Shayne nodded, as though he believed her. He got up. “I won’t wait any longer, since your husband has been detained. But I wish you’d have him call me at the Tropical Hotel as soon as he gets in.”
“Of course, Mr. Shayne. I’m sure Ben will be glad to talk with you.”
She went to the door with him, her hand going nervously to her throat while he said “Good night, Mrs. Edwards,” and went out.
She was still standing in the doorway when he turned to latch the wire gate behind him, a stout, short figure back-lighted by the rectangle of light, with something pathetic yet essentially courageous in her posture of patient waiting.
Shayne drove swiftly back to the hotel. He strode into the lobby and noted that Melvin and Hymie were no longer seated near the elevators. He went to the desk and described the pair, mentioned where they had been sitting.
The clerk said he had noticed them sitting there. “They were two of Mr. Samuelson’s party.”
“Did you see them go out?”
“I believe so. Almost immediately after you, sir.”
Shayne grunted his disappointment. That meant that Gentry would scarcely have had time to arrange a tail for them. “Is Samuelson in now?” he asked.
“No, sir. He hasn’t gone up to his room since registering. He asked for Mr. Hardeman as soon as he arrived-then went out, presumably to see him at the race track when I said that was where Mr. Hardeman could be found.”
Shayne nodded and wheeled around. He crossed the lobby in a few long strides and flung himself into his roadster. He paused with his fingers on the ignition switch. The full-bodied scream of a siren sounded from south of town. It expired into a faint moan, then silence.
Shayne turned the switch and pressed the starter. He backed away from the curb, made an illegal U turn and sped southward.
Headlights were converging on a spot in the street a few blocks south of the business district. He pulled past a row of parked cars, nosing beyond the authoritative hand of a distracted policeman who tried to stop him, on to the edge of a circle of onlookers pressed about a crumpled body lying by the side of the road.
An ambulance stood just beyond, and two white-coated men were bending over the body. One of them shook his head and said something to the other. They both straightened up and spoke to Chief Boyle, who stood inside the circle.
Shayne pressed through, glancing down at the dead man. Sightless eyes peered up at him and he recognized the stoop-shouldered man he had seen in the office of the Cocopalm Voice.
“I couldn’t avoid it,” Albert Payson was saying over and over in a flat monotone. “I didn’t see him at all. He must have been crouching in the shadow of that clump of oleanders waiting for a car to come by so he could jump out under the wheels. There’s no other way to account for it. I tell you I didn’t see him. I felt my wheels bump something. My first thought was that I had struck a dog. I came to a stop immediately and rushed back. I was appalled when I saw a man lying there.”
“Sure, Mr. Payson,” Chief Boyle interrupted sympathetically, putting his hand on the local financier’s trembling arm. “Sure, we understand, sir. I don’t reckon you’re to blame. We all knew Ben Edwards was sort of nutty. Must have slipped an extra cog all of a sudden and chose this way to kill himself.”
Shayne turned his back on Boyle and Payson. He stepped back to the body of Ben Edwards lying just beyond a dark patch of shadows cast on the pavement by the moon shining through the oleander. He knelt down beside the body, oblivious of the stares and the murmuring of those who pressed close, made a quick examination of the corpse.
He got up and went back to Boyle, who was still assuring Albert Payson that he mustn’t take the accident too much to heart, that it was clearly unavoidable.
Shayne laughed grimly. The chief swung around to gape at him. Shayne said, “Accident, hell! If you weren’t so damned occupied with soothing this bird’s fright, you’d know Ben Edwards had been murdered.”
“Murdered?” Chief Boyle gulped the word out.
Shayne nodded angrily. “Of course. Don’t let anyone touch the body until the coroner gets here.”
Chapter Eleven: GOING TO THE DOGS
“You got no right to horn in telling me what to do,” Chief Boyle snapped vehemently. “I know not to have a body moved until the coroner inspects it.”
“I’m surprised at that,” Shayne growled.
Then Shayne felt wiry fingers gripping his arm and heard a panting voice close to his ear, “What’s up, Shayne? My God, that’s Ben lying there.”
Shayne turned to scrutinize Gil Matrix’s thin, agitated face. “Ben Edwards worked for you, didn’t he?”
“Hell, yes. He was my right-hand man. Been with me ever since I started. Who did this? Some drunken road-hog, I suppose.”
“There he is,” Shayne said, stepping back and nonchalantly indicating the ashen Mr. Payson. “Boyle thinks he should arrest Edwards for getting in Payson’s way,” he ended sardonically.
Gil Matrix shouldered past Shayne, tossing his bushy hair dramatically. He shook a long, lean finger in Albert Payson’s face. “This is one thing you’ll pay for, Payson. You’ve been running roughshod over people in this town long enough. Strutting around with your potbelly behind the wheel of that limousine. You’re a menace to society, and-”
“Shut your mouth, Gil.” Chief Boyle pushed him back with a big blunt hand, blowing out a worried sigh. “Mr. Payson wasn’t speeding. You can tell by the tracks he wasn’t going more’n twenty miles an hour.”
Gil Matrix snorted angrily. “How can you tell? You wouldn’t know where to feed yourself if your mouth didn’t blather so.”
“That don’t matter anyhow,” the chief asserted stoutly. “Shayne here says it’s murder. Says Mr. Payson didn’t kill him.”
Matrix whirled on the redheaded detective. “Did you make that statement, Shayne?”
“Not exactly. I said that any fool could see he wasn’t killed by being struck by a car. The side of his head is crushed where the car didn’t touch him. I didn’t say Payson didn’t kill him. I don’t know.”
“You just said it again,” Boyle averred indignantly. “We all heard you with our own ears. If Ben Edwards was already dead before Mr. Payson’s car ran over him, then Mr. Payson can’t be held accountable. That’s just plain sense.”
“It’s not that simple,” Shayne explained patiently. “How do we know Payson didn’t crack his skull first, then lay him out in front of the car and run over him to make it look like an accident?”
Albert Payson’s eyes bulged from their sockets. He made smothered sounds of indignant protest.
“You got no right to accuse Mr. Payson of a thing like that,” Boyle burst out. “Why would he want to kill Ben Edwards?”
Shayne said quietly, “I’m not accusing anyone. I’m pointing out what could have happened. One thing’s sure-you’re not going to learn the truth by standing here arguing.”
“What was he going so slow for if that’s not the way it happened?” Matrix yelled vindictively. “He’s always breaking the speed limits while you’re looking the other way, Boyle. It looks mighty funny to me.”
“But this is an outrage.” Color was coming into Payson’s face and he had stopped shaking. “Completely and utterly fantastic. Why, I scarcely knew Edwards. What motive do you think I could have for such a ghastly crime?”
“You might have been running after his wife. That sort of thing is right up your-”
“Cut it out, Matrix,” Shayne said. “That kind of talk isn’t going to do any good.” He took the little editor by the arm and drew him back, muttering, “Let’s get out of here. Edwards’s murder can’t be solved this way. We’ve got to run down a motive.”
Matrix let himself be drawn away to the outskirts of the crowd, which was growing larger every minute. Shayne led him to his parked roadster, jerked the door open and shoved him in. The editor leaned back and wearily rubbed his eyes as Shayne went around to the other side and got in beside him. He said, “Things are happening too fast even for me. First, those two fellows at the hotel-now, Ben Edwards. Where is it going to stop?”