Pay-Off in Blood

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Shayne stopped downstairs in the crowded lobby to call his office. Lucy Hamilton told him, “Two calls, Michael. Abe Lincoln, the probation officer. At first look, he’s pretty sure Fritz Harlan is in the clear. He’s checking further. One thing he thought might interest you: Harlan was once a patient of Dr. Ambrose’s… and recognized him at the Seacliff last night. He’ll call again as soon as he has something more definite.

“Your buxom nurse on the Beach is the other one,” Lucy went on chattily and almost cattily, although Lucy didn’t have it in her to really be catty. “She wants you to come see her at once. She refused to confide in a mere secretary why she wants to see you, but dropped some mysterious hints intended to make me believe it’s something more important than your virile sex appeal… which I somehow doubt.”

Shayne said, “I’ll get over there as fast as I can… in the hope your hunch is right. In the meantime, Angel: Call Will Gentry and alert him to the fact that the house dick from the Splendide Hotel is bringing three mugs in for booking. Tell him to hold them until I can get in to make charges… which are going to start with assault with intent to kill, and go on from there. Explain to him that they got roughed up a little by resisting arrest.”

“Michael! Are you all right?” There was instant alarm in Lucy’s voice.

“I’m wonderful.” Shayne grinned reassuringly at the mouthpiece. “Feel better than I have since I got my ribs kicked in last midnight. Take care.”

He hung up and walked out of the lobby briskly. He did feel wonderful, by God! The mood of depression, that had momentarily possessed him in the hotel room upstairs, had vanished. The three of them deserved everything they’d got. God knows how many poor suckers they had manhandled in the past while collecting legally uncollectable racing bets.

Twenty minutes later he walked springily up the walk to the Ambrose house and pressed the doorbell. The door was opened almost immediately by Belle Jackson, wearing her white nurse’s uniform and with a warning finger pressed against her lips. “I hoped it would be you,” she told him in a conspiratorially low tone. “Celia is resting in the bedroom. I don’t think she’s in any condition to be aroused, but you never can tell about… well, you know?”

“Drunk?” Shayne asked bluntly, stepping inside and keeping his voice low.

“Well,” said Belle delicately, “she’s been nipping anyhow. And now I hope she’s asleep.” Belle moved close to him, so she could keep her voice low. “I called your secretary, Mr. Shayne, because I made what I think is an important discovery and I wanted to tell you instead of that stupid policeman, who came to the office last night.”

Shayne grinned at her characterization of Peter Painter. “What is it, Belle?”

“I want to show you in a minute. It’s in the bedroom and that’s why I hope Celia stays asleep. But tell me this one thing first: was it Doctor’s own gun that was used to murder him? This morning you said you hadn’t got the official report yet.”

“Yes. It was his gun all right. And a careful chemical analysis of the glove compartment of his car gave no indication at all that it had been carried there recently.”

“I wondered about that,” she said sibilantly. “Whether they would be able to tell for sure where a gun had been. How do they know?”

Shayne shrugged. “I don’t know anything about that end of the business. Ultra-violet rays, I guess. Stuff like that. Why are you so interested in the gun, Belle?”

“You’ll see.” She linked her big, solid arm closely with his and led him across the carpeted floor, moving with that same soundless grace he had observed in her before.

He followed her example by keeping on the balls of his feet, and she guided him to the right, down a hallway off the living room and into a large bedroom that was cool and dim with heavy draperies carefully drawn at the windows. There were twin beds in the room, and one of them was occupied by Celia Ambrose.

The bed was made up, and she lay on her back on top of the silk spread, fully clothed, as Shayne had seen her earlier.

Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open, and small, wheezing sounds came out of it with her breathing. There was a faint smell of alcohol in the room, and an overturned highball glass lay on the rug beside the bed just underneath the trailing fingers of her left hand.

An open door on the left led into a large bathroom, and beyond that was another closed door.

