“Of course it is,” he stammered. “Albert Hawley. Why shouldn’t I recognize him after being with him four days on a lousy raft?”
“No reason you shouldn’t,” agreed Shayne smoothly. “If it weren’t for the fact that Albert Hawley had his photograph snapped in Chicago last night posing as Theodore Meredith.” He produced the glossy print of Meredith that Ben Ames had sent him, and laid it in front of Gentry. “Albert Hawley didn’t die on the life raft, Will. A soldier who was masquerading as Hawley died. His real name was Leon Wallace. And here’s his picture.” He laid the wedding picture of the Wallace’s beside the recent one of Hawley. “See if that doesn’t look a little more like the man who died,” he said to Cunningham.
“That is the secret the dying soldier confided to Groat,” he went on to Gentry. “You’ll notice Groat didn’t call him Hawley after he died. He referred to him merely as ‘the soldier.’ Old Lady Hawley didn’t want her precious boy drafted into the army,” he went on sardonically, “so she arranged with the gardener to take his place in the draft and serve in his name, sending Mrs. Wallace ten grand to keep her quiet, and another thousand every three months in envelopes pre-addressed by Wallace. And Matie helped out by getting a Reno divorce from Hawley and then remarrying him under the name of Meredith. Which I should have guessed just as soon as I learned that Albert Hawley had obligingly remade his will after his divorce still leaving everything to his ex-wife. It was the only way he could be sure of inheriting Ezra’s money without admitting the truth and being indicted as a draft dodger. That stuck in my craw from the beginning… the fact that a divorced husband left everything to his ex-wife, but I didn’t have brains enough to realize the significance of it.”
There was silence in the office and every eye in the room was on Mrs. Meredith. She squared her shoulders and broke the silence with an incisive voice:
“All right. I never did think Albert could get away with it. His mother planned the whole thing and used up her own money hiring Leon Wallace to go into the army in Albert’s place. I was against the plan from the beginning, but I loved Albert and finally agreed to get the divorce and remarry him under a different name.” She shrugged her shapely shoulders and smiled coldly. “I don’t think that’s against the law.”
“This is all very interesting,” said Will Gentry heavily. “There’ll be a federal charge against Hawley for evading the draft. But we’ve still got two murders here in Miami. Let’s get back to them. A while ago, Mike, you said it was between Cross and Cunningham. I’ve already established that Cross has no alibi for the time of either killing. If Cunningham can produce one…”
“Sure I can,” Cunningham cut in eagerly. “I told you I was right in Mrs. Meredith’s hotel room while the Meany dame was getting bumped off. Shayne will tell you so himself. I was sitting right there when he left to meet her at his place.”
“That’s right,” Shayne agreed amiably. “But the question is: How long did you stay with Mrs. Meredith after I left?”
“Half an hour at least. She’ll tell you.” He appealed to Matie. “We talked about it last night and you mentioned how you fixed me a drink and…”
“Let her tell it,” said Shayne sharply. “I think Mrs. Meredith might have been willing to perjure herself by giving Cunningham an alibi… last night,” Shayne explained to Gentry. “At that time she thought she needed his testimony to prove that her ex-husband didn’t die until the fifth day on the raft. But that doesn’t make any difference now because we know it was Wallace who actually died on the raft. I wonder if she is as willing to perjure herself this morning to save Cunningham’s neck.”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Meredith coldly. “There has never been any question of perjury or of alibis. But Mr. Shayne himself can’t deny that Mr. Cunningham was in my hotel suite when he left to meet Beatrice. That seems to me all the alibi that’s needed.”
“It would be,” said Shayne, “if I’d gone direct to my hotel from the Biscayne. But I didn’t. I wasted fifteen or twenty minutes getting your Chicago address from the house dick at the Biscayne and sending a telegram to your husband signed with your name. Plenty of time for Cunningham to get to my place ahead of me and strangle Beatrice… unless he did stay with you for half an hour.”
“But he didn’t,” she said calmly. “As soon as you left the room he muttered something about another appointment and hurried out. I had no idea that he had done anything to Beatrice,” she went on virtuously, “because I thought you’d gone directly to her and that he couldn’t possibly have done it. But I have no intention of lying to protect a murderer.”
Peter Cunningham made a strangled sound in his throat and whirled on her with big hands opened menacingly. “It’s all a pack of lies. Jasper Groat was my best friend, and I didn’t have nothing against the Meany dame.”
Shayne said, “He’s the only possible one, Will. Cross had no motive for Groat’s murder. Hell, he was tickled to death to buy the diary for his paper. But Cunningham had to kill Groat to cash in on the Leon Wallace story. And then he had to kill Beatrice when he learned she was waiting for me in my apartment. I practically handed her to him on a silver platter,” he ended moodily. “I’d given him my address the night before, and then he heard me tell Lucy over the telephone that I had a stop to make before I saw Beatrice… I even mentioned twenty minutes. That gave him all the time he needed to get to her and break her silly neck. Look at him carefully, Will. Don’t you see he fits Matthew’s description of the killer better than either Cross or Meany? No wonder Matthew got balled up this morning and couldn’t positively identify either of them. Put Cunningham in a line-up and see what happens.”
20
When the inner office was finally emptied, Michael Shayne stood for several minutes at one of the windows overlooking Flagler Street with his back to the open door into the reception room. He was listening intently for some sound from the outer room, but could hear nothing.
After a time he sighed and went to the water cooler where he nested a paper cup inside another and filled it with cognac. He ran cold water into another cup and carried them to his desk where he ranged them carefully in front of the swivel chair and sat down. He lit a cigarette and took a sip of John Exshaw and hesitated a moment with his forefinger poised over a button on the desk. Then he squared his shoulders and pressed the button firmly.
When Lucy appeared in the doorway, her brown curls were disarranged and there was a stricken look on her face. She paused timidly and said in a small voice, “I’m sorry, Michael.”
“Sorry for what?” He grinned expansively.
“For the horrid things I said last night. Because I was a fool not to trust you as you begged me to. Oh, Michael! Can you ever forgive me?” She ran to him suddenly and leaned over his chair and buried her face in his shoulder, her slender body shaken with tearing sobs. He put one arm tightly about her waist and said gruffly, “There’s nothing to cry about, angel. We pulled it off okay.”
“But why didn’t you give me some hint last night?” she sobbed. “Why did you let me go on thinking you planned to destroy the diary just so Mrs. Meredith would get the money instead of the Hawley family?”
“Because you’re a lousy actress. You never would have been able to put it over if you’d known the truth.”
“What do you mean by that?” She pulled back and stood erect, still circled by his comforting arm.
“Don’t you realize that your tantrum was the absolute clincher in getting that agreement signed? I had to make her believe I was going to destroy the diary. She certainly wouldn’t have agreed to pay out a quarter-million bucks for me to prove that Hawley is still alive so he can be jailed as a draft evader. And when you believed it so strongly, you convinced her I was just the rotten sort of heel she could do business with.”