A pleasantly seductive female voice cooed back at him over the wire, and when Shayne asked for the proprietor, she assured him that he was speaking to her at that moment and that nothing would fill her cup of happiness so full to overflowing as to personally take care of whatever his needs might be.
Shayne grinned wryly at this offer, and told her, “Another time, lady, I may take you up on that. But I wonder if I could deal with your husband this time?”
She was extremely sorry, but she was Miss Elroy, and if he would put his problem in her hands he was assured he would never regret it. He politely declined the invitation and hung up, turned to Jean and told her confidently, “Sit down and relax. He’ll be here very shortly.”
“Who will be here?”
“Either Mr. Johnson or Mr. Magner,” he told her. “I’m inclined to pick Magner as my candidate right now. Of the Final Tryst, you know?” he ended blandly.
“I don’t know.” Enough of her spirit had returned under the relaxing quiet of her talk in Shayne’s hotel suite to cause her to stamp her foot on the floor. “Why are you looking so smug?”
“Because we’ve got our man on the hook. Don’t you understand yet? He’s an undertaker, Jean. A funeral director, I suppose he calls himself.”
“However do you know?”
“Who else,” demanded Shayne, “would call your relatives your ‘loved ones’ when he mentioned how worried they must be about you? Who else… in business for himself as he told you he was? And think back on the man sitting in the rear booth last night nursing half a warm highball in his hand.” He laughed confidently and got up to pour himself a small drink while he waited for the two undertakers to come to him.
“Let me do the talking, Jean. You sit back there on the side and stay as relaxed as you can, and listen. Break in on us if anything is said that strikes any chord in your memory.”
19
They hadn’t long to wait. When his bell rang not more than ten minutes after he finished telephoning, Shayne was glad the man had turned out to be an undertaker instead of plumber.
He opened the door and found a short, rotund man in the hallway, with a cherubic, moonlike face that expressed tactful sympathy for his host’s supposed bereavement.
He intoned, “Mr. Shayne? Johnson is my name, sir. You asked me to call on you…”
“I know I did.” Michael Shayne stood with his body blocking the doorway and made no move to step aside. “I’m sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Johnson, but I’m afraid I’ve changed my mind in the interim. Later, perhaps? The next time something of this sort happens…”
The elevator stopped again at the fourth floor as Shayne spoke, and Mr. Johnson turned his head to see the man who got off and hurried toward them. His round features tightened in an unpleasant grimace, and he turned back to Shayne with asperity. “I’m afraid I don’t understand why you called both Mr. Magner and me. It’s hardly ethical…”
“Just changed my mind,” Shayne told him heartily, leaning out to look down the corridor and make certain that Mr. Magner was, indeed, the man Jean Henderson had been supposed to point out the night before.
Shayne recognized his mild, horselike face immediately, and he drew back, telling the other undertaker, “After phoning you, I suddenly recalled that I had met Mr. Magner before and had promised to give him all my business. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
Mr. Magner came up as he spoke, and stopped to address his competitor in surprise: “Mr. Johnson. Do you consider it good ethics to try and push in ahead like this when it was I who was summoned?”
Johnson grunted something indistinguishable as Shayne stepped out to shoulder him aside and take Magner’s arm firmly. The smaller man gasped and tried to shrink back when he saw the detective’s rugged face, but Shayne pulled him forward through the door and closed it firmly in Johnson’s face.
Mr. Magner stood aside helplessly, his face ashen and his eyes flitting nervously from the girl curled up in the deep chair across the room and back to Shayne.
He gulped deeply and said in a high, thin voice, “You… you are the man last night, aren’t you?” He wet his lips desperately and turned back to Jean. “And… and Miss Buttrell there…?”
“Not Buttrell,” Shayne said flatly. He put his hand on Magner’s shoulder and pushed him back toward a chair. “We’re going to have a long talk, so make yourself comfortable. Her name is Jean Henderson and she’s told me about how you picked her up on the road and ducked away after dropping her in front of the hospital.”
“I had done everything I could for her under the circumstances. I assure you that I had.”
Shayne sat down in front of him and waved his protestations aside with a big hand. “That’s not the point. If she had come up to you in the bar last night instead of stopping at my booth… those men would have killed you outright. Thinking I was the man they wanted, they tried to kill me instead. Why?”
“I don’t… that is, I… if you knew how terribly I felt last night, sir, when I saw that awful thing happen right in front of my eyes. I realized it was some terrible mistake. I was so taken by surprise to see her come in the door. I’d thought I was perfectly safe coming there… that she was in Miami and no one could possibly recognize me. And I was simply petrified when those thugs assaulted you. I beg you to understand and forgive me for not speaking up manfully to say there had been a mistake.”
Shayne said, “None of that matters now. Stop snivelling and pull yourself together. Who were the three men who jumped me and why did they do it?”
“I recognized only one of them, and him only by sight,” muttered the distraught undertaker. “His name is Eugene Forbes, I believe. His reputation in Brockton is not good at all. He has… well… a great deal to do with the management of the Sanitarium. That’s why he was there last night, Mr… ah… Shayne, was it? He was after me, of course. I do not deny it. It was foolhardy of me to think I could successfully challenge the Sanitarium. But I had worked out such a careful plan. I didn’t see how it could fail. And I was intentionally moderate in my demand upon them. Only ten thousand dollars. That’s all I asked for my silence. It was so little to them, yet it meant so much to me.”
“You were trying to collect blackmail from the Sanitarium,” Shayne said harshly. “For what? As a price for your silence about what?”
“Why… about this young lady. The night I found her wandering along the road with no memory of what had happened. I didn’t realize the truth that night, of course. I saw no sign of the car then. But later when I read about Mr. Harris burning up in his car at the bottom of the ravine, I realized that was almost exactly the spot where I had found her, and that she must have been in his car with him when it was wrecked. And him being a State’s Attorney, and that in the paper about him asking his way to the Sanitarium earlier in the evening… well, I can put two and two together and make four, Mr. Shayne.”
“That’s more than I can do right now,” the redhead growled. “Suppose she was in Harris’ car when it went over the bank, and was thrown clear, maybe, with a bad concussion. How does that add up to blackmail material against the Brockton Sanitarium?”
Mr. Magner wet his lips and looked at Jean appealingly. “I’ve just suddenly realized… did you say her name is Jean Henderson?”
“That’s right.” Shayne glanced with him at the girl. She was sitting erect in her chair, hands clasped tightly in her lap, and her blue eyes were alight with excitement.
“I thought you said Henderson. She… had a sister named Jeanette. Perhaps you don’t know that she is supposed to have been killed in another automobile accident near here a month ago.”
“I know about that. And some passerby like you picked her up and took her to the Brockton Sanitarium for emergency treatment and hurried away without leaving his name. Don’t tell me you were in on that rescue also?”