Shayne let Belle lead him quietly across the room to the closed door, which she opened. This was a smaller bedroom with a three-quarter sized bed, and with masculine appointments. The draperies were tightly drawn here, too, and Belle drew the connecting door shut behind them before switching on an overhead light.

Then she crossed to a chest of drawers and leaned down to open the bottom one. She straightened up and stepped aside and said triumphantly, “There it is. I don’t think we should touch it until they can come and make their chemical tests or whatever.”

Shayne squatted down in front of the open drawer. It contained several pairs of folded pajamas on the right side. On the left side there was a neatly folded hand towel in a rectangle about six inches by twelve. A fully loaded clip from a.32 automatic pistol lay at one end of the folded towel. In the center of the rectangle was a faint yellowish stain. Shayne leaned close to it and sniffed the unmistakable smell of gun-oil.

He rocked back on his heels and looked up at Belle, who stood with both hands on her hips.

“Did I guess right?” she asked in a low, urgent voice. “I don’t know anything about pistols, but isn’t that thing part of one?”

Shayne nodded and got to his feet, his eyes bleak. “It’s a spare clip that generally comes with an automatic. How did you come to find it?”

“I looked for it. I just opened the drawers, and there it was. Remember, I told you this morning that I knew Doctor didn’t keep any pistol in the office… and I didn’t think he had one in his car. So, when you said you thought he was shot with his own gun… well, I wondered… how anybody could have got hold of it. So I looked here in his room, after Celia lay down to rest.”

Shayne tugged at his ear-lobe thoughtfully, looking down at the open drawer. “I don’t know whether the scientific boys can tell how long ago a gun was there. I don’t suppose there’ll be an actual proof that it was in that drawer as late as last night.”

Belle Jackson drew in a deep breath and let it out in a sibilant sigh. “If they could prove that…?”

Shayne said gently, “It still wouldn’t be proof that Celia used the gun last night. If she was passed out when it happened… as she is now… anyone could have come in here without her knowing it and got the gun.”

“How do you know she was passed out when it happened?” demanded Belle. “I know that’s what the detective told me last night, and he seemed to think it gave poor, dear Celia a perfect alibi. I don’t think that holds true at all. Maybe she did have most of a bottle of vodka in her when the police doctor finally got here. What was to prevent her drinking it and passing out after she shot Doctor?”

Shayne said, “Nothing… really. What motive did she have, Belle?”

“I don’t know. I’m not accusing her, for heaven’s sake,” said Belle virtuously. “I’m just guessing how it could have happened.”

Shayne said abruptly, “Let’s go back into the living room and talk about it. I don’t believe you’re telling the whole truth, Belle. I think you knew a lot more about the doctor and his business and private affairs than you’re admitting. Without some motive for the murder, this evidence is useless.”

He turned and opened the door into the widow’s bedroom and went past her sleeping figure into the hallway with the nurse following him.

He sat down and lit a cigarette, oblivious of the fact that there were no ash-trays in the room. He waited until Belle Jackson lowered her sturdy body into a chair near him, and then asked: “How long had he been blackmailing you, Belle?”

She stiffened indignantly. “Blackmailing me? Who? What do you mean by that impertinent question?”

“Dr. Ambrose,” Shayne told her. “It’s perfectly obvious, Belle. He was paying you a good salary, wasn’t he?”

“Indeed he was,” she responded indignantly. “Hundred and twenty-five a week.”

“That was on the books for income tax deduction. How much of that did you kick back to him each week?”

“Of all the insulting questions… Belle’s smooth brow was furrowed and she was breathing hard.

“It doesn’t really matter, Belle. He’s dead now… and you can go out and get another job and keep all your salary… and move into a decent apartment where you can begin to live like a human being again.”

“How did you know…?” She caught herself a little too late, and bit her lower lip.

