“Stand still,” Shayne said. He frisked the man expertly. Outside of the canes he had no weapon more effective than a pocket knife with a two-inch blade.
“Why did you come?” Shayne asked.
“Sally said I could trust you,” Cal Harris said. “Mister, we both figured that right now I need somebody I can trust.”
“You do indeed,” Shayne said. “Come into the main room here and sit down. Now, first of all, did you kill the old man?”
“Only if wishes could do it,” Cal Harris said. “I admit I hated him like everybody did, but I didn’t kill him. I don’t care what nobody says. I wasn’t in this place last night.”
He said that last so emphatically that Shayne decided to take a chance. “You were seen here,” he said.
“I know,” Cal Harris admitted. “Why do you think I ran and hid out? I was only on the grass outside, though, when old Buck saw me and shot at me. I was never in the house.”
Shayne thought hard. “Where was Buck when he shot at you?”
“Over across the street on his porch. I seen the muzzle flash when he fired, and I ducked around the corner.”
“Come on,” Shayne said. “I want to see about something.” He was remembering what Jane Mullen had told him earlier.
They went upstairs to the big bedroom where John Wingren had slept. Sure enough there was a small round hole in the window screen, and he could see where the projectile had struck the iron fire dog in the fireplace. A smear of lead and a chip in the iron marked the spot of ricochet.
“Buck Smith’s been lying to me because he thought he shot John Wingren when he fired at you,” Mike Shayne said. “But the old man was shot in this room through that window. No shot fired from Smith’s house could possibly have done it.”
Cal Harris was silent. He just watched and listened.
The big man got down and put his head by the mark on the firedog. He sighted from there to the hole in the window screen.
“Near as I can make out,” he said, “the shot that hit Wingren had to come from up in that big oak tree out there.”
The mass of the tree’s foliage showed as a dark blur against the reflected lights in the sky.
“Right from that tree,” Shayne said.
He saw the muzzle flash in the midst of the foliage and threw himself sideways and down on the floor. Even Shayne with his catlike, almost instant reflexes would have been too slow, if the sniper’s aim had been better. As it was, he swore afterwards he’d felt the wind of the bullet on his cheek.
Cal Harris swung one of his heavy canes and knocked the table lamp which Shayne had lit to the floor of the room, where the bulb smashed.
“Don’t move,” Shayne shouted. “With the light off he can’t see in here.”
He himself crawled swiftly to the window and peered over the sill. The tree from which the shot had come was a big one with low-hanging branches and bushes around its base. The sniper, whoever he was, could have dropped down easily out of sight of the window and made his escape in safety.
Shayne put his gun back in its holster.
“From now on we better stay away from windows,” he told Harris.
“Now you know I didn’t do any killing,” Cal Harris said. “I sure couldn’t have fired that shot.”
“I never did think you were guilty,” the detective said. “But this doesn’t prove anything except that if you did kill the old buzzard you had an accomplice. That, or maybe somebody else is cutting himself in on the act now.”
“I didn’t think of that,” Harris said in a discouraged tone. “I am innocent.”
“You don’t have to argue it with me,” Shayne said. “I don’t believe you’re the killer type. We’ve got to get busy and prove out a couple of things though.”
“Won’t somebody have heard that shot and call the police? What do I do then?”
“You leave the worrying about that to me. That shot was from a small caliber gun, probably a twenty-two. I barely heard it myself, and people around here seem to have wax in their ears when it comes to gunshots.”
“Then what do we do?” Harris asked.
“Partly we wait for him to come in after us. He may think that shot got me. If he does, he won’t wait long coming after you. That is, if he knows you’re here. Anyway, there’s something in here he wants. It might be evidence he left last night, but I think more likely it’s old Wingren’s money. Whichever, it’ll bring him in.”
“I haven’t any weapon,” Cal Harris said.
“You don’t need the kind of weapon you’re thinking about. I can do any shooting for both of us. I need the weapon you don’t know you have.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ll spell it out,” Shayne said. “What we need now is your brains. You knew old John. I didn’t. You’ve been in and out of this place a lot while he was alive. You know things about what sort of man he was, how he thought, how his mind worked — things like that.”
“I don’t know,” Harris said. “I think you’re giving me more credit than I deserve. Old John was a mean, cruel man. He never told a man like me how he thought of things or how his mind worked. He was just mean.”
“You’re right,” the redhead said. “He wouldn’t have told you a thing if he knew that was what he was doing. He told you without knowing it. Little things. Things he didn’t know he was giving away. Now tell me, boy — fast — where would he hide his treasure?”
“Uh. I... don’t—”
“Fast. Tell me.”
“In the big room downstairs,” Harris blurted out.
“Fine. Fine. Let’s go down there now.”
They went through the hall, where Shayne left the single bulb burning and down the wide flight of stairs. In the living room the detective turned off the light. Enough reflected light from the city came in through the windows so that they could make out essential details once their eyes became accustomed to the semi-darkness. Anyone coming up to the windows from outside would be instantly visible from within.
“Now, you tell me why you said this room,” Shayne said.
“I don’t know. It just came to mind.”
“I realize that. But why this particular room?”
“Well,” Cal Harris said hesitantly, “I guess maybe because it was his favorite room. He spent most of his time in here. Sometimes he even slept down here on the couch or even in a chair. He made me come early to work for him and when I’d knock he was always in here already.”
“So this was his favorite room. That’s good thinking. Go on from there.”
“Okay,” said an encouraged Cal Harris. “Now he was such a mean man he wouldn’t trust nobody or nothing. If he did hide something that meant a lot to him, like money, it would be where he could keep an eye on it. Leastwise where he could keep an eye on the hiding place. Otherwise he’d always be worried that somebody had got to it. Anyway, that’s what I think.”
“I think you’ve got a good head on your shoulders,” the detective told him. “Everything I’ve learned about human nature agrees with your line of thought. Now let’s take it one step further.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” Harris said. At the moment Shayne had spoken a big airliner, gaining altitude as it took off from the Miami Airport, had thundered by low over the house. The roar had drowned out the words.
“When the wind’s a certain way them things go over here one after the other like a train of cars,” Harris explained when they could hear again.
“I said take your line of thought a step further,” Shayne said. “If he hid something in this room, what sort of hiding place would it be? A safe in the wall? Under the floor?”