The Uncomplaining Corpses

Chapter Fifteen: ONE JUMP BEHIND DEATH

Shayne stopped at the first drugstore he came to on Biscayne Boulevard and called his hotel from a pay station. The clerk told him that Phyllis had neither returned nor phoned since the afternoon call which he had failed to receive. He hung up and used another nickel calling Miami police headquarters. He caught Will Gentry still in his office and the detective sounded worried.

“What the hell’s getting into you, Mike? You knocking out everybody you meet? I’m willing to go a long way with you, but you can’t go around bouncing your fist off Peter’s chin.”

“Why not?”

“Hell’s bells, Mike, be reasonable!”

“He’s been begging for that for a long time, Will. Did the little twerp tell you he was trying to lock me up in his stinking jail when it happened?”

“Sure. But resisting arrest and assaulting an officer in pursuit of his duty is what makes it so bad, Mike. I’ll have to pick you up if you show your mug in Miami.”

“All right, Will.” Shayne sounded weary and beaten. “I guess I do have a way of making it tough on my friends. You’ve gone the limit for me plenty of times and I know it. I’m calling from Twentieth and Biscayne if you want to send a car to pick me up.”

“Aw, now, you know how it is, Mike. I’ve got a job of my own to look out for. I can’t just outright refuse to pinch a man because he happens to be a friend.”

“I know it, Will. I’m a heel for expecting friendship to stretch that far.” Waiting tensely at his end of the line, Shayne heard a smothered curse come over the wire. His lips slowly twisted into a grin as Gentry spoke again:

“You know I’d do anything within reason for you. Take the Thrip boy, for instance. Did you hear about him being picked up in an alley beat half to death by an unidentified mob-and robbed?”

“Yeh. I heard about that, Will.” Shayne’s voice was warm. “That was white of you. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d grabbed me for that. I’m not squawking. I know when I get out of bounds. Come on and pick me up and get the credit for it. There’ll be plenty of credit. The morning papers will say I’ve gone berserk. Maybe I have. I just wanted to stay out of jail long enough to find Phyllis and bring her back home, but-I guess the cards are stacked against me this time.”

“Phyllis? Your wife, you mean? What in God’s name has happened to her, Mike?”

“I don’t know,” Shayne groaned hollowly. “A fate worse than death maybe. You know how impulsive she is. Well, she-but, hell! You can’t worry about that at a time like this.”

“Damn it, you know I’m worried, Mike. I love that girl like she was my own. What are you covering up?”

“Nothing, Will. She’s probably all right. You know how jittery a man gets.”

“I never knew you to be jittery before.” Will Gentry’s voice was very stern. “If your wife’s in some trouble-”

“She’s just a kid. Doesn’t know what the score is. Dumb enough to think her husband isn’t a murderer and to try and help him prove it. That’s why it’s going to hurt like hell while I lie up in Painter’s jail knowing that whatever happens to her will be on account of her being so lamebrained as to love a louse like me.”

“Quit your stalling,” Gentry snapped impatiently. “If Phyllis is in any danger, let’s do something.”

“Yeh. I’d better tell you before they lock me up so you can do what you can. She left me a note this morning saying she was going out to help me solve the Thrip case. She went straight to Carl Meldrum without knowing that he’s a maniac. She’s so damned innocent, Will-” Shayne’s voice faltered convincingly.

“Meldrum? That’s the bird at the Palace Hotel on the Beach. I’ve got a man waiting to pick him up now.”

“Yeh, but he and Phyllis went off together before your man got there and they haven’t come back. I think I know where I can find him tonight, but hell! that won’t do me any good if I’m in jail.”

“You’re not in jail yet, you damned fool. I can’t arrest you if I can’t find you.”

Shayne said, “Well-but-”

“No buts about it. Duck out of there and forget you called me.”

“You’ve got your job to think about,” Shayne reminded him, “and Painter will be riding you hard.”

Will Gentry cursed him fervently, then ended with a snarl: “I was running this department when Painter was wearing a safety pin instead of a belt buckle. Just keep out of sight, Mike.”

“Well, if you want to know where not to look,” Shayne suggested, “I’m on my way out to the Tally-Ho.”

“Good. That’s outside the city limits. I don’t think the sheriff is looking for you yet.”

Shayne said, “All I ask is a few hours, Will.” He hung up and hurried out to the curb, stepped in his car, and sped north on the boulevard.

