“The bedroom windows are dark now,” Marsha Elitzen said. “Perhaps Brad has taken her home earlier than I thought.”
Shayne said, “Perhaps.”
She opened the door on her side and slid out. She held the door open and told him, “If you could answer that telephone at midnight, Michael Shayne, it would be much easier for me to say ‘yes.’” She closed the door and walked up the driveway before Shayne could reply.
He sat very still for a moment, and then moved the car forward slowly, keeping to the edge of the road and passing the corner of the ten-foot stone wall Marsha had mentioned. He slowed to a complete stop in front of the big iron gates at the main entrance, and pondered the situation for a moment, then drove on very slowly to the other corner of the wall which led straight back from the street to the bank of a canal connecting with the Inland Waterway. Beyond the closed estate was a large vacant area grown up with scrub pines and underbrush, and leading off the street outside the wall was a narrow pair of ruts which Shayne knew must lead to the service entrance described by Marsha.
He turned into the ruts, leaving his headlights on, and half-way down the wall came to a graveled turn-around with wooden gates barring an archway leading into the estate.
He cut off the motor and took time out to light a cigarette, making himself relax and getting the feel of the place.
He could see nothing beyond the high wall at his left, and could hear nothing inside the grounds. Indeed, the night silence all around him was pervasive, and somehow threatening.
The redhead took three, long, contemplative drags at his cigarette before leaning forward and opening the glove compartment where Timothy Rourke always carried an automatic pistol. He took it out and drew back the slide, saw the firing chamber was empty, pulled the slide back the rest of the way to insert a cartridge, and thumbed the safety into place.
He left the headlights burning, directed straight forward along the wall where the entrance road ended, got out of the car and closed the door firmly, not slamming it but making no attempt to muffle the sound which was loud in the silence.
He slid the loaded automatic into his hip pocket and walked briskly to the solid, wooden gates which were on hinges and met snugly in the middle. There was a Yale lock set flush with the surface near the edge of the right-hand gate, and when he pressed hard against it the gates did not budge a fraction, indicating the presence of a heavy and well-fitted latch.
The headlights from the coupe behind him gave enough light for Shayne to see an electric button set in a wooden frame on the left.
He hesitated a long moment before pressing the button, glancing up at the top of the gates, which were just above his head, and at the clear space above them beneath the stone arch. It would be simple enough to swing himself up and over the gates and inside the grounds without announcing his presence-if there were, indeed, anyone inside.
Did he want to meet Brad just now? If the caretaker was amorously engaged with Felice, it wasn’t likely he would enjoy the interruption.
But Shayne did want to talk to Felice, and, if she were here spending the evening surreptitiously, as Marsha suspected, the element of surprise at being caught in a compromising situation might bring more answers from her than he would get by a more conventional approach.
At this point in his thinking, he hesitated no longer. He dropped his cigarette to the ground and toed it out, then put his forefinger firmly on the electric button and held it there for a dozen seconds.
He could hear no sound of a bell inside to indicate that it was connected, but Marsha’s description of the arrival of Brad’s visitor that evening indicated that he must have been summoned to the gate by some means before it was unlocked.
He waited for at least two full minutes, then put his finger on the button again and held it down for at least sixty seconds.
Again, he waited a long time without getting any response whatever. He studied the tops of the gates once more and debated whether it would be wise to enter that way, and reluctantly decided against it. If Brad had taken Felice away (as Marsha somewhat naively surmised) then nothing much would be gained by entering the vacant grounds. If, on the other hand, the caretaker were inside the wall, he would be fully alerted by the ringing of the bell, and Shayne’s legal position would be indefensible if he swung himself over the gate.
He turned away instead, and made his way down the path of the headlight beams alongside the wall toward the bank of the canal about a hundred feet away.
There was no roadway beyond the gates, and Shayne made his way carefully to avoid the sharp fronds of dwarf palmettos and the cunning thorns of briars that sought to waylay him.
The solid stone wall had been built all the way to the very edge of the steep-banked canal, and then continued at right angles along the bank for fifty feet or so, where a boat-house jutted out a few feet into the swiftly moving current.
At this point the bank had been concreted to prevent erosion, and the wall was simply a continuation of the concrete, leaving not even a foothold on the outside, above the water, where one could possibly reach the boathouse.
If you were hell-bent on getting in, you could slip into the stream and swim those fifty feet to the boathouse, but the chances were it would be firmly locked against ingress from the water side, so that wouldn’t do you much good either.
Shayne shrugged his wide shoulders and turned around and started back.
With the headlight beams in front of him this time, it was easier to pick his way among the wild growth, and he arrived back at the graveled turning-area with only mild damage to his trouser-legs and ankles.
He was headed directly toward Rourke’s coupe, disgusted with himself for having wasted time stopping here, when a sound from his right attracted his attention and he stopped in mid-stride, drawing Rourke’s automatic from his hip pocket.
It was the sound of the wooden gates swinging inward on their well-oiled hinges. The side-glow from the car’s headlights revealed a brawny figure standing menacingly in the opening. He was bareheaded with an unruly shock of thick hair standing up in wild disarray. He had a square, brutal face and a thick-lipped mouth, and he held a double-barreled shotgun with twin sawed-off barrels pointed directly at Michael Shayne’s mid-section.
Both barrels of the lethal weapon were cocked, and the man’s right forefinger was crooked menacingly about both triggers.
Shayne stood very still, facing him, glad that the pistol was hanging loosely at his side and in full view of the other man.
He said, “Hi,” and sincerely hoped that his tone was casual and light. “Mind pointing that thing just a little bit away from my belly?”
“Why should I?”
Shayne shrugged and said, “I’d feel much more like carrying on a light conversation if you did.”
The man with the shotgun said belligerently, “To hell with that light conversation stuff. Throw that gat on the ground over here.”
Under the circumstances, Shayne was glad to get rid of the pistol. It was a poor match for the more lethal weapon in Brad’s hands, and this was a case in which discretion was much the better part of valor.
He tossed it forward carefully at the feet of the caretaker, who grunted, “Now you step back about six more feet.”
Shayne did so. Brad shifted the shotgun firmly into his right hand, and picked up the pistol by its barrel. He rested the short-barreled shotgun loosely in the crook of his arm to leave both hands free, and released the loaded clip of the automatic and let it drop to the ground. Then he thumbed the safety off and expelled the loaded cartridge from the firing chamber, tossed the useless weapon back to Shayne contemptuously, and growled, “Now, Mister. What the hell are you doing here?”
Shayne stooped to scoop the unloaded gun up and slide it back into his pocket.