Nothing of this showed on Shayne’s face when his host re-entered with a brimming glass for him. Shayne accepted it with a grunt that might be construed as thanks, and took a careful sip while Henderson settled himself back into his chair.
Then he asked abruptly, “Who’s gunning for you, Henderson?”
He drew in a deep breath and held it for a long time. Then he expelled it unhappily and said, “So far as I know I haven’t an enemy in the world. That’s what makes all this so utterly fantastic. Throughout my entire life I’ve tried to be guided by the Golden Rule, and until day before yesterday I felt that I had succeeded. I’ve searched the innermost recesses of my soul and I just can’t come up with anything or anybody who might have a motive for harming me.”
Shayne refrained from asking him how he thought Muriel Graham felt about his treatment of her. Instead, he said, “What about a profit motive? You’re a fairly wealthy man, I believe.”
“I am, yes. But there’s nothing there. I have no relatives to inherit my own money, and my stepdaughter received half of her mother’s fortune which I hold in trust for her until she comes of age in a couple of years. No one would benefit financially by my death.”
“In that case, I don’t see what the hell I can do for you,” Shayne told him bluntly. “If some nut is determined to knock you off, all the police protection in the world won’t keep it from happening. Much as I dislike agreeing with Painter, I have to do it in this case. If you haven’t anything concrete to work on, you’ll just have to sit back and wait on the hot seat for the next time.” Shayne grinned wolfishly as he spoke, and there wasn’t the slightest trace of pity in his voice,
“Yes… I… I see your point. And that’s why I’m so glad to have this opportunity for a private discussion. There is one thing I haven’t told you, Mr. Shayne. One thing I didn’t tell Painter and couldn’t possibly tell him. But I feel I can confide in you. This talk has given me the utmost confidence that you are a man of discretion and honor. I told you in the beginning I was going to bare my soul to you. I know it must have sounded bombastic at the time, but I meant it seriously, Mr. Shayne. I meant it from the bottom of my heart.
“There is this letter, Mr. Shayne. I received it this morning from New York.” He reached down and pulled open a drawer of the desk, lifted out a red and white striped envelope which he looked down at with fear and loathing.
“I almost threw it away at the time. When you read it you’ll understand why. I still don’t believe a word of it,” he went on forcibly. “It is still utterly inconceivable to me how it came to be written. There cannot possibly be a word of truth in the filthy thing. And yet… and yet… after what happened yesterday I just don’t know. I just-don’t-know,” he repeated slowly and fearfully.
“Here.” He held it across the desk to Shayne as though it were a time bomb about to explode. “You’ll have to read it for yourself. There’s no other way. But as God is my judge, I swear there is no reason on earth why my stepdaughter should wish me dead.”
11
Shayne took the airmail envelope and looked at it. The address was a penciled scrawclass="underline" Mr. Saul Henderson, Palm Tree Drive, Miami Beach, Fla. It was postmarked New York the previous day.
Shayne opened the flap and took out a single sheet of folded cheap paper. The message was penciled in the same handwriting as the address:
Dear Sir,
This is a friendly warning to say that your stepdaughter is going around offering fifty Grand to get you bumped off. I ain’t a killer an turned her down cold but other guys wont. Watch your step.
A friend
Shayne sat looking down at the note for a long time after he finished reading it. No matter what she had promised Paul Winterbottom, her fiance, she hadn’t wasted any time getting in touch with the criminal element in the big city.
He carefully refolded the single sheet into its original creases and replaced it in the envelope. He dropped it on the desk in front of him and looked up to meet Henderson’s tortured eyes. He said, “You didn’t show this to Painter?”
“How could I? My God, Shayne! Don’t you understand? My own stepdaughter threatening me. Don’t you see what a field day Painter would have with that? What political capital he could make out of it? Even though it’s base calumny without a word of truth in it, if even a rumor of it leaked out to a newspaper I’d be finished in Miami Beach.”
“Still,” said Shayne reasonably, “if you expected Painter to take the attempts against your life seriously and give you protection, you’d have to show him this.”
Henderson said fervently, “I’d rather die.”
Shayne shrugged and said, “Maybe that’s just what you’re going to do.” He leaned back and lit a cigarette, studying his host out of low-lidded eyes.
“Tell me about your stepdaughter. Muriel Graham? Is that her name?”
“Muriel, yes. A sweet and wonderful girl. Like my own daughter, Shayne. I always think of her that way. And I think she loves me as a father. Her mother was quite ill for years as you may know, and Muriel and I were extremely close.”
You don’t know that I know how close, Shayne said to himself sardonically, but aloud, he asked, “So what’s this about her trying to get a hired gun to kill you?”
“I don’t know, Shayne. I simply don’t believe it. Not for a moment. There’s some ghastly mistake. Someone passing herself off as Muriel. A case of mistaken identity. I just don’t know. I haven’t been able to think straight since reading that letter.”
“Why not ask her?” suggested Shayne.
“I would if it were possible. That’s exactly what I would like to do. But she’s in New York visiting friends. I don’t know which one of several she’s with.”
“And this letter is postmarked New York.”
“Yes. But even with that coincidence, I dismissed the whole thing as a hoax when I first read it. Then, that very afternoon the shot was fired at me. I still dismissed it as an impossible thing. And then there was the second attempt yesterday. I simply don’t know what to think.”
“You’re veering around to the idea that maybe Muriel has hired somebody to kill you?”
“No. No!” Henderson pounded the desk angrily with his fist. “Nothing on earth would ever make me believe that. But I am inclining to the belief that the letter isn’t a practical joke. That it has some basis, though what it is I can’t even imagine.”
“I’d still like to know more about your stepdaughter. Did you say she’s nineteen?”
“Yes. An extremely well-poised and attractive young lady. Not at all the neurotic type. The last person in the world to do anything to cause such a letter to be written to me.”
“Yet it was written to you.”
“That’s exactly why I showed it to and am asking you to take the case, Shayne. You can see why I can’t take Painter into my confidence. Yet someone is trying to kill me, and you’ve got to find out why.”
“Still going back to Muriel,” Shayne said placidly. “How old was she when you married her mother?”
“Four years ago. She was almost sixteen.”
“Was her mother an invalid at the time?”
“When we were married? No. She was in poor health, but… her ailment hadn’t been properly diagnosed. None of us guessed that it was… cancer.” Henderson lowered his voice in speaking the word, as so many people do even today. In the same hushed voice he went on: “I insisted that she see the best specialists, but by then it was too late to operate… hopeless. She took to her bed and… all of us did our poor best to see that she was comfortable and happy until the end.”
“About three years ago?” Shayne pushed him relentlessly.
“Three years ago… what?”
“When her illness was diagnosed as cancer and she became bedridden.”
“Yes. That’s right. Though I don’t see…”
“When your stepdaughter was sixteen.”
“Yes. Muriel would have been sixteen.”
“A beautiful girl. On the brink of maturity. Did it ever enter your thoughts, Henderson, that the daughter might become a substitute for the mother? There the two of you were, living together closely in the same house. You, a young man for your years, deprived of the companionship of a wife and the sexual use of her body… living on intimate terms with a young and unawakened girl…”