Dividend on Death

CHAPTER 18

It was hours later when Shayne came back to consciousness in the emergency ward of the Jackson Memorial Hospital. He gritted his teeth, sat up, and asked what time it was. A doctor came hurrying to his bed and told him it was four o’clock and that he must take it easy and get some rest until his strength returned.

Shayne said, “Rest be damned. I’ve been here three hours already. Where are my clothes?”

It was the same doctor who had treated his wounds when he was brought in from the midnight shooting. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “All right. Be stubborn. I warned you to take care of yourself the other time. You’ll carry this cast around for an extra month just because you horsed around when you should have been in bed.”

Shayne chuckled and asked for a cigarette. Then he again demanded his clothes.

The doctor shook his head and called an orderly to bring Shayne’s clothes. “But, what’s your hurry?” he argued. “We were going to move you into a private room as soon as you woke up. A night here with fresh dressings in the morning would fix you up as good as new.”

“I’ve got a date,” Shayne informed him with a wide grin. He dressed with the orderly’s aid, and whistled expressively when he found the twenty thousand dollars intact.

“You’re an honest bunch,” he grunted.

The orderly gazed at the bills in respectful awe.

“God in heaven! Who are you? The Secretary of the Treasury?”

“Just a flatfoot trying to get along,” Shayne told him cheerfully. He put the money back in his pocket and his feet on the floor. A slight dizziness was the only discomfort he felt. “If you’ll whistle up a taxi, I’ll be set,” he announced.

The orderly complied, eying Shayne with unmitigated respect as he went out.

Shayne gave the driver his address and settled back comfortably. As they turned into Flagler he heard the newsboys shouting an extra. “All about the Brighton case! Three dead in final roundup!” Shayne had the driver pull up at the curb while he got a paper. He spread it out on his knees and chuckled while reading the lurid news account of the affair.

Peter Painter was the hero of the day. According to printed accounts, he had fearlessly entered the fray single-handed and come out with three dead, one wounded, and two prisoners.

Under questioning, the sick man in the upstairs room had confessed he was Julius Brighton, and that his brother Rufus had died in New York-insisting that he died a natural death, and admitting no regret over the attempted imposture which Montrose and Oscar, his former cell-mate, had helped engineer. The trunk containing Rufus’s embalmed body had been dug up on the beach. The bogus nurse had confessed nothing, but a ballistic test proved that her. 25 automatic had killed Charlotte Hunt.

The real Myrtle Godspeed had made a telephonic statement of her innocent entanglement in the affair, and arrangements had been made to bring her back from Cuba to confront the woman who had inveigled her into accepting an expense-paid vacation in Cuba.

That was about all. It was enough. Shayne’s name was mentioned only casually, and not at all in connection with the solving of the case. “Which,” he told himself as he got out at his hotel, “certainly justifies a payoff.”

He went in the side entrance and up to his apartment. A maid had cleaned up all the evidences of disorder left by Gordon when he searched the apartment.

Shayne went to the kitchen and crushed ice cubes into a pitcher which he filled with water. He set it on the table with a large glass and a wineglass. Then he opened a fresh bottle of Martell and set it beside the pitcher.

Drawing up a comfortable chair, he lit a cigarette and poured himself a drink. Sitting alone, he sipped the liquor and smoked meditatively while strength flowed back to his body.

The telephone rang as he finished a second glass. He answered it and heard Painter on the wire.

The chief of detectives’ voice was exultant. “Everything has worked out perfectly, Shayne. The reward will be paid to me personally. I’ll turn it over to you-privately-as soon as I receive it.”

“Two and a half G’s?” Shayne questioned laconically.

“That’s right. And thanks.”

Shayne said, “Money talks,” and hung up.

He went back to the table and finished his drink. He then took a sheet of paper out of the drawer and looked for a pencil. There wasn’t any. A lopsided grin spread over his face as he picked up the fountain pen which he had taken from the sickroom.

He sat down and wrote across the top of the sheet:

He nodded approvingly at the figures and poured himself another drink. Dusk was creeping in through the windows, but he didn’t turn on the lights. Suddenly he remembered something. He got up and went to the kitchen door. It was still bolted shut as he had left it the night of Charlotte’s visit. He unbolted it but left the night latch on. Then he went back to the living-room-to his cognac, his cigarettes, and his not unpleasant meditations. It grew darker in the room, then lighter as the street lamps came on. Shayne sat in a listening attitude.

He sat like that a long time before he heard the sound he was expecting. The faint click of a key in the lock on the kitchen door.

His back was toward the kitchen. He did not move except to reach out in the semidarkness and fold the sheet of paper upon which he had cast up his profits on the Brighton case. He heard the back door open softly, then light footsteps advancing hesitantly from the kitchen. He chose that moment to light a cigarette, still with his back turned, seemingly unaware of another presence in the room.

The intruder stole upon him as he blew out the match. Soft hands were clasped over his eyes, and a laughing voice exclaimed, “Guess who.”

Shayne did not move. He said lazily, “So it was you who stole the key to my kitchen door.”

Phyllis Brighton leaned her cheek down against his coarse red hair for just an instant. Then she took her hands from his eyes and came around from behind him.

“Pull the cord on the floor lamp,” Shayne suggested.

She did, and faced him accusingly in the soft light. “You’re not even surprised to see me.”

“Of course not. I expected you sooner. Sit down.” Shayne pointed to a chair and reached for his glass.

Phyllis drew the chair close and sat down. Her eyes were bright and unclouded.

“It’s a good thing I wasn’t sure it was you who had that key,” Shayne told her easily. “Else I would have known it was you who peeked in the other night-and I might have suspected you had killed Charlotte Hunt out of jealousy.”