Shayne said quietly, “You had to know about his blackmail, Belle. You made out the monthly bills to patients. You knew the ones who were forced to pay added amounts each month as the price of his silence… to make up his gambling losses. Being the essentially decent woman that I think you are, you wouldn’t have gone along with this over the years, if he hadn’t been holding something over your head also.”

She wilted suddenly, and hung her head. Listlessly, she said, “I hoped… no one would ever have to know. It was years ago. I fell in love with my patient. He was dying-a painful, incurable disease. But he would have lived in agony, for months longer, if I hadn’t given him an overdose of sleeping pills. Dr. Ambrose knew. He was the doctor. No jury would have believed I did it for love. The boy left me all his savings.”

“That’s why you went to the office and emptied the strongbox last night after Ambrose was dead, wasn’t it?”

Shayne went on remorselessly. “Because you felt sorry for all his patients, who had been paying him off in monthly installments for years to keep the contents of that box secret?”

“I didn’t,” she cried out violently. “It was lying on the floor, open and empty, when I got there last night. Whoever killed him must have got the key to the box and to the office.”

Shayne shook his head. “That doesn’t add up, Belle. You told me he carried the key to the box on his car keyring. But his car was sitting in the driveway, with the motor still running, when the neighbor found his body. That means the ignition was still on… the car key still in the lock. You’re the only one who knew about the box and had another key to it, Belle. You went there and emptied it before Rourke and I got there last night. You already had those blackmail documents in your bag when we broke in on you… didn’t you?”

“All right, I did.” She faced him defiantly now. “I’m proud to admit it. Why shouldn’t I? Every one of them is burned up now, and a lot of people in Miami and on the Beach are going to breathe easier because of it. If it’s a crime to destroy blackmail evidence, go ahead and arrest me.”

Shayne said, “I don’t think that’s a crime, Belle. But, unfortunately, murder is. Even if the victim was Dr. Ambrose, who probably deserved killing as much as any man who ever got his just deserts.”

“They won’t be too hard on her, will they?” Belle asked in a hushed tone, nodding toward the rear bedroom. “None of us know what sort of cross she’s had to bear… living with him all these years. Won’t they take all that into account when she stands trial?”

Shayne said, “I hope they’ll take all that into account when you stand trial for this murder, Belle.”

She stared at him incredulously, lacing her fingers together in her lap, and unlacing them.

“Me? You know that gun was right here in this house all the time! She must have grabbed it last night, after she heard him drive up…”

Shayne shook his head and held up a big hand to shut off her protestations.

“You were the one who knew what he was getting in that envelope he picked up from Cecil Montgomery at the Seacliff Restaurant last night. The temptation was just too much to resist, wasn’t it? You knew he was going to turn that twenty thousand dollars over to the bookies’ collector later on in the evening, and you thought you might as well have it as they. You were waiting out here for him with his own gun, which you had taken from the office… and they’re going to prove premeditated murder against you, Belle, no matter how you argue otherwise.”

“But you saw that towel and the extra clip in his bedroom drawer! You said they could make tests to prove how lately the gun had been there.”

“They can make a pretty good guess how lately the gun was on that towel,” conceded Shayne. “But the towel wasn’t in that drawer last night, Belle. Only way it could have got where it is at present is for you to have brought it here from the office and planted it there after you got Celia tight.”

Belle was panting hard, staring at him unbelievingly. “I didn’t! You can’t ever prove I did!”

Shayne said, “That’s the one place you miscalculated, Belle. You thought Peter Painter was pretty stupid when he questioned you last night. I grant you that he isn’t exactly brilliant. But he’s a good policeman and he follows the rule-book. He had his men go over this house with a fine-tooth comb last night, and if that towel and extra pistol clip had been in the drawer last night, Celia Ambrose would be under arrest right now. You overplayed your hand when you planted it there after the police search. It’ll be a damned shame and a waste of raw material if they put that big, beautiful body of yours in the gas chamber, but you’re like so many murderers, Belle. You just can’t leave well enough alone.”