Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 34, No. 5, April 1974

Murder stalked its bloody way among the guests on the isolated island estate: anyone could be the next victim, and anyone could be the murderer. Then Mike Shayne took on the case, using Tim Rourke, his friend, as the bait...

I

The charter boat Daisy Belle out of Islamorada on the Florida Keys had an outstanding day. The Detroit auto executive and his friends who paid the charter boated a six foot ’cuda with a mouthful of razor fangs, two sailfish and a near-record black marlin.

Just before dusk, on their way in to port from the Gulf Stream, the Dairy Belle also boated a corpse. The sharks hadn’t gotten to the body yet, and there were still papers in the wallet in its pocket.

There was still a length of frayed rope tied around the ankles. Apparently, whoever put the body in the water had tied on a heavy weighty but the rope had been too old, had parted, and the corpse had come to the surface. It was swollen and sodden and very unpleasant to look at and worse to smell. If it had been a dead horse or pig they’d never have kept it on board for a minute.

The papers in the wallet said it was the body of Harvey Peckinbaugh, however — and in this world the remains of a Harvey Peckinbaugh are never just tossed back for the sharks to finish.

The charter boat skipper got on his radio phone instead and within minutes a Coast Guard Cutter was on the way. Within half an hour three helicopters full of newspaper and teevy people were on the tail of the cutter and there were special news bulletins out all over the country.

The name Harvey Peckinbaugh meant a couple of hundred million dollars and a great deal of political clout in a midwestern State.

Harvey had been beaten over the head before he was put in the water. He’d also been stabbed several times with a very sharp knife.

That’s murder any way you call it. And murdering the likes of Harvey Peckinbaugh is news. Big news.

Somewhere between one and two in the morning the phone rang in the apartment Mike Shayne kept in an old but comfortable apartment hotel overlooking the Miami River close to its mouth.

It rang for three minutes before the big private detective got his head off the, pillow, clamped one big hand over the instrument and grunted a “hello” in greeting.

“Mike, are you wide awake?”

Shayne recognized the voice as that of his longtime good friend Tim Rourke, ace feature writer for the Miami Daily News. “Hold on, Tim,” he said, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “What’s up!”

“Come on down here,” Tim Rourke said. “I’m in a little trouble and maybe you can help.”

“Hold on a second,” Shayne said, coming awake fully for the first time. “What kind of trouble are you in, and where are you?”

Rourke took a deep breath before replying. “I’m down here at Key Paradiso.”

“The Peckinbaugh estate?” Shayne, like most Floridians, knew of the million dollar sportsman’s “hideaway” Harvey Peckinbaugh had built some ten years earlier. “What are you doing down there?”

“It’s a long story. I’ll give you the details when I see you. But as you know I met the Peckinbaugh’s some years ago when I handled the story of that lawsuit between his manager and himself. You remember, when Peckinbaugh’s companies were being broken up by the Justice Department and that manager of his tried to get more of the pie than his salary.”

“Yeah, I remember. I also seem to recall Peckinbaugh threatening to shoot him in the courtroom.”

Rourke laughed. “Yeah, Harvey P. had a temper. Lucky for him, the manager’s doing a twenty year stretch right now. Anyway,” he went on, his voice becoming serious. “Everybody’s being held down here for the night and probably most of tomorrow morning. We got Sam Hill, the Monroe County Sheriff himself, half his deputies and a couple of police from Peckinbaugh’s home ground all nosing around. And last night, some nut put a note in my pocket, claiming that I witnessed the murder, but he’ll pay me to keep quiet.”

“Did you tell Hill?”

“You better believe it! Hiding something down here right now would be impossible. So he wants me to hang around awhile longer. Which is trouble for me. But at least I’m getting an exclusive. And Della, that’s Mrs. Peckinbaugh to you, shamus, hinted that she’d like to have a private investigator of her own to keep track on the locals. Naturally I thought of you.”

“Natch, friend.” Shayne grinned.

“So if you get down here by morning, you can nose around a bit and see what’s going on, and then drive me back to Miami.”

“What happened to your car?”

“I rode down with Peckinbaugh. And he’s in no shape to drive me back. So if you hop to it, you can have the pleasure.”

Shayne grunted as he stood up. “Okay, I’ll be there soon as possible.”

“And shamus,” Rourke said, “Better bring a gun. Looks like the murderer is still around. We might have breakfast with him when you get here.”

“I’ll cross my fingers,” Shayne said.

II

Mike Shayne was starting to dress almost as fast as he hung up the phone.

He called his beautiful assistant, secretary and right-hand-woman Lucy Hamilton at her apartment and told her about Tim Rourke’s early morning call.

“I’m not sure what it’s all about,” he told her, “but Tim thinks I’d better get on down to Key Paradiso. If I can’t do anything else, at least I can drive him back to Miami.”

“If somebody thinks he witnessed the killing of Mr. Peckinbaugh, Tim could be in trouble,” Lucy Hamilton said. “So could you, Michael. I suppose you have to go down there, but please take care of yourself.”

“Don’t worry about me, Angel,” Mike Shayne said.

Even though he wasted no time, it was nearly daylight before Shayne could reach Key Paradiso. He had to pack his bag and then get his car out of the garage where he kept it and make a drive of more than two hours duration south on U.S. Highway One.

Late at night as it was, there was still a surprising amount of traffic on the narrow bridges spanning the water between the Keys.

Key Paradiso itself was off the main road, lying about a quarter of mile out to the East in the Atlantic. It was actually a small island with only about twenty acres of land above high tide mark. Harvey Peckinbaugh had bought the entire Key, erected houses, recreation facilities and even built a private causeway out from the main road. It was the sort of estate that only a man who was many times a millionaire could afford.

There was a gatehouse and swinging gate at the Key Paradiso end of the causeway. When Mike Shayne pulled up there was a private security guard in a fancy blue and white uniform standing by the gate.

With him was a uniformed Sheriff’s Deputy that Mike Shayne had known when he had been on the City of Miami police force some years back.

“Hi there, McGee,” the big redhead said. “I didn’t know you were working for Sam Hill these days. How are things?”

“Well, well,” McGee said, “If it isn’t Sherlock Holmes in person. Still setting the private eye business on its ear in Miami, Mike?”

“Not at the moment,” Shayne said easily. “Right now I’ve got a client up at the big house, on the Key here.”

“I don’t know about that,” The private guard said self-importantly. “Right now we got orders to keep the public out of here. I don’t think we can let you through.”

“Oh come off it,” the deputy, McGee, told him. “This here ain’t press or general public. Mike Shayne’s an old friend of my boss. Practically on the force himself, so to speak. Swing that gate up and let him by.”

“If you say so,” the guard said. He opened the gate reluctantly and let Shayne drive onto the island.

From there on it was only a short drive through scrub mahogany and wild lime tree groves to the big house on the seaward side of the Key. Dawn was breaking with the beautiful, translucent pearly light peculiar to the Florida Keys. The sea lay still and flat as a mirror.

The Peckinbaugh mansion was a sprawling two story structure with gables and big porches. There was a huge Olympic swimming pool off to one side and a dock big enough to moor a dozen large boats. A deepwater channel had been dredged to the dock, and there was also a sizeable artificially constructed turning basin for the boats. At the moment there was only one yacht moored, Peckinbaugh’s own HARVEY II, and a much smaller sport fisherman.

At the shore end of the dock there was a standing light fixture. Nobody had bothered to turn the light off as yet. Under it was a bench, and on the bench was a slender figure in blue slacks and a blue and white check sports jacket which Shayne recognized at first glance. He left his car parked on the grass in front of the big house and walked down to the dock.

Tim Rourke got up off the bench and hurried to meet him. “Well you finally got here, maestro,” the lanky newsman greeted his friend. “I’ve been up all night answering questions, and now and then asking a few of my own. I need sleep and breakfast and a good stiff drink — in reverse order. Mostly I need to relax, but didn’t want to do that till you showed up.”

“What’s all this about, Tim?”

“This is what it’s about.” Rourke took a sheet of paper out of his jacket pocket and handed it over to his big friend.

It was a piece of embossed Peckinbaugh stationary from one of the writing desks in the mansion. The message it bore was typed carefully in the center of the sheet:

“Well,” Mike Shayne asked, “does he need to say more? Who wrote this thing?”

“That’s what I need you to find out for me,” Rourke said, “I haven’t got the faintest idea. He thinks I know him, but I swear, Mike, I don’t even know if it’s a man or a woman. This was in my pocket last night after dinner. That’s why I called you.”

“Who had a chance to put it there?”

“Anybody. Anybody at all. We ate buffet style, milling around the ground floor. Everybody was upset by the news they’d found Harvey, his body I mean. Any one of twenty guests or that many servants could have planted this thing on me. Mike, let’s go in. I’m tired and I need a drink.”

Mike Shayne looked at his friend and agreed. Tim Rourke showed the effects of a long and sleepless night. His face was drawn, and his thin hands trembled slightly.

“Okay,” Shayne said.

“We’ll go back to the house.” Rourke said. “Some of the servants must be up by now. I’ll have breakfast and a bottle brought up to my room. Then I can fill you in on this business.”

Half an hour later the two friends were seated by the window of Tim Rourke’s guest room looking out over the sea towards the Gulf Stream. A serving table between them held plates of scrambled eggs and sausage, hot rolls with butter, a covered bread basket, oranges and mangos and a pot of steaming coffee. There was also a bottle of brandy which they were using to lace the coffee.

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Then Mike Shayne Said, “Okay now. Give me the details.”

Tim Rourke looked more relaxed. “The last time anybody saw old Harvey alive,” he said, “was after dinner two nights back. The house was full of people and there was drinking and partying going on. Harvey was in the den on the ground floor playing poker with some of his business and political buddies. Sam Hill’s boys can give you the list.

“About one in the morning Harvey got up from the table. He was losing heavily, but he didn’t cash in his hand. Just said he needed air and was going to take a stroll and see how the party was going. The next time anybody saw him was when that boat pulled his body out of the water.”

“You mean nobody in this place saw him after he left the poker table? Nobody?”

“Somebody did,” Rourke said. “Somebody killed old Harvey and he had to see him to do it. Then again I may have seen him, too. At least, whoever typed me that little mash-note seems to think I did.” Rourke took a drink of coffee.

“Suppose you get down to the nitty gritty of why anybody would think a thing like that.”