It was too early for much of a crowd to be at the Tally-Ho when Shayne turned off the boulevard to the right toward neon lights showing through lacy palm fronds. The night club was backed up against the western shore of the bay, alone and secluded in the midst of a palmetto-grown strip which had been subdivided during the boom, but never built up.

The floodlighted parking-lot wasn’t more than a third full of cars and the dimly illumined tropical gardens surrounding the two-story stucco structure were deserted at this hour of the early evening.

Inside the clubhouse, an air of subdued magnificence was calculated to overawe the unwary and loosen their purse strings to meet the high cost of the entertainment offered.

Shayne traded his trench coat and hat for a check and a smile from a blonde behind the check counter, strolled to the door of the main downstairs dining-room for a quick gander inside, then went back through a well-lined bar to the gaming-rooms in the rear which were occupied mostly by croupiers and dealers waiting for the late play to begin.

After a leisurely circuit of the rear he came back through the bar, went on to the dining-room without seeing a familiar face. He knew there were private rooms upstairs where anything could and did happen, but he saved an investigation of them until later when they were more likely to be in use.

The headwaiter didn’t recognize the detective, but, his eyes lighted with recognition for the twenty-dollar bill in Shayne’s hand when Shayne asked:

“Do you know Carl Meldrum by sight?”

“Yes, sir. He’s one of our regular patrons. It’s a little early for him.”

“Is Miss Thrip here?”

“Miss Thrip? I don’t know the young lady by name, sir.”

Shayne nodded shortly and moved toward a vacant table near the door, disregarding the waiter’s suggestion that he could arrange a ringside seat for the floor show which was soon to begin.

Shayne said, “This will be all right,” and selected a chair backed against the wall where he could see every person who entered and survey the entire dining-room.

A waitress, appropriately attired in a short red hunting-jacket, pink tights, and patent leather boots, approached his table at once to place the Tally-Ho’s menu sheet before him.

Without glancing at the menu, Shayne said, “Four sidecars and a planked steak for two. Make it hot on both sides but not in the middle.”

When she went away, Shayne leaned back and lit a cigarette, began a careful study of the half hundred or more couples at the tables next to the roped-off square where the floor show would be held.

He had finished less than half of his keen survey of faces when a girl glided up to his table. She had black, square-cut bangs and a white-toothed smile. She was sheathed in a tight evening gown of emerald green biased by darker stripes which reminded Shayne of garden snakes. Its V-front ended alarmingly close to her navel.

The girl asked, “Waiting for someone, big boy?” and started to pull out a chair.

Shayne said, “Yes,” and she hesitated, then cajoled:

“No use being lonesome while you’re waiting. How’d you like to buy me a drink?”

Shayne said gently, “Go sell your bill of goods to some sucker, sister.”

The waitress brought Shayne’s sidecars and ranged them in front of him just as the ceiling lights dimmed, leaving only the dim bulbs of cleverly designed coconut-shell lamps glowing on individual tables.

The orchestra struck up a two-four time medley and twin floodlights covered two short flights of steps down which a bevy of nude young girls tripped in a rhythmic dance.

Shayne gulped down half of one sidecar and settled back with his left arm crooked over the back of the chair, holding the glass in his right hand. From a distance and in the soft glow of varicolored sprays of the spotlights, the girls were alluring, claiming his attention. They appeared entirely nude except for silk triangles apparently held in place by nothing at all.

They paraded around the square, dancing, holding out their arms, coyly inclining their heads to flirt with the males whose tables crowded close to the ropes.

Shayne looked on through half-closed eyes for a time, then swore to himself because the lights were too dim to see the faces of the couples who entered the dining-room and were led to tables by waiters.

The girls were trooping back toward the twin flights of steps. The leaders swerved, and instead of dancing up the stairs to the dressing-rooms, tripped up side steps leading out among the tables scattered all over the room.

Shayne straightened, drank the last of the sidecar, and sat with his arms folded on the table. The dancing girls moved toward the outer tables, moving their arms snakily, flirting as they passed along.

When they passed his way, he could have reached out and touched them. But he didn’t. At close range he saw that a puttylike substance covered their full breasts, lifting them high, and that the putty was beginning to crack. A vivid brunette paused briefly at his table, cocked her head coyly, and moved her arms as if to encircle his neck.

Shayne looked up and grinned. “Wash that damn stuff off and you’ll have something, baby,” he muttered.

