Stranger in Town

14

On a sudden impulse, Michael Shayne braked his car and swung in to the gas pumps at the Squaredeal Filling Station just outside of Brockton. His gas tank was three-quarters empty, and he got out and said, “Fill it up, please,” to the brisk young man who trotted out from the office to wait on him.

He waited until the gasoline was running before asking casually, “Your name John Agnolo?”

“That’s right, Mister.” The young man’s voice was cheerful, his face was intelligent and showed a certain amount of curiosity as he regarded the stranger.

“I’m doing some checking on the man who was burned up in his car last week-end,” Shayne explained. “I understand you thought he stopped here for gas Thursday evening before it happened.”

“Yeh. I did think it was him at first. Same make and color of car. And when they showed me his picture at the police station I was ’most ready to swear it was him that asked me how to get to the Sanitarium, but if it was I guess he changed his mind and turned off on the other fork instead because they said he didn’t go there.”

Shayne frowned. “According to the paper, you gave him a pencil sketch showing how to get there, and it wasn’t a difficult route.”

“That’s right. I sure did. Drew it out for him. ‘You just turn left at the next light,’ I told him, ‘and keep going straight till the road forks where there’s a sign. You take the left fork,’ I told him, ‘and you can’t miss it.”

“But his car was wrecked on the other fork?”

“That’s right. About a mile from where he should have turned left.” Gasoline gurgled up from the tank, and Agnolo shut off the pump. He hung up the hose and replaced the tank cap and asked Shayne, “Want me to check your oil and water?”

“They’re okay. You might give the windshield a swipe.” Shayne followed him around to the front and went on, “You’re not sure whether the man was alone or not?”

“I was pretty sure at first there was someone with him, but I could be wrong. I just didn’t notice particularly. They said at the Sanitarium that a fellow who looked like him was there about the right time that night to see his sister, so I reckon I must of been mistaken. It wasn’t anything I could swear to, you see.”

Shayne gave him a five-dollar bill as he finished cleaning the windshield. He took his change and got in, pulled out onto the highway again and followed it to the first traffic light. He turned left and was on East Avenue, and glanced at his speedometer. It registered almost exactly two miles from the light when the road forked in front of him.

He slowed and clearly saw the neat sign on a post directly ahead in the Y of the fork where a car’s headlights could not fail to pick it up at night. It said, BROCKTON SANITARIUM, and there was an arrow pointing to the left.

Shayne followed the arrow up a winding, black-topped road a half mile to a high fence of meshed wire with swinging gates closed across the road barring the way. Beyond the gates, landscaped grounds sloped upward to a large, sprawling white building almost concealed from view by a row of gnarled magnolia trees.

There was a small brick shelter beside the gate, and a man stepped out of it as Shayne pulled up with his bumper against the steel gates. He was a small, spry man of about sixty, wearing a faded gray smock and gray trousers that had the look of a uniform. He unlatched a narrow gate that was a part of the bigger one, and came around to Shayne’s side of the car. His face was brown and wrinkled and his eyes a wintry blue. He leaned ah elbow on the door and extended his hand. “Let’s see your card.”

Shayne said, “I haven’t any card. I want to see Dr. Winestock.”

The old man shook his head. “Can’t let you through ’less’n you got a card.”

“It’s personal,” Shayne told him.

“Can’t help what it is. You don’t get in without a card. Them’s my orders.”

“It’s police business,” Shayne said.

He continued to shake his head obstinately. “I got no orders to admit a policeman.”

“What kind of place is this?” demanded Shayne angrily. “Why are you afraid of visitors?”

“Private, that’s what. Patients pay for privacy and we aim to see they get it. Happens some of ’em don’t want visitors… they don’t have ’em.”

“Are you on the gate at night?”

“Till eight, mostly. Then I get a relief. Look, Mister.” The old man’s voice was placating. “It ain’t my rule. You got to phone up for an appointment first if you ain’t got a card. That’s the way it is and no amount of talking in this world will change it. You go back and do that and if I get word to let you through, you go through. Not no otherwise.” He turned back and walked behind the car and reentered the grounds through the small gate which he carefully latched on the inside.

Shayne sat immobile behind the wheel and lit a cigarette, peering through narrowed eyes up the green slope to the white building behind its screen of trees.

It was very quiet here in the late afternoon sunlight. Very peaceful and serene. Unaccountably, a shiver traveled slowly up the detective’s spine as he sat there moodily regarding the well-guarded sanitarium.

He shrugged and backed away in an arc on the wide apron that had been thoughtfully provided in front of the gate for visitors who weren’t allowed through, cramped the wheels and drove back toward Brockton.

At the fork half a mile away, he slowed, debating whether to take the other turn and drive out to investigate the scene where Randolph Harris’ automobile had gone off the road on a sharp curve and burst into flames at the bottom of a ravine.

