“Found it out later. Freddie said not to worry. He had inside dope. Told me to keep her drugged till Dawson paid off. It was all fixed, see?”
Shayne said, “Go on. Who else was in on it?”
“I don’ know anything else about it. It wasn’t a real kidnaping, see? Kiss me, honey.”
“How much was Dawson going to pay you?” he demanded.
“I don’t know. Freddie said it’d be plenty. But the bastard tried to run out on us tonight.”
“Is Dawson the man Freddie was meeting here?” Shayne pressed her.
“Was he meeting somebody besides me?”
“Didn’t he phone you he was, and for you to come?”
“I guess so.” She closed her eyes wearily and said, “Let’s us have a drink.”
“First, tell me what Freddie said when he called you.”
“Said ever’thing was awright,” she muttered. “Said for me to come out here and we’d hide out a while and then get out of town. With that shrimp!” She laughed contemptuously. “Y’know what he’s got? He’s got false teeth. God, what a cluck.”
“Did he say he was meeting Dawson here?”
“Didn’t say. Just said it didn’t matter ’bout the car getting wrecked when I told him. Said we were getting paid for the job anyhow. And now how’s about a drink?” She cocked one eye open and sighed deeply.
Shayne said, “I guess it is about time.” He got the bottle and handed it to her. She fumbled for it with her eyes closed, cuddled it down in the valley between her breasts and lifted the bottom just enough for the liquor to trickle into her mouth.
Shayne leaned back and lit a cigarette while she sucked contentedly on the bottle, and the level of the drugged gin went steadily and rhythmically down.
She stopped drinking after a time and the bottle slid from her bosom onto the bed where a small portion of it spilled. Shayne smoked and watched her with alert eyes. Her head fell sidewise on the pillow. She pouted her lips and began snoring gently.
He got up and went into the other bedroom, turned on the lights and knelt beside Gurney’s lifeless body. Methodically, he went through the man’s pockets. He found a few bills and some silver, a key ring and a couple of policy tickets, but no scrap of paper of any sort-nothing to tell him any of the things he wanted to know.
He turned out the lights and went back to the other room, carefully wiped his fingerprints from the glasses and the bottle, and from everything he could remember having touched, then went to the front door.
He stood there for a moment before going out, giving the room a final searching scrutiny. The radio was still playing transcribed music very softly, and Gerta Ross looked very peaceful on the bed.
He shrugged his shoulders, went out, got in the sedan and drove away, circling past the lighted tower and heading back to 36th Street. It was full daylight now. The sun was pushing itself up from the Atlantic and the sky was garish with red and crimson banners.
Stopping at the first all-night restaurant he came to, he parked and went in to the telephone. He called the Miami Beach police department and asked if Timothy Rourke was around.
After a long wait, he heard Rourke’s voice come over the wire. Shayne said gruffly, “Here’s a tip-off from a pal. The Deland kidnapers are in a cabin-Number Sixteen-at the Tower Cottages on West Thirty-sixth in Miami.”
He hung up as soon as he finished, went out to the sedan and drove directly to his apartment on the Miami River. He went in the side entrance and climbed the stairs without seeing Henry or the elevator boy, entered his old apartment, and emptied the last three inches from the cognac bottle.
Chapter Fourteen
It was nine o’clock when Shayne awoke. He made a distasteful grimace at the wrinkled clothing in which he had slept, and scowled as he pulled on the tight shoes. His scowl deepened when he looked at his puffed lip in the bathroom mirror. He made a sketchy toilet with cold water splashed over his face and neck.
The day clerk was on duty when he went down to the lobby, and he looked surprised when Shayne strode through to the front door.
Shayne walked two blocks to a restaurant where he bought a morning Herald and ordered a big breakfast.
The Deland kidnap-murder was spread all over the front page. There were pictures of the bereaved parents and the uncle, and three different poses of the sweet-faced girl who was dead. The parents looked about as Rourke described them, weary with long and anxious waiting and broken with grief.
The picture of the uncle interested him more than the others. Emory Hale had a square jaw and a tight mouth and eyes that looked cold and remorseless. The story described him as “A wealthy New York sportsman and financier” and quoted his offer of a $10,000 reward for the person or persons responsible for his beloved niece’s death. It gave a dramatic account of Hale’s hasty airplane flight south with the ransom money to meet the kidnaper’s demands, and painted a pathetic picture of his personal grief and outraged anger over the outcome of his rescue flight.
Rourke’s story covered the front page. Shayne was glad to note that the copy smacked of the old vigorous reporter he’d known for years, and not in the least like the sob story he had told Shayne.
On an inside page, however, a woman reporter described the scene in these words:
There was silence in the little house as Chief Peter Painter turned from the telephone and announced, “I am sorry to inform you that your daughter is dead.” The silence continued, thick and heavy-laden with disbelieving grief while the Miami Beach chief of detectives tersely explained the circumstances under which Kathleen Deland’s body had been discovered.
The tears of the stricken mother coursed down her cheeks and dropped upon the bosom of her simple dress. The hands of the anguished father lay still in his lap while his cavernous eyes were lifted to the framed photograph of his daughter above the mantel.
Mr. Emory Hale’s visage was like that of a statue carved from granite. There was no outward change of expression, yet with such a show of inward suffering and despair that the look upon his face will remain stamped indelibly upon my memory. He sat there, erect in his chair, one hand placed firmly on each knee, leaning forward slightly from the waist, his gaze fixed on Chief Painter’s face.
It was Mr. Hale who broke the silence first-the devoted uncle who had responded so swiftly and without question to his sister’s plea for help across the miles separating them; who had moved heaven and earth to obtain the required ransom money from his New York bank and fly south with it to meet the deadline set by the kidnapers.
Mr. Hale spoke flatly and without emotion, with a machine-like precision that conveyed an impression of dynamic force beneath the surface: “Have they found Dawson yet?”
Chief Painter replied, “Dawson seems to have disappeared into thin air, Mr. Hale. Along with your fifty thousand dollars.”
Mr. Hale made a brief and savage gesture to indicate that the loss of the ransom money meant nothing to him now. “And the man responsible for Kathleen’s death?”
“There have been no arrests as yet,” the detective chief admitted sadly. “However, the owner of the death car is known and I assure you that everything humanly possible is being done to apprehend the kidnapers.”
Emory Hale stood up to his full height. He thrust both hands in his pockets and strode from the room without another word.
Mr. Deland got up and said in a dead and hopeless voice, “I wonder where Emory is going. I wonder if I ought to-”
Mrs. Deland spoke the first words she had uttered since hearing the agonizing truth of her child’s death. She said simply, “Go after him, Arthur, before he does something desperate. You know he loved Kathleen as though she were his own.”
Arthur Deland nodded mutely and left the room, pausing only to lay a rough hand gently upon his wife’s bowed head.