He turned his entire attention to the three sidecars in front of him, pouring down two-thirds of the second one as the waitress approached with his steak. She set it before him and waited while he pierced it with a sharp knife. A rich red color showed between the browned sides of the thick slab of meat and Shayne nodded his satisfaction.

He detained the waitress when she started away: “Is Mona busy right now?”

“Mona Tabor? I don’t think she’s here yet. I’ll find out.”

Shayne said, “I wish you would.”

He started on the third sidecar, and in less than a minute the waitress came back to report, “Mona hasn’t come yet. She phoned that she’d be late. I can get one of the other hostesses,” she offered with an obliging smile.

Shayne told her not to bother and attacked his steak after draining the third sidecar glass.

The orchestra tuned up again with swing music. A G-stringed girl and a man in top hat and evening clothes came onto the dance floor and got in the groove. In spite of the music, Shayne was interested in the eccentric dance.

He tossed off his fourth sidecar and came to the morose conclusion that he was getting old.

Dorothy Thrip came in between floor-show acts when the ceiling lights were on. Her black sequin dinner gown glittered and there were rhinestone clips in her hair. She stopped just inside the doorway and asked the headwaiter a question. He shook his head and said something, nodding toward Michael Shayne,

Dorothy turned her head slowly to look at him. Shayne had just sopped up the last drop of hot blood on a piece of bread. He waved it at her, then stuck it in his big mouth.

She didn’t return his greeting. She followed the head-waiter down the aisle to a vacant table which also commanded a view of the entrance, and sat down alone.

Shayne crooked a finger at his waitress, who appeared to have as many eyes as she had patrons for she glided to his table instantly. Shayne ordered a quart of 1932 Du Blanc Port and leaned back to light a cigarette. The lights dimmed again and a breathy female of large proportions gave a fair imitation of Sophie Tucker in a stepped-up version of Frankie and Johnnie.

Shayne didn’t like Sophie and he detested fat women who imitated her. The crowd liked it, though. By the dim lights at the tables he saw them whisper, laugh boisterously, and applaud noisily the more vulgar lines. The dining-room was filling up rapidly and the smoky air held an acrid bite of marijuana along with the sickening sweet of Turkish blends.

During the intermission, Shayne watched the close-packed dancers who swarmed onto the small square of polished floor. Many of them were obviously muggled with marijuana; Shayne guessed the cute little cigarette girls were peddling reefers openly among the patrons. That would account for the number of private rooms upstairs and the rumors that filtered out of the Tally-Ho.

Shayne could see Dorothy Thrip alone at her table, her cold round eyes fixed on the door. She showed no symptoms of nervousness nor any hint that she feared Carl Meldrum might not come.

Shayne’s waitress glided up and said, “Mona just got here. I told her a gentleman was asking for her and she’ll be right over.”

Shayne thanked her and slid a dollar bill into her palm. He kept faced away from the rear toward the door for fear Mona mightn’t come if she saw who had been asking for her, and he was rewarded after a time by hearing someone stop at his table and utter a smothered gasp of recognition.

He turned slowly, pushed his chair back, and stood up. Mona’s lips were twisted sullenly and there was a tight, hard look about her face. She looked as though she was on the point of turning away, then tossed her head and said, “It’s you. I might have known it would be.” Her voice was low, her body and manner as splendidly poised as when Shayne first saw her. Her copper hair gleamed, a becoming coiffure above an evening gown of purest white which gave her a deceptively virginal appearance.

Shayne nodded to the hovering waitress to bring another wineglass. He drew out a chair for Mona, and after a moment’s hesitation she sat down. He gave her a cigarette and lit it, then poured her a glass of the excellent port.

She drank the wine and made a face, complaining, “What kind of stuff is this for a redheaded he-man to be drinking?”

“I’m just a sissy,” Shayne admitted. “I suppose you don’t think much of my cigarettes, either.”

She grimaced and tapped her cigarette against the ash tray on the table. “They’ll do,” she said indifferently. “I don’t go for marijuana, if that’s what you mean.”

“It wouldn’t mix so well with absinthe,” Shayne told her. He gestured toward the crowded dance floor. “Plenty of floaters out there, though.”

“Sure. That’s one reason a hostess has a hard time being decent in this joint. Too much nonprofessional competition from the girls who get high.” Her voice held an undercurrent of discontent. It was as though she held back with an effort to keep from exploding.

