Date with a Dead Man (16 page)

“Cut it for now,” he said tersely, ripping off the scotch-taped brown wrapping. “I have here a picture taken of Mr. Meredith in Chicago last night. In that envelope from Mrs. Wallace there should be a picture of Leon Wallace and the empty envelopes in which she received the money from him during the past year. Open it up and let’s see what we can see.”

Lucy compressed her lips, and then with quickened interest and despite her anger went around him to pick up the envelope.

Shayne discarded the wrapping paper and took a glossy photograph from between two sheets of cardboard. He laid it on the desk and studied the picture with brooding intensity. It was a full-length shot of a bareheaded young man standing in the doorway of a house. He was slender and about medium height, and his face had a slack-jawed look of astonishment indicating his surprise at the photographer’s flash-gun.

In the meantime, Lucy had extracted a four-by-six wedding photograph in a cheap cardboard frame, and she laid it beside the other one without speaking. The glowing bride was unmistakably Mrs. Wallace, a couple of years younger and prior to the birth of twins, and the beaming young man beside her had a strong, square face and a broad-shouldered body that towered six inches above her.

Shayne shook his red head slowly and his gray eyes were bleak as they moved from one photograph to the other. “See if you can see any resemblance. Damn it, no man could possibly change that much in two or three years.”

“Of course there’s no resemblance at all. You say that’s a picture of Mr. Meredith. The man Albert Hawley’s wife married after she divorced him? Did you think she had married Leon Wallace… under an assumed name?”

“It seemed a reasonable assumption.” Shayne stepped back with a frown. “He was a gardener at the Hawley place and vanished without a trace just about the time she got her divorce… sending his wife money to support his children. Where else
did
he go, if not off to marry her after deserting his wife?”

“I don’t know,” said Lucy. “But he certainly didn’t turn himself into this picture of Mr. Meredith.”

Shayne said, “No. That’s one thing he didn’t do. Are the envelopes in there?”

Lucy rummaged in the manila envelope from Mrs. Wallace and took out three long pre-stamped envelopes similar to the one Mrs. Wallace had shown them the previous morning. All were addressed in ink to
Mrs. Leon Wallace, Littleboro, Florida
but none had a return address. They were postmarked in Miami at three-month intervals during the past year.

Shayne studied the three empty envelopes carefully, and suddenly a glint of excitement showed in his eyes. It was also clearly in his voice as he said, “Do we have the original envelope from Wallace? The one she showed us?”

“Yes. I put it in the file with his letter.” Lucy hurried in to her desk, forgetful for the moment that she was no longer Michael Shayne’s secretary, and returned with the first envelope which she laid beside the others.

There was no doubt, as Mrs. Wallace had stated, that all four envelopes had been addressed by the same person, but as Shayne studied them carefully another fact also became apparent.

He told Lucy slowly, “I’m no expert on such things, but I can almost swear that all four envelopes were addressed at the same time with the same pen and same ink. See what you think, angel. They’re all faded to the same degree.”

She leaned close beside him, her shoulder pressing his arm companionably, and after a moment her brown head bobbed excitedly. “I think you’re
right,
Michael. I believe they were all addressed at exactly the same time.” She looked at him with her brown eyes anxious and a little frightened. “What does that mean?”

“One thing,” he pointed out grimly. “It disposes of those following three envelopes as evidence that Leon Wallace was in Miami when they were mailed to his wife… or even that he was alive at the time.” The trenches in his cheeks deepened, and he turned away abruptly to the water cooler where he mechanically fitted two paper cups together and got a cognac bottle from the filing cabinet to fill them.

As he poured the liquor slowly, he said, “I’m afraid we’re going to have bad news for Mrs. Wallace.”

“You mean… you think he’s dead?”

“If those envelopes were pre-addressed as I think, it certainly indicates that he didn’t expect to be around to mail those thousand-dollar payments to her himself.” Shayne tilted his head and gulped half the liquor just as his telephone rang. Lucy reached for it mechanically and said, “Michael Shayne’s office.” She listened a moment and said, “He’s right here, Chief.” Covering the mouthpiece with her hand, she said, “Chief Gentry. He sounds terribly angry.”

