He slid his hip off the desk and went to Hardeman’s side, studying the position of the body and the hand groping toward the pistol it never reached.
He stepped back and tentatively wormed his toe under the corner of the office rug, turned it back to uncover the bare floor between the swivel chair and desk.
Nodding with satisfaction, his eyes took on a hard brightness. He draped his handkerchief over the back of Hardeman’s flaccid right hand, put his own hand over the handkerchief and got a firm grip on the dead man’s fingers, which were stiffening rapidly.
He inched the hand gently forward in the open drawer, using extreme care not to change the natural position of the corpse. He pressed Hardeman’s fingers about the butt of his own. 38 and drew it out.
Careful to allow only Hardeman’s fingers to touch the polished steel and corrugated wooden butt, he turned the cylinder and assured himself that the pistol was fully loaded.
He crouched beside the chair, lowered the dead man’s hand and gun toward the floor with muzzle down, aimed at a spot of bare wood from which the rug had been turned back.
He cocked the pistol with his handkerchief over the hammer, maneuvered Hardeman’s unresisting first finger under the trigger, curled it snugly against the steel.
Sweat streamed from the detective’s seamed face as he crouched there at his ghoulish task. He forced himself to wait, his own finger on top of Hardeman’s, holding it against the trigger.
There was a lull in the crowd sounds coming in the window; the band ceased playing. It was as though the thousands in the grandstand had an inexplicable prescience of what awaited in the back office, as though they momently caught their collective breath, stilled the clamor of their voices so that the shot might be clearly heard if Shayne dared to press the trigger.
Into the lull came a faint racketing din familiar to every greyhound fancier. The clatter of wheels on curved rails starting at the far side of the oval track, growing louder as the electrically propelled motor zoomed, forcing the stuffed rabbit to bob around the track in exact simulation of the swift bounds of a fleeing jack rabbit.
The dogs set up a yapping in the starting-boxes as the rabbit rounded the turn and came toward them. The yelping of the hounds increased, rising to a shrill crescendo as the bouncing bit of fur raced by the boxes.
Michael Shayne waited with his finger tense on the dead finger gripping the gun. Sweat streamed from every pore of his body.
Then it came, surging in through the window. A deep roar that drowned the yapping of the hounds and the racketing of the mechanical rabbit. Two words bursting in unison from a thousand throats:
“They’re off!”
Shayne’s finger jerked against Hardeman’s, pressing the trigger hard.
The sound of the exploding cartridge was loud in the confines of the office, but merged soundlessly into the roar of the crowd outside.
The bullet tore into the pine floor beneath, a small round hole in the planking.
Still moving with infinite care, Shayne shifted his foot and let the corner of the rug fall back into place, covering the single bullet hole in the floor.
He released his hold on Hardeman’s hand and the pistol dropped to the rug.
Shayne stood up, mopping his face with the handkerchief which had just assisted him in turning a clear case of murder into a perfect suicide.
He then shook his head slowly. The job wasn’t perfect. Not yet. He bent down and pulled the rubber finger tip cover from Hardeman’s hand, slid it onto his own right forefinger.
Going to the typewriter, he began hitting the keys slowly and carefully, using only the protected forefinger for operation, pressing the shift key and moving the carriage with a handkerchief-covered left hand.
Beneath the date which Hardeman had typed before he was murdered, Shayne wrote:
I can’t go on this way longer. I thought I could get away with it but I was a fool. When Shayne was here this evening I could tell from the way he looked at me, the way he spoke, that he suspects the truth.
I killed Mayme Martin in her apartment. I had planned it that way from the beginning…
Shayne typed on steadily, the clacking of the machine loud in his ears. He ended with the words:
… only thing left for me to do. I am going to shoot myself through the right temple and may God in His all-embracing wisdom pity me, though I deserve no pity.
He stepped back from the typewriter and read what he had written, leaving the sheet of paper in the machine. Nodding approval, he stripped the rubber covering from his finger, replaced it on Hardeman’s after obliterating all prints from the inside with his handkerchief.
Grateful for the clamor outside, to which the noise of starting motors was added from the parking-lot, Shayne took time for another slow and comprehensive survey of the interior of the office. Changing the setup from murder to suicide had, strangely, made no difference in the appearance of the room.
He went to the door and opened it enough to press the button releasing the night latch, carefully polished the knob and the light switch.
Leaving the door slightly ajar, he strode back to the desk and with his elbow pushed the telephone to the floor from its position on the extreme corner where Hardeman’s outflung hand might have struck it as he died.
He went out without a backward glance, leaving the light burning, and as he passed through the door he could hear a metallic voice rasping from the phone on the floor;
“Number, please. Number…?”
No one saw him go swiftly down the hall and out under the grandstand, where an eddying mob of people surged toward the exit gates. He joined them, let himself be shouldered around until he reached his roadster, and waited until he was able to edge out onto the highway.
Bright stars gleamed in the sky, covered here and there by fleecy white and scurrying clouds.
He drove slowly, completely relaxed behind the wheel, while a stream of cars raced past him.
The full-bodied scream of a police siren brought him alert as he approached the outskirts of Cocopalm. He grinned briefly as an automobile with red accessory lights and siren going at full blast sped past him toward the greyhound track.
Shayne did not stop at the hotel, but drove a few blocks beyond and turned toward the beach. As he neared Midge Taylor’s cabin he saw lights in the windows and Gil Matrix’s Ford parked in front.
Will Gentry sat behind the wheel of his car across the street and a block south.
Shayne stopped beside Gentry’s car. The Miami detective chief removed a cigar from his mouth and leaned out, gesturing toward the cottage. “Your man pulled up and went in soon after I parked here. Nobody has come out.”
“Thanks, Will. I’ll take over now.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Will you do me one more favor?”
Gentry said. “I might as well be your errand boy as anything else,” caustically.
“Stop by the hotel and ask Phyllis to get a cab and come out here. It’ll only delay you a minute,” Shayne said mildly, “and then you can drive on out to the track and see what’s up out there.”
“The track? What is doing out there?”
“I didn’t stop to ask anybody but I just saw the Cocopalm police force headed hell-bent in that direction. I would’ve gone too, but I knew you’d be getting impatient on this assignment.”
Gentry growled something unintelligible and put his car in gear, but Shayne detained him:
“I’ll meet you at the police station in half an hour with Matrix. Tell Boyle to get Payson and MacFarlane down there too. We’ll clear everything up while we’re at it.”
Gentry nodded and drove away at high speed.