Shayne studied her face with frank, wide eyes. “Seen Carl Meldrum today?” he asked after a little silence.

“Does it mean anything to you whether I have or not?”

“Not much. You haven’t,” he answered for her after a brief study of her eyes. “Are you expecting him here tonight?”

“I never expect him any more,” she said with some bitterness.

Shayne motioned toward Dorothy Thrip sitting alone several tables away. “Looks as if Miss Thrip was waiting for someone.”

Mona moved languid eyes in the girl’s direction. “Oh-her. She’s always getting in Carl’s hair.”

“She’ll soon have a lot of cash at her disposal,” Shayne murmured.

For a moment Mona’s defenses were down before a surge of emotions which seemed compounded of anger and fear. “She won’t have it long after Carl takes her over the hurdles.” Then, getting a firm grip on her emotions, she looked levelly at Shayne and said indifferently, “Why don’t you give up your crazy idea of hanging the old lady’s murder on someone else? Darnell’s already dead and buried. Why strain yourself to bring grief to anyone else?”

Shayne’s eyes grew stubborn before her pleading gaze. “I told you how I stood on that. I’d just as soon have you as Renslow or Meldrum.”

“That’s twice you’ve made that kind of a crack about me,” she slid out. “Where do you get that stuff?”

“You’re one of my best suspects,” he told her cheerfully. “You’ve got the physical strength for it-and a snootful of absinthe does funny things to people. Carl is covering up for somebody-maybe it’s you.” Shayne set his wineglass down and opened the fingers of his left hand, began touching them off with the forefinger of his right hand. “Now, Carl could have let you into the Thrip home last night; or you might have made an impression of his key.” He touched the third and middle finger, saying, “You have got some string on Meldrum that makes you certain he’ll come to you with any money he picks up-you might have got tired of waiting for his notes to have any effect on Leora Thrip-and you’re willing for him to play the girl for her money. Hell,” he added, brightening and picking up his wineglass, “I didn’t know it did fit so well. He didn’t know what you were planning on, so he went ahead and mailed that note that night.” He raised the glass to his lips and drank. “Nothing like talking things over to make them come clear.”

Mona’s eyes were wide upon him; in the dim light they seemed the exact color of her henna-colored hair. “What are these notes you’re talking about? First you accuse Buell Renslow of writing them-then Carl.”

Shayne looked at her with a sort of vague admiration in his gray eyes. “Upon those notes, my dear possible murderess, hangs the solution of as weird a crime as I’ve ever tackled.” He poured both wineglasses full from the quart bottle, emptying it. “Renslow would be glad enough to hang it on Carl,” he went on argumentatively. “I hope neither of you thought I was fooling this noon when I said I was going to throw somebody to the wolves.”

“And you don’t care whether it’s the guilty person or not,” Mona charged. “You’d frame any one of us if you saw a chance to do it.”

“Sure.” Shayne drank some wine. “I’d frame any one of you I thought was guilty,” he explained. “But you’re wrong about thinking I’d hang anything on a person I believed innocent.”

“Very generous of you,” Mona answered ironically, “but it would still be a frame.”

Shayne emptied his wineglass and raised ragged red brows in a cynical grin. “I might have to manufacture some evidence to convince the police,” he admitted. “Painter is so bullheaded he’s going to take a lot of convincing.” He paused, then added musingly, “I had a hunch Renslow would offer you enough to overcome your objections to our idea of fitting Carl for the trap when I left you two together today.”

“He did make me an offer.” Mona’s tone was sullen, brooding.

“Not big enough to wean you away from your husband?”

“Say!” Mona threw him a startled glance. “How’d you know-” She checked her words with a sharp intake of breath, after which she clamped her lips.

“Smart guessing,” Shayne told her. “You said you were married and not working at it very hard. You seemed absolutely certain of your string on Carl.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t hard to dope out. Does Renslow know?”

“No. Why should he?”

“He might raise the ante if you told him how it was.”

“We didn’t go into that very far,” Mona admitted. “Maybe he would.”

“If you drank much absinthe after I left, you weren’t in any condition-” Shayne was looking past her and saw Buell Renslow standing in the entrance. He wore a dinner jacket and looked immaculate, but his eyes were bloodshot and veins showed in his face.

Shayne glanced across at Dorothy Thrip and saw her looking at her step-uncle without apparent recognition. Renslow saw Mona and Shayne sitting together. He moved toward their table after a moment’s hesitation.

