Cunningham whirled to look at Mrs. Meredith standing near the door. The expression on her face was enough to tell him that Shayne had spoken the truth. His hand darted into his coat pocket for a gun, but Quinlan grabbed him first. The plainclothesman dived in, and came up with a frothing sailor handcuffed to his wrist.
“Take him along,” Quinlan said irritably. “All we need is Mrs. Meredith’s testimony that he was gone from her room long enough to have committed the murder. You’ll give us that!” It was a command.
“Of course.” She smiled with cold mockery. “I don’t want to do anything illegal.”
“Illegal?” sputtered Quinlan. “After divorcing Albert Hawley and remarrying him under a different name?”
“I didn’t break any law by doing that. He’s still alive as Mr. Shayne has proven. His uncle’s estate will come to us.”
“A hell of a lot of good that will do him,” Quinlan raged. “He’ll spend twenty years in jail for evading the draft.”
“But I won’t. I didn’t evade the draft.”
“You’re as guilty as he is.” Quinlan barked. “Come along.” He took her by the arm, said, “O. K., Shayne,” and went out.
Lawyer Hastings lingered. When he was alone with Shayne he said in a troubled voice: “A very clever series of deductions, Mr. Shayne. I have been most unhappy in the realization that something of this sort took place two years ago. I confess I was at a loss to understand Albert’s action in leaving everything to his ex-wife, but I assure you I didn’t know... I really didn’t know about the substitution of the gardener to take Albert’s place in the army.”
“The old lady was the key to the whole thing,” Shayne told him. “Her domineering personality and her idea that Albert was too good to serve as a common soldier. That, and the rundown condition of her estate. You assured me that Ezra Hawley had furnished them with plenty of money to get along on, but it certainly hadn’t been spent on the home. That explained where the money came from to pay Mrs. Wallace — and the added income Albert received in Chicago.”
Hastings sighed. “I daresay — a mother’s love...” He waved his hand and cleared his throat. “You understand this surprising turn of affairs nullifies the fee you were to receive. I’m sure you recall it was contingent on my client receiving the estate.”
“That’s right,” Shayne said carelessly. “Perhaps you feel I shouldn’t keep the two hundred-retainer.” He got out his billfold.
“No, indeed. You must keep that. I insist.” Hastings settled his Panama on his head and went out.
Lucy, who had been listening in a corner and taking notes, said: “I should say it’s little enough. I suppose you won’t even send Mrs. Wallace a bill.”
“For explaining to her that her husband is dead? No, angel.” He grinned broadly. “A strange case. Mrs. Wallace has fourteen grand in the bank. Mrs. Groat has her husband’s diary which she can sell to any newspaper for a small fortune.” He sighed. “I’ll try to be satisfied with the ten thousand I’ll collect from Mrs. Meredith-Hawley when the estate is probated.”
He patted the folded agreement in his pocket and poured himself a long drink.
Heir in the Air
by Dale Clark
Chapter One
Haunted Hotel
Blond Eva Taine was tousle-headed and panic-eyed. She wore a negligee a little thicker than a cobweb, and a blue-and-gold bellhop’s coat. The negligee was what she’d been wearing when she rushed screaming into the lobby. The coat was what they’d covered her up with as they hustled her into manager Endicott’s private office.
She said: “I tell you, I saw it with my own eyes! I woke up and it was bending right over my bed! It was Grandpa’s ghost, and it tried to strangle me!”
The thin-faced, graying Endicott listened in tsk-tsk disapproval. Endicott didn’t believe Eva Taine’s spook story, and he didn’t think the paying guests at the fifteen-dollar-a-day-on-up resort hotel would believe it, either. He was afraid the Hollywood week-enders and West Coast socialities would figure there was a real life, flesh-and-blood stranger on the loose at San Alpa.
It doesn’t do the luxury hotel business any good to have crimes committed against its clientele, and Endicott argued against the whole idea.
He spoke curtly: “You were just dreaming, Miss Taine.” Then he turned to O’Hanna, the San Alpa house dick, and asked him: “Wasn’t she just dreaming, Mike?”
O’Hanna was a tall Irishman, and a long hop-step-and-jump from the average, toothpick-eating lobby cop. Hired to keep the California mountain resort an upper-class playground instead of a happy hunting ground for crooks, O’Hanna was supposed to squelch wrong-doing before the paying guests even knew anything had happened.
Of course, he couldn’t help it if they had bad dreams. But — was this just a dream?
O’Hanna’s Irish-gray glance rested on the negligee that did almost nothing to keep the blonde from catching her death of cold. The part of it which interested him most was the lacy neck of the garment. Nothing about Eva Taine’s slim, rounded throat showed any signs of struggle with a strangler.
“I don’t know,” the house dick admitted. “What makes you so sure it was your grandfather, Miss Taine?”
“It had a beard — a white beard. Even in the dark I could see that. And then there was the way it breathed.” Eva Taine shivered inside the negligee and the borrowed bellhop’s jacket.
“Breathed?”
“As if it had a tin whistle in its throat. I’ll never forget Grandpa Taine breathing like that when he had his attacks of asthma.”
O’Hanna said: “Still, ghosts don’t just happen! There’s generally a reason why they come back—”
Endicott interrupted sharply. “You’re crazy. Ghosts don’t happen at all, for any reason whatsoever.”
“I’m asking her. Did the ghost say what he wanted, beside strangling you?”
She moistened her lips. “I... I’m not sure. He muttered something about the cat, about teaching me to let the cat alone...”
O’Hanna caught the cat on the first bounce. “You grandfather didn’t happen to be old Colonel H. C. Taine?”
The blonde said: “Yes.”
“Rubbish,” Endicott fumed. “It wasn’t any of her dead relatives. It was probably the lobster thermidor on the table d’hote dinner—” and stopped, did a double-take with his mouth muscles as if he’d just suddenly remembered Colonel H. C. Taine.
Endicott said: “Colonel Taine? The one who left a hundred thousand dollars to his pet cat?”
O’Hanna recalled the newspaper publicity at the time. Both times, in fact. It had all started when a black kitten, belonging to one of the servants, had crossed the path just as the old gentleman was coming out to his limousine. Colonel Taine had been superstitious enough to turn back to his front door and start the trip all over again. The chauffeur, standing there beside the open limousine door, had thought his employer had changed his mind about the drive, so he closed the door. When he did, four sticks of dynamite under the back seat had blown the cushion clean through the top.