“I’m getting to that,” Rourke said, “as fast as I can. Just give me a chance. As a matter of fact I’m not too clear about the whole thing in my own mind. You have to remember the party had been going on for a couple of days by then and it was a real bash. A real swinger. There was this girl. We’d been up in her room after dinner and we’d had quite a few drinks.”

“I’ll bet you had,” Mike Shayne grinned sardonically.

“Okay, okay,” Rourke said. “So I was a little sozzled maybe. Anyway the girl was more. She passed out and that stopped the fun, so I did just what Harvey told the boys he was going to do. I went out for air.”

“That’s when you saw somebody?”

“Not at first. I walked around for quite a bit,” Rourke said. “After a while I was down by the formal gardens along the shore north of the house. There’s shrubbery there and trees and benches. Dark. You know, a great place for couples. Anyway I was talking in there when I came on two people. They were under the shade of some trees.”

“You couldn’t recognize them?”

“I couldn’t even see if it was men or women. I thought first it was a couple necking. Then they seemed to be wrestling. I thought: ‘she’s trying to break loose from him.’ I couldn’t really see enough to tell if it was a couple or a fight or what. Then one figure stepped back and it looked like that one was punching or poking the other.”

“Or sticking a knife into him?”

“Or knifing him. Only I didn’t see any knife. I didn’t care anyway. It was none of my business. I turned away. I thought somebody yelled at me, but I wasn’t sure. I walked off.”

“That must have been when he recognized you,” Shayne said. “Pass me that basket of rolls over there. I’m still hungry.”

Rourke obliged.

When Mike Shayne opened the napkin in the bread basket there weren’t any rolls inside, though.

There was a dead toad impaled on a razor sharp steak knife.

“Oh, crap!” Tim Rourke said.

III

Mike Shayne wrapped the napkin back around the gruesome little reptile and left it in the basket. Then he picked up the brandy bottle and filled his and Tim Rourke’s coffee cups with the fiery amber liquid.

“I think your friend means business,” he said.

“I guess so,” Rourke agreed. “First the note and then this for a warning. I’d better get down and tell Hill about this latest development. And after that, maybe I can get a little shut-eye. What do you plan to do?”

“You’ve worked with me enough times to know the answer to that,” Shayne said. “I want to meet the cast of characters. Who was here two nights ago that could have a reason to kill Harvey Peckinbaugh? Who do you think might have done it?”

“That won’t be easy to say,” Tim Rourke said. “There were about thirty people here. They still are, by special request of Sheriff Sam Hill. About half of that crowd are business or political pals of Peckinbaugh from his home State, and their wives or girl friends. I don’t really know any of them well enough to know how they feel about the late departed. You can ask Bill Buzby about them. He was Harvey’s secretary, confidential man and general right bower. He’d know the poop oh that crowd.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Shayne said. “Could he have done it himself?”

“Buzby? I haven’t the faintest idea. I don’t know of any motive on his part.”

“A confidential assistant could have one,” Shayne said. “How about the rest of your happy group?”

“Mostly just friends from Miami like me,” Rourke said. “Most of us didn’t really know Harvey very well, but his food and liquor was triple-A good so we came for the ride. Then of course there was Harvey’s harem.”

“His what?”

“That’s what we called them among ourselves. It was a funny grouping for a party. His wife, Della, is here of course. Or maybe ‘of course’ is the wrong way to put it because the big room with the king-size waterbed down at the end of the hall has his girl friend Dolly Dawn in it. We figure that’s where Harvey did most of his bouncing around. Then to top the whole thing off Slim and Sally Peters are in one of the guest cabins.”

“Slim Peters the gambler?” Shayne asked. “The one who owns the casino in Dominica?”

“That’s the one,” Rourke agreed. “Only what you probably don’t know is Slim’s wife Sally is also the ex Mrs. Harvey Peckinbaugh.”

“Whew,” Shayne whistled.

“That’s right,” Rourke confirmed. “Wife, ex-wife and current hotlips all at the same party. Now who had what motive to do which to who.”

The redhead sat back, looking out through the window at the rising sun in the east. One big hand reached up and the thumb and forefinger tugged at his ear-lobe. That was a sign Shayne was in deep thought, so Rourke sat quietly and did not interrupt.

After a while the newsman reached out for the bottle and started to refill the cup in front of him.

About that time they began to hear the sounds of plates clattering and of voices from the dining room on the ground floor under their windows.

“That will be breakfast,” Rourke said. “It’s served buffet style like in an English country house. I don’t suppose many of the guests got much sleep last night, what with one thing and another. They’ll be down early.”

“We’ll go down too, then,” Mike Shayne said. “We can make like we’re eating, and it’ll be a good chance for you to finger the suspects to me.”

The dining room was huge, at least thirty by sixty feet in dimension, with French windows opening out to the wide verandah and the sea along the front. The guests helped themselves from a variety of hot and cold dishes on a long sideboard, and ate either at the main table or at one of several smaller tables which had been set up on the porch just outside the dining room.

They looked nervous and tense and were eating lightly. A few, most of whom Shayne recognized as Miami socialites, ate with good appetite and were busy talking among themselves. Those were the people who obviously considered themselves above suspicion and who had little or nothing to gain or lose through the death of their quondam host. They tended to favor this outside tables.

Another group, mostly older men already wearing dark business suits suitable for a plane flight, were Harvey Peckinbaugh’s business and political associates.

These men ate little and talked Jess. They looked alert and harrassed. Shayne assumed that every one of them had something at stake as a result of the murder.

The servants, too, looked nervous and even frightened. They moved about quickly as if unsure of themselves, hesitated before touching anything, and tried to keep an eye at all times on a small group of men at the head of the big table.

Mike Shayne recognized these as Sheriff Sam Hill and some of his top grade plainclothes men. That was where the big private detective headed at once.

Sam Hill was busy eating and trying to talk with his mouth full. He didn’t see Shayne and Rourke coming at first. When he did he sat back in his chair and eyed them while his jaws worked on a mouthful of ham and biscuit.

“Hello Sam,” Shayne said. “You got this thing all wrapped up already?” He dropped the basket with its grisly contents on the table in front of the Sheriff.

Sam Hill took two swallows to get his mouth clear. When he did, he said, “What in the blazing noonday sun are you doing here, Shayne? And what’s this thing?”

“I just happened to be down this way,” Mike Shayne said easily, “so I stopped by to give Tim here a ride back to Miami. I figured after what happened the festivities would be fizzling out pretty quick down here. But then Rourke and I found this. Served up with breakfast.”

“Oh Lordy,” Sam Hill said. “I don’t know what we got here. Old Peckinbaugh didn’t die of no virus of course, but we don’t know even where he was killed. Now there’s a skiff missing. Was he killed here and did somebody row him out and tip him into the Gulf Stream? Or did he row out himself and meet somebody who knifed him? And now these threats. I got to question everybody on this place.”

“Speaking of that, Sam,” Shayne said, “when do you think you’ll be through with Tim?”

Sam Hill turned to Tim Rourke and said, “Okay, Shayne, you can have him any time you want. Don’t be in too much of a hurry though. We could maybe use your help.”

“Great,” said Rourke, “I’m only too glad to get off this place. I’ll leave my little friend in your hands. Glad it’s your job, not mine!”

“Yeah,” Sheriff Hill grunted.

At that moment a younger man came hurrying across the big room to where the sheriff sat. He was darkly handsome in a curiously stereotyped way. His sports jacket and slacks were casual, but his manner put him with the business-suit men rather than the Miami social set.

Mike Shayne’s hunch that this would be Bill Buzby, the late Mr. Peckinbaugh’s confidential man, was confirmed as soon as he spoke.

“Sheriff, when are you going to begin letting people out of here? Some of Mr. Peckinbaugh’s business associates are very important people. They want to get back west, you understand. Pick up the chips that the old man’s death has scattered.”

“I have to ask some questions before I let everybody go,” the Sheriff protested.

“Of course. Of course,” Buzby said. “We all understand that. On the other hand you can’t just hold all these people indefinitely as if they were ordinary joes. Why, one of them is Lieutenant Governor of our State. Another is the third or fourth biggest car dealer West of the Mississippi. That sort of people... Can’t you just take a brief statement from them and let them go? Men like that are easy enough to locate if you need them later on. You know that.”

“Easy to locate,” Sam Hill said, “and hard as the devil to extradite if I let them out of my jurisdiction. Still, there’s something to what you say. The question is — did any of these men have reason to want Peckinbaugh dead? Answer me that.”

“That’s easy,” Bill Buzby said. “They all wanted him dead. Everybody who knew Harvey Peckinbaugh wanted him dead.”

IV

“That makes it interesting,” Sam Hill said. His tone said; well, I’ll be damned, but he didn’t put that part into words.

“I mean it,” Bill Buzby said again, “I really don’t think there’s a man in the lot of his associates who isn’t glad the old man’s dead. He was rough and tough to deal with. You did it on his terms if you did it at all. He was greedy. That old man had money to burn, but he wouldn’t put a cent in any deal that didn’t guarantee — and I mean guarantee — him a clear forty percent profit before he started. His forty percent came off the top too, if you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” Mike Shayne said. “We’ve got a couple of characters like that right here in Dade County, Florida. Real prominent citizens, but there’ll be dancing in the streets at their funerals.”

Buzby gave the big redhead a direct look. “Do I know you?”

“This is Mike Shayne,” Sam Hill told him. “He’s a private dick from Miami and a real good friend of mine. You can trust him.”

“Glad to meet you,” Buzby said, and then turned back to Sheriff Hill. “Not only was old Harvey greedy, he was mean. He liked to make his people squirm and see them hurt. That’s the biggest way he got his kicks. They all hate — I mean they hated him.”

“Not enough to kill him, though,” Mike Shayne said. “Or at least not enough to kill him night before last and here in the Florida Keys.”

Both men turned to him.

“What makes you say that?”

“The skiff,” Shayne said. “You tell me the old man was found floating north of here and hear the Gulf Stream. You also say there’s a skiff missing.

“These men you’re talking about are westerners, not boatmen. They wouldn’t know what to do in a skiff. It needs somebody familiar with Florida to put a body in the Gulf Stream, or even know where the Gulf Stream is. Even if one of those cowboy types had tried it, he’d have brought the skiff back. That’s the way he’d have come back himself. Anybody trying to land along the Keys and walk back would have had to give himself away when he came in through the gatehouse, wouldn’t he?”

