Outside the death chamber Shayne stood in the wide hallway looking down the length of it. The policeman whom he had seen pushing the young man across the hall now stood guard outside a closed door on the opposite side about halfway down.
The guard scowled and planted himself solidly in front of the door as Shayne approached.
“Can’t nobody go in here,” the man said. “Chief’s orders.”
“Your chief’s orders don’t apply to me,” Shayne told him. “These people are my clients and I have a right to see them.”
“Your clients, eh? Bad luck that is for them. The lady in the bedroom yonder-she was your client too, I’m told.”
Shayne said, “This is going to be tougher on you than on me,” without rancor.
His knotted fist came up smoothly and without warning from his side. It struck the cop’s jaw solidly with all of Shayne’s hundred and ninety pounds behind it. The man in uniform went down with a surprised look on his face.
He stayed down without moving.
Shayne glanced around swiftly to see that he was unobserved, then dragged the policeman up to a slumped sitting position against the wall, opened the door silently, and went inside.
Chapter Five: THREE UNPLEASANT PEOPLE
When Shayne closed the door behind him, shutting out the hall light, he blinked at the dimness, waited a moment for his eyes to adjust themselves to the faint light cast by a pine log crackling on andirons in a tiled fireplace across the room.
It was a large sitting-room, he soon perceived, with French windows along one side and with open doors leading into bedrooms from two sides. He thought for a moment he was alone in the room. Then he heard the sound of heavy breathing coming from a divan set against the wall near the fireplace.
As he turned his eyes in that direction a trickle of resin gurgled out of the burning log and yellow flame spurted up. In the wavering light he saw two figures on the divan. The girl was sitting at the end next to the fireplace, legs stretched out in front of her. A slim-bodied young man in evening clothes lay full length on the divan with his head in the girl’s lap. His face was toward her and he was breathing loudly.
Her head was bent forward and she appeared to be staring down at him intently. Brown hair that was bobbed long enough to comb hung down, shrouding her face from Shayne’s gaze. Shayne was certain that they were both unaware of his presence in the room. He wondered if the young man in evening clothes was asleep, passed out, or neither. He wondered if they were brother and sister.
He said, “Hello,” and stepped toward them.
The girl jerked her head and the longish strands of hair were flung back from her face. Her eyes looked perfectly round and they glittered in the light from the leaping yellow flame. The young man’s head came up a second later, like a released spring. He swung his legs off the end of the divan and sat up beside the girl. His face looked yellower in this light than it had out in the hall when the cop led him away from his stepmother’s room. His mouth began opening and shutting again, but, as before, no words came out. It gave him the appearance of idiocy.
The girl smoothed her negligee and asked angrily, “What are you doing, sneaking in here? The police said we wouldn’t be disturbed.”
Her eyes were actually almost as round as they had looked from across the room. Her lashes were colorless and didn’t show drawn back tightly against whitish eyebrows. The effect was, extraordinarily, that of naked amber marbles set into the flesh above high cheekbones. Her cheeks were concave. Her nose and chin were narrow and pointed, giving her the look of a vixen.
Shayne dropped into a chair a few feet in front of the divan. He said, “I’m not sneaking. The policeman just happened to be mistaken.” He looked at the young man and asked sharply, “What’s the matter with him? Can’t he talk?”
“Of course he can talk,” the girl snapped. She nudged the young man with her elbow. “Say something, Ernst. He gets that way when he’s badly upset,” she explained more calmly.
Ernst gulped and smacked his lips loudly. He stopped staring at Shayne and asked, “What shall I say, Dot?”
“That’s enough,” Shayne grunted. “I just wanted to be sure you were human.” He transferred his attention to the girl. “You’re Dorothy Thrip, I suppose, and this is your brother Ernst.”
She nodded ungraciously. “We’ve both told the police everything we know. Now get out and leave us alone.”
“After a while,” Shayne promised, “you can be alone all you want. Right now I’m asking questions. I’m not the police. I’m just the fall guy who happens to be plenty on the spot because of the merry goings-on in this house tonight.”
“Then you haven’t any right to question us if you’re not a policeman. Get out before-”
“Shut up,” Shayne said. His eyes were murky with anger. He hunched forward a little, his big hands hanging loosely between his legs.
“There’s something screwy around here and I don’t mean only you two. Were both of you at home tonight when the killings were pulled off?”
Dorothy hesitated, then said, “Yes,” sullenly. “That is, Ernst was just coming upstairs when Dad shot the man.”
“And you were in here?”
“I was in my bedroom.” She gestured to the door behind her with a thumb as pointed and nearly as long as her forefinger.
“Alone?”
She bobbed her head. “I was undressing.”
“Was Carl Meldrum with you?” Shayne asked the question casually and she seemed wholly unaware that it held any significance.
“No. Carl had gone.”
“Don’t you generally undress before he leaves?” Shayne asked gently.
She blinked her eyelids down tightly and it was as though a shutter had been drawn over two amber lights.
Ernst lurched to his feet and snarled, “Damn you! What do you think you’re doing? Carl and Dorothy don’t-”
“Don’t they?” Shayne didn’t look at him.
Dorothy’s mouth was twisted in a tight smile of cunning. She let her eyelids slide up slowly. “How did you know about Carl? The other cops didn’t”
“I told you I wasn’t a cop. I’m the guy who knows a lot of things and who intends to find out a hell of a lot more.”
Ernst sank back onto the divan. His haggard face had an ineffectual scowl and his eyes were hot with suppressed fury. Dorothy put her hands down on the divan beside her and let her head lie back. Her round eyes looked down her nose at the detective, challenging him.
“Carl said good night to me at the door fifteen or twenty minutes before Dad caught the man in Leora’s room. Ernst was just reaching the top of the stairs when it happened. That’s all either of us know.”
“Neither of you is taking it very hard,” Shayne said.
“Why should we? She was so damned holier-than-thou-always prissing around-doling out a few dollars now and then when she had millions-”
“Which you’ll get now,” Shayne cut in sharply.
“Sure. Why not? God knows we deserve it for putting up with her hypocritical ways all these years. Believe me, mister, if I wanted to cut loose I could tell you plenty.”
“No,” Ernst panted. His mouth worked in that strange way and he finally yelled, “No, Dot! For God’s sake, do you want to-?”
“I’m not going to.” Dorothy tossed him a disdainful glance. It was stifling hot in the room. The burning log was dying down to smoking embers and furtive shadows danced in the corners.
Shayne lifted his gaze and saw Dorothy studying his face with a calculating look. He got up and turned his back to the divan, walked to the fireplace, and lit a cigarette. When he turned back Dorothy looked vaguely disappointed.
“I’ll leave you two to your own devices,” he said in a flat voice. “After I talk to your father and Carl Meldrum and find out how much you’ve both lied, I’ll be back for the truth.”