Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, September 1956

Home Ground by Matthew Lee

A ruthless, successful man who steals the wife of a worthless failure does not look for trouble. However, weakness can prove a most deadly weapon.

Harlan Wayne had made the trip to Cottstown buoyed by inner certainty that Philip Morrison would never find him there. He hadn’t intended to use the little city, where he had spent part of his youth, as a permanent refuge. His plan had been merely to get Phil off his and Laura’s trail for a breathing spell, until he could work out more permanent plans for the two of them.

Yet, when he went downstairs in the hotel, less than an hour after he and Laura had checked in, there was Phil Morrison, sitting in an armchair under one of the potted palms in the old-fashioned lobby, with a magazine on his lap. As always, Phil looked absurdly innocuous, absurdly inadequate, to be married to a woman as vivid and vital as Laura.

It was not that Phil was unhandsome — if anything, he ran a little too much to good looks in a florid, purposeless way. His was the classic, perennial-sophomore type of non-success in a harsh, post-graduate world. Harlan Wayne had seen hundreds of Phil Morrisons in his forty-odd years.

They were always around, letting the Harlan Waynes pay the checks in expensive restaurants after failing to put over their flawed or untimely deals. They were forever applying at personnel offices for jobs that, for them, would never exist. They were the inevitable failures whose good looks and popularity Harlan Wayne had once bitterly envied, for whom he now felt only contempt.

Finishing the purchase of Corona panatellas that had brought him to the lobby, Harlan Wayne strolled over to where Phil Morrison sat looking at him with a dogged and defeated, yet annoyingly hopeful, look on his too-handsome face.

Wayne stood over him, using the height advantage that found him standing and Morrison sitting down — when both men were standing, the futile Morrison topped him by almost six inches.

He said, “What in hell do you think you’re doing here, Phil?”

Morrison said, “You know as well as I do, Harlan. A husband still has certain rights in this country.”

“You forfeited any rights you have in Laura years ago, Phil,” Harlan Wayne told him brutally. “My detectives have enough on you for her to get a divorce in any state of the union. Why don’t you go back to Chicago and leave her alone?”

“You know the answer to that,” said Phil Morrison. There was unusual determination, as well as a sort of slyness, in his expression. He added, “You have my terms — meet them, and I’ll leave you alone.”

“You won’t get another red cent out of me,” Harlan Wayne said quietly. “How long can you keep this up — following us around the country? I know your financial condition as well as your rottenness.”

“Until you pay off or give up Laura,” was the reply.

“Fat chance you have of getting either out of me,” said Wayne.

Both men had been speaking quietly, and their conversation had attracted no special attention. But Morrison’s voice rose a notch as he said, “There’s another alternative you wouldn’t like, Harlan — an alienation-of-affections suit. You try to run away once more, and your lawyers will be hearing from mine. Put up or shut up.”

For a moment, Harlan Wayne was tempted to hit Phil Morrison where he sat. A one-time almost All-American football player turned into an all-time All-American rat — that was Laura’s husband. Fearing to make a spectacle of himself in the lobby of his home-town hotel, he turned on his heel and walked swiftly, furiously, to the elevators.

Laura was waiting for him in the drawing room of the bridal suite. Brilliantly brunette, slimly yet luxuriantly full-bodied, she was, as always since Wayne had met her, sensitive to his every mood. Regarding him as he entered, she rose swiftly, came to him.

“Something’s wrong,” she said with quiet concern. “Is it Phil?”

“What else?” Wayne countered. “That worthless punk of a husband of yours is sitting downstairs right now. He even had the almighty gall to threaten me with an alienation suit if I don’t pay him off.”

Laura’s slim, strong, exquisite fingers gripped his biceps. Her voice was low, anxious, as she said, “Darling, why not give him what he wants? You can afford it, and, this way, nothing’s any good. I know Phil — he’s weak, but he has the stubbornness of the weak man. He’ll never give up till you pay him — he’ll make trouble for you. And you know I could never bear that. I’d rather go back to him than have him cause you a breath of scandal.”

Wayne gave her a hug and left her, to sit down and bite off the end of one of the cigars he had purchased before the unpleasant encounter downstairs. As always, a moment with Laura restored his detachment, his ability to think with a clear head.

He said, “First Chicago — then New York, Philadelphia, Atlantic City. Now Cottstown. Dammit, Laura, I never thought he could stick to any purpose so long — not even in the hope of regaining you. But now...” He let it trail off as he lighted his smoke.

Laura sat gracefully on the arm of his chair. She said, “Whatever you do will be the right thing, darling.”

He looked at her and nodded. After all, he was on home ground in Cottstown. His mind, which had made him a multi-millionaire, began to work with its accustomed precision. Whatever he did...