“I never thought of that,” Buzby said.

“I did,” Sheriff Sam Hill told them. “Go on, Shayne. What happened to the skiff? Suppose Peckinbaugh took it out himself and ran into a lobster boat? There’s been lobster poaching and trap stealing back and forth to the Bahamas for months. Suppose he got caught close to the traps and knifed for a thief?”

“A lobster thief in a two hundred dollar sports jacket and hundred dollar shoes?” Shayne said. “I read the description of the corpse in the papers and saw it on teevy. Those lobstermen aren’t idiots. If they’d found Harvey, they’d just have pointed him back to shore, skiff and all.”

“What do you think did happen then... and where’s that ever-loving skiff?” It was one of the Monroe detectives who asked the question.

“I think Peckinbaugh was killed right here on Key Paradiso,” Mike Shayne said. “I think whoever killed him put him in the skiff right here. Then he bolted an outboard motor to the skiff. He could get it out of the boathouse at the same time. One of those little electric one-horsepower jobs would be perfect and I’ll bet there’s a rack of them in the boathouse.

“Then the killer used his knife to punch a couple of small holes in the bottom of the skiff. Just enough to start slow leaks. He pointed the skiff out to sea, and shoved it off, but he didn’t go with it. He just started the skiff out with the dead body in it and a weight tied to the body. He probably figured the slow leaks he started wouldn’t actually sink the boat till it got out of the Gulf Stream.

“If he was right we never would have found Peckinbaugh even with the rope breaking. The Stream is deep and the currents would keep shoving the body on North till the sharks finished it. Where he went wrong was the boat sank well this side of the Stream in shallow water. The body came up and was found. Otherwise we’d just have a mystery instead of a murder.”

“I have to, admit that was clever,” Buzby said. “I’d never have figured it out.”

“Neither would most of old Harvey’s midwestern friends,” Sam Hill agreed. “I think we may be able to let them go after a short interrogation. Anyway, we’ll talk to them first.”

“Keep an eye out for one who has local friends who could have given him the idea,” Shayne said. “Come along, Tim. We’ll leave the gentlemen to their business.”

“Where did you ever think up all that?” Rourke asked as they left the group at the head of the table.

“What stuck in my craw was the skiff was missing but the murderer wasn’t,” Shayne said. “At least nobody mentioned anybody around here not accounted for. If the killer left with the body, he’d have brought the skiff back.”

“Wouldn’t that have been the smart thing to do anyway?” Rourke asked his friend.

“I think it would,” Shayne said, “because then there’d have been nothing to indicate what had become of the body. Just go all the way out and put the body in the Gulf Stream and then come back. Nothing missing but old Harvey.”

“Why wouldn’t he do it that way?” Rourke persisted.

“Only two reasons I can think of,” Shayne answered. “One would be a stupid killer, and I don’t go for that. The other is the killer was somebody who didn’t want to make the trip in the skiff because it would take a couple of hours and he’d be missed. Then when it was found Harvey was gone, the killer would have fingered himself by being gone.”

“Who misses anybody at a party like this one was?”

“Only if the missing one is very prominent,” Shayne said, “that narrows the list of possible suspects. Right now I want you to introduce me to what you called Harvey’s Harem. Start with the widow Peckinbaugh. It’s time I let her know I’m here.”

Mrs. Della Peckinbaugh had not confined herself to the master suite of the waterfront mansion that morning, but was having a substantial breakfast at a small table set for two on the wide verandah. The second seat had been occupied by Bill Buzby before he had left to join the sheriff and his detectives.

Tim Rourke took Mike Shayne over and introduced him as “My friend from Miami.”

Della Peckinbaugh gave him a long, level look before replying. She was a beautiful, auburn-haired woman in her early forties. The late Harvey P. had been seventy-three the week before he died. Della had large green eyes and a statuesque figure well set off by the simple linen dress she wore.

“I’m glad you’re here, Mr. Shayne,” she said finally. “I’ve heard of you of course. I guess anyone who reads very much news has. When I heard that Mr. Rourke knew you, I asked him to phone Miami and ask you to come down and talk with me.”

Shayne smiled. “That’s flattering to say the least.”

“I’m not trying to flatter you,” she said. “Just to he honest. Harvey’s death has been a real shock to me. I won’t pretend that I’m grief stricken. If I did, it wouldn’t fool you for long. Harvey’s position and wealth were major reasons for my marriage. There was some affection at first, while he was busy courting me, but I’m afraid that was long ago. Still, with all of Harvey’s faults I had no reason to kill him. It disturbs me that someone else did. I’ll be honest with you. It shocks and, yes, frightens me.”

“I was hoping you could tell me who wanted to kill your husband and what the motive was,” Shayne said.

“On the contrary,” Della Peckinbaugh said. “I’m counting on you to find out and tell me, Mr. Shayne.”

She paused. Then, “You must find out and tell me before that same person decides to do the same thing to me as she did to Harvey.”

V

“Good lord Della,” Tim Rourke said. “You don’t really mean that, do you? Harvey was an overbearing man. He could be rough and tough, and he made enemies. But who on earth would want to murder you?”

She looked at Rourke.

“That’s what I want your Mr. Mike Shayne to find out for me,” Della Peckinbaugh said, and she wasn’t smiling when she said it. “Honestly, gentlemen, I think this was a personal killing. Not based on politics or Harvey’s business dealings, though God knows some of those may have-made him bitter enemies. I think this was strictly a personal thing and that the killer has the same crazy, twisted reasons to murder me.” She spoke calmly and with certainty.

“You sound very sure of yourself,” the big redheaded detective told her.

“I am. Oh, believe me, I’m in fear for my life right this very minute.”

“I believe you,” Mike Shayne said. “I also think that if you’re this sure of danger you can give me an educated guess where that danger is coming from. Who do you suspect killed your husband?”

“I don’t want to say,” Della Peckinbaugh said. “I don’t have any real evidence, at least not the sort that would stand up in court. I could be sued for accusing the wrong person.”

“Anything you say to Mike will be absolutely confidential,” Tim Rourke said. “I promise you that. You know he can do a better job if he knows who you suspect.”

She thought it over.

“Alright, Mr. Shayne. I have to trust you. Go see the woman who calls herself Dolly Dawn.”

“Your late husband’s friend?”

“My late husband’s girlfriend, his infatuation, his open and shameless light-o’-love. I’m not stupid. I know about her as I know about all the others. She’s the one.”

“But why would she want to kill him? You’re his legal wife and heir. What has she to gain?”

“You don’t know my husband,” she said. “I do. He told the same lies to each of his mistresses in turn to bind them to him. He told each one that he had put her in his will for a bequest of a cool million dollars cash. It was a lie of course, but it did heat up their feelings for him. I could always tell just when he’d told the girl by the way they both behaved. Oh, don’t look so shocked, Mr. Shayne. My Harvey was perfectly shameless in all the departments of his life.”

“I guess I’m just a bit old fashioned in a few things,” Shayne said.

“Only a few,” Tim Rourke interjected.

“To tell the truth I’m like you,” Della Peckinbaugh said. “I never quite got used to it myself — but that’s the way he was. On top of that he would hint to each girl that he would divorce me and marry her if she continued to make him happy. That was mighty effective too. Then after a while, of course, he’d cool off or find another girl. That could be an awful shock.”

“You think he was going to, drop Dolly Dawn?” Shayne asked.

“I think he was about to and that she found it out, but hadn’t found out yet that there wasn’t any million dollar bequest in his will. There was no million for Dolly, but she didn’t know it yet. Isn’t that a motive to kill?”

“Wrong, Della,” said a new voice. It was Bill Buzby who had come up to the table just in time to overhear her last words.

“Wrong?” she said. “What on earth do you mean?”

“I mean that in Dolly’s case there is a million dollar bequest — and she’ll collect it too. Harvey had a codicil to his will executed only three months ago. Up till then he’d just talked about doing that, but for Dolly he actually went ahead. I had to call in the attorneys and witness.”

“You never told me,” Della said.

“I didn’t expect him to die,” Buzby said to the three of them. “How could I anticipate this? I just figured he’d change his mind after a while.” He looked defensive.

“I wonder,” Della Peckinbaugh answered. “Maybe he really did love this one... Anyway, Mr. Shayne, I think you have enough of a motive to look into the young lady in depth. Don’t you?”

“I’ll talk to her,” Shayne said.

One of the servants informed Shayne that, “Miss Dawn is still in her room. She had her breakfast sent up a little while back.”

The two men went on up to the second floor of the mansion where the Master Suite and the quarters for the more important guests were located. The one assigned to Dolly Dawn was at the southeast corner looking out over the blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

They found the room easily.

Mike Shayne knocked loudly on the heavy door of the room. There was no answer. He knocked again, and this time realized the latch of the door hadn’t caught. It moved a little under his fist. At the same time he and Rourke both thought they heard a low moan from inside.

Shayne pushed the door open. There was a partly-clad woman on the floor over by the window.

Shayne took a step unto the room.

The woman sat up and threw a knife, a silver hilted little Italian stiletto. If Mike Shayne hadn’t dodged with lightning speed, it would have skewered his throat. As it was the point stuck half an inch into the solid wood of the door.

VI

Mike Shayne was into the room with the speed of a big jungle cat, ready to grab the woman or pull his gun if necessary. Neither action was needed.

She just sat there on the floor with her hands in plain sight and looked at the two men as they came into the room.

“Who the hell are you?” she said then.

Shayne got the impression the knife hadn’t really been meant for him, that she’d expected someone else to come through that door. It would have helped if he’d known who that other person was.

“I’m a real poor target for that sort of thing,” he jerked his big thumb at the knife which was still quivering in the wooden panel of the door. “If you try that again, I’ll take the shiv and make you eat it.”

She sat there and looked up at him.

“I believe you would at that,” she said.

Long red hair streamed down to rounded shoulders and even without makeup her face was roundly beautiful. She wore pajamas which neither restrained nor concealed the ripe curves of breast and thigh. Under her auburn brows were hard, alert, china blue eyes. Shayne got the impression they looked right through to his backbone.

“I’ve seen your picture in the papers,” she said, “You’ve got to be Mike Shayne.”

“That’s me,” Shayne said, “and I suppose you’re Dolly Dawn.”

