Shayne climbed the stairs leading up from the hallway. At the top of the stairs the door on the right was closed, and so was the next door on the left. Another door, beyond that, stood open, and Shayne walked to it and stopped on the threshold.
Marvin Blake sat across from him on the edge of a child’s bed that was strewn with an array of dresses and clothing. A suitcase sat open at the foot of the bed, and it appeared to be partially packed with Sissy’s things.
Blake sat hunched forward in a miserable posture with both elbows planted on his knees and his down-bent face resting in his hands. It was obvious that he had not heard the detective coming up the stairs, and believed himself alone in the house.
Shayne stood in the doorway and said quietly, “Blake.”
Marvin did not appear startled or surprised. He lifted his head slowly and stared dully at the redhead. His face was pasty-white and there were red blotches on his cheeks where his fingers had been pressed. He said, “Oh, it’s you,” in a dead sort of voice.
Shayne said, “I have to talk to you, Blake. Let’s go downstairs.”
Marvin turned his head to look at the strewn bed and the suitcase. “I’m packing up here. Sissy’s things. I’m going to take her away, you see. I have a sister in Jacksonville.” He spoke slowly and laboriously, forming each word with care as though it were terribly important that he make himself understood.
Shayne said patiently, “I know. And I think that’s fine. But right now you and I have things to talk about.” He stepped across the room to Blake’s side and took his arm and pulled him up to his feet. Blake did not resist, but he didn’t help much either. He reacted automatically to the authority in Shayne’s voice, shuffling along beside him and explaining in a low voice that sounded apologetic, “I don’t know what to take for Sissy and what to leave behind. She’s got so many clothes. Ellie always looked after that, and now she’s not here to do it, and I’ve got to do the best I can.”
Shayne silently shepherded him down the stairs and turned into the neat sitting room where the shades were drawn and it was dim and cool. He urged him toward a chair and helped him to stiffly lower his body into it, and then stepped back and got out a cigarette and lighted it.
He said crisply, “Listen to me, Blake. Pay attention to what I’m saying. Do you know they have a man in jail charged with murdering your wife?”
“Have they?” Marvin Blake showed a spark of interest, though it wasn’t strong. “I didn’t know that. I haven’t talked to anybody. I guess I’ve been up in Sissy’s room a good while. I’d keep looking at her dresses and I couldn’t decide…”
“It’s a colored man they have in jail,” Shayne told him strongly. “They haven’t any real evidence against him, Blake. Just that he appears to have been in town last night about the right time. That’s all. But they’re getting ready to lynch him for your wife’s murder. Do you want that, Blake?” Shayne’s voice was like a whip-lash. “Do you want another murder in Sunray Beach?”
Marvin Blake looked bewildered. He shook his head slowly, blinking his eyes at the detective’s harshly accusing voice. “I don’t,” he muttered. “Of course not. I don’t believe in lynchings.”
“Then it’s up to us to do something to prevent it,” Shayne told him. “Why don’t you start out by telling the truth about last night?”
“I have told you. Down at the railroad station.”
Shayne shook his head angrily. “I just got back from Moonray Beach where I checked your story. You didn’t register at the hotel until just before two o’clock this morning. The evening train from Miami gets there a little before ten.”
“I told you I stopped at a restaurant and bar and had some drinks and something to eat.”
“And spent four hours there?” Shayne continued to shake his head. “No one saw you, Blake. No one recognized the picture I had of you. I couldn’t find a soul in Moonray Beach who saw you last night except the hotel clerk. And he says you weren’t drunk at all when you showed up at two o’clock. Also, Blake…” Shayne deliberately made his voice harsh and cold. “… there’s a train coming back from here that stops in Moonray about one-forty. I can prove you were on that train, Blake.
“I spent almost an hour on the long distance telephone checking the railroad records,” he went on deliberately. “One ticket from Miami to Sunray was taken up on last night’s Express. It was the return half of a round-trip ticket. And the train did stop here to let off a passenger. There’s a record of it and the conductor remembers it, and he’ll identify you as the passenger who got out if I bring him into court. Also, there was one cash fare paid between Sunray and Moonray on that return train last night. You did come home last night, Blake. You got off the train at ten-twenty and walked up here to your house without being seen by anyone. Tell me what you found when you got here.”
“I… I… oh, my God!” Marvin Blake buried his face in his hands and moaned like a stricken animal.
“I’ll tell you,” Shayne said in an unexpectedly gentle voice. “I’ll make it easy for you, Blake. You found Harry Wilsson here. Your best friend. He was upstairs in bed with your wife.”
“No, no,” cried Blake wildly, shaking his head, but keeping his face buried in his hands. “Not Ellie. I swear it wasn’t like that.”
“But it was like that,” Shayne told him grimly. “Wilsson admitted it to me. But he didn’t know… doesn’t know yet… that you came back unexpectedly last night and caught him here. What did you do, Blake? Hide in the bushes and watch him drive away? Why didn’t you jump him then and there? Have it out with him… man to man?”
“I couldn’t,” moaned Marvin frantically, “Don’t you see I couldn’t? How could I face Ellie if I’d done that? I thought about it,” he cried wildly, lifting his face to stare up at Shayne. “I knew I should. I knew I should have come right in the front door and got my gun from the bureau there in the hall and gone upstairs and shot him. And maybe Ellie, too. But how could I? What about Sissy? She’d have to know that her mother… don’t you see why I couldn’t do it? I thought if I’d go away and pretend I didn’t know, that it would be all right. And then I thought maybe I’d kill myself instead. That’s what I meant to do when I went up to that hotel and got a room. But I was afraid I wouldn’t have the nerve to do it and so I bought a bottle of whiskey from the clerk and I drank about half of it straight down and that knocked me out like a light. I didn’t wake up until after noon today. And then I thought I’d just get on the train and come on home and no one would ever know I was here last night at all. No one would ever have to know about… Ellie and Harry. I thought I could just pretend it never had happened.”
“What did you do after you watched Harry drive away from here last night? You came into the house, didn’t you, Blake…?”
“No, no. I couldn’t bear to face Ellie with it. I tried to plan what to do, and that’s when I thought about the train going back and how I could get on it and just ride back to Moonray and stay the night there and then catch the Miami train and come on home this afternoon like I was expected to. I swear I didn’t even come in the house. I went back down the street away from here, and I remember I got sick about half-way back to the station and I crawled in behind a hedge and was sick and I guess I sort of fainted, and when I came back to my senses fully it was time to go on and get on the train to Moonray.”
Shayne was silent for a long moment. Then he said harshly, “You’re going to have to tell this story in court, you know. Right now, there’s nothing to prove that Ellie was still alive after Harry Wilsson left this house. You and Harry will both have to testify as to what went on here last night.”
“Will we have to? What does it matter? Can’t we spare Sissy that? Does she have to go through life knowing that her mother was… that she…?”