“Have I?” Shayne’s eyes were alert, questioning.
“That’s what it looks like. And what gets my goat is the damned stupidity of it. Any time you pull a fast one I expect it to be good. This stunt couldn’t get by, Mike. You, of all men, should have known better.”
“I don’t get it. I’m no good at riddles or beating around the mulberry bush. What are you talking about?”
Gentry waved a big hand toward Painter. “You tell him. It’s your party.”
Peter Painter took a folded document from his breast pocket. “Just to be sure that everything’s in order, Shayne, here is a search warrant authorizing me to search your apartment for the gun that killed Harry Grange.”
He extended the paper toward the detective.
Shayne blinked at him in utter consternation, his thoughts swiftly going over his action in exchanging barrels in the two pistols. He was certain the barrels had no identifying marks. How in hell could they have found out about the exchange? He bluffed it out by growling, “You don’t need to get so technical. I gave you that pistol last night of my own volition.”
“You gave me a pistol,” Painter contradicted. “But not the one that killed Harry Grange. Don’t you know, for God’s sake, that we’ve got ballistic tests down to such a science nowadays that you couldn’t get away with a switch like that?”
Shayne still didn’t get it. He thought the beach detective was referring to his switching of barrels. He glanced over at Will Gentry with ragged red brows drawn down low over his eyes.
“What’s this guy talking about, Will?”
Gentry waggled his head sorrowfully.
“It wasn’t even smart, Mike. Painter has found out about you prowling Marco’s house yesterday, and it’s easy to guess how you got hold of the gun registered in his name.”
“Then went out on the beach and had a witness watch you pick up the death gun where you had thrown it last night,” Painter put in swiftly. “Then you fired a shot out of the Marco pistol, cleaned and reloaded your own gun-as if that would fool a ballistics expert,” he ended witheringly.
“Wait a minute.” Shayne looked from one to the other in horrified realization. “Do you mean to say that gun you took away from here didn’t fire the bullet into Grange’s head?”
Painter said, “Absolutely not. There’s a difference between the markings on a bullet shot out of it and the death slug.”
“Well, I’m damned!” Shayne appealed to Gentry. “He’s crazy, Will. He must be crazy-or else he’s pulling one.”
Will Gentry nodded negatively.
“You can’t get away with it, Mike. I had my own expert compare the bullets before I’d believe you had tried a dumb trick like that.”
Shayne got up unsteadily. He moved over to the liquor cabinet like a man in a coma, reached down a bottle and pulled the cork with his teeth, took a long drink out of the bottle.
Gentry frowned, watching him. Shayne’s surprise was almost too perfect to be simulated. For a moment the Miami detective chief wondered if it was possible that Shayne had actually thought he was giving them the death gun.
Shayne came back, stood before the two detectives on wide-spread legs, his nostrils flaring at the base.
“As God is my witness,” he told them steadily, “this is news to me. News that hurts like the devil. I-hell! I can’t believe it yet.”
Painter’s lips curled scornfully. He snapped, “Save the histrionics for a jury.” He flipped the search warrant in front of Shayne and reached for the table drawer. “I’m taking this nice clean pistol along with me this time. We’ll see what ballistics has to say about it.”
Trapped by his own infernal cleverness, hoisted on his own petard! For a moment Shayne couldn’t think of anything to say. His pistol was fitted with the barrel taken from the Marco gun-the one he had found in Marsha’s room.
And Marsha’s handkerchief had been in the car-high-heeled footprints running from the scene-Marsha had, undoubtedly, ridden away from the casino with Grange-Marsha’s inexplicable confinement to her room and her father’s anxiety over what she might have told Shayne.
All these facts flashed kaleidoscopically before his benumbed mind as he stood there speechless. If Marsha Marco had killed Grange, a ballistic test would prove his gun had shot the bullet.
It was too much for Shayne all of a sudden. All along he had been working on the theory that Larry Kincaid had killed the man with his pistol and left it behind to frame him. But if the barrel from his pistol hadn’t fired the shot He dropped into a chair and mopped sweat from his brow. Painter had the drawer open and was lifting out his pistol.
“I’ve got another warrant in my pocket,” Painter was saying casually. “One charging you with first-degree murder, Shayne. If you want to come along quietly, I won’t serve it until we’ve had a chance to test this pistol and clinch the case against you dead to rights.”
Shayne’s head moved slowly from side to side as if he hadn’t the strength to stop it. It was beginning to clear up a little, and he realized what a spot he had put himself in. They’d never believe him if he told his story of exchanging pistol barrels-and if they did believe him, he’d be indicted for planting evidence in a homicide.
He turned his back on Painter and addressed Gentry. “Before God, Will, this is all a complete upset for me. You can see what it does to my plans. I thought I had this case all sewed up. Now, everything’s screwy. I’ve got to work it all out from another angle.”
“You can work it out behind bars,” Painter told him silkily. “Let’s be going.”
Shayne kept his position, further appealing to Gentry, “Talk him out of it, Will. Give me a few hours to readjust my case. Tell him I’m not going to take a runout powder. Hell! I’ll hand over the real murderer if he’ll give me a few hours.”
“And I contend I’ve already got the real murderer. You’ve had your last chance to mess up the evidence in this case.”
Shayne thrust his hands deep into his pockets and strode across the room and back, shoulders hunched. Stopping in front of the two men, he said, “There’s one thing neither of you know. The pistol I found on the scene of the crime had jammed after the first shot was fired. I unjammed it when I removed the magazine to count the remaining cartridges. Knowing that just one shot had been fired into Grange’s head, I naturally thought nothing about it. But you can see how that changes things now that we know the one shot fired from it didn’t kill Grange.”
Gentry said, “Mike, I’ll be damned if you aren’t making me believe you thought that was the death gun you gave Painter.”
Shayne swung on him savagely.
“Why wouldn’t I think so? There it was with one shot fired-lying where the murderer might have tossed it. Good God, Will! as you said in the beginning, I would have been a damned fool to think I could put the wrong gun over on ballistics.”
For the first time since the interview had started, a look of indecision appeared on Peter Painter’s face.
“Why would anyone leave a jammed gun lying around there?”
“That,” Shayne told him, “is what I intend to find out.” He swung away, back and forth across the room again.
Gentry stepped close to Painter and said in a low tone, “I’d listen to him if I were you. He’s never run from anything. He’ll be here whenever you want him.”
“I’ll be here,” Shayne promised grimly from behind them. “I’m going to be so damned busy the next few hours I won’t have any time to think of leaving town.” Painter rubbed his mustache undecidedly.
“Will you be personally responsible for him, Gentry? Alter all, he’s a citizen of your city-not mine.”
“Of course,” Gentry said without hesitation. “I might have known I shouldn’t have come up here with you. I knew he’d twist me around with his blarney.”
“Thanks, Will.” Shayne’s hand closed tightly on the detective chief’s shoulder.
“All right,” Painter decided. “I’ll place you in Gentry’s custody until I can get a check made on this gun. If it proves to be the one that killed Grange, I’ll serve that warrant without any further argument.”