He decided against that, and continued in to town on East Avenue. There would be nothing there for him. Nothing that the police had not already thoroughly investigated.

He was a mile beyond the fork when he noticed the car behind him in the rear-view mirror. It was far back and coming fast when he first noticed it as he rolled along at moderate speed, and he had no way of knowing whether it came from the Sanitarium or the right-hand fork behind him.

Deep in thought as he reviewed the perplexities of the problem confronting him, Shayne forgot the car behind him as he drove on, until he suddenly realized it hadn’t passed him yet-as it certainly would have done had it continued at the speed it was coming when he first noticed it.

Another glance at his mirror showed him it had slowed to the same moderate pace he was driving at a point about a thousand feet behind, and was keeping that distance as he continued on.

The road ahead was empty for half a mile, and Shayne abruptly stepped hard on the gas pedal. His heavy sedan leaped forward with a surge of smooth power, and his speedometer needle moved from thirty to sixty in a distance of five hundred yards.

A grim smile tightened Shayne’s features as the car behind him fell into the trap and responded immediately. It was slower to accelerate and he was pulling away fast, approaching the residential section of Brockton where there were cross streets leading in both directions.

He took his foot off the gas to let the other car regain its distance behind him, and stepped on his brake hard when it was again no more than three hundred yards in the rear.

His tires squealed their protest and he fought the wheel hard to swing the heavy car across the road in front of the other, but the second driver realized what he intended and didn’t try to slacken speed. He increased it instead, and a light gray sedan careened past Shayne on his left before he could slow enough to block the roadway, outer tires going off the pavement and flinging gravel from the shoulder as it shot by.

There was only one man in the front seat, hunched forward over the wheel as the gray car shot past, and Shayne caught only a momentary glimpse of a snap-brim hat pulled low over the driver’s forehead as it went by.

He cursed and whipped his foot from brake to gas pedal and the Hudson accelerated fast from almost a dead stop, but the gray sedan was fleeing ahead like a frightened antelope and made a screeching turn on a side street before Shayne could regain enough speed to remain in sight.

He didn’t attempt to follow the other driver around the corner. With no knowledge of the geography of Brockton, he realized it would likely be useless.

He thought the man in the gray sedan had been Gene. He couldn’t be positive because he hadn’t seen his face, but the snap-brim hat and the tilt of it were definitely remindful of the man who had tried to kill him the preceding evening.

He drove on into town, putting two and two together, and getting five or six for the answer each time he did so. If Gene had followed him from the Sanitarium… if his slowly awakening suspicions about the nature of the place were correct…

Two and two still added up to six no matter how he twisted the meager supply of facts at his disposal. Jean Henderson was still the key to the puzzle. Why had a stranger positively identified her as his daughter and taken her from the hospital? What had she been doing last night in Brockton? Why had she come up to speak to him as he sat alone in a bar-room booth that he had entered by the merest chance? Why had her apparent recognition of him brought on the immediate attack by Gene and his companions?

The questions kept passing through his mind again and again as he entered Brockton’s Main Street, and the image of the girl was clearly before his eyes as he had first seen her standing timidly inside the door of the bar-room less than twenty-four hours before.

So it was almost like a physical materialization of his own concentrated thoughts when he saw the figure in the white silk dress with its distinctive green embroidery of Mexican symbols moving toward him on the crowded sidewalk across the street.

Today, on the street, she wore a wide-brimmed Leghorn hat that hid her features from Shayne, but he would have recognized that distinctive dress anywhere, in any crowd.

She was almost opposite him when he saw her, and he was in a stream of slow-moving traffic that would not allow him to stop at once.

He looked ahead frantically for a parking space, breathed a deep sigh of thanks when he saw an empty spot along the curb a few car lengths ahead.

He set his teeth together and swore harshly when the car directly in front of him slowed and stopped just beyond the parking space, and the woman driver signaled her intention of backing into it.

Normally a polite driver, Michael Shayne shed all pretense of politeness under the sharp necessity of getting his car out of traffic and hurrying back to intercept the girl in the white dress.

He shoved forward and cut in sharply, grazing the left front fender of a parked car, forced his right front wheel up onto the sidewalk and cut it back viciously to squeeze into the curb before the woman could start backing into it.

He snatched his keys from the ignition and leaped out, trotted across the street, disregarding the angry voice of the driver whose rightful place he had preempted.

When he reached the opposite sidewalk, he thought for a moment that he was too late, that Jean had turned in one of the many store entrances along the street where he might never find her again, but as he plowed forward through the stream of pedestrians, he saw her half a block ahead and he breathed more easily.

She was sauntering along looking in the shop windows, and Shayne came up behind her fast. He slowed into step beside her and looked down at the spreading brim of straw that hid her face, and then without speaking he took her bare upper arm in a firm grip and stopped her on the sidewalk.

A gasp of astonishment came from beneath the hat brim and she turned to look up at him indignantly.

He had never seen this girl before in his life.