happen. Nobody seems to know—”

At that moment a brilliant searchlight lit up the scene from the roadway above and an authoritative voice called down gruffly, “Come back up here, all of you. Got to start moving your cars out of the way to make room for a winch truck. Any of you know anything, we’ll take your statements up here.”

“I’ve got a rowboat,” Shayne shouted up at the glaring light. “Want me to stand by here to help you locate the car?”

“Good idea. You go down, Roberts. Hustle the others up out of the way. Having a boat on hand will save time, though, God knows, whoever went down in the car won’t be caring by this time.”

A uniformed man came sliding down, brusquely ordering the onlookers up to move their cars from blocking rescue operations. He stood stock-still and stared with openmouthed astonishment at the redhead and his secretary sitting in the boat under the bright light from above.

“Michael Shayne, by all that’s holy! What in the name of God are you doing here?”

“Offering to help you locate the car that went over,” Shayne snapped. “Hello yourself, Roberts. Ever met my secretary, Miss Hamilton?”

“No— I—” The young patrolman was still goggling helplessly. He turned to shout lustily up the bank, “It’s that redheaded shamus from Miami, sarge. Here in a rowboat with a dame.”

“Okay. So it’s a cinch they didn’t shove him over,” an irate voice shouted back. “Row out from shore a little and try an oar to see if you find anything. Wrecker’ll be here in a minute with grappling hooks.”

“You step out, Lucy,” said Shayne quietly. “I may be stuck here for hours helping them. No use your staying. Why don’t you go up and bum a ride back to Miami? Get some sleep and I’ll tell you about it in the morning.”

She bit her underlip and nodded unhappily. “All right, if that’s what you want me to do, Michael.”

The young officer moved forward to stand in a few inches of water and give her a hand so she could leap from the prow to dry sand, and Shayne ordered sternly from behind her, “Don’t let any of the cops up there give you any lip, angel. Just because I want to take a moonlight boatride with my secretary isn’t any reason for them to get fresh.”

She knew he was trying to tell her she mustn’t under any circumstances admit the truth about the part she had played in the accident to the gray sedan, and she replied meekly, “All right, Mr. Shayne. Please do be careful.”

She climbed upward slowly, coming on a scene of utmost excitement and confusion when she reached the roadway.

At least fifty motorists headed in both directions across the Causeway had been morbidly attracted by the accident, and half a dozen policemen were cursing and arguing with them to get back in their cars and clear the traffic lanes for rescue vehicles.

No one paid any attention to Lucy as she shrank back out of the glare of the searchlights, tried to pick her way across to the other side of the Causeway where she might ask some motorist for a lift home.

She reached the safety island between east and westbound traffic, and paused to catch her breath when a man hurried up behind her and caught her arm tightly. She whirled about to see Timothy Rourke’s grimly elongated countenance. “What happened, Lucy? Where’s Mike? Did it happen to the man we wanted?”

Lucy nodded mutely to the last question, wilted suddenly in Rourke’s arms, and sobbed.

“Michael’s down there in a rowboat helping the police find the car. He told me to catch a ride home. It was awful, Tim. It happened just the way you and Michael thought it would. Only he was going too fast when your bomb went off, and lost control and there wasn’t any fence to stop him.”

“Tough,” said Rourke tersely. He guided her up the safety island to his car with its Press sign on the windshield. “You hop in and wait a few minutes. I’ll just make one check to see if anyone knows anything, then drive you home.”

Lucy settled back with a shudder and closed her eyes tightly as he slammed the door and hurried away. She tried desperately not to think about the man in the front seat of the gray sedan at the bottom of the bay. He probably deserved it, she told herself over and over again. And it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Things had just gone wrong. Shayne had had to do it that way, she told herself desperately. The man had given him no choice. He had simply signed his own death warrant when he assumed the redheaded detective could be blackmailed.

She remained with her head back against the cushions and did not open her eyes when Rourke returned and started his motor. He pulled out slowly past a policeman, gained the right-hand lane toward Miami, and told her ruefully, “I was about five minutes too late to do anybody any good. I was hurrying back from the Beach on my last round trip because I had a feeling it wouldn’t be much longer, and suddenly saw cars piling up in front of me and knew it had happened. Did you see him, Lucy? Get any dope at all?”

“Hardly. Not to recognize him again. He was big, and I had the impression middle-aged. It was a gray sedan, Tim. He did it exactly the way he said he would. What... was in the package, Tim?”

“A gas bomb with a slight charge of explosive,” he told her moodily. “We had to figure it out fast, and Mike got Will Gentry’s top explosives man to put it together for him. The explosion wasn’t meant to be much, but the gas should have knocked him unconscious before he could stop the car and get out. It figured good,” he went on angrily. “I was to drive back and forth on the Causeway without being conspicuous, and Mike was to keep close offshore in that rowboat. He figured he’d be able to see you walking along, silhouetted in passing car lights, so it’d be only minutes before he could row ashore and reach the guy after the gas knocked him out. Just what did go wrong, Lucy?”

“Maybe it didn’t go off soon enough. I pulled the knob and threw it in.” She shuddered at the recollection. “He accelerated so fast. He must have been going forty when it happened. Even then, it might have worked the way Michael planned if the guard fence hadn’t happened to be down right at that point.”

“It was set for ten seconds after you pulled the pin,” the reporter explained. “Mike wanted to give you time to get out of the way, but he couldn’t risk giving him time to pick it up and examine it.” He shrugged wearily. “Now he’s going to have a hell of a time explaining to the police what he was doing out in a rowboat right where the accident happened. And if there’s anything to connect him with the dead body when they recover it, there may really be hell to pay. The cop who fixed the bomb for him was plenty curious, though he didn’t ask many questions at the time. But if he ever adds things up and gets the right answer.” He shrugged again as he left the end of the Causeway and turned toward Lucy’s address. “It sounded like a good idea.”

“Come up and have a drink with me, Tim.” Lucy impulsively put her hand on his arm as he stopped outside her door. “I just don’t want to be alone. And I’m sure Michael will call here the moment he can get away from there. I know you want to know what happened.”

“And I can use a drink of your good bourbon, honey child.” Rourke swung his long-legged body out and followed her to the foyer where she unlocked an inner door and preceded him up one flight of stairs.

While Lucy hurried into the kitchen for glasses and liquor, Rourke went to the telephone and dialed a number. He asked for the city desk when he got an answer, then asked casually, “Got anything yet on a car that went over the County Causeway into the drink about half an hour ago? This is Tim Rourke.”

He listened, nodding his head without much interest until he jerked to attention suddenly just as Lucy entered the room behind him.

“Are you sure about that?” he demanded incredulously. “I drove by shortly after it happened and didn’t hear about that.”

He listened again, then said tensely, “This may be a hell of an important story, Ed. Put every man you can roust out into checking that story and trying to get hold of the fellow. Look! I’m at this telephone number.” He read Lucy’s number out loud. “Call me here the moment you get a single thing on it.”

He hung up slowly, turned to Lucy with an odd expression on his face. “Just called the paper.” He tried to keep his voice calm, but couldn’t conceal the racing excitement that filled him. “They’ve got a tip that the driver of the car didn’t go over in it at all. That he was thrown clear in the roadway and the first motorist at the scene picked him up unconscious and rushed him off to a hospital.”

“Thank heavens for that,” said Lucy thinly. “I feel less like a murderer.”

“Maybe it’d be better if you were. If the cops get to him before we do—” He shook his head angrily and strode forward to snatch the bottle from Lucy’s tray.