Shayne groaned loudly and reached for the bottle on the floor between them. Rourke’s skinny hand went out swiftly and closed talon-like fingers about his wrist.
“No, you don’t, Mike. I’m going to get around to asking some questions pretty soon, and I want straight answers.”
Shayne looked quizzically into Rourke’s dark gray eyes. They glittered with a feverish intensity and the left side of the reporter’s mouth jerked as he stared back at the redheaded detective.
Shayne relaxed and set the bottle down. He said mildly, “All right, Tim. I didn’t kill the girl, you know.”
“I know this,” Rourke told him in a tense and shaking voice. “Kathleen Deland was murdered by every rat that had a hand in her kidnaping. It was a composite job. The law may not say so, but I contend that every bastard who so much as dirtied the tips of his fingers by contact with the kidnaping is a murderer in fact.”
Shayne said, “I haven’t got all night.”
“That’s the background.” Rourke laced his fingers around one knee. “Arthur Deland was too upset to tell a coherent story when we got there, but his brother-in-law supplied the facts.
“It happened two days ago. Kathleen didn’t return from school in the afternoon. Her mother received a telephone call about four-thirty, before she’d had time to be worried about Kathleen not coming straight home from school. A man called her. He merely said that Kathleen had been kidnaped and was being held for fifty thousand dollars ransom. He warned the mother that if a word leaked out to anyone, the girl would be killed immediately. That was all. He told her he’d call later that night, that her telephone was tapped and the house was being watched. Then he hung up.
“Minerva Deland was frantic and called her husband immediately, afraid to tell him anything over the phone except to come home at once. He runs a small plumbing shop here in Miami. Not much business, I guess, and he and his partner have been doing most of the work themselves on account of labor shortage and lack of supplies. Just struggling along and keeping their heads above water and hoping for better days.
“That’s what I gathered, anyhow, because he said it was utterly impossible for him to raise as much as five grand, much less fifty. He got home as fast as he could and was just as paralyzed by fear for his daughter’s safety as his wife was. They knew they should call the police or the F.B.I., but they didn’t. They huddled together with their fear and waited for the telephone to ring.
“The second call was at ten-thirty. Mrs. Deland answered, and she thinks it was the same voice. Nothing particularly noticeable about it, just a voice over the telephone. He asked for her husband and repeated his threat of the afternoon, and told Deland to appoint a third party to act as intermediary in the negotiations. Someone whom Deland could trust and who could be trusted to keep his mouth shut. Deland immediately thought of Jim Dawson, his partner in the plumbing shop. He gave Dawson’s name and address, but protested that it would be utterly impossible to raise the ransom.
“The voice then told him that he had a rich brother-in-law in New York. ‘Midnight tomorrow is the limit if you ever want to see your girl alive again.’ The man hung up.
“Well, of course Deland and his wife had already thought of appealing to her brother, Emory Hale. Seems he’d helped them financially before, and is fixed so he might have that kind of money on tap.
“About midnight they phoned Hale in New York and laid their need before him. He argued at first that they should call in the F.B.I., but they were too frightened and made him promise not to. At least that’s what Hale said. He knew it was the right thing to do, but he loved Kathleen so much he was afraid to upset the negotiations. He promised to raise the money the next day and fly down with it at once.
“Neither of the Delands slept that night. They called Dawson and told him what was up, begged him to keep his mouth shut and follow instructions. Dawson agreed.
“They had a wire from Emory Hale the next day saying he would arrive with the cash at eight o’clock. They phoned Dawson so he could pass the word along.
“Dawson called by phone at five o’clock. He had received his instructions from the kidnaper. The money was to be wrapped in a paper package and be waiting at the Deland house at eight o’clock, while he waited at his house. They had previously specified that the money should be in old hundred-dollar bills, and that’s the way Emory Hale brought it from New York by plane. He came straight to the house and they wrapped it in a paper package, five bundles of bills, each bundle containing a hundred hundred-dollar bills.” Rourke paused, looking at Shayne gravely.
Shayne laughed shortly and lit a cigarette. “Finish talking before you start asking questions.”
“There isn’t much more to tell. About ten-thirty the phone rang. Deland answered it. He was told to leave the house alone and drive in his car by a certain route to the County Causeway and meet Dawson there. Dawson was to take the money, drive to Miami, turn north on Biscayne Boulevard, and keep driving north on the highway at about thirty miles an hour until he was accosted. He was warned that they’d all be watched every second after he left the house and if anything went wrong, the girl would be killed.
“Deland left the house in his car with the ransom money as directed and turned it over to Dawson, then came back home. The three of them waited until midnight for the girl to be returned to them. At midnight, Emory Hale blew up and demanded that they call the police. You can’t blame him. It was his money.”
“No word from Dawson?” Shayne asked softly.
“He had vanished into thin air. As soon as he got the gist of the story, Painter alerted every cop on both sides of the bay and up the coast! He called the local office of the F.B.I., and they’re sending experts down. I was still at the house with Painter at about two o’clock when we got the flash that the girl’s body had been found-asphyxiated-inside the locked luggage trunk of a gray sedan that had overturned just off Thirty-sixth Street an hour previously.”
Shayne expelled a long breath and relaxed. “Now we come to the part that’s supposed to tie me into it.”
Rourke nodded. “The best we could piece out the story, it happened this way. The sedan was traveling east on Thirty-sixth like a bat out of hell and tried to make a turn on Fourteenth Avenue. It struck a concrete bridge abutment and turned over, landing on its side. There’s some reason for believing the sedan was trying to escape from a pursuing car, but that isn’t positive. A crowd gathered at once and pulled out the driver-a big blonde. A man was riding with her and he climbed out unaided. Several people saw him in the light of headlights, and said he had blood streaming down his face. We got several conflicting descriptions, the way you always do, from excited witnesses. They all thought he was tall, and two or three said he had red hair.
“Nobody paid much attention to him in the excitement. Mostly, they were crowding around the unconscious woman, and the passenger slipped away. Chick Farrel happened to be one of those attracted to the wreck, and he told some of the cops he thought he recognized you, but he couldn’t be sure.
“They didn’t think much about it at the time. The woman was named Gerta Ross. She came to after a little and asked them to take her home. A cop wanted to take her to a hospital, but she refused. Said she was a nurse and knew how to take care of herself. So the cop drove her home-to a big place out on West Fifty-fourth. He let her out in front and she went up the walk to the front door by herself.
“In the meantime,” Rourke continued slowly, “the police wrecker came out to pick up the sedan. While they were getting ready to tow it in, one of the cops noticed a golden curl sticking out from under the lid of the luggage compartment. He lifted the lid and found Kathleen Deland’s body crammed inside. The girl was gagged and tightly bound, and she’d been doped to keep her quiet. The locking mechanism showed she’d been locked in, but the wrench the car received in turning over caused the catch to slip and the lid to open. Otherwise, they might not have found the body for days.” He ended angrily.