She put back her head and rocked with gusty laughter. “Two minutes I see the great detective,” she said between laughs. “Only two minutes and he goes as wrong as he could be.”

“Who are you then? This, is Dolly Dawn’s room isn’t it?”

“It’s her room alright, but I’m not her. Ask your friend there who I am. He danced with me and did his best to do more the night before last. Or were you too sozzled to remember me, Tim?”

“This isn’t Dolly Dawn,” Tim Rourke confirmed. “This is Sally Peters, Slim’s wife.”

Mike Shayne was genuinely startled.

“I came to see Dolly,” Sally Peters told him. She got up off the floor and went over to a portable bar near the window. There she poured a stiff three fingers of whiskey into a glass and tossed it down as a man would have done.

“The door was open when I got here, so I walked on in. A man, or maybe two men, I can’t be sure, came up the hall and pushed in behind me. One of them gave me a karate chop from behind and that was it. Lights out. The next thing I knew you were coming through the door. How did I know who you were?”

Shayne moved quickly about as she talked, checking the closets, bath and dressing room. There was no one else in the suite. “You didn’t recognize the men or see or hear anything more?” He asked her.

“Neither would you have if you’d been me,” she said bitterly. “Whoever it was who clipped me, he knew his business. A real pro that one.” She poured another drink and tossed it off like the first.

“Don’t you worry though, mister detective,” she said. “If I do figure out who it is, I’ll tell you. If Slim finds out first and locates him, all those fly cops downstairs will really have somebody to nail for murder one — and Slim’s too good a man to lose.”

“What did you want to see Dolly about?” Tim Rourke asked the woman.

“Are you kidding, buster?” she said. “The same thing you and the big shamus wanted to see her about. The same thing that hick sheriff downstairs wants to see her about. What else? I want to know what she knows about who wasted dear old Harve.”

“You don’t sound very sorry about his death,” Mike Shayne said.

“Sorry?” she smiled grimly. “Who’s to be sorry? Harvey was a louse. He lived a louse and he died a louse. All the sex appeal that big bum had was in his safety deposit vaults tied up with red ribbon. Not that it wasn’t enough to get me up to the altar for the everloving vows of course.”

“So.”

“So I don’t want to be blamed for knocking him off is what. I’m a practical gal if nothing else. Just my hard luck to be here when he died. I’ll be a number one suspect and I know it.”

She saw the puzzled look on their faces. She smiled and then continued.

“I’m in old Harvey’s last Will and Testament for a cool ten million clam slice of the estate, in case you didn’t know. It was part of the divorce settlement, and I had some, high priced lawyers write, it in so it would stick. So you see, I hated him and Slim hated him, and all we have to do is pull the lever to win the ten million dollar jackpot. Who else is gonna be the number one patsy around here today?”

“But you and Slim didn’t pull the lever?”

“Do you think we did?” she asked. “Why would we pull a dumb stunt like that when all we have to do is wait? Why risk a rap for murder one when the apples are gonna fall off the tree into our laps anyway?”

“Suppose I believe you?” he said to her. “What you’re saying makes a certain amount of sense. In that case who do you think arranged for your late ex-husband’s untimely departure from this world?”

She picked up the bottle as if to pour herself a third drink, but then shook her head and put it down again. “Two’s enough. I don’t want to look sozzled when the Law puts me on the grille. I’ll level with you, buster. I really will. I think his dear wife Della is the one you want.”

“Good God,” said Rourke.

“She’s got a better motive than anyone else,” Sally Peters said. “I get to inherit ten million, but she gets the whole kazoo. God knows how much. Besides she has to live with him, put up with him, let him wipe his feet on her every day. Maybe she couldn’t stand it any more than I could, only in her case she decided to take the fast way out. Why go through a divorce and get ten million when she can go the murder route and take the whole pot? You see what I mean, buster. I know you do.”

That was all they were going to get out of Sally Peters at the moment, and both of them knew it. Out on the big porch near the railing Sam Hill and two of his dark suited detective officers were talking to a red-haired woman.

Mike Shayne almost did a double-take when he spotted them. This wasn’t the woman he would have picked for Dolly Dawn. This one was small, below medium height and with a slender figure. Her face was an oval under a mass of soft auburn hair and she was small-boned and graceful.

“That’s Dolly?” Shayne said.

“Miss Dolly Dawn in person,” Rourke said with a laugh, “and miscast for the part if you must go by the looks. It’s really the body of Sally Peters that ought to be standing there if you ask me.”

Even as he spoke the woman finished talking to Sheriff Hill and came back into the house. She recognized Tim Rourke and smiled at him. The lanky feature writer took Shayne over and introduced him.

“Another detective?” she said in a soft voice. “I’ve already told all I know to the Sheriff. If you don’t mind... I’m afraid I’m quite upset this morning by all that’s happened.”

Shayne noted that she really did look rather pale and drawn, the first person he’d met yet who showed any feeling for the recently departed master of the house.

On the other hand, her feeling could actually just be fear that the Law might be closing in. It was impossible to tell.

“I don’t think you understand,” Shayne told her. “I’m sure Sam Hill has asked you all the proper questions, and that really wasn’t what we wanted to talk to you about. Actually we were looking for you because we were afraid you might be in some danger and we could help.”

“Danger?” she said with what seemed like honest surprise. “I’m not in any danger that I know of.”

“I’m surprised to hear you say that,” Shayne said. “Sally Peters was slugged in, your room only a little while back by two men. They might have been after you. Naturally we...”

“There’s something very wrong here,” Dolly Dawn said, and looked him right in the eyes. “Personally, she’s the kind who would fake such a scene. I wouldn’t put it past her to have killed Harvey herself.”

VII

Dolly Dawn must have seen the surprise in the faces of the two men, because she repeated what she’d just said. “I said goodnight to Sally and Slim Peters about two in the morning in the hallway outside my room door last night. I closed and locked the door when I went into the room. That is absolutely the last I’ve seen of either Sally or Slim. I don’t know what she may have said to you, and I don’t really care. What I just told you is the God’s truth.”

She said it with emphasis and with a ring of sincerity in her tones, so that Mike Shayne and Tim Rourke could only nod in agreement.

She turned away from the two men and started over to the stairway.

She didn’t quite reach, the landing before Sheriff Sam Hill came into the doorway from the porch and called out, “Attention everyone, please!”

Everyone on the ground floor stopped talking and turned towards the sheriff.

“As all of you know,” Sheriff Hill announced. “It’s been necessary to keep you here on Key Paradiso this long so that we could ask each of you a few questions. Most of you have been able to answer those questions to our satisfaction, so I’m not going to keep you here any longer. You are free to leave at any time. I only ask that you leave word with my men at the gate as to where you can be located in case of any new developments.”

Someone in the archway to the dining room spoke up. “Does that mean you’ve solved the case, Sheriff? Or that you’ve given up?” The speaker gave a sarcastic laugh.

“It doesn’t mean either thing,” the sheriff said. “Most certainly not that we’ve given up. We have certain leads to what took place here two nights ago. When we follow those up, there will be action taken. What I’m doing now only means that we are convinced most of you aren’t involved in any way — and I have neither the reason nor the authority to hold you here. Just leave word where you can be found.”

Most of the guests hurried to the stairs on their way up to pack their things.

“Go get your bag,” Shayne told Tim Rourke. “I’ll feel better about you when I get you out of this place and back to Miami.”

Shayne himself went over to talk to Sam Hill.

“Have you really got any leads?” he asked the Sheriff.

“Nothing I can take to a grand jury for indictment and that’s for sure,” the sheriff told him. “You know how it is late at night at a party like this. Everybody half drunk and wandering all over the place. Half the wives with the wrong husbands, and nobody really interested in anything except their own private bash. Nobody I’ve talked to has really had anything to say that they could testify to in court.”

“I know,” Shayne said. “I just wondered if you had even a list of possibles.”

“Oh, I’ve got plenty of possibles,” Hill said. “And after talking to Sally Peters just now, it looks like everybody’s a possible — but everybody. Even your pal Rourke was seen coming back from the direction of the boathouse way late at night.”

“Tim?” Mike Shayne laughed. “Probably just went down to spit in the ocean. Who saw him anyway?”

“That’s the funny part,” Hill said. “It was one of my other possibles. Slim Peters, no less.”

“Slim, eh. Why do you call him a possible? Because his wife is in for a slice of the estate? Or didn’t you know?”

“I knew. Both of them told me that. What they didn’t tell me, though — but I already knew — is that Slim’s casinos down in the islands are in a real bind of some sort. He’s in need of money right now. Lots and lots of money. Either the syndicate is fighting him or has cut itself in for most of the take. I don’t know for sure — but I did hear that the real reason Slim and Sally came to this party was to try and promote a stake out of old Harvey.”

When Tim Rourke left Shayne talking to the sheriff, the lanky newsman went straight up to his room where his bag was already packed and waiting for him.

He pushed the door open and stepped into the room.

A second later he felt the icy cold ring of a revolver muzzle touching his neck right at the top of the spine. Someone had been standing flat against the wall next to the door where he wouldn’t be seen by anyone walking in.

That someone kept the gun against Tim Rourke’s head and closed the door.

“Don’t turn around,” said a muffled and obviously disguised voice. “Don’t turn and don’t yell. Just listen.”

Tim Rourke stood as rigidly quiet as he could. “I don’t think you’re going to shoot me,” he said. “This place is crawling with cops.”

“They wouldn’t hear a shot through the door,” the muffled voice said, “and I’d be out of this place before you’re found. So don’t count on my not shooting. I’d rather than not.”

“Mike Shayne knows what I know,” Rourke said. He meant that if he was killed the secret knowledge of the killer that he was supposed to have wouldn’t die with him.

The gamble paid off.

“That’s what I thought,” the voice said. “Now listen. I can pay two hundred thousand dollars for your silence. That’s all I can raise. You and Shayne go back to Miami to your apartment and wait there. I’ll contact you tonight and set up the pay-off. No cops. If you talk to anyone before then or try anything funny I swear I’ll kill both of you before they get me.”

The muzzle of the gun came away from Rourke’s neck. A second later the butt of the gun crashed into his temple from behind. He went face down on the carpet and the world about him blacked out.

Mike Shayne found his friend there on the floor ten minutes later and the big man silently cursed himself for being so careless as to let Rourke go up to the room by himself.