Phil Morrison was waiting for Wayne in the taproom of Hillside, Cottstown’s one decent roadhouse. It hadn’t proved difficult for Wayne to arrange a meeting outside of the hotel. All he had had to say was, “If I pay you off, as I intend to, Laura must know nothing about it.”

With Laura, he had pleaded a business engagement. He had left for the date early, had then taken an hour to scout the surroundings of Hillside and the route from Cottstown, which he had known so well in his youth. Thus, Phil Morrison’s battered 1951 Buick was awaiting him in the twilit parking lot of the roadhouse on Wayne’s arrival.

A check for fifty thousand dollars — made out to Philip Morrison and countersigned by Wayne — was in his pocket. With it, was an agreement for Morrison to leave both Laura and himself alone in the future. This he had written on hotel stationery, in the lobby, so Laura would know nothing about it. He was sure of her love, but, as a sensitive woman, he feared she might not appreciate the cold-bloodedness of its terms.

Morrison had already had several drinks. Their presence was betrayed by the increased flush of his face, the somewhat too-loud tones of his voice, as well as by his inability to conceal the gleam of triumph in his usually watery blue eyes.

“This is illegal,” said Morrison, after scanning the document Wayne had placed in front of him on the booth table they were sharing.

“So,” said Wayne, “is what you’re demanding of me. Once you have accepted and cashed the check I’m about to give you, this contract will hold. Naturally, I’ve consulted my attorneys in Chicago. They told me how to draw it up.”

There was a long pause, then Phil Morrison pulled a pen from his breast pocket and scribbled his signature at the bottom of the agreement. He held it until Wayne produced the check and laid it on the tablecloth. Then he handed the agreement to Wayne.

“There’s just one more thing,” Wayne told him. “I want you to leave Cottstown and head for Chicago immediately. I don’t want Laura to have the unpleasantness of even a chance off seeing you again.”

Morrison shrugged. “As you wish,” he said. “Shall we go?”

Wayne rose, told Laura’s husband, “There’s a short-cut to the main highway half a mile down the road. I’ll lead the way and put you on it. And no tricks, if you don’t want that check stopped.”

Morrison bowed low, with an ironical smile, and motioned for Wayne to precede him from the roadhouse taproom. Wayne was not entirely surprised when he had to ante up another six dollars for the check. Good old Phil — game to the end! he thought as he put his alligator-skin billfold back into his pocket.

By the time he reached the cutoff, with Phil Morrison’s headlights glowing brightly in his rearview mirror, it was dark — he had planned it that way. He drove over the uneven macadam surface through the woods, for about a third of a mile, then pulled over to the side.

When Morrison pulled to a halt, beside him, Wayne gestured ahead and told him, “Just keep on following it for another mile and a half, and you’ll hit the highway.”

He didn’t bother with any goodbye, just sat there, watching Phil pick up speed as if relieved at being rid of such a slow guide. Wayne had planned that, too. He watched Phil’s twin taillights vanish around the curve in the road fifty yards ahead. Then he heard the abrupt screech of brakes, followed by the splash.

He ran his convertible ahead to the curve, stopped and got out. Ahead, around the bend, was the swamp that had, for a century, defied all efforts to drain or fill it in. By his headlights, there was not a trace of Phil’s beat-up old Buick, or of Phil. Nothing as heavy as a car — or a man — had ever been recovered from the swamp.

Carefully, he dragged the white sawhorse from the scrub beside the old road-without-an-end and placed it across the lumpy pavement. He glanced at the warning sign before climbing back into his convertible and backing it around. He cut his headlights before reaching the road to town and made it without witnesses. As ever, he told himself, Phil had been a fool, offering him battle on his home ground.

Driving back to the hotel, he plotted how best to break it to Laura. All he would say was, “Honey, you’ll never see Phil again. It cost me fifty thousand, but it was worth all of that — many times over.” That was the sort of compliment Laura understood — and appreciated. He knew her like a book, a book of which he was never going to grow tired.

But Laura was not in the bridal suite. Spotting the envelope on the table in the drawing room, he blessed her for her thoughtfulness. Tearing it open, he felt the excitement of freedom, freedom to live, to love as they liked, opening up in brightly colored new vistas in front of him — in front of them both. No more Phil to spoil things...

He read the note with growing disbelief—

There was more. She was meeting Phil in Chicago the next day. She hoped he wouldn’t be vindictive, because of certain things she had discovered about his affairs, certain deals the Bureau of Internal Revenue might be glad to look into if they knew about them. As long as she and Phil were all right, he had nothing whatever to worry about.

He tore up the letter and threw it in the wastebasket. Then he sat down and chewed on a cigar. He wondered how long he dared wait.