“All we can do is theorize. The way Lucy tells it, he didn’t get much of the gas. Just a few good whiffs, probably, before he was thrown clear. That would knock him out, but not for long. Could be he recovered before they reached a hospital, pulled a gun, and held his Good Samaritan as a hostage. Anything on the dead woman?”
“Not much. The gray sedan was a stolen car, by the way. From near the scene of the first murder between eight and ten o’clock.” Rourke was leading the way back to the dark and deserted file room as he spoke. “Cops checked the motel key found on the woman. They’ve got a somewhat vague description of the man who checked her in as Mr. and Mrs. Peter Smith, and they’ve got the license number of your car, but don’t know it yet. So far, nothing to point the finger at you. Nothing to show any connection between the gray sedan and Bristow or the strangled girl.”
Rourke opened double glass doors as he finished, switched on bright overhead lights to reveal filing cases and rows of newspapers hanging from heavy wooden clips. He led the way down a narrow corridor, explaining over his shoulder, “We’ll start with the last two weeks of the News. I’ve a hunch I saw it locally, though I’m sure it wasn’t a local story. You take one week and I’ll take the next. Look first for a front-page wire story from some other city.”
“New Orleans?” asked Shayne as Rourke selected a file of back issues and spread it out on a table for him.
“We can guess that. But look for the name Allerdice and some mention of a hunk of dough.” Rourke took the last week’s file for himself and began busily scanning the front pages for each succeeding day.
Shayne was slower than the reporter, not having the instinctive knowledge of where to spot what he was looking for, and he was carefully studying Tuesday’s front page in his file when Rourke exclaimed, “Here it is, Mike! Not New Orleans, but Baton Rouge.” He read aloud:
“‘A triple tragedy occurred today when an automobile occupied by two veteran police officers from New Orleans and a convicted prisoner they were conveying to the state penitentiary left the highway at high speed thirty miles from New Orleans, careened off a concrete bridge abutment; and crashed into the swirling waters of the Seewatchie River thirty feet below. With the river almost at flood peak, rescue operations were hampered by a swift current and neither the automobile nor any of the bodies had been recovered late today. It is believed all three occupants of the car perished in the raging torrent.
“‘They were Detective First Class Mark Switzer and Officer John Parradine of New Orleans, and their prisoner was Hugh Allerdice, convicted recently of bank robbery and sentenced to serve an indeterminate term in the state penitentiary. It will be recalled that none of the eighty-thousand-dollar loot alleged to have been stolen by Allerdice was ever recovered.’ There it is, Mike. It comes back to me now.” Rourke looked up from the paper with glinting eyes.
“There was a follow-up the next day.” He turned the pages swiftly. “Car was recovered a few hundred feet downstream with the body of the driver wedged behind the wheel. The other two haven’t been found yet. Here it is.” He nodded his head as he scanned the story swiftly. “Parradine was driving. Switzer in the back seat handcuffed to Allerdice. With the two guys handcuffed together, no one gives them a Chinaman’s chance of having got out alive, and the best guess by experts is their bodies may well have been carried downstream and out to sea by the flood current, and never be recovered. So, where does that put us?”
“Damned if I know.” Shayne’s voice was deeply puzzled. “A woman who may or may not have been Mrs. Allerdice told me she had hitchhiked from New Orleans to meet her husband tonight. Later an unknown man called me to demand the eighty grand he insisted Jack Bristow had on him when he reached Lucy’s place. And—” he added slowly, “don’t forget that Jack told Lucy a dead man had shot him.”
“And remember the man over the phone told you he had told Mrs. Allerdice you had killed Hugh, too. But according to this story, Hugh Allerdice died in an accident three days ago.”
“And according to the woman,” said Shayne disgustedly, “her husband telephoned her in New Orleans two days ago to meet him tonight in front of the Eighteenth Street rooming-house. Look through those stories and see if you can find out anything about a wife.”
Rourke turned back to the first dispatch and began reading the body of it. He nodded after a moment. “Beatrice Allerdice.” He frowned at Shayne. “The man on the phone mentioned her name was Beatrice, didn’t he?”
He looked back at the paper and began reading aloud, “‘Reached by telephone at her dingy two-room apartment on Rampart Street late this afternoon, Mrs. Beatrice Allerdice, young and attractive widow of the convicted man burst into tears and hysterical denunciations of the police when informed of her husband’s death. The youthful wife, it will be recalled, stayed by her husband throughout the trial, repeatedly asserting his innocence and pointing to their lack of money to employ adequate counsel as proof that her husband had not stolen the money as alleged. “They’ve murdered my Hugh,” she screamed defiantly over the telephone to a representative of this News Service this afternoon. “They weren’t satisfied with railroading him for a crime he didn’t commit, but had to murder him, too. It was all a plot on the part of the police. I don’t believe those cops died at all or even that it was an accident the car went over the bridge. You’ll see when they recover the car.”
“Maybe the gal had something at that,” said Rourke meditatively as he glanced up from his reading. “Though from where I sit, I’d guess the shoe was on the other foot.”
“You mean that Allerdice manufactured the accident somehow to escape?”
“Well, we know now that at least one of the cops was killed. If Allerdice was guilty and had the eighty grand stashed away with a confederate, or hidden, there was enough money involved to have fixed a getaway like that.”
He turned back to the paper and read further, nodding again. “Nothing, really, to prove it was an accident. It was a deserted stretch of road and the only witness was an approaching motorist who was driving toward the bridge at high speed and suddenly saw it go over the side. Nothing to prove there wasn’t a hijacking first, then the police car sent over to hide it.”
Michael Shayne sat down wearily in a wooden chair. “All right. Let’s assume Hugh Allerdice did escape that way and phoned his wife next morning to hitchhike to Miami and meet him here. What then? What significance did the rooming-house have? Bristow and the strangled girl? Could Allerdice be the one who phoned me?”
“Could be. Though it doesn’t make much sense for his own wife to have been tied up in the trunk of his car.”
“Maybe he wanted to get rid of her and not share the money.”
“But he’d arranged to have her meet him here,” argued Rourke.
“So she said,” reminded Shayne. “We don’t even know she is Beatrice Allerdice. And there’s still no connection with Bristow. Listen. Do you have back files of a New Orleans paper? Can we backtrack to the date of the robbery and the trial? There should be pictures of all of them at that time.”
“Sure. We should have a file for a month or so back. Let me check the date if it gives it here.” Rourke studied the story again, said doubtfully, “Almost two months ago. I don’t know—” He went to the rear of the musty file room, turned on more lights, and began searching while Shayne sat hunched forward on his wooden chair, dragging deeply on a cigarette and moodily reviewing the few things they knew and the great many things they didn’t know about the affair.