When a fast application of cold water from the bathroom tap brought Tim Rourke around so that he could sit up on the floor and then in a chair and demand a glass of brandy, Shayne knew that no real damage had been done.

“Who was it?” he demanded then.

“He was behind me all the time,” Tim Rourke explained. “I never even got a look at him. Anyway I think from the way his voice sounded that he probably had either a mask or a stocking over his head. And no, I didn’t recognize the voice.”

“You keep saying ‘he’,” the big detective said.

“That’s right, I did. Funny. I suppose it might have been a woman disguising her voice, but I just don’t think so. It was a man, Mike. Don’t ask me why I’m so dead sure.”

Mike Shayne wasn’t that sure, but he listened while his friend went on to tell what the mail had said, and repeated the offer of the two hundred thousand dollars.

“That’s a lot of money to offer in such a hurry,” Rourke said. “Particularly when I’ve really got nothing at all to sell. I may have seen the killing, but I sure didn’t recognize the killer. He didn’t even ask me that. I’d have told him fast enough if I had the chance.”

“I don’t think you could have convinced him no matter how hard you tried.”

“I know that, Mike, but I’d have liked a crack at it anyway. He was in, an awful hurry to give away that two hundred grand though.”

“That’s what he wanted us to think,” Mike Shayne said. “I don’t think that whoever it is about pass out that much cash. But if he’s trying to trap us, maybe we can use it to our advantage. I’d like to try it Rourke — if you don’t mind joining me as bait.”

Rourke grimaced. “Well, I seem to be bait anyway. Might as well go along for the ride.”

On their way-out of the big house they encountered Della Peckinbaugh at the front door. She was looking regal and widowed at one time in a three thousand dollar Paris “creation” in black linen and pearls. Three servants were busy carrying bags out to the long black Rolls which waited, complete with chauffeur by the steps.

Sam Hill was with Mrs. Peckinbaugh, but he broke off his conversation to greet the two friends. “You boys on your way back to Miami?”

“That’s right,” Shayne greeted the Sheriff and Mrs. Peckinbaugh. “I figure if you haven’t found anything down here, then I won’t either.”

“I take that as a compliment — coming from you,” Sheriff Hill said. “Anyway there won’t be much action here after another hour. It looks like everybody’s clearing out all at once.”

“I see you’re going too, Della,” Rourke said to the widow. “Are you headed back to your home in the west?”

“Not right away, Tim,” she said. “Naturally I want to stay in touch with Sheriff Hill here until he finishes his investigation. After what happened the other night this place gives me the chills, so I’m going to Miami for a little while. The Peterses and Miss Dawn will be in Miami too. We have to have at least one business conference before we all separate.”

Shayne looked surprised.

“Bill Buzby insists on it,” Della Peckinbaugh explained. “We’re all in Harvey’s will you know, one way or the other. He says we should talk things over amicably instead of letting the lawyers mess it up. Besides, I think he wants me to authorize some sort of advance payment to Slim Peters.”

“That’s interesting,” Shayne said.

“Oh yes,” Della continued, “I suppose you know by now that’s the big reason Slim and Sally came to this party. They wanted to talk some sort of business deal with Harvey. Now I suppose it will be with me instead. Whatever it is, I think I’ll probably agree. I’ve always liked Slim.”

Shayne noticed that she didn’t say Sally or even Slim and Sally.

Della followed Shayne and Rourke partway down the steps. “Remember, Mr. Shayne,” she said in a low voice that Sam Hill couldn’t overhear, “you’re still working for me. I’ll contact you as soon as I get settled in Miami.”

VIII

Tim Rourke and Mike Shayne drove straight on up the stretch of U.S. Highway One known as the overseas highway to the tip of mainland Florida and then on through an endless wall of bars, restaurants, car sales lots, realty offices and advertising signs to Miami itself.

Shayne stopped first at his apartment hotel near the mouth of the Miami River to leave his bag and pick up a few things he needed. Then he drove them on to Tim Rourke’s high rise condominium.

Unlike his detective friend, who hadn’t changed his address in years, Rourke lived in the most flashy and extravagent of the lofty new buildings that had gone towering up on the near-in northeast side of the central city.

The place had everything, including an oversized swim pool and a boat dock and turning basin for nautically minded tenants, of whom Tim Rourke was not one.

The apartment also had a wide, railed balcony looking east over Biscayne Bay to the shining white towers of Miami Beach. It was here that the two friends took their tall, cold drinks and sat down for a talk while they waited for the killer to contact them with a repetition of his offer.

It was already past mid-afternoon, and the blazing Florida sun had passed over the building to the west. They sat in shade and a cool breeze blew in from the Atlantic and across the shining waters of the Bay.

“I suppose we just wait now,” Tim Rourke said over his drink.

“That’s the ticket,” Shayne said. “Whoever he is, he’s done us a favor. Instead of our having to chase all over Dade County looking for him — he’s promised to come to us.”

“Why would he do a fool thing like that?” Rourke asked. “If we had to look for him it’s a thousand to one he’d be perfectly safe. We don’t even know who we’re supposed to be looking for, let alone where to start.”

“He doesn’t know that,” Shayne said. “In fact he’s sure we do know who he is. If he wasn’t so scared by that thought he’d be a lot smarter. He can’t be smart while he’s frightened. That’s the trouble with murder, Tim. You and I’ve seen it a thousand times. As soon as a man kills he starts being afraid. Then he starts acting like a fool and keeps it up till sooner or later the murder catches up to him. It’s just a matter of time, and that’s what gives somebody like me the edge.”

“I suppose when he does call what we do depends on what sort of a proposition he has.”

“That’s it.”

The two men watched the Bay and nursed their drinks and waited.

The call they were waiting for came along about dinner time when the sun was well down towards the western horizon. Tim Rourke answered the phone as soon as it rang.

“Rourke?” the voice said. “You get off the phone and let me talk to Mike Shayne.”

“Shayne here,” the big man said a moment later.

“You listen real close,” the voice said. Shayne didn’t recognize it. “You listen real close. Real close. I’m only going to say this once. Get it or you won’t hear it again.”

“I understand.”

“Make sure you do. Both of you go down to the boat dock that goes with Rourke’s building. In the number ten slot on the dock you’ll find a runabout tied up. The Dolly. She’s all gassed up and ready to go. One of you know how to handle the boat?”

“We both do,” Shayne said.

“Okay. Take her out and go right on north. You’re heading for the yacht marina on the south side of seventy ninth Street Causeway just before the drawbridge.

“About an eighth of a mile due south of the marina and west of the channel you’ll see an anchored yacht. It’s a seventy footer, painted white. It’ll have an old outboard skiff tied to the stern. Tie your own boat to the stern beside the skiff. Go on board the yacht. I’ll meet you in the main cabin with the money. Do you get that?”

“I get it.” Shayne said flatly.

“Get started then and no tricks — no guns — no police.”

That was all. The phone went dead.

Shayne and Tim Rourke found the sleek sports runabout, Dolly, tied up where the Voice on the phone had said it would be.

Mike Shayne questioned the dock attendant, but the man denied knowing anything at all about the Dolly.

“I never saw that boat before in my life. All I know is it wasn’t tied up here last night or this morning. Somebody must have brought it in when I was off having supper earlier and then just gone off and left it.”

That would have been easy enough to do.

The keys were in the boat’s ignition as had been promised, and Shayne had no trouble casting off the lines and backing her out the short approach channel to the deeper waters of Biscayne Bay.

“This tub is named the Dolly,” Rourke said when they were under way. “Do you think maybe it could belong to Peters?”

“I’d make a big bet it doesn’t,” Shayne said with a laugh. “I think this was stolen earlier today, probably from the Dinner Key anchorage. Whoever took it probably had a good laugh at the name. Plenty of boats are called Dolly.”

He turned the boat’s bow to the north and opened up the throttle.

It was only a short run, first to clear, the midtown Julia Tuttle Causeway and then to head for the causeway marina to the north, but by the time they sighted their goal the sun was just about ready to set in the west.

The yacht was a big, diesel powered cruiser, painted white and with expensive mahogany trim. There was nothing except its location and the old outboard skiff at the stern to distinguish it from any one of hundreds of yachts that came into Biscayne Bay every year.

There was no one visible on deck, but the proper riding lights had been lit. There was also light in the wheelhouse and shining through the ports of the main cabin aft.

Shayne circled the yacht once and then pulled his runabout to the landing ladder which had been lowered on the starboard side of the yacht. This was the side furthest out in the Bay and shielded from the sight of anyone in the marina or any of the buildings lining the seventy ninth Street Causeway.

In spite of the instructions received by phone, both Mike Shayne and Tim Rourke were armed. Rourke had a flat .380 Browning in his jacket pocket, and the big detective had his forty-five Colts automatic in a belt holster back of his right ship.

They both climbed the boarding ladder to the yacht’s deck and waited.

Nobody stirred on board the yacht. Seconds dragged into minutes.

Finally the two men went into the wheelhouse. Like the decks, it was deserted.

Mike Shayne called down the stairwell to the main cabin. There was no answer. No one was stirring on the big yacht. Apparently even the crew had all gone ashore.

“Do you suppose he’s hiding down below?” Rourke asked.

“I don’t think so,” Shayne said. “Come along.”

They went down the four steps into the main cabin aft. It was lit by a table lamp with three bulbs burning. The furnishings were luxurious, but here too there was no sign of anyone having been on board recently.

Even the ashtrays were clean and bare of any butts or other residue.

Shayne looked about carefully. The killer may have left a package or a bundle of money or even a note. He couldn’t find anything at all.

The big cabin was partly below and partly above the deck of the yacht. The part above was lined with windows which could be opened to give the passengers sun and air.

Suddenly one of the windows over the stern shattered with a crash. Glass fell into the cabin on the furnishings and carpet.

Tim Rourke jumped a foot. “My God, what was that?”

Mike Shayne yelled, “Get down, Tim. Flat on your face!” and went into action. He jumped across the cabin and pulled the lamp cord out of its socket to plunge them into darkness.

“What’s going on?”

“Somebody took a shot at us through the glass,” Shayne said. “I think he was either on shore or on another boat and using a rifle.”

“He just tried again,” Tim Rourke said.

He was right. They didn’t hear the rifle shot, but they did distinctly hear a bullet strike the stern of the yacht. Then another whined into the water right off the stern.

