He looked at Domaine for comment. A little smile had appeared on Domaine’s lips. He said coldly, “Go to hell, Shayne.”
“Look at him, Tim,” Shayne said. “This has its compensations. If the plan had worked, nobody would ever have known how brilliant it all was. It wasn’t Domaine’s fault that it didn’t work. One thing went wrong-Joey Dolan picked last night to sleep in the Domaine tack-room.”
“That’s absolutely all,” Domaine said softly. “Everything else went off like clockwork.”
“But what was the plan!” Rourke wailed.
“His great grandfather could have got away with a double killing in the heat of passion, but things aren’t that simple today. The first thing Domaine did was loan Thorne some money to start his own stable. That was to give the guy a taste of success so he’d miss it more when he didn’t have it. Domaine sold him a couple of lemons. Then Thorne’s one moneymaking horse was killed. Brossard was involved in that. So was Joey Dolan. I saw the film patrol and I couldn’t spot what happened, but I think Brossard will explain it to us as soon as he hears that the boss has been arrested for murder. After that, Domaine pulled a few strings and got Thorne suspended. By this time Thorne was in a serious financial jam, and he needed a big win. Domaine proposed an apparently sure-fire coup. Everybody thought it was a plan to beat the twin double. Actually it was a plan for a double murder. His wife had been doing his betting for him. I think originally all Domaine had in mind was to set up a winning combination and then lose with it by drugging his mare. But then Mrs. Moon told him about Fussbudget. He bought three tickets substituting Fussbudget for My Treat as the winning horse in the ninth race. An old man who is known as a Domaine agent cashed one of them. In the course of their affair, Thorne had given Claire excellent reason to hate him. Naturally he would assume that this was a deliberate scheme, worked out by her, to maneuver him into position so she could sandbag him. By using such an obvious agent, she had wanted to make him realize who was doing it to him. One thing we don’t know is how Domaine talked her into carrying a gun. She thought it was her own idea, but I doubt it.”
“Claire respected my intelligence,” Domaine said smugly. “She was always responsive to suggestion, bless her.”
“Domaine could be pretty sure what would happen if he could manipulate these two hopped-up people into a room alone. It almost happened this afternoon, even before Thorne thought he’d been double-crossed. It didn’t matter to Domaine which one turned out to be the killer, and which one the victim. At one point tonight he got cold feet and nearly called it off. If that had happened, we could never have nailed him for Joey’s murder. So I rigged up something with Claire to stir up his sense of honor again. I brought her here for an hour or so, and part of that time the lights were off. I couldn’t tell her we were really setting a trap for her husband, or she wouldn’t have been convincing in her scene with Thorne. I made her think the reason we came was to bug the room.”
“That surprised me, Mike,” Rourke said. “You’ve never gone in much for that crap.”
“Nothing actually happened,” Shayne explained to Domaine. “The lipstick on my face was put there for your benefit. I knew it had to be you in the cab.”
Rourke said, “But last night, Mike, I still don’t see why he had to drug the mare. He could have worked out something with Brossard.”
“He was looking forward to a big murder trial, either Claire’s trial for the murder of Thorne or Thorne’s trial for the murder of Claire. Everything had to be airtight. He couldn’t let anybody else in on it. Not only that, if Brossard hadn’t been trying, Thorne might have spotted it. As for Joey-tonight, if the killing had gone off on schedule, Joey would know that Domaine had been doping his horse to lose. They could take urine and saliva samples to prove it, and the whole careful fabric would start to unravel. So Joey had to be killed.”
“Who fired those shots?” Rourke said. “I couldn’t make out.”
“Thorne fired the first one. Then Domaine slipped in to make sure she was actually dead. She was still breathing, so he put the gun against her forehead and fired again.”
Miss Mallinson spoke for the first time. “Mike Shayne, how can you sit there calmly telling us about your clever trap? Oh, it was clever, all right! You got him to confess one murder by letting him commit another. I don’t understand you!”
“Well, you’re a nurse,” Shayne said wearily. “Take a look at the corpse.”
He lifted the phone and gave the switchboard the number of the Broward County Sheriff’s office. Claire Domaine sat up. As her face appeared above the edge of the bed, bruised and powder-stained, but unmistakably alive, Domaine crouched back in his chair and began to stammer.
“Wh-wh-wh-”
He leaped up suddenly, clutching his temples, and screamed like a horse, a shrill, penetrating scream that transfixed everybody in the room. He was rigid for a moment, then slumped to the floor in a faint.
“Mike, there’s a twin-double ticket on the bed!” Rourke exclaimed. “Six and eight! That’s the winner!”
Claire came shakily to her feet and looked down at her unconscious husband. “It’s Mike’s,” she said in a dead voice. “That’s his fee for catching the murderer of Joey Dolan.”
“You may have to twist my arm,” Shayne said, “but I think in the end I’ll probably take it.”
A voice on the phone said, “Sheriff’s office, Deputy Sheriff Swanson.”
Shayne’s grin faded. “This is Michael Shayne. I’m in Room 18 of the Golden Crest Motel on A1A. I have a killer for you.”