“Don’t you worry about me. You go right out and get them crooks.” She got out and Shayne lifted her suitcase from the rear of the car and went up the walk with her. There was no electric button, so he knocked loudly on the door.
A light came on and after a moment the door opened. The young girl standing in the opening was quite obviously and proudly pregnant. She exclaimed, “Why… Mother! What on earth…?”
Shayne slid the suitcase inside the door and went back to his car. He had a sour taste in his mouth as he drove away. He slumped low under the wheel. He had inured himself against hurt. Sorrow and grief were for lesser men than he, but as he drove toward Miami in the bright moonlight an acute pain gripped him. Sarah Wilson, the widow of Joe Wilson, carrying his child so proudly within her slender body, and Shayne suffered the agony of the damned, remembering his own slender, dark-eyed wife who had not been so fortunate as the humble wife of Joe Wilson.
With all his strength he pulled himself erect. He was nearing the outskirts of the business section of Miami. He squinted at the numbers on buildings and realized that the one he sought was in the next block.
CHAPTER 3
He stopped in front of a downtown office building and went in. A night light burned in the foyer, but the elevators were not running after midnight. He walked up two flights of stairs and down the corridor to an office door with only a number on it.
He rapped, then turned the knob. It opened and he stepped inside a large room containing two big flat-topped desks, several armchairs, and a number of filing cabinets.
A tall man with alert blue eyes sat in a swivel chair behind one of the desks. He wore the uniform of a United States Army Captain, with the blouse unbuttoned and his tie askew. He took a cigar from his mouth and waved a hearty greeting.
“Hello there, Shayne. Come in.”
Shayne grinned and asked, “Don’t you ever sleep, Captain?”
Captain Ott yawned. “The Military Intelligence never sleeps. Bad conscience keeping you awake, Mike?”
“A conscience is a luxury no private dick can afford.” He unbuttoned his trench coat and shrugged it off. He took the bottle of cognac from a pocket before throwing the coat over the back of a chair. Arching bushy red brows quizzically, he invited, “Join me in a nip?”
“Sorry,” the captain said regretfully. “Not while I’m on duty.” He opened the center drawer of the desk and took out a paper cup which he tossed to Shayne. “Go ahead. Don’t mind me. They tell me you drink your clues out of a bottle.”
Shayne said, “I’ve got a clue, so I’ll wait till I catch you off duty,” as he returned the bottle to the pocket. He sat down across from the captain.
“What’s on your mind?” Ott asked. “Got something for us?”
Shayne tugged at his earlobe, frowned, and said, “I’m not sure. I hope maybe you’ve got something for me. That is… maybe I hope you haven’t.”
“Now I’ll tell one,” Captain Ott said approvingly. “Riddles are a swell way to pass the time on night duty.”
Shayne leaned forward and said, “Let’s take a hypothetical case.”
“Shoot.”
“Suppose a soldier whose home is in Miami gets into some sort of trouble with the Army. As a routine matter, would your office get a report on that soldier?”
Captain Ott’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, then he said, “What sort of hypothetical trouble would you have in mind?”
“I’m not sure. Something rather serious.”
“It isn’t likely we’d know about it. There isn’t any reason why we should receive a report on it.”
Shayne scowled at his knobby fingers. “I was afraid of that.”
“If you have a reason to check on some soldier,” the captain offered with brisk interest, “I can get in touch with his commanding officer and get the details. Is that what you have in mind?”
“That might be difficult. This man is presumed to have been shipped overseas a couple of weeks ago.”
“There are always ways of contacting him, of course. But I would want to know how serious the necessity before sending a request through official channels.”
“What about desertion?” Shayne asked.
“In a case of desertion we would be notified at once if his home is here. It’s routine to interview the family and associates of a deserter… keep some sort of surveillance on his home in case he tries to contact them.”
Shayne massaged his angular chin and said, “U-m-m.” He lit a cigarette, tossed the match toward a wastebasket. “My hypothetical soldier is named Robert Wilson.”
“Wilson?” Captain Ott swung around in the swivel chair and reached for one of the files behind him. He pulled a drawer half-way out, lifted a large folder from the front, and turned back. “I don’t have to look that one up. I made the investigation myself a few days ago.”
Shayne looked at the closed folder. “Then it is desertion?”
“A bad case,” Captain Ott told him. “Wilson deserted his outfit on the eve of their embarkation for foreign service. That places his action in the same class as desertion on the field of battle.”
Shayne leaned back in his chair and said, “That’s what I thought you might have on Wilson.”
“See here, if you’ve got anything on this deserter, give it to me,” the captain warned sternly. “He’s nineteen years of age, and…”
“I know.” Shayne held up a big hand. “I know Bob Wilson and his parents.”
“That’s a pitiable case, Shayne. As I say, I made the investigation and had to inform his parents. It would have been more merciful to shoot them. Particularly the father. He impressed me as being a fine man. Runs a little filling station out on the Trail.”
Shayne said, “Clem Wilson was a fine man. I can imagine how it hit him.”
Captain Ott did not notice his use of the past tense. “They have another son who was killed in a naval action recently,” the captain said. “Damn these thoughtless youngsters. If they could know the heartbreak they bring to parents they might think twice before doing some of the things they do.”
“Have you been keeping watch on the home?”
“Only in a cursory way. I’ve kept in touch with Mr. Wilson. If I’m any judge of character he can be trusted to turn his son in if he comes home. Wilson gave me his word of honor he’d let me know if he heard from the boy. I felt that I could trust him to handle the situation.”
“That’s too bad,” Shayne muttered, his gray eyes morose and his voice glum.
Captain Ott’s keen eyes snapped. “Why? Don’t tell me I was mistaken in the old man,” he grated. “If he has crossed me up I’ll never trust another human being to play fair.”
Shayne squinted at him through smoke roiling from flared nostrils. “You weren’t mistaken in Clem Wilson,” he said. “He hasn’t crossed you up.” He crushed his cigarette out viciously. “If you had had a guard over the house you might have prevented murder tonight.”
“Murder? Who?”
“Clem Wilson. He was shot down in his filling station at midnight.”
Captain Ott sprang up and paced the floor, came back to the desk and demanded, “Did the boy have anything to do with it? What do you know about it?”
Shayne crossed his knobby knees, leaned back in his chair and calmly gave a detailed recital of all that had happened, beginning with the urgent telephone call from Clem Wilson.
“I’m explaining this to you,” he ended with a rueful grin, “because I don’t want the Army on my neck when the morning paper comes out. Actually, that telephone conversation told me nothing. But as long as I can make the murderer think it did…” His broad shoulders lifted in a significant shrug.
Captain Ott resumed his seat after listening to Shayne with intense interest. He nodded approvingly and said, “Using yourself for killer-bait, eh? It might smoke them out at that. But what’s this about Bob Wilson? Why did you come here to inquire about him?”
“Two or three small things that added up into a hunch. In the first place, I know Bob. He’s weak. I pulled him out of a jam about a year ago. And tonight Mrs. Wilson seemed to be suffering from something more than grief over her husband’s death. She was deeply troubled and anxious. Then… there was a photograph of the boys taken together. Bob’s picture had been cut away. After talking with her, I made up my mind that Bob…”