“Nice timing, Sergeant. Keep on looking if you haven’t found anything yet. That was a dumb play,” he went on to Morgan. “Even if you did sign Devlin’s name to the radiogram and then kill Mrs. Brice, killing Devlin wouldn’t keep us from eventually learning the truth.”
Morgan laughed jarringly. “So he’s taken you in, too. What makes you think he’s so innocent?”
“I know he didn’t kill Janet Brice because he couldn’t have sent the radiogram to her. It was filed in Miami at ten-thirty and I was talking to him in my apartment on the phone at that time — and no calls were made out of my room.”
He paused while Thompson moved forward slowly with the tray of drinks. “Just put them here on the mantel for a moment,” he told the doctor, watching while Thompson set the tray down and took one of the glasses for himself.
“What was it you asked Tommy about Marge Jerome?” Devlin asked in the moment of silence.
“I asked why he employed her as his office nurse under the name of Miss Dort.”
“Is it a crime to give a girl a chance to rehabilitate herself?” asked Thompson. He sipped his cold drink with obvious enjoyment.
“It’s no crime,” Shayne agreed, “but it’s queer about her being Skid Munroe’s girl — and the one whom Devlin chose to take up with while supposedly suffering from amnesia.”
“Marge?” Devlin whispered hoarsely. “Your nurse, Tommy?”
“Didn’t you see her when you went to his office today?”
“I — didn’t go to his office. He met me at Bert Masters’s office.”
“Give me a drink,” Morgan said.
“Just a minute,” said Shayne, “and we’ll all have one.” He looked across the room hopefully and stepped away from the mantel, saying, “Get something, Sergeant?”
“I think it’s what you need.” The three men looked at Pepper, saw him pass a folded newspaper to Shayne.
The silence in the room was tense for a moment. The three men at the table looked at each other, then Morgan got to his feet with a loud oath and picked up one of the three glasses remaining on the tray.
Shayne whirled in time to see him lifting it to his lips. “Drop it, Morgan!” he shouted.
The man’s hand jerked with fright and the glass fell to the hearth and shattered at his feet.
Shayne strode forward grimly, slapping the folded paper
against his thigh. “I’d prefer to see Doctor Thompson drink one of these first,” he said flatly. “How about it, Doctor?”
“I have a drink,” said Thompson, holding his glass high. “I suggest that these are specially good.” Shayne took one from the tray and held it out to him with a half smile on his wide mouth. “I’ll trade with you, Doctor.”
“Very well.” Thompson shrugged and extended his half-full glass to the detective. In accepting the full one in return it slipped from his fingers and crashed on the floor.
Shayne nodded. “I didn’t really need that added proof, but it verifies the suspicion I’ve had ever since I learned about this humanitarian trip to your lodge. You came loaded with enough poison to kill a dozen men, didn’t you, Doctor? I forced your hand by walking in on you, and you took a desperate chance to get rid of the three of us at once, hoping to cope with Sergeant Pepper later.”
“Poison?” The doctor’s laughter was easy and unforced. “If you’ll hand me that other glass—”
“No.” Shayne blocked his way as he moved toward the tray. “I’ll save that one for chemical analysis. You really did an admirable job of covering your tracks all the way,” he went on, unfolding the newspaper Pepper had found in one of the bedrooms, “but I’ve realized all along that this lonely fishing-lodge would have been the perfect place to be landed by a seaplane from Havana and remain in seclusion while you grew back the mustache you shaved off as a disguise while you impersonated Devlin on the Belle of the Caribbean.”
“You must be insane,” said Thompson. “Heavens, man, I have such a heavy practice that I haven’t been able to get away for even a quiet week-end all summer.”
“So you took pains to tell me in the kitchen a moment ago. One of the most curious things about this whole affair has been the ransacking of your office files early this morning — by a burglar who took great pains to destroy all your records for the past two weeks. That made me wonder if perhaps there were no records for the first week after the Belle sailed — and you had pulled the job yourself to conceal that fact if an investigation turned in that direction.”
“That is utterly absurd. I explained how I was called away by a fake call—”
“I know,” said Shayne pleasantly, “you were very adept at explaining a great many things. Let’s see what you can do with this.” He held the unfolded newspaper in his hands. “A copy of La Prensa, Havana, Cuba, June twelfth. The date the Belle of the Caribbean touched at Havana and a passenger who called himself Arthur Devlin disappeared from on board. You might try telling us how it got in your bedroom here.”
“I — it’s some sort of put-up job,” Thompson burst out. “It doesn’t prove a thing. It might have been planted here.”
“Just as your felt hat was planted in the bedroom last night where Skid Munroe was murdered after he had come there by arrangement with Marge Jerome to buy ten thousand dollars’ worth of drugs from you?” Shayne taunted him. “We’ve checked your blood group, Thompson, and it coincides with an analysis of the sweat in that hat. Marge has already told her story — and don’t forget the manager got a good look at you when you asked for Skid Munroe. Your cabin steward on the Belle will recognize you, too, as soon as we shave that mustache off again and take your glasses away from you—”
Shayne was thrown aside as Thompson, without warning, lunged at him, reaching wildly for the glass of liquor remaining on the mantel.
But Sergeant Pepper had quietly moved in as Shayne spoke and had a grip on Thompson before he could get his hands on the glass of poisoned liquor he had destined for one of the others.
When Thompson was prostrate on the floor with handcuffs locking his wrists behind his back, Shayne told Devlin and Morgan, “I don’t know about you two, but I’m going to take a chance on one of those bottles in the kitchen.” Without a word they followed him out of the room.
Chapter nineteen
The two lost weeks
“I wasn’t able to get anything more out of Thompson,” Shayne told Chief Will Gentry the next morning after detailing the events that led up to the doctor’s arrest. “Roger Morgan came clean with everything he knew, but that wasn’t a great deal. I’m hoping you can get enough from Marge Jerome to tie him up tight on Skid’s murder, at least — and to set Devlin’s mind at rest about what happened during those two lost weeks,” he added with a grin at the insurance man who sat beside him.
“What did happen that night of the farewell party?” Devlin asked nervously. “How did I wind up posing as Marge’s husband?”
“We got the whole story late last night,” Gentry told them. “Suppose you give me what background you got from Morgan, Mike. That part of it Marge didn’t know — Thompson’s motive for going aboard the Belle as Arthur Devlin.”
“Morgan admits destroying the suicide note Lily Masters wrote before her death,” Shayne told him. “He denies having been in love with her, though they were close friends and he evidently admired her tremendously. He had known for some time that she was being blackmailed, though he didn’t know what for nor by whom.
“Her suicide note didn’t reveal the man’s name, but it did state she was a hopeless drug addict and had been systematically sucked dry of funds by the man who supplied the drugs.”