“What you talking about?”
“I’m in a hurry!”
“I didn’t take nothing, Shayne.”
Shayne looked at him steadily and said, “Get it!”
Kling hesitated, eyeing the redhead’s grim face doubtfully. Then he shrugged and turned to a half-open suitcase lying next to a metal clothes cabinet. It was filled with handcuffs, leg-irons, padlocks, tools and dirty laundry: With insolent deliberation he dug out a greasy, towel-wrapped bundle, and flung it at the detective, his face black with hate.
Shayne picked it up hurriedly, unfolded the towel, and saw — a plate. But the damnedest plate. To the eye it would have passed as one of the common dime store varieties. If it hadn’t been for its weight and thickness to the touch he would have thought Willie was pulling: a fast one.
Accidentally his right thumb touched something on its outer edge. He started at the sudden vibration in his hands, the simultaneous silent and lightning-like whirl of little trap doors in the center of the plate that could... that could have invisibly substituted one small object for another.
Like, for instance — a bullet.
It was now close to midnight, and assembled in Chief Gentry’s office were Willie Kling, Adams and his father, under police guard, Kara and Timothy Rourke.
“It’s not what the murderer did that killed Voltane, Will,” Shayne pointed out, “but what the murderer did not do. Both Zamboni and Adams thought each other guilty, and Zamboni made a phony confession to save his son’s life.”
Gentry bit into a soggy black cigar butt, rumbled, “What makes you so sure it was phony?”
“Because of the way the trick worked, Will. The real bullet is marked first, then switched for the dummy. Obviously he lied when he told you Kara handed him the dummy to mark.”
Comprehension dawned on Gentry’s grim, keenly alert face. “Then Voltane was murdered by someone deliberately not making the switch!”
Shayne nodded, but before he had a chance to speak Kara was on her feet with a shrill cry. “That’s ridiculous! No one touched—”
“Right, Kara!” grinned Shayne, “Not with their hands! But this—” he whipped out the mechanical plate from under his coat, and his face hardened as he strode up to her, tripping the secret spring with his thumb. “This is the weapon you used to murder your husband so that you could marry your lover!”
Burton Adams, his handsome face twisted with horror, sprang to her side, drew her close, and choked, “No! She wouldn’t. It must have been a mistake!”
Gentry shouted for order, and Shayne said harshly to Kara, “Go on, tell him the truth! Tell him how you staged your alibi in my office yesterday morning with your slick mumbo-jumbo! Tell him how you fooled Dr. Vogle with your fake side-show trance, and how you even tried to frame his own father when you saw I was getting wise!”
Kara seemed suddenly to age. Her lips quivered and her whole body sagged. She looked despairingly into Adams’ dazed, tear-filled eyes, and her own told him that what Michael Shayne had just said was true.
Adams turned his face as she was led away. The redhead laid a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “Sorry, Burt, but that’s my job. It isn’t always pleasant.”
The boy blew his nose, looked up at him and gulped. “Mr. Shayne, do you think — could you get Chief Gentry to call off his charges against me? You know, resisting arrest, running away from a crime? I wouldn’t ask, only I’ve — I’ve got a very special reason.”
“Could be. What’s the reason?”
“I’d like to join the Marines, sir.”
Scratch One Mark
by Dan J. Marlowe
The killer’s gambling session frameup seemed perfect. Only... it wasn’t.
The big blond man had already turned the key in the lock of his desk drawer when the door to his office burst open unceremoniously and his unannounced visitor dropped down in the chair across from him. The blond man’s light-colored eyes narrowed slightly, but his lips curved in what could have been a smile.
“Yes, Ted?” he said softly. He leaned back in his swivel chair and folded his hands gently in his lap.
Ted Lindsay sat sprawled in the opposite chair, a small, dark, intense-looking man of thirty-odd with small, dark, intense eyes behind rimless glasses. He turned his head to read aloud in a deliberate tone the reversed black lettering on the door. “Lieutenant Joseph Conway.” The thin mouth drew down sardonically at the corners. “How’s the youngest police lieutenant in the state today, Joe?”
“Just fine,” the big man said easily. He had gone to school with Ted Lindsay, whose casual attitude was no novelty to him. He wondered if Ted had ever realized just how close he had come once or twice to discovering that he had been taking a little too much for granted. “Someone you’d like arrested?”
“I might, at that,” Ted Lindsay said as if the idea had just occurred to him. “On the other hand, I might not.” He leveled a finger across the desk, the dark eyes mocking. “Has Dave Corbin been asked to step aside yet, so that you can be the youngest police captain in the state?”
“Dave’ll be around a while, Ted.”
“If he is, it’ll be in spite of you,” the slender man said. He grinned crookedly. “I know you, boy. You’re ambitious.”
Lieutenant Joseph Conway considered the man across the desk. “I know you, too, Ted — fortunately for you. I know that eight years ago you took over a patchwork, hand-me-down hardware store from your father, and that it’s now the largest in the area. I know that you play the tightest game of draw poker in a hundred square mile radius. Do I really need to know anything more about you?” He smiled. “You haven’t said whom you wanted arrested.”
Ted Lindsay scowled. “That’s what I like about small towns. You and I are friends, which doesn’t necessarily mean that we like each other.” He straightened abruptly in his chair. “You coming by the game tonight?”
“I’m speaking to a group at the Boys’ Club at ten.”
The crooked grin returned. “Still politicking, Joe?”
“I wasn’t elected to this chair.”
“That’s right,” Ted Lindsay agreed promptly. “A little afraid of the electorate, perhaps? Or possibly it’s easier to do a little sub rosa campaigning for the people who can appoint a deserving young man to a suitable office?” He waited for a response, and when none was forthcoming he continued. “Haven’t seen you much at the game lately. Turned your back on it?”
“I’ve been a little busy.”
“I wonder.” The intense dark eyes explored the big man speculatively. “Could it be that the youngest police lieutenant in the state now feels it a little bit indiscretionary to be a regular in the town’s high stakes poker game?” Syrup dripped from every syllable. “I’d gotten into the habit of thinking that that game had been pretty good to you.”
“I don’t think I’d disagree, Ted.”
“I don’t mean just financially, understand. I remember when Big Joe Conway was a raggedy-pants kid fresh out of school playing in a game he couldn’t afford because some of the better people in town played in it too. Like Doc Morrissey. And Judge Schofield. You going to marry Ann Schofield, Joe? She put the seal of approval yet on your Nordic chromosomes?”
The blond man glanced up at the wall clock, elaborately. “You’re going to make me late for dinner.”
“At Judge Schofield’s?” Ted inquired, and waved a hand negligently. “Don’t let me detain you.”
“You must have had a reason for coming by the office.”