Mike Shayne was up the hatch and out on deck with a speed that was extraordinary for such a big man. He left his gun in its holster, but pulled the big, three-inch-blade pocket knife he always carried and got it open.

Even as he reached the stern, another bullet splashed white splinters from the thwart of the old skiff tied to the stern.

Mike Shayne slashed with his knife at the ancient rope with which the skiff was tied to the after rail. He cut through and the tide began to pull the skiff away from the yacht. As it drifted, Shayne ran back into the wheelhouse and threw himself flat on the deck inside.

Two more bullets hit the skiff as it drifted. Then, when it was a good fifty yards from the yacht, the distant marksman hit the target he’d been aiming at from the start. It was the innocent looking rusty five gallon gas can on the floor of the outboard skiff. The contents weren’t gas. When the bullet hit, the can blew the skiff to toothpicks and showered the yacht with water and debris. The blast shook windows on the causeway.

As the crash died away, Rourke ran up into the wheelhouse. “That was supposed to be us,” he yelled. “How did you ever know to cut that thing loose?”

“I almost didn’t,” Shayne said. “I knew it was crazy for him to shoot at us when we were down in the cabin. Once the light was out nobody but an idiot would expect to hit you or me, but he kept on shooting.

“That meant it wasn’t us he was shooting at. Then I remembered that outboard. It didn’t belong with a luxury craft like this. When we came out I figured the killer had used it to board, but he wasn’t on board. When the shot came, I guessed that it must have been left for a target. I decided to get rid of it. I guess it was none too soon.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

“Let’s not and pretend we did,” Shayne said. “Anybody sharp enough to rig this trap is also sharp enough to figure we just might survive the bomb. He’ll expect us to bolt in that case, and lie’ll be ready for it. You stay right where you are.”

Shayne went out on deck and climbed down into the fast runabout, the Dolly. He started the engine, cast off the line, climbed back onto the yacht and kicked the runabout clear of the larger boat.

The Dolly, its throttle wide open, started to roar away down the Bay.

The second runabout came in on a converging course to head it off. This one was painted black, and moved very fast. As it slid alongside the Dolly someone stood up for a second and tossed something inside, then cut wildly away.

The Dolly disintegrated in a fountain of flame and smoke.

IX

“I told you he’d have something up his sleeve,” Mike Shayne said as they watched the wreck of the Dolly go down into the dark water. “Sort of a single track mind though. Bombs and again bombs.”

“How are we going to get back to shore?”

“This boat is bound to have a ship-to-shore phone,” Shayne said. “Even if it didn’t, the Harbor Police will be closing in on the scene of two explosions that size. They’ll take us ashore.”

Tim Rourke had found a portable bar in the cabin, and the bar had a bottle of whiskey. He drank and passed the bottle over to big Mike Shayne.

“Our friend is a mixture of smart and dumb,” Shayne said as he wiped his mouth with the back of one big hand.

“How do you figure that?”

“Oh come off it, Tim,” Shayne said. “You can figure that as well as I can. You tell me.”

“Well, he was smart enough to know he couldn’t buy off the pair of us. Maybe he knew your reputation for honesty. If he knew that much, he could also figure we couldn’t resist the temptation to come out to this yacht. He knew if he couldn’t buy us, he had to kill us. On top of that he was smart enough to rig the bomb in the skiff. I suppose he figured he could explode it at long distance by rifle fire and run no risk from us. The bomb would have blown us up and sunk this yacht.”

“He misjudged the difficulty of hitting that mark with a rifle in fading light, shooting over water,” Shayne said. “That isn’t easy. He must be a crack shot or a rank amateur to even try it, and my vote goes for the expert. It was still a fool thing to try. Success depended on his making it with the first shot. That was dumb.”

“Maybe it was,” Rourke said, “but he was still sharp enough to close in and bomb our escape craft.”

“That wasn’t so smart, either,” the big detective said. “If I had really been on the Dolly when he closed in, I’d have had my gun with me. When he stood up to toss that bomb, I could have shot his head off, and would have.”

They heard a motor then and saw the lights of the Harbor Patrol boat bearing down.

“Okay, okay,” Rourke said. “What would you have done in his place?”

“If I’d been stuck with this caper,” Shayne said and laughed, “I’d have set the yacht here as bait. Then when we were coming up the. Bay in Dolly, innocent as babes, I’d have come close in that black speedster of his and tossed my bomb. Before we got near the yacht. That’s when we were off guard and he could have got, away with it. That’s what a real smart man would have done.”

An hour and a half later the two friends were in the oak panelled office of Miami Police Chief Will Gentry. The Chief, an old friend of both Shayne and Rourke, had had a car waiting at the dock when the Harbor Patrol brought them in.

He had glasses and a bottle of Mike Shayne’s favorite French brandy on his big mahogany desk, and a box of the long, black, Havana type cigars for which he was famous.

“Someday you’re going to stretch your luck, too far,” he said to the redhead. “Everytime you show up in the middle of a case I ask myself is this the time. One of these days the answer is going to have to be yes.”

“Not this time, Will,” Shayne said. “Not this time. By the way who owns that big yacht we were on? The estate of the late Harvey P.?”

“Not quite,” Gentry replied. “In a couple more days it would have been. The owner was trying to sell it to Peckinbaugh for a red hot price.”

“Oh? What owner?”

“The boat is registered in the name of Slim Peters, Mike. He’s been using it as a floating home down in the islands.”

“Slim Peters!” Tim Rourke exploded. “So he’s the one.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions again,” Shayne said.

“I don’t know about that,” Rourke protested. “Slim needed money, lots of it, and needed it bad. Sally’s stake in old Harvey’s will gets him out of that hole. He owns the boat so he can use it to trap us. He’s from the West so he has to have used a rifle before. It was a man who stood up in that cruiser and tossed the bomb into the Dolly. What more do we need?”

“We need evidence that would stand up in court,” Mike Shayne said over his brandy and cigar. “Look at it this way. We know Sally Peters is into the will for ten million. That’s a lot of course, but Slim Peters is running a big gambling chain with at least six casinos, and maybe more not in his own name. In a setup like that, ten million dollars is a drop in the bucket.”

“That’s right,” Chief Gentry said. “If Slim really is in trouble either with the syndicate or the island governments, he could need a lot more than ten million.”

“Sure,” Shayne said. “Old Harvey alive and maybe willing to back him with a really big bag of money, could have been worth a lot more to Slim. He’d want to keep him alive, not kill him.”

“But suppose Harvey had already turned down the idea of staking Slim,” Gentry said. “We don’t know that he didn’t.”

“We don’t know that he did either,” Shayne said. “Of course if that was so, the ten million would look better than nothing. But I think Slim’s the frugal type. He wouldn’t want to waste his own yacht.”

“The crew was ashore,” Gentry said. “They say Slim phoned and told them to take the night off. On the other hand the man who took the call can’t swear it was Slim’s voice. It sounded like him... So where does that leave us all? With one dead millionaire and three red headed women for suspects is where?”

“Correction,” Mike Shayne said. “For suspects we have three beautiful redheads, Slim Peters, and everybody else who was on Key Paradiso the night old Harvey Peckinbaugh died.”

“This is in my jurisdiction since they all came up here,” Chief Gentry said. “I’m going to have my boys look into this. I’ll have a tail on Slim and Sally Peters too. He won’t be throwing any bombs now for, sure.” Gentry shifted his cigar.

“I’m not satisfied he was the one,” Shayne said again. “Maybe, maybe not. We can’t even be sure it was a man threw that bomb. Gould have been a woman in man’s clothes — or a goon hired for the one hit. By then it was pretty well dark.”

“What are you going to do then?”

“Della Peckinbaugh said she was going to set up a ‘family’ conference,” Shayne said. “That will be sometime tomorrow. Since I’m supposed to be working for her, I’ll invite myself in. By that time I think I’ll know enough to expose the killer.”

That was all he would say.

X

Mike Shayne spent the rest of the night in Tim Rourke’s apartment. Not only did he want to be there in case another attack was made on his lanky friend, but there was also a chance that the killer might make another attempt to contact the ace writer by phone.

“Sooner or later he’ll have to call or kill,” Shayne said. “He can’t just sit and wait to see what we do. Not as long as he thinks you really do know his identity, he can’t.”

“I don’t envy his frame of mind right now,” Rourke agreed. “He must be pretty sure we escaped both his bombs. After that the natural thing would be for us to spill our guts to the cops. He must be wondering if there’s already a warrant out for him.”

“On the other hand he won’t dare break and run for it,” Shayne said, “for two reasons. In the first place that would be a dead giveaway. Anybody innocent right now has got to stick around. In the second place, if he runs...”

“Don’t you mean if she runs?”

“Maybe so. Maybe not. Anyway it’s easiest just to say he. If he runs he loses whatever it was he killed for. That is, he does if it was money that was the motive. Of course if it was hate or jealousy...”

“That’s an interesting word, jealousy,” Tim Rourke said. “How come you suddenly start using it? Of course all three of the beautiful redheads have some reason to be jealous of each other.”

“So they do,” Mike Shayne agreed and tugged his ear lobe with one thumb and forefinger. “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind though. I suppose it’s the idea of motive that bugs me most in this case. All three women stand to get a lot of money by the murder, but not exactly the sort that makes for murder. Della gets the most of course, but she’d get it anyway. They’d all get it anyway. Nobody has to kill.”

“Dolly Dawn might lose hers if Harvey cooled off on her and changed his will,” Rourke pointed out.

“Harvey was a long way from cooling off on that one,” Shayne said. “Remember she was the only girl friend that actually got in the will without marrying him. No, I’m just not satisfied. There has to be another motive, or somebody else with a motive.”

“Maybe one of the men close to Harvey,” Rourke said. “Maybe even Buzby, though I don’t think so. What would he have to gain? As far as we know he’s not in the will, and besides he’s been like a member of the family for the last five years since Della married Peckinbaugh. He should be loyal to his boss if anyone in the world was. How about the servants?”

“If it was the servants, Sam Hill would have smelled it out. Sam’s no fool.”

“What are we going to do then?”

“First of all I’m going to try to make sure nobody gets close to you with another bomb. Then I’ll give the killer a chance to give himself away, Killers are like cats on a hot tin roof, Tim. They can’t sit still, and anything they do, anything at all, has a tendency to give them away. I want this one to make another move.”

The night wore on, and the two friends took turns getting some sleep. Nothing untoward happened.

