“Could Irvin be playing it straight?” asked Rourke doubtfully. “Undercovering for the F.B.I., down here?”
“Even undercover agents for the F.B.I., don’t go around murdering innocent bystanders like this fellow Slocum,” Shayne reminded him ruefully.
“God! Do you think Irvin-”
“Who else? I’m actually Slocum’s murderer,” Shayne went on, the trenches deepening in his gaunt cheeks, and his gray eyes bleak. “I put the finger on him with my story about where I got those two bills. It was a lousy story, but I couldn’t think of a better one with Perry’s gun on me. Of course it was Irvin, or one of his trigger-men. They had the address and the apartment number. They even had my key after they stripped me in the basement,” he ended savagely.
“It looks as though Dawson was trying to duck out of town with the ransom money,” muttered Rourke. “That makes him Kathleen Deland’s actual murderer, Mike. Do you realize that? She didn’t die until about twelve-thirty-after Gerta Ross had driven all over hell and gone to catch up with Dawson and deliver the girl. If he hadn’t skipped on your ticket, she would be alive right now.”
“It seems likely,” Shayne admitted.
“And you’re letting him get away with it,” Rourke told him harshly. “You’re covering up for him by not reporting him as the airplane passenger instead of yourself.” He got shakily to his feet and walked up and down before Shayne, on unsteady legs.
“What do you think Painter would do if I told him the truth?” Shayne grated.
“He’d get men in Palm Beach on Dawson’s trail, by God!”
“He might believe me enough to do that,” Shayne admitted. “A trail that’s at least two hours old, Tim. But don’t you see I’m placed right in the kidnap car if I kill my plane alibi by telling the truth?”
“You’re in the clear, Mike.” Rourke stopped before him, his talon-like fingers clenched tightly. “No one would blame you after hearing the whole story.”
“Not if they believed it,” Shayne said quietly.
“I believe it.”
“You’re not Painter. He won’t believe a damned word of it. Look,” he went on patiently, “what proof have I got? Irvin and Perry have skipped, and that leaves Bates. He’ll deny every word of it. Where does that leave me? With fifty grand ransom money, joy-riding in the kidnap car, and an unexplained corpse here in the apartment. Who but you would believe such a cockeyed story as that?”
“You’ve got to take a chance on it. Damn it, Mike, you can’t let a skunk like Dawson escape just to keep your own neck clear.”
“I’ll get Dawson.”
“How? By sitting here drinking cognac?”
“That’s the best way I know of. Don’t forget that I’ve got something Dawson wants pretty badly.”
“The money?”
Shayne nodded absently and was silent for a moment while Rourke prowled the room, plopping his fist into an open palm.
“See here,” Shayne resumed, “by this time Dawson must have discovered the switch in suitcases. But he doesn’t know if I’ve discovered it yet. He’ll be frantic when he finds out he has contributed to the death of his partner’s daughter for nothing. He doesn’t know what I’ll do with the money when I find it. Give him a chance to come to me.”
“But he may not do it. He may keep right on going.”
“He may,” Shayne admitted. He slumped to a more comfortable position, his long legs stretched out and his knobby hands folded over his flat stomach.
“You can’t take a chance on it by keeping quiet.” Rourke again stopped before him. “You’ve got to put the cops on him. I’m telling you he murdered Kathleen Deland just as surely as if he’d slit her throat.”
Shayne said wearily, “My going to jail won’t help catch Dawson. Damn it, Tim, don’t you see the interpretation Painter’ll put on my story? He’ll just believe what he wants to. He’ll see the whole thing as prearranged for Dawson to slip the money to me at the airport while I give him my seat on the plane to make his getaway. He’ll never believe a word of my story about Bates and Irvin-and they’re mixed up in it somehow. They have to be. What good will it do to catch Dawson? Maybe he did contribute to murder, but there are others mixed up in it. We’ve got to find out what Irvin’s interest in the ransom money is and pin the Slocum murder on him. For God’s sake, be logical. You and I are the only two on the inside. With us behind bars you know the sort of job Painter will do. He’ll name me the kidnap-killer and you my accessory, and sit back smirking and thumbnailing his damned mustache while all the rest of them get away.”
“Accessory? Me?” Rourke’s feverish eyes were filled with consternation. “How do you figure that?”
“You knew I had the ransom money, didn’t you? You saw it in the bag and you didn’t say a word to Painter. If you didn’t expect a slice of it, why didn’t you yell right away?”
Rourke doubled up his fist and took a step toward Shayne. “Damn you, Mike, I’ll-”
“Hold it,” Shayne said angrily. “I’m telling you how it can be made to look. Use your head. There’s a hell of a lot more to this than appears on the surface. If you’re so hell-bent on bringing Kathleen’s murderers to justice, you’ll have to play ball with me and keep your mouth shut.”
Rourke took a short turn about the room, then came back and sat down on the couch. “I’ve seen you hold out on the police before, Mike,” he said in a slightly subdued tone. “I’ve always helped you get away with it. But you always had a good reason.”
“Isn’t avoiding a kidnap-murder rap a good reason?”
“You could beat that,” said Rourke earnestly. “You know damned well you could beat it.”
“Maybe. After I’ve rotted in Painter’s jail for a few months and the real killers got away.”
“Are you sure that’s the only reason you want to keep this hushed up?”
“What do you mean?” growled Shayne.
“That.” Rourke spoke hoarsely, pointing a trembling finger at the bundles of currency on the floor. “Fifty thousand dollars. You haven’t pulled down a fee on either of your last two cases, have you?”
Shayne said, “No, I haven’t.” His gaunt face was expressionless, and he tugged at his ear lobe abstractedly.
“It’s a hell of a lot of money. If Dawson isn’t caught, no one will ever know what became of it, will they?”
“Not unless we tell them,” Shayne agreed woodenly.
“And if Dawson is caught and tells the truth, we can claim we were holding it out for bait and meant to turn it back as soon as it served its purpose.”
“That’s right.”
“It’s blood money, Mike. Maybe that’s what Bates and the senator saw on those bills. Kathleen Deland’s blood. That’s what you’d begin to see after a while.” The reporter spoke jerkily, his eyes burning into Shayne’s face.
Shayne said, “If you think that about me you’d better call Painter right away.”
“I’m going to.”
Rourke lifted the receiver. In a voice that resembled nothing Shayne had ever heard before, he croaked out the number of the Miami Beach police station.
Shayne took a long drink and set the bottle back on the floor. He picked up one of the bundles of bank notes and examined the outside bill with meticulous care. The thing that bothered him most at the moment was the question of how Bates and Irvin had immediately recognized the two bills Dawson had given him. If all five hundred of the bills followed a straight sequence of serial numbers, it would be a simple matter to spot one of them. But Emory Hale denied that they were in any numbered order or that the money had been marked in any way.
Shayne glanced idly at the number on the first bill, then turned it back to look at the next bill. They were Federal Reserve notes, with the familiar picture of Franklin in the center. He frowned when he saw that the identifying letters were the same on both bills, and the first five numbers were exactly the same on both bills: F3704-1615A and F37041890A. He felt his belly muscles tighten as he turned bill after bill and glanced at the serial numbers. They all had the same identifying letters and the same first five numbers. Only the final three numbers were different on each bill, and Shayne quickly established the fact that the variance in the last three numbers did not range beyond five hundred.