“What about the Lenski pistols?” Shayne demanded. “Did you get any line on them? Are they what the killers were after?”
“She doesn’t know, of course. I’ve told you all she saw and heard tonight. Oh, your tip was right. There were six of them originally. A man brought them in for sale about a week ago. She realizes it was not a strictly legal transaction, of course, but these poor people are accustomed to making a dollar any way they can. Her husband paid twenty-five dollars each for them, and he’d already sold four of the six for a hundred dollars each up to this afternoon. It was a great windfall for Wilshinskis, and there are two of them still in the safe waiting to be sold.”
Shayne shook his head as she paused for breath. “Not now, there aren’t. It looks as though that’s what the men were after, but why did they kill him in the process? To save two hundred bucks? And then go off leaving boxes of jewels in the open safe?”
“There’s one thing she did say, Mike, that may be very important,” Molly went on hurriedly. “The man who brought in the first half dozen told Mr. Wilshinskis there was an unlimited supply where those came from and he would be glad to furnish more in the future at the same price. They had visions of building up a steady trade and selling three or four a week, Mike, at a net profit of at least ten times what a store like this normally brings in.”
“What was their source of supply?” demanded Shayne. “Who brought in the first six guns and promised them more in the future?”
“She doesn’t really know, except he’s a former customer who has pawned small things here in the past. You see, she gets all the shop business second-hand from her husband, Mike, from what he tells her at night. But she says he was a sailor… a seaman is the way it translates from the Lithuanian… wearing a uniform with brass buttons. She never saw him actually… it’s just her husband’s description. But, Mike! She says there is a special ledger in which he made a note of transactions like this… under-the-counter business. If you could find that ledger it might have something written down.”
Shayne turned back to the open safe and crouched in front of it. He spread his handkerchief over his hand to pull the canvas-covered cashbook out and lay it on the counter. He turned swiftly to the center of the book and the last page on which a transaction was noted, saw the date was the previous day, and turned back a page, muttering, “There are names and dates and prices entered here. Let’s see… a week ago. This must be it: Six Len. 12-0-7 Pd. $150. Cap. Sam Ruffer. And there’s an address out in the northeast section… one of those streets that dead-ends on the Bay. I’m going out there to find Captain Ruffer, Molly. Sounds like it might be a boathouse or a beach cottage. You stay here and call the police as soon as I leave. Tell them everything except about the call from Gonzalez and the reason we came here. Tell them any damned thing except the truth.”
She shook her head, standing flatfooted in the doorway and barring his exit. “I’m going with you, Mike. Why should I stay here and make statements to the police?”
“Because this is murder,” he told her savagely, “and I want you out of it. We don’t know what he told those men tonight before they killed him. If I get there in time I may surprise them interviewing Captain Sam Ruffer.”
He moved in close to her and caught both her wrists in his big hands and swung her aside easily. “You stay here and comfort the old lady with your Lithuanian crooning. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.”
He hurried out through the front door without looking back, closed it carefully behind him, and then went around his parked car to slide under the steering wheel. He switched on the headlights and reached for the ignition key, and his hand brushed the empty lock.
He stared down at it stupidly for a moment. He had left the key in the lock when he got out. He knew he had. Molly had been sitting in the car and he hadn’t bothered to lock it.
Molly! Of course. She must have taken the key from the lock when she heard the old lady scream and hurried inside.
He jerked the car door open and leaped out, went back inside the pawn-shop and found it empty. He went back to the rear calling as loudly as he dared without arousing the neighbors, “Molly. You’ve got my keys.”
He paused at the back door, looking up the stairway and listening, but he could hear nothing from above.
Damn her! he thought angrily. She’s sore because I refused to take her along, and she’s going to make me come up and get my keys from her.
A glint of metal on the counter in front of the arched opening in the lattice-work caught his eye just before he started up the stairs.
It was the set of keys to his car which Molly had evidently placed there after he shoved her aside and hurried out.
He grabbed them up and called up the stairway, “Okay. I’ve got them. See you tomorrow,” and long-legged it back out of the shop without waiting for her answer.
10
Shayne swung back and threaded through traffic as fast as he could make it to Biscayne Boulevard, then straightened out northward in the inside traffic lane and stepped hard on the accelerator. Traffic was heavy in both directions on the boulevard at this hour, and he continued at high speed for only a short distance before he had to start easing off and moving over to the right to be ready to make a right turn onto Captain Ruffer’s dead-end street.
He watched the street signs tensely, braked to fifteen miles an hour and made a wide sweeping turn onto the narrow, palmetto-lined street, then cursed savagely and jerked his wheel to the right when a car suddenly loomed up directly in front of him, moving toward him in the center of the macadam strip without lights.
His heavy sedan lurched down into a shallow borrow-pit and Shayne fought the wheel to hold the car upright, then gunned the motor hard and was back on the pavement almost before he had time to realize what had happened. In his mirror he saw the lights of the other car flash on, and it made a fast turn into the boulevard northward.
He made no attempt to stop and back up and pursue the car, knowing it would be at least a mile from the scene before he could complete the maneuver, and he had seen and recognized the faces of the two men in the front seat in that brief instant while his headlights were full on them. He would know where to find them later if he wanted them. Right now, having recognized the pair, he was more than ever anxious to get to Captain Ruffer fast.
It was less than a quarter of a mile to the bayfront with no houses on either side of the narrow roadway.
There was a solid stone barrier and a turn-around at the dead-end where Shayne stopped and turned off his motor and lights. There was a cool breeze from the bay, and night silence broken only by the sound of small waves splashing against the foot of the cliff in front of him.
On his left a squatty stone structure was perched boldly on the very edge of the cliff overlooking the bay. Light glowed through a round window like a porthole in the front door and a neat shell-lined walk led up to the door.
Shayne got out and strode up the walk. The driving sense of urgency had deserted him now that he was here. Those two hoods in the unlighted car had been here first and he was strangely reluctant to follow them inside the sea captain’s house.
The door had a heavy bronze knocker, and the big strap hinges were also of bronze. Shayne looked for an electric bell without finding one, lifted the heavy knocker and dropped it twice. He waited no more than ten seconds before trying the doorknob.