Shayne put the cups down and took the phone, grinning reassuringly at his secretary. He said, “Hi, Will,” and Gentry’s choleric voice bellowed back at him:

“Damn it to hell, Mike, you’ve really put the kibosh on the Meany girl kill. We’ll never get a conviction the way it’s messed up now. And I think I know why you did it, Mike. And if I can prove it, you’re through in Miami. This time I mean it.”

“Wait, Will. What’s the trouble?”

“Trouble?” raged Gentry. “That phony identification of Joel Cross you screwed out of the elevator operator at your hotel. He’s backed down on it now. After we got Gerald Meany sobered up this morning and he persisted in his story that he did start out to your place to get his wife but stopped for a drink on the way and then blacked out… well, I put him in a line-up with Cross and some others and had Matthew down to look them over. And you know what, Mike?” Gentry’s voice became savagely gentle.

Shayne sighed and said, “Tell me.”

“He can’t identify either one of them now. He’s all mixed up. Thinks it must have been one or the other, but he can’t swear which. Personally I think Meany is guilty as hell, but we’ll never get a conviction when a defense lawyer puts Matthew on the stand and extracts the story of his first positive identification of Cross.”

Shayne said, “That’s tough, Will. But when a man makes an honest mistake…”

“Honest mistake, hell!” raged Gentry. “The way I’ve been piecing things together, Cross was absolutely right when he accused you of putting Matthew up to identifying him. Just, by God, so you could get him thrown in the jug long enough for you to get your hands on the Groat diary.”

“How do you figure that, Will?” Shayne kept his voice calm and even.

“It isn’t too hard to figure. With a hint or two from Tim Rourke and a complaint from a lawyer named Alfred Drake of assault on his person and theft of valuable property from him last evening immediately after he visited Cross in jail. Before God, Mike, this is the last goddam time you’re going to use the Miami Police Department to set things up for your personal gain. And if we don’t get a conviction in the Meany case…”

“Hold it, Will.” Shayne’s voice was loud and harsh. “I’m ready to tie that up in a knot for you… along with Jasper Groat’s murder. If you want a solution to both of them, come along to my office right away. Bring both Cross and Gerald Meany with you. And you better invite Hastings, the Hawley lawyer, to attend. I don’t believe he’d come if I asked him.”

“You want anybody else?” Will Gentry demanded sarcastically.

“Several. But I’ll take care of those myself.” Shayne replaced the telephone and told Lucy, “Get Tim Rourke for me.”

After a curious look at Shayne’s face she lifted the telephone automatically and dialed a number. She had seen the redhead like this too often before to argue with him. There was a sense of driving urgency in his manner, a feeling of dominance, of surging power inside his big frame that meant he was on the home-stretch and wouldn’t let up until the finish wire was crossed.

Into the telephone, she purred, “Timothy Rourke, please.” And then, “Tim? Michael wants you.”

He took the instrument and growled, “Hell of a pal you turned out to be. Gentry’s about to snatch my license on account of some insinuations you made about Matthew’s identification of Cross.”

He listened a moment and then broke in irritably, “All
right.
So I did want to get my hands on Groat’s diary and Cross played sucker just the way I figured he would. We’re going to write headlines in my office in about ten minutes,” he went on swiftly. “Better get here fast. And bring along a copy of the
Herald
for day before yesterday. That’s right, the
Herald
covering the story of Groat and Cunningham being rescued. I don’t know about the
News.
I didn’t see their story… but I do know the
Herald
has what I need.”

He hung up and settled back and picked up the two nested paper cups that were still half full of cognac, and told Lucy, “We need three more to make a full house. Get hold of either Mrs. Meredith or Jake Sims and tell them to both high-tail it over here if they want to collect a million bucks or so. And have them bring Peter Cunningham along. Tell them we can’t pull it off unless he’s here to testify.”

Lucy Hamilton’s hand had reached for the telephone. She stiffened with her fingers touching it. “Michael! Are you still going through with it? I thought… the way you were acting a minute ago, I thought…”

“What did you think, angel?”

