Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 6, May 1961

Death by Fright by Herbert Harris

A case of mistaken identity can be very serious... for a killer.

John Houck clutched at his breast, wincing with pain, his hands gripping a chair-back for support. It was useless to tell himself he should be accustomed to these agonizing pangs by now. Each time a sharp pain stabbed at his heart it made him gasp.

As the spasm passed, he pulled open a drawer and took out the nitroglycerine tables which he had been using much too frequently during the past three weeks.

For three days now he had been forgetting to take them. There had been all this trouble over Sandra...

The telephone in his apartment began ringing, and he braced himself to answer it. “Hello... this is John Houck.”

The voice at the other end of the wire was angry, contemptuous — the voice of Laurence Blair, movie actor, and amateur sportsman. “Houck, I asked you not to see Sandra again. I’ve warned you before, but I’ll say it just once more. She’s through with you. I wish to hell you’d realize that.”

“You listen to me, Blair...” Houck could feel a hot flush mounting to his cheekbones. “I don’t intend—”

“No, you listen,” Blair cut in, his voice taking on a steely edge. “Sandra doesn’t ever want to see you again. Try to get that into your thick head.”

Blair paused an instant, then went on truculently. “Look, I don’t intend to continue this conversation, it’s too unpleasant. However, there’s one other matter that’s got to be straightened out Remember that diamond ring you gave Sandra? I’ve told her to give it back to you.”

“And I told her to keep it,” Houck muttered, his voice choked with rage.

“She doesn’t want to keep it. And I’d just as soon she didn’t. As a matter of fact, I have it now. I’ll see that it’s returned to you.”

“Now, look here, Blair—”

The receiver at the other end was slammed into its cradle. Houck stood staring first at the dead telephone, then at the framed snapshot of himself and Sandra at Palm Springs. Sudden anger overcame him. He struck savagely at the frame, smashing it against the wall and shattering the glass, splintering it to fragments and cutting his hand slightly.

Another twinge seared his heart, and he sat down trembling. A sliver of glass from the damaged picture frame lay by his foot. It was shaped like a dagger, and the ugly thoughts that had been crystalizing on a subconscious level were openly faced and accepted.

Houck knew that he wanted to kill Laurence Blair, that he had wanted to kill the man from the moment the actor had taken Sandra from him. Blair had dazzled her, of course, precisely as he had many more sophisticated women. Perhaps he had promised her a movie career?

He recalled the Sandra he had known, the almost plain-looking girl who might have married him and nursed him back to health, or at least made his life less bleak during the little time he had left. Blair had changed her, had made her seem almost beautiful.

Houck went to the drawer where he kept his nitroglycerine tablets. He looked at the knife that rested there, a hunting-knife with a fine tapering blade. He took it from the drawer and put it into his pocket.

It was nearly seven o’clock when he went out. The sun was sinking behind the houses. Soon he would be a shadowy figure with murder in his heart.

Lieutenant of detectives Don Lake eyed the broken picture-frame in Houck’s room, picked it up, and handed it to a sergeant in uniform. He then walked over to where Houck lay sprawled on the carpet near the door.

The doctor who had been examining the dead man got up. “Heart attack,” he said. “Went out like a light. It happens often enough.”

Lake grunted and turned to look at the man who had put through the call to the police. “You’re Charles Gough?”

“That’s right,” the man said. He was rather well dressed but somehow he did not have the look of a very prosperous or successful man.

“You were working for Laurence Blair?”

“I’ve worked for him, on and off, for some time,” Gough said. “Small odd jobs, mostly. I also—”

“All right,” Lake said. “Did you know that Blair was stabbed to death near his home at about seven o’clock? That was—” He glanced at his wrist-watch “—about three hours ago?”

Gough’s pallor heightened. “No, I didn’t know. That’s — terrible. I didn’t even—”

“When did you last see him?”

“This afternoon about five, maybe five-thirty. Mr. Blair gave me this package.” He handed the package to the detective. “He said it was a diamond ring, and told me not to lose it.”

“What did he want you to do with it?”

Gough swallowed. “He asked me to deliver it here.” He nodded towards John Houck’s body.

Lake nodded. “But you didn’t bring it to Mr. Houck right away?”

“No, I had some other errand I had to do first. I didn’t get here until after nine, not quite an hour ago.”

“More than two hours after Blair was murdered,” Lake said.

“I knew nothing about that,” Gough protested quickly.

“All right, relax,” the detective said. “What happened when you got here?”

“I rang the bell and Houck opened the door. I was going to hand the package to him when he made a choking noise and his face turned purplish. Then he collapsed—”

Lake was eyeing Gough thoughtfully. “Has anyone ever told you that you resemble Laurence Blair?” he said.

With a fleeting smile, Gough said, “That’s how I got to know him. I doubled for him in some of his motion pictures, especially the stunt scenes. I wasn’t related to him, but we were always taken for twins. A lot of people have mistaken me for Blair.”

“Yes,” Lake said thoughtfully. “Houck thought so too, apparently. Laurence Blair returned from the dead. Even a person with a sound heart might have died of fright.”

The sergeant said, “The whole thing’s damned peculiar. The girl in this snapshot looks exactly like one of Blair’s girl friends.”

Lake eyed him wryly. “You don’t say,” he said.

Charles Gough still looked vaguely bewildered.