Even as he cursed himself, Shayne was conscious of a faint inward glow of satisfaction. The pressure was on, and that’s the way he worked best. A girl had been murdered in his apartment and a kidnap note sent implicating him. Painter and Stallings had promised him until noon tomorrow to see that Helen Stallings was returned. He had that much time in which to clear up the murder and the mystery surrounding it. And he didn’t even know where the body was.
He pressed down the accelerator and stuck his head out the window to let the cool bay breeze blow the muggles from his mind. His thoughts revolved around Arch Bugler, around the hot-lipped maid at the Stallings residence, around the young man whose name was Marlow, and the mysteriously missing body of a strangled young girl.
A few vagrant pieces of the larger puzzle — and none of them appeared to fit together. He had only a few hours in which to find enough more pieces to form some design. He forgot the discomfort of his swollen lips and puckered them to whistle a carefree tune. Inside him was a driving eagerness to begin the search for some of those missing pieces.
Arriving at his hotel, the clerk beckoned to him when he entered the lobby. “Telephone message, Mr. Shayne. A Mr. Rourke called from the Parkview Hotel. He’s waiting for you there and wants you to join him at once.” The clerk stopped abruptly, his eyes fixed on Shayne’s face. “Gosh,” he breathed, “what does the other fellow look like?”
“Better than I do,” Shayne admitted ruefully. “But I’m going to try out a pair of knucks next time I meet him. No other messages — or visitors?”
“Nothing else. Gee, I’ll bet it was a whale of a fight.”
“Practically a butchering.” Shayne grinned. “The Parkview?”
“Yes, sir.”
Shayne returned to his car and drove north through the center of town. Rourke, he mused, had worked fast and with luck to locate Marlow’s hotel so soon. Shayne wasn’t at all sure that it would be any help, but it was a good omen. If his Irish luck started working, things were bound to begin straightening out.
He passed the Thirteenth Street entrance to the causeway and continued north along the boulevard. There was little traffic. A heavy car which had loitered behind him for several blocks suddenly darted ahead with a full-throated roar of sixteen cylinders.
Subconsciously he stiffened when the big car whirled into a U turn at a street intersection a few blocks ahead and roared back at high speed. Shayne couldn’t remember whether the Parkview Hotel was in that block or the next, and turned his eyes to search for a sign. When he looked back at the street the heavy, speeding car swerved as it came abreast of him. Then it was a lunging projectile of steel that smashed his aged car as though it was made of papier-mâché, lifting and twisting it in the air, driving it sideways against a lamppost that crackled at the base under the terrific impact.
Shayne was thrown free. He crashed into a low Australian-pine hedge on the other side of the sidewalk.
The big car careened over the curb on screaming tires, bounced back into the street, miraculously retaining an upright position. It shuddered to a standstill and a figure leaped out, ran to Shayne’s smashed car carrying a burden in his arms. The figure darted back to the waiting car and it sped away as Shayne shook himself and got groggily to his feet.
Staggering to the wreckage of his car, he stopped to stare stupidly down at the pallid face of a girl who lay crumpled against the curb as though she, too, had been thrown from his car.
Shaken and unnerved, he dropped to his knees beside her. Her flesh was cold to his touch, and in the illusive moonlight he saw that it was the body of Helen Stallings.
An approaching car was slowing, edging in cautiously toward the wreck.
He was going to have a hell of a time making anyone believe that the cold corpse had not been a passenger in his car when it was wrecked.
SEVEN
THE CAR WAS A BLOCK AWAY. Shayne’s emergency reflexes were swift and adequate. Before the headlights were upon him he gathered the stiff corpse in his arms, holding it vertically against his body, and darted across the sidewalk to the thick hedge against which he had been thrown. Lifting the corpse over the hedge, he held on to the dress until the legs touched the ground, then let it fall to the grass with a soft thud.
He scuttled crabwise to the curb beside his wrecked car and staggered to his feet as the first car arrived and an excited young couple jumped out.
Other cars began converging upon the scene and curious householders hurried out of near-by homes, attracted by the crash.
Shayne didn’t have to do much talking. Everyone else was doing it for him. He kept insisting that he was all right, and when a police car arrived he gave a terse report of the wreck, grimly insisting that it had not been an accidental crash.
“I was loafing along when this car swerved and rammed me.” He did not mention the significant fact that the limousine had been trailing him along the boulevard before it darted ahead and doubled back to get a good run at him.
“A black limousine, I think.” He gave the best description possible. “Looked as big as a fire truck and must have been just about as heavy to do this job to my car and get away under its own power.
“Hell, no. I didn’t get the license number,” he snapped in answer to the uniformed man who was taking notes. “I was busy getting my door open and trying to make a leap for it. It was all over before I knew it was happening. You’ll have to look for a black limousine with a smashed left fender and radiator grill.” He edged away from the officers and curious onlookers crowding the sidewalk, managing a disinterested glance at the hedge to see that the girl’s body was not in evidence.
He breathed a deep sigh of relief that the hedge was thick and matted, the fine soft needles of the pines forming a solid mass from the ground up to the level, clipped top.
Pushing through the throng, Shayne ambled up the street mopping his face with a handkerchief. The accident had been contrived with fiendish and perfect timing. If he had been injured or knocked unconscious for half a minute, no one would ever have believed his fantastic story — even with Rourke to back him up. Against them there would be Chief Gentry’s positive evidence that the girl was alive in his apartment at six o’clock. It would tie in with the kidnaping note, a perfect chain of circumstantial evidence with a noose dangling at the end of it.
He had seen other innocent men writhing ineffectually in the coils of circumstantial evidence, had helped some of them beat the rap. There was no one to help him. If he didn’t get the answer quickly — or if Helen Stallings’s corpse was discovered—
Perspiration streamed from his face. His handkerchief was soggy with sweat as he went over the setup. The Parkview Hotel was a block and a half beyond where his car had been wrecked, but Shayne felt that he had walked miles from the scene before reaching it.
He swung into the lobby and saw Timothy Rourke seated comfortably in a corner talking with the house detective. Rourke’s eyes brightened as he took in Shayne’s appearance. House Detective Cassidy removed the frayed butt of a cigar from his mouth and rumbled, “Looks like you’ve been in a rough game of tag, young fella.”
Shayne stopped in front of them and glared at their complacent faces. “I could die a block away and neither of you’d stir off your rumps to say a prayer for me,” he complained.
Rourke sighed. “Praying for you would wear out a rosary a week. I might’ve known it was you when we heard the crash down the street. I’ve been waiting for you to wreck that jalopy ever since you took out junk insurance on it.”
Shayne sank down in a leather chair. He growled, “Phyllis will be happy about it. She’s been after me to buy a new one ever since we were married.”