In the morning Tim Rourke phoned down to the condominium restaurant and had hot breakfasts sent up.

About nine o’clock nothing had happened and Mike Shayne was getting restless. He and Tim Rourke went on down to Shayne’s second floor Flagler Street office. Lucy Hamilton was already there.

Shayne called Will Gentry and learned that Della Peckinbaugh had a suite of rooms in the largest and most expensive of Boulevard hotels facing Miami’s Bayfront Park.

“The hotel’s part of the Peckinbaugh estate, so she moved right in,” Gentry said. “In case it matters to you, we have the place staked out.”

He also gave the addresses of the, less pretentious hotels where Dolly Dawn and the Peters had taken rooms.

“Harvey’s confidential man Buzby is in the same hotel as the widow,” he added. “He and a couple of secretaries and lawyers who flew in from the west have rooms four flights down from Della’s suite. Incidentally, we found the guy who owned the Dolly. He wants to sue you for causing the destruction of his boat.”

“Just what I needed,” Shayne said. “Tell him to sue the thief.”

“We already did,” Gentry said. “What are you up to, Mike?”

He put through another phone call to Della Peckinbaugh.

“It’s important that I see you this morning, Mrs. Peckinbaugh,” he said. “I think I know who killed your husband, but I’m going to have to have your cooperation to prove it.”

“Oh thank God you’re alright, Mike Shayne,” she said. “I was afraid you’d been injured last night. Of course you can have all the help and cooperation I can possibly give you. Just tell me what I can do.”

“I’ll have to see you in person,” he said. “I’ve got a long standing rule not to trust phones with the really important conversations. Can I come to the hotel?”

“Of course you can. I just woke up though and I’ll have to bathe and dress and have some breakfast. Suppose you come at twelve noon. I’ll be expecting you then.”

Shayne said: “Fine. I’ll be there,” and hung up.

Tim Rourke looked at him across the desk with a quizzical expression. “So you think you know who killed her husband?” he said. “Come on, boy, and let me in on the secret. Don’t forget he’s trying to kill me too.”

“And me,” Shayne said. “I wish I really did know, but I’m afraid that was mostly bluff for the beautiful widow’s benefit.”

He picked up a copy of the Miami Daily News which Lucy Hamilton had put on his desk. “I see our little bombing spree didn’t hit the front page.”

“It’s on page two of section B,” Lucy told him. “Will Gentry didn’t give out much to the reporters. Just a couple of mystery explosions in North Bay. The police are looking into it. That sort of thing. A couple of the teevy stations didn’t even use the item at all.”

“He didn’t give out our names?”

“I suppose he thought you didn’t want the publicity,” Lucy said. “Frankly I’m glad. Let the bomber worry about what happened to you.”

“That’s funny,” Shayne said. “The widow P. was afraid I’d been hurt last night.”

“She must know more than she’s supposed to then,” Rourke said. “That’s obvious.”

“It is. What I’d like to know is how she found out about danger to me.”

The phone rang again. This time it was the gentle voice of Dolly Dawn.

“Mr. Shayne? I thought you’d be interested to know that Della Peckinbaugh has invited us all to a meeting in her hotel suite this evening. Something about both the murder and the estate. Do you think you could possibly arrange to be there? Anyway I feel you should know about it.”

“I’m going to arrange to be there,” Shayne said. “Thank you for calling anyway.”

“Don’t thank me. I know you were working on the matter of poor Harvey’s death. I want his killer brought to justice too, you know.”

“I appreciate that,” Shayne said.

Dolly Dawn hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know if I should mention this. I didn’t see anything in the papers... but I think I ought to say there’s a rumor that someone tried to kill you and Mr. Rourke last night. I hope you’re both alright.”

“We are,” Shayne told her. “Whoever it was bungled badly. I’m interested in how you heard about it. Can you tell me?”

“Of course I can. The Peters are staying at the same hotel I am and we had breakfast together in the coffee shop. Slim told me he’d heard a rumor about it. Well, I hope I see you at the meeting tonight.”

Shayne put the phone down.

“Tim,” he said. “It looks like our little ruckus last night is about as secret as this morning’s weather report.”

The hotel where Della Peckinbaugh had her suite was just a couple of blocks up Biscayne Boulevard from the intersection of Flagler Street, so Mike Shayne decided to walk over at noon.

Since the hotel was a part of the Peckinbaugh real estate holdings, the family always used the top floor penthouse when they were in town. Only one of the elevators went all the way up, but it also made stops at all the other floors. Like the rest of the bank it was of the self service type and the riders pushed buttons for their floors.

Shayne got on in the lobby. When the elevator stopped to pick up a passenger on the mezzanine he had a good view of the entrance to the bar on the other side of the balcony. A man and woman with their backs to him were going into the bar. Shayne thought he recognized the man as Bill Buzby. The woman was a redhead. She was ahead of the man and he got only a fleeting glimpse of her, but he thought he recognized Sally Peters. Then the elevator door closed and his view was cut off.

The penthouse had its own private lobby. Shayne got out of the elevator and rang the bell, to the apartment door and a uniformed personal maid let him in.

“Mrs. Peckinbaugh is just finishing dressing,” she told the detective. “She says will you please wait in the living room.”

Shayne complied. The room was beautifully furnished and had a huge picture window looking out over Biscayne Boulevard to Bayfront Park and then across the Bay to the coast of Miami Beach.

It was fully ten minutes before Della Peckinbaugh appeared. She was wearing a chic and expensive linen slack suit and a necklace of magnificent matched pearls. Nothing about her appearance suggested a bereaved widow.

“It’s a beautiful morning,” she smiled at Mike Shayne. “I just couldn’t stand the idea of wearing black.”

“I understand.”

“But that wasn’t what you came to talk about, Mr. Shayne. Do I understand that you have evidence to show who murdered my husband?”

“I have evidence that’s just about good enough to convince me,” Mike Shayne said. “I’m afraid it’s not enough yet to take to a jury, but I’m pretty sure I can get that within another twenty-four hours. With your help, that is.”

“Splendid,” she said. “Now I believe you’re as good as they told me you were. Who do you suspect and how can I help?”

“You can help by inviting me to your conference this evening and letting me bring Tim Rourke and Chief Gentry of the Miami Police as guests. By that time I think I can name the killer.”

“Consider it done,” Della Peckinbaugh said. “You know I’ll do anything you ask. Can’t you tell me who it is though? You know you can rely on my discretion.”

“I know I can,” the big man said gravely. “But I’d rather not accuse anyone till I have a few more facts. I haven’t told anyone yet, and I won’t till I’m absolutely sure.”

“Excuse me a moment,” she said then. “I think the private phone in my bedroom is ringing.”

She was gone only a few moments. “Sorry,” she said on returning. “It was my hairdresser making an appointment for tomorrow. Now, what else can I do to help?”

“Just a couple of questions,” the big man said. “Is there anyone outside of those I’ve met who could have a real interest in your husband’s will? Any other heirs?”

“As far as family is concerned there are only distant cousins,” she replied. “My understanding is they are provided for by generous personal bequests and by income from a family trust. None of them would have gained anything by murder. Then there are large bequests to three charities, but of course they wouldn’t...”

“Of course not,” Shayne agreed. “Just one more thing. Could anyone but you or your husband draw on your bank accounts?”

“Only Bill Buzby,” she said, “but one of us had to add a second signature to any check he wrote.”

Shayne excused himself then after promising to be at the meeting that evening.

Della Peckinbaugh went with him to the foyer and waited until the elevator arrived. It was empty. Shayne said a last goodby and stepped in. The heavy metal doors slid shut.

There was a movement — a bare flicker of movement caught by the corner of his eye. He couldn’t pin it down. Just a movement where there should have been no movement at all.

Another man wouldn’t have noticed it, or would have hesitated and died. Mike Shayne had the keen, instant reflex of a big jungle cat. He jumped by instinct to flatten himself against the wall of the elevator cage, even as his right hand flashed to draw the big Colt’s forty-five.

By the sound, the gun was a thirty-eight. The shot came from above his head and the bullet struck the floor below where his head had been just a split second before.

By the time Shayne managed to look up, the metal panel in the roof of the elevator cage, placed there so passengers would have an emergency escape hatch, had slammed shut. There was a quick scrape of feet on the roof and then silence.

Shayne jumped for the escape hatch, but it was wedged shut from above.

He knew that this was the top of the elevator shaft. There would be a balcony and exits both to the roof and to a stairwell alongside the elevator shaft. Both were provided for the convenience of maintenance and repair men.

By the time Shayne could get into the shaft the killer would have made an easy escape either down the stairs or out across the roof.

Instead of wasting time on futile pursuit, the big man dug the bullet that had been fired at him out from under the thick carpeting. The slug had flattened out of shape on the metal flooring. He dropped it in his pocket and then pushed the button for the lobby floor.

Once safely down Shayne took a lounge chair in the lobby where he could watch the elevator bank and stairs. About twenty minutes later Slim and Sally Peters came down the stairs from the mezzanine where the bar was located. They were laughing and talking.

Shortly afterwards Shayne got up and walked back to his office. He spent the next couple of hours on the phone, long distance, to newspaper offices, banks and stock brokers in Harvey Peckinbaugh’s home town in the west. Tim Rourke was also busy talking to friends and news sources in the financial community of Miami.

XI

At nine o’clock the same evening Mike Shayne, Tim Rourke and Police Chief Will Gentry were in the lobby of the hotel where Della Peckinbaugh was staying waiting for the elevator to the penthouse apartment. From a distance they had watched Dolly Dawn take the elevator, followed shortly afterwards by the Peters.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Mike,” the Chief was saying.

“I’ve got this place staked out just like you said. You know that’s all I can do. Without some evidence I can’t even get a search warrant, let alone arrest anybody.”

“I think I can show you some evidence within the next half hour,” Mike Shayne said.

“I certainly hope you can. My boys haven’t been able to turn up a thing so far, any more than Sam Hill has down at Key Paradiso.”

“This isn’t that sort of evidence,” Shayne said. “This isn’t the sort that you can leave lying around for a cop to pick up, not even the best cop in the world. This evidence is what’s inside the killer. He doesn’t leave it lying around, but he can’t hide or destroy it either. He has to carry it wherever he goes. In a few minutes I’m going to give him a chance to show it to us.”

“All I can say is you’d better know what you’re talking about,” Chief Gentry said. “Well, come on. Let’s go.”