“That you had reconsidered.” The words came with a rush. “You were beginning to act like your old self… when a case was breaking right and you were sitting back pulling the strings to see that justice was done. You just can’t accept a bribe to toss a fortune into that Mrs. Meredith’s lap, Michael.”

Shayne said, “Are you going to call her?”

She took her hand away from the phone. “No. Do your own dirty work.”

Shayne emptied the cognac down his throat and tossed the empty cups on the floor. “Okay. And after it’s all over I’ll help you clean out your desk.” He picked up the telephone and began dialing.

19

They were all gathered there in Michael Shayne’s private office and the walls were practically bulging to contain them. Will Gentry, cold-eyed and red-faced, chewing angrily on a black stogie, escorted Joel Cross who looked a lot the worse for wear after a night in jail, and Gerald Meany, shifty-eyed and hung-over, with a sullen air of bravado that wasn’t at all convincing.

And there was Attorney Hastings who hadn’t the faintest idea why he had been summoned to the conclave, and Timothy Rourke with a wad of copy paper ready, hopefully expectant that Shayne would pull some promised rabbits out of his hat. In one corner was Jake Sims, wet-lipped and nervous, seated beside Mrs. Meredith who appeared to be the calmest one of the assemblage and who was obviously eager to impart some of her serenity to Peter Cunningham who stood close to her chair trying to appear insolently self-confident but managing to look only sullenly defiant.

Lounging in the open door to the reception room, Michael Shayne towered over them all and grinned confidently, conscious of Lucy Hamilton at her desk behind him where she was pretending to clean out the drawers to make ready for her successor but was, Shayne knew intuitively, listening desperately to hear every word that was spoken in the inner office.

“This won’t take long,” Shayne said abruptly. “We’ve got two murders and an unexplained disappearance to clear up, and the estate of Ezra Hawley amounting to a couple of million dollars to be legally allocated. Each one of you here has a certain personal interest in one or another of these matters.

“Everything goes back to the diary kept by Jasper Groat on the life raft after his plane ditched in the ocean leaving only three survivors,” he went on in a conversational tone. “He and Beatrice Meany were both murdered because of the diary and because of a death-bed secret confided to Groat by the young soldier known as Albert Hawley who died on the raft before they could be rescued.

“Most of you who are here know that Albert Hawley was named as sole heir to his uncle’s fortune in Ezra Hawley’s will in the event that he did not pre-decease his uncle who died on the fifth day after the plane wreck occurred. Thus it became of the utmost importance whether young Hawley died on the fourth day, or lived until the fifth day.

“And Jasper Groat’s diary was the one irrefutable proof of the current date.

“Thus from the beginning it looked as though Groat had been murdered by whichever of the two parties stood to gain a fortune by suppression of the truth—the Hawley family, or Mrs. Meredith who is Albert Hawley’s legal heir. But the trouble with that theory was that Groat was murdered the night before the content of Ezra’s will was made public… assumedly before either party knew how important the date of Albert’s death was to them.

“That brings us to the death-bed confession made to Groat and at least partially overheard by Cunningham who eavesdropped while the soldier was dying. Joel Cross, the only other person here who has read the diary, will confirm the fact that it was a secret concerning the Hawley family, a ready-made basis for blackmail if Groat and Cunningham decided to use it for that purpose.

“But Jasper Groat had a strong sense of probity,” Shayne went on evenly. “He was practically a religious fanatic, and he resisted Cunningham’s arguments that they should blackmail the Hawleys with the diary.”

“That’s a lie,” broke in Cunningham. “You can’t prove a word of it.”

“I think I can,” Shayne told him. “On the afternoon before he was murdered, Groat made a long-distance call to Mrs. Leon Wallace in Littleboro telling her he had news of her husband who mysteriously disappeared a year ago while working as the Hawley gardener. He also made an appointment by telephone to meet Beatrice Meany at the Hawley house at eight that night to talk to her about her brother and Leon Wallace. He was murdered after getting out of a taxi at the Hawley house that night to prevent him from talking to Beatrice.

“I’ve gone to the trouble to give you all this background,” he concluded quietly, “because some of you know some of