Her eyes dropped before his. “I saw plenty-to make me jealous.”

“That’s what you get for sneaking in through kitchen doors at such an ungodly hour,” Shayne pointed out. “I was in a tough spot that night, but business is business. I got enough dope from her to solve the case.”

Phyllis shuddered and said, “Ugh! Let’s not talk about it.”

“I,” Shayne told her, “will be very happy to forget Miss Hunt. But where the hell have you been hiding?” He lifted his glass and took a long drink.

Phyllis laughed with carefree pleasure. “Right here in a downtown hotel. I’ve seen you on the street twice. And, oh!” she went on exultantly, “I’m all cured. Just getting away from that horrible house has made me well. I haven’t had another single one of those spells of forgetting.”

Shayne nodded. “That’s one thing that didn’t get into the papers. Pedique made a full confession just before he committed suicide. He was trying to drive you crazy, angel, with a mixture of drugs and hypnotism. I burned his confession.”

“Thank God.” Tears swam unashamed in the girl’s eyes. She reached out her hand, and Shayne gripped it tightly. “You’ve been-wonderful to me,” she breathed.

Shayne grinned, released her hand, and patted it. “You’re the kind of kid men like to be nice to.” He swung up awkwardly and went into the kitchen, saying, “By the way, I’ve got something here that belongs to you.”

He opened the refrigerator and took out the hydrator, brought it in to the table while Phyllis watched with wondering eyes.

“Don’t look,” Shayne said.

Phyllis obediently closed her eyes while Shayne dug under the lettuce with his left hand and brought out the shimmering pearl necklace.

Going around behind her chair, he dropped it down over her head. His hand strayed toward the curling tendrils of hair on her neck, but he jerked away before touching her, and his face was expressionless as he moved from behind her.

She opened her eyes wide, and her hand flew up to the necklace. “But these are yours,” she exclaimed. “They were your-what do you call it-your retainer.”

Shayne sat down and shook his head. “No, darling. Tough as I am, I can’t take a retainer from you.”

“But you’ve earned it,” she implored, lifting the pearls from her neck and thrusting them at him. “It’s little enough for what you’ve done. I know it was you who did all the work on the case.”

Shayne pushed the pearls back toward her. A diabolic grin lurked at the corners of his mouth. His fingers closed over the folded sheet of paper and crumpled it up. “I’ll get along,” he assured her.

Phyllis didn’t say anything. She stared at him bright-eyed, seemingly struggling with words which would not form themselves.

Shayne poured himself another small drink and said slowly, “You and the boy are the sole heirs, eh?”

“I-suppose so.”

Shayne toyed with his glass. “The estate isn’t very large. I imagine Montrose has been stealing from Brighton for years, getting even for the raw deal he felt Rufus handed Julius.”

She made a little gesture and said, “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I have enough money for the present.”

Shayne drank some cognac. He said, “I just wanted you to know-after all the ruckus is cleared up and forgotten, there’s a genuine Raphael in the possession of an artist friend of mine which belongs to the estate. It’ll be worth a pretty good pile of dough.”

“A Raphael? But the papers said-”

“The papers,” Shayne told her, “don’t know a hell of a lot of angles on this case. It’s genuine, all right. I had Pelham Joyce paint a bum ‘Raphael’ on top of the new signature Henderson had put on for smuggling purposes and then a second fake ‘Robertson’ on top of that. That made four signatures piled up on each other. Only two were scraped off by the time the shooting started. The bottom signature is authentic.”

Phyllis drew in her breath unevenly. “You’re a remarkable person-and I owe you a lot.” Her fingers crept out and touched Shayne’s hand.

Shayne drained his glass. He said, “It’s fun being nice to you, angel.” Then he patted her fingers and went on with a grin, “It’s been a good case. There’s only one thing I’ll always regret-that those two mugs busted in on us just when they did that first night.”

Phyllis stood up. There was something very close to adoration in her eyes. She said breathlessly, “You needn’t-regret it any longer.”

Shayne looked up at her for a long moment from beneath raggedly bushy brows. “What are you trying to say?”

She returned his gaze bravely, color flooding her cheeks. “Must I-draw you a blueprint?”

Shayne lurched to his feet. Phyllis swayed toward him. Her eyes were clear and unashamed.

He caught her shoulder with his sound hand and turned her toward the door, muttering, “God help me, I almost weakened once before.”

He let go of her in the doorway. She stood rigid, her back toward him. His lips brushed the top of her hair, and he said huskily, “Wait a minute.”

She stood like that without turning while he strode back to the table and picked up the pearls. He came back and slid them over her head, growling, “Go out and grow up. Then come back, and we’ll do something constructive about it-if you still feel the same way.”

Her hand went up to touch the pearls. “But you-you can’t afford to take cases for nothing,” she faltered. “And the newspapers didn’t even give you a line of credit.”

“I’ll get along,” he assured her, “without the credit. But-if you insist-I will collect a slight fee.”

His one arm turned her slowly so her luminous eyes gazed unflinchingly into his. She swayed back against his arm and trustingly lifted her lips. Shayne leaned down and collected more than a slight fee, then sent her away with a little push, closing the door behind her.

His face was morose as he went back to the table and poured himself another drink. Something new had come into his life-and gone out of it.

His brooding gaze fell on the folded sheet of paper listing his cash receipts on the case just finished. He opened it out and read the items slowly. The muted beat of evening traffic drifted up from the street below and into the room through an open window. The sound was not unlike the rumble of a distant drum, but Shayne’s mind was occupied with other things, and he paid no heed to it.