They found the group from the Key Paradiso party waiting in the luxurious, softly lighted living room of the hotel penthouse.

Della Peckinbaugh sat at the head of a carved mahogany library table. Her hair was beautifully coifed and she wore a midnight blue evening dress, which set off her superb figure to perfection, and a rope of sapphires and pearls around her neck. Bill Buzby, in a tuxedo, and two dignified men who were introduced as members of the late Harvey Peckinbaugh’s legal staff were at the table with her.

Dolly Dawn sat in an upholstered wing chair over by the big picture window. She looked calm, aloof and faintly withdrawn from the whole affair.

Slim and Sally Peters were side by side on a big couch near the library table. Slim wore a white linen suit and a black bow tie. The jacket was loose enough to conceal a shoulder holster. Shayne couldn’t tell if the lanky gambler was wearing one. Sally was in a matching white linen pants suit. Her magnificent red hair was piled high on her head and fastened with a flaming pearl and diamond beret.

Chief Gentry and Tim Rourke sat on another sofa facing the Peterses. Mike Shayne went to the library table and took a chair at one end.

A servant served a round of drinks, in which no one seemed particularly interested.

“I’ll get right to the point,” Della Peckinbaugh said then in a cool and incisive tone. “You all know Mr. Mike Shayne. I think you know who he is and why I’ve asked him to be here tonight. I hired Mike Shayne to find the killer of my husband after it became apparent that the police were not doing so. This morning Mike told me that he had succeeded and would name that person tonight.

“Mike Shayne — you have the floor.”

Apart from the two attorneys, the room exhibited the finest collection of inscrutable poker faces that Will Gentry had ever seen. No one said a word or even stirred a finger.

“Mrs. Peckinbaugh is right,” Shayne said after he had let the pause drag itself out until every nerve was tense. “I know who killed Harvey Peckinbaugh. I am going to name him tonight.”

He paused again, took out a cigar, and preceded to light and puff it slowly and carefully.

“My God, man,” one of the attorneys said, “Why don’t you cut out the theatrics. Name the killer.”

Shayne kept silent almost a moment longer. “All in good time,” he said. “First I think that all of you, and particularly the killer, are entitled to know how I came to my conclusions. You see, it was the killer in person who gave me the answers one by one. If he hadn’t made one basic error and then compounded that error over and over, this crime might have gone forever unsolved, and the killer been perfectly safe.”

“Tell us,” Della Peckinbaugh said.

“Tim Rourke blundered onto the scene of the murder,” Shayne said. “The killer saw and recognized Tim. His fatal mistake was that he thought Rourke also recognized him. Tim didn’t. All he saw was a confused scuffle in darkness. He didn’t even know he’d seen a killing, let alone who the parties were.”

Shayne looked from face to face. None of them changed expression in the slightest.

“The killer wasn’t a professional,” Shayne said. “If he or she had been, then Tim would never have left that shadowed grove by the sea alive. His body would have been put in the skiff along with Harvey Peckinbaugh’s to sink into the Gulf Stream too.

“The killer was an amateur who would kill only for a personal reason. He didn’t think fast enough or realistically enough. He let Tim walk away.

“That was his second mistake. His first and worst was to assume that Tim had recognized him. All the other mistakes grew out of that first one.

“Of course the killer didn’t know Tim Rourke. Tim is a brave and honest man. If he had realized a murder had been taking place, he would have interfered even at the risk of his own life. If he had recognized the two people in the thicket, he would have gone to Sam Hill as soon as he knew that Harvey was murdered.

“The killer didn’t even consider this. The killer thought that Rourke was a blackmailer, as he himself would have been. This in itself tells us a lot about the killer.

“He tried to buy Tim Rourke’s silence. When that failed and he found out I was associated with the case, he tried to kill us both. He tried and failed more than once. Each time he did, he made more mistakes that pointed more and more clearly to his own identity.

“At first all of you here tonight were possible suspects, except for you gentlemen,” Shayne turned to the lawyers, “because each of you had the opportunity and a possible motive to kill.

“By his actions the killer eliminated you one by one until the only suspect remaining was the right one.”

Shayne’s cigar had gone out. He took his time striking a match and relighting it. The tension in the room almost reached the breaking point.

“Miss Dawn was a suspect because she was in Harvey’s will for a very large sum,” Shayne said. “On the other hand she seems to have really been fond of him. She was too small and slight to have overcome him in a fight. She had nothing to gain by his death at this particular time. Most important of all, it has been established that she couldn’t have tried to bomb Rourke and myself last night. At the time that happened she was eating dinner in a public place. You might say the killer cleared her himself by the time of the bombing.

“That yacht where we were to have been bombed belonged to Slim Peters. I don’t think he would have planned to destroy it. It was worth a lot of money to Slim, and not insured against bombing. I talked to the insurance people today. In Slim’s business they’re careful what insurance they write.

“Besides, I think Slim would kill with a gun, not a bomb.

“Of course even Della Peckinbaugh could be a suspect. Her motive? To free herself from a man she found intolerable, a man who flaunted his mistresses before her, who treated her with scorn and whom she dispised.”

Della Peckinbaugh stirred in anger.

Shayne raised one big hand. “Hold on. You could have been a suspect. I’m not saying yet you are the killer. You had the most to lose by killing and to gain by waiting till Harvey died a natural death of anyone. If you killed him and were caught, you couldn’t inherit one dime. Why risk that?

“Of course, I almost changed my mind this morning. When I came to see you here I had to wait ten minutes. I know now it’s because it was you I saw in the bar downstairs with Mr. Buzby. I had to wait while a servant got you back up here. The police will question your servants and find out which one.”

“I wasn’t with Bill,” Della said. “He was having a drink with Sally Peters.”

“She joined us,” Sally said. “I left them together.”

Shayne ignored the exchange. “After I told you I knew who the killer was you excused yourself for a moment. You said it was to answer the phone. I think it was to make a phone call. The person you called tried to kill me in the elevator when I left here, so he must have been close by. Maybe still in the bar.”

Della Peckinbaugh’s calm was really shattered by this time. “You’re accusing me of conspiring with Bill Buzby to kill Harvey and then you! Mr. Shayne you’re out of your mind. It’s a tissue of lies. I had no reason on God’s earth to do such a thing.”

She started to rise, but Mike Shayne waved her back into her seat.

“Hold on there. I haven’t accused you. I’m just stating some facts.”

“I hired you to find my husband’s murderer. I wouldn’t want you killed.”

“I thought of that,” Shayne said. “Only the real killer would. He had to be someone who knew the Key Paradiso home and boathouse intimately. He had to know this hotel and how to get into the elevator shaft. He had to know the financial affairs of all of you, and where Slim kept his yacht, and how to imitate Slim’s voice on the phone to the crew. He had to be in the know on everything that happened, that is, be someone you would confide in at every stage. The only one that fits is Buzby.”

The confidential man kept his poker face. “Your hypothetical killer also had to have a motive, Mr. Shayne. Of all these people I’m the only one without a motive.”

“Oh no,” Shayne said. “On the contrary — you’re the only one of the lot with a motive strong enough to make you kill Harvey. That motive was fear.”

He paused again, and they all watched him closely.

“Somebody offered Tim Rourke two hundred thousand dollars for silence. That’s an odd amount. It should have been much less, or much more. Any of these women could have offered half a million at least, I thought to myself. The killer panicked. He offered all the money he had, or close to it. It was a mistake.

“I made some phone calls today, Buzby. A month ago Harvey Peckinbaugh got suspicious. He ordered an audit of your accounts by a good detective agency. You have a quarter of a million dollars that you shouldn’t have.

“We can check this. I think Harvey had a report that you had been embezzling from him and was going to send you to jail. That, or you had intercepted the report. You quarrelled and he threatened you, so you killed him.

“You might have gotten away with it, if Tim Rourke hadn’t blundered by and you thought he had recognized you. That was a mistake, and so was everything you’ve done since.”

Bill Buzby looked white and deadly calm, but he still managed to keep control. “Theories,” he said. “Words, Mr. Shayne. Nothing but words. You have no proof of anything. If you did, I’d be under arrest now.”

He glared at the big detective.

Shayne looked at him gravely. “I’ve got proof.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a battered lump of metal and let it drop on the table. “This is the bullet you fired at me in the elevator today. This we can trace to the gun and the gun to you.”

Chief Will Gentry and Tim Rourke kept perfectly straight faces, though they knew this was pure bluff on the big redhead’s part. No bullet mashed so badly by its impact on steel could be ballistically assigned to the gun that fired it.

Like most people Buzby didn’t know this, but he still kept his control. “Trace away. I don’t own a gun.”

“You don’t have to own one,” Shayne said. “You fired one. Not twelve hours ago you fired a gun. There’ll still be minute traces of burned powder in the skin of your hand even if you’ve washed that hand. The traces will be there for days. We’re going to test the hands of everyone in this room for powder traces, Buzby. We’ve got you now.”

Bill Buzby was faster than Shayne had counted on. He hadn’t been fool enough to come to the meeting wearing a gun, but there was one in the drawer of the library table where he sat, and he got it out and shoved it to the back of Della Peckinbaugh’s head before they could move.

“I’m leaving here, and she’s going, along as hostage,” he said. “So much as blink an eye and I’ll blow her head off. I mean it. You all stay here for two hours. Nobody moves or phones. At the end of that time you can do as you please. I’ll be gone in a private plane and Della with me. I’ll let her go when I’ve made Cuba. Do you understand?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. Keeping Della as a shield he backed across the room and through the kitchen door into the hands of the two detectives Chief Will Gentry had posted there before the meeting started.

“Could you really have found powder residue on his hands?” Della Peckinbaugh asked the men over drinks when Buzby had been taken away.

“No way to tell without trying,” Chief Gentry said. “It’s possible, but we couldn’t know for sure. The important thing is that Buzby thought we could. He didn’t dare test it.”

“Everything he did was a mistake,” she said. “Poor Bill.”

“He was a killer and a fool. The two go together,” Mike Shayne said. “His first mistake was when he stole a dollar from your husband. Everything came from that. At the end everything he did showed me more and more clearly who he had to be. The only real evidence was his own guilt. It had to come out and it did.”

“If I hadn’t blundered onto the killing, he’d have had a perfect crime,” Tim Rourke said.

“There’s no such thing,” Mike Shayne told them all.