Shayne muttered, “Here’s your drinking companion now-coming straight toward our table. Want to duck out?”

Mona turned to look at Renslow and pushed her chair back. With loud vivacity she said, “I’ve wasted too much time at one table, redhead. I got to be circulating.” She nodded casually to Renslow as she went away.

When the white-haired ex-convict sat down heavily in the chair she had vacated, Shayne greeted him cheerfully.

“You look like the fag-end of a misspent life, fellow. What are you drinking?”

“Nothing for me, thanks,” Renslow’s eyes followed Mona across the room. He complained, “I’ve got the jitters.”

“Absinthe?”

“That’s all there was to drink after your bottle was emptied.”

“And I’ll bet she’s the kind that’ll keep on at it indefinitely,” Shayne offered sympathetically.

Renslow nodded. He seemed withdrawn, remote from everything about him, with that same quality of secretive stillness which had characterized his sister, Leora Thrip.

“Did the party just break up?” Shayne asked after a while.

“About an hour ago. I’ve been home washing the green taste out of my mouth with peroxide.”

“Try a glass of beer,” Shayne suggested.

Renslow shuddered. “Not yet. After a while maybe.”

A uniformed attendant of the Tally-Ho was threading his way between tables toward them. As he passed, he paused at each table to ask a question, but evidently, Shayne noticed, he was receiving negative responses.

Renslow puffed jerkily on a cigarette and he and the detective watched the attendant approach.

Michael Shayne had one of his Irish hunches that destiny approached him as the man came on. He didn’t know what it was that told him, but there was an odd tremor playing over his spine as the callboy came up, asking, “Mr. Buell Renslow?”

Renslow nodded and the attendant handed him a sealed envelope. Shayne tossed him a quarter while Renslow tore the message open. Shayne watched him unfold a single sheet of paper and read the few typed lines on it.

Renslow kept staring at the paper and his fingers tightened spasmodically. His knuckles were white and the paper shook in his grip. A wave of sickness swept over his face and Shayne leaned forward to ask sympathetically, “Bad news, old man?” straining to get a glimpse of the words but seeing only the signature of Carl Meldrum in heavy pen strokes.

Renslow looked up quickly, crushing the message in his hands. “No-it’s-” His expression hardened. He looked past Shayne and his eyes were tortured with something that went beyond the limits of physical fear. “It’s a joke,” he said hoarsely, “a-lousy joke.”

His fingers folded the note and began tearing it in long strips. His gaze was still remotely on nothing, on a shadowy something which no other man could see. He said, “Excuse me,” and got up. He dropped the torn bits of paper on the table and walked away stiffly.

Shayne watched Mona come up and intercept him on his way to the door. It seemed to him that she must have been watching, as though she had waited for something like this to happen.

She spoke to him and he snarled an answer. Mona’s eyes widened and she appeared to protest.

Renslow started for the door and she clung to him. He pushed her off, then deliberately slapped her face with the full force of a wide open-handed swing.

She went to her knees crying out something unintelligible to Shayne. Renslow darted away while waiters began to converge on the spot. Shayne watched them help Mona to her feet, then he began gathering up the torn strips of paper the ex-convict had dropped.

It was a laborious business getting them pieced together in order. It took him a full half-hour of concentrated work to put together this much:

— Saw yo-urder Mrs.-rip-willing-talk it over-midnight-meet-at 306 Terrace Apt-Oth-wis-am go-to the-lice.

He slid the pieces of paper into his coat pocket and jumped up. Pausing to drop a ten-spot on the table, he hurried out and retrieved his hat and coat. Dorothy Thrip had disappeared while he was working on the torn note.

In his car he drove at savage speed down the boulevard to Ninety-Sixth, where he made a screaming right-hand turn to the Grand Concourse which angled down to Northeast Second Avenue.

It took him less than five minutes to reach the Terrace Apartments in Little River, but he knew he was too late when he slowed to turn off the avenue onto the side street where he had parked earlier in the day.

Police cars lined the curb in front of the apartment building and excited residents of the district crowded the wide lawn where children had played in the sunlight that noon.

Shayne rolled past the police cars, cut his ignition, and parked. He lit a cigarette and sat behind the wheel for a moment, then shook his head angrily and got out. If he had trailed Renslow when he left He hadn’t. Instead, he had stopped to put the note together. He got out and went toward the apartment building. His mouth was dry and he wondered where Phyllis was.