“You’re well supplied with brazen effrontery, Shayne,” the realtor observed bitingly. “After what took place in the next room last night I should think you’d hesitate to show your face in my house.”
Shayne laughed shortly. He slouched down into a chair and ill a cigarette. “Granting that Darnell did choke your wife, you’re as much to blame as I am, Thrip.”
Thrip’s face turned darkly florid. His underlip trembled like a pendulum gone out of control. “You’d better leave, Shayne. I don’t propose to listen to your insults.”
“I’m staying, and you’ll listen to what I have to say.” He crossed his long legs and settled his left arm comfortably. He took a deep puff from his cigarette, emitted smoke slowly, and said, “Don’t forget that I know why Darnell was here-why he jimmied the window and-the reason for his coming upstairs at an early hour in the morning.”
Thrip tucked his cigar into the pouch of his thick lips, took a deep puff before replying. “I’ve explained to the police and they’re satisfied. You sent him in response to my request for a guard because of the threatening notes my wife had been receiving lately.”
Shayne simulated amazement. “Is that the story you cooked up? I wondered how you were going to get around the truth.”
“You will make matters very difficult for yourself if you contradict my story. You have no proof to the contrary and the police have the threatening notes.” Thrip leaned back in the low chair. A long breath wheezed through his nostrils.
“You mean there actually were some notes?” Shayne leaned forward attentively.
“Of course. As I am prepared to take oath, I explained to you yesterday afternoon.”
Their eyes met briefly. Thrip’s were calmly triumphant.
Shayne’s bushy red brows came down over half-closed gray eyes. He wondered whether Thrip knew of his wife’s visit to his apartment yesterday.
“I begin to see your game,” Shayne said slowly. “I suppose not even your wife knew the true reason for Darnell’s presence here last night?”
“Naturally not.” Thrip spoke with irritation. “A matter like that cannot be conducted without the utmost secrecy. Do you suppose my wife would have agreed to converting her jewels into cash? Not Leora. It made no difference to her that I needed a large sum of money desperately to swing a big deal.”
Shayne leaned back comfortably and changed the position of his legs. “I’m just beginning to realize what a scoundrel you are, Thrip. You not only planned to defraud the insurance company, but also to steal your wife’s jewels and make her think the robbery genuine. By God, I’m beginning to think you did have a perfect crime planned. Too bad an accident had to upset it.”
“My wife,” said Thrip coldly, “was mean and tyrannical. Since our marriage she has derived the most intense pleasure from being in a position to force me and my children to go to her for any sum of money beyond the inadequate allowances she grudgingly doled out. Not only was I refused the appointment as administrator of her deceased father’s estate, but she humiliated me by keeping control of every dollar of the income in her own hands.”
“It was her money,” Shayne snapped.
Thrip sat back in his chair looking straight ahead.
Shayne studied his pudgy face. He could clearly imagine the obsession the man had built up through the years into a persecution complex. Thrip honestly felt he had grounds for righteous indignation at being refused control of his wife’s property. To such a man, Shayne cogitated, and with such a grievance, a plan to defraud both his wife and an insurance company would appear both reasonable and just.
Shayne lit another cigarette and nodded as if in response to his deductions. “All right,” he said, “I get the picture. I don’t know that I blame you for taking steps. And I don’t blame you for keeping the truth concealed when things turned out as they did. As a matter of fact, it wouldn’t help my position any if it came out that I was conniving with you to pull a fake robbery of your wife’s jewels. Don’t worry about me talking out of turn. But what about those threatening notes you mention? Where are they?”
“I turned them over to Mr. Painter this morning. There were three of them, threatening bodily harm to Leora unless she agreed to pay a hundred thousand dollars to the writer.”
“Anonymous?” Shayne asked casually.
“They were unsigned. She was directed to indicate her willingness to pay the sum demanded by placing an advertisement in the personal column of a newspaper.”
“And she didn’t do this?”
“She refused. As I have explained, my wife was not one to part with money easily. She pretended to dismiss the notes as the work of a harmless crank at first. Later she admitted she was worried and suggested we place the matter in the hands of a private detective. I confess my nervousness yesterday when she came to my office unexpectedly, but fortunately she spoke in such vague terms that you remained deceived.” There was a note of gratification in Thrip’s voice as though he preened himself on his cleverness in deception.
There was a short silence during which Shayne stared at the floor and Thrip stared straight ahead. Then, as if speaking to himself, Thrip muttered, “I shan’t pretend any great grief over my wife’s death, but it is a pity she had to die in such a brutal manner.”
Shayne’s eyes grew keen for an instant, but he was staring thoughtfully at the floor again when he said, “You say she pretended to dismiss the notes as the work of a crank at first. Do you imply that there was more to them than that-and she knew there was-she knew whom they were from?”
“I do imply exactly that. I feel morally certain she knew the identity of the author of the notes from the first. Guessing the authorship of the notes myself, I felt she was in grave danger, but when she refused to consider the consequences of disregarding the threats I considered myself absolved of all responsibility in the matter.”
“Hoping perhaps,” Shayne said with sharp irony, “that she would get bumped off so you could get your hands on her money.”
“I resent that, Mr. Shayne.” The realtor arose, his face purpling with wrath. “I see no reason why I should allow you to insult me. Your status in my house is that of an unwelcome intruder.”
Shayne didn’t move. His long legs were stretched out in front of him and his eyes were fixed on the toes of his number twelves. “I’m staying, Thrip. Sit down and stop swallowing your goozle. You’re not going to deny, are you, that her money comes to you and your children?”
Arnold Thrip fidgeted indecisively, then sat down on the extreme edge of his chair. “As to that, it will be a matter of common knowledge when Leora’s will is probated that half of her fortune comes to us.”
Shayne lifted his gaze sharply. “And the other half?”
“I can’t see that it’s any of your business,” Thrip said, “but her brother, Buell Renslow, will receive half of the estate. As a matter of fact, Leora’s entire portion of the fortune comes to us-half of her father’s estate. For years she has enjoyed the use of the income from the entire estate, but there was a provision in her father’s will providing that one-half should go to her brother upon her death-or be held in trust for him until his release from the penitentiary to which he was sentenced twenty-five years ago for murder.”
Shayne snapped from his moodiness with a start of surprise. “You’d better start at the beginning and tell it straight through.”
Thrip stuck a dead cigar in the little pouch he made of his lips, drew ineffectually, laid the cigar on the stand. He turned a little toward Shayne. “I can’t see that it is any concern of yours,” he said with conscious dignity.
Shayne’s half-closed eyes were brilliant. “Murder has been committed, Mr. Thrip,” he said in a low tone. “You and your children are involved. You might be doing yourself a favor to come clean with me.”
Thrip took a fresh cigar from a humidor on the stand, lit it, blew a puff of smoke ceilingward. “It is a brief though sordid story. You can understand my hesitancy in speaking of it. I have a standing in the community to maintain.”