Shayne didn’t say anything. Rourke tried to help by remarking, “Some garage mechanics have good-looking wives and are jealous of them.”
Gentry paid no attention to the remark. He frowned and said, “I keep thinking about that dead Negro in the basement garage of the house that burned tonight. The boys found an open razor gripped in his right hand. He was about the size to have worn those coveralls.”
“How did the fire start?” Shayne asked blandly.
Rourke sat quietly, looking suspiciously from one to the other, trying to fathom the meaning of the seemingly irrelevant remarks.
“Short circuit in the electric wiring, apparently,” Gentry rumbled. “Fuses kept blowing out and when they had no more, some damn fool tried to make a connection by putting a penny in the fuse box socket. If it wasn’t for a telephone call I received I wouldn’t think so much about it,” he ended gently.
Shayne nodded. “I know what you mean. Have you picked up Irvin?”
“Not yet.” Gentry took a couple of swallows of his drink, then added, “I’ve got men asking questions.”
Shayne tugged absently at his ear lobe as the police chief got to his feet. He said, “Let me know as soon as you get any answers.”
Gentry stared for a moment at Shayne’s bland face and said, “It might help a lot if you’d tell me where you were between midnight and two-thirty.”
“Painter places me in Palm Beach at one o’clock,” Shayne reminded him lightly.
Gentry grunted. “I know.” He asked Rourke, “Coming along, Tim?”
The reporter squinted at the half-full bottle on the floor and shook his head. “Not for a while, Chief. I learned a long time ago to hang around Mike when I wanted a headline. And I like his drinking liquor.”
Gentry said, “There’s going to be an awful stink when the Deland kidnap story hits the morning papers. I’d hate to be involved in a deal like that.”
Rourke nodded soberly. “My story has already gone in to the local paper, and out over the wires. There’ll be a lot of tears mixed up in the stink all over the country. That’s one time Petey gave me a break. I guess I ought to’ve kissed him for it.”
Gentry gave a grunt of disgust and moved stolidly to the door, went out and closed it silently.
Shayne and Rourke sat quietly for a time, the latter’s deep-set eyes bright with excitement as he regarded Shayne hopefully.
When the detective said nothing, Rourke muttered, “Gentry made several queer cracks at you, Mike. I never knew him to be subtle before.”
Shayne made a violent gesture with his right hand. “Will knows I’m on the spot half a dozen ways, but he also knows I’ve never let him down.” He settled back in one corner of the couch and closed his eyes. “Give me everything on the kidnap story, Tim.”
“It’s nasty,” Rourke warned him. “It’s got all the elements of a cause celebre. Pathos, heartbreak, down-to-earth people. There’ll be a wave of popular indignation, sob stories, editorials, and sermons on the death of Kathleen Deland. For God’s sake, Mike,” Rourke went on shakily, “that wad of dough I saw in that Gladstone. If that’s what I think it is-”
“Don’t bother thinking about that now,” Shayne told him sharply. “Give me the kidnap dope.”
“I’ll give it to you straight,” Rourke growled. “After the wind-up at Leslie Hudson’s house last night I got a story off on the wires, and then beat it down to Beach headquarters to get a fill-in. I was with Painter in his office a little after twelve when he got the kidnap flash.
“I went with him to the home of Arthur Deland on Tenth Street. It’s a nice little white stucco cottage, on a modest street of other nice little cottages. A neat lawn and flowers and a white picket fence. One glance tells you it’s the home of a hard-working man who loves his family and takes pride in his property and-”
Shayne broke in impatiently. “Save the sob stuff for your copy. You’ve got soft since you got your guts nearly blasted out a couple of months ago.”
“Maybe,” said Rourke quietly. “But you’re going to get the picture the way I got it. I know you’re hard-boiled and you’d sell your grandmother’s soul to the devil for a Canadian dime, but I’ve got a hunch you don’t know what you’re in the middle of this time.”
Shayne lit a cigarette and said, “Go on.”
Rourke poured himself a drink. “There were lights on all over the place when we got there. Painter and I went in. We were met at the door by Arthur Deland. He’s a tall, gaunt-faced man with big knuckles and calloused hands that’ve done hard work for a lot of years. His eyes were sunken and tears were running down his cheeks. There were two other people in the living-room-Mrs. Deland, and her brother from New York. Mrs. Deland’s name is Minerva; she has white hair and a sweet face. I don’t suppose she’s more than forty, but years of poverty and the struggle to maintain a decent home for their only child are stamped in her face. There’s pride, too. Pride in her home and their way of life and in the beautiful child they’ve reared.”
Shayne groaned, reached for the bottle and tilted it, took a long drink, and said, “You’re breaking my heart.”
“I’m trying to,” Rourke assured him. “Mrs. Deland was slumped in a rocking chair. Probably the same one she rocked Kathleen to sleep in when she was a baby. She wasn’t crying. I think she was drained of tears. There was just an empty look on her face, as though she already knew the truth-and the futility of it all. I doubt whether she felt anything more when they brought the lifeless body of her daughter to her a couple of hours later.
“The rug on the living-room floor was faded and the furniture was worn. But it was clean and neat, and everywhere there were little touches of a woman’s loving care. Crocheted doilies, decent but cheap prints on the walls, fresh zinnias from her garden in a bowl, above the mantel a large picture of Kathleen at the age of ten. It was a tinted picture, Mike. She had laughing blue eyes and golden curls.
“That’s Miami’s house of sorrow tonight. A dead house, silent and cold. Life has gone out of it and all the meaning that life and drudgery and privation have been to that couple. No laughing young voice echoing through it and no sunlight glinting on golden curls. I tell you it got hold of me like nothing else in the world ever did. I’ve covered lots of stories in my time and I thought I was hardened to that sort of thing, but tonight I learned I wasn’t.”
“In the name of God, Tim, don’t switch off on your life story,” Shayne raged. “I’m still waiting to hear one single relevant fact about the kidnaping.”
“You’ll get the facts in good time.” Rourke lit a cigarette, took a deep puff on it, and continued. “The third person in that room was Minerva’s brother, Emory Hale. He’s a big, quiet man with shaggy eyebrows. He didn’t have much to say, but you could see how it was hitting him, too. You could see that he adored his sister and that Kathleen had been the one bright spot in his life. Just from little things he said, you could tell. He’s got a poker face and from the cut of his clothes I’d say he’s a rich man, but he was wilted when we got there. I had a feeling that he knew-just as Mrs. Deland knew-that they’d never see Kathleen alive again.
“I think I pitied the father most. He wouldn’t let himself give up hope. He was determined not to let it get him down. It was wonderful to see a man with such faith. He tried to know that no harm had come to his little girl, and in his own sorrow he tried to comfort the others. So I imagine it was hardest on him when they did bring Kathleen home.”
“How old was the girl?” Shayne asked sourly.
“Sixteen, Mike. Life must have looked pretty good to Kathleen Deland. She had everything before her. Honor student in the senior class at high school. Organist in the church, and a leader of a young people’s group. I swear to God, Mike, I’ll never get that girl’s picture out of my mind. I keep thinking of the thousands of sixteen-year-old floosies it might’ve been. Silly bobby-soxers and cocktail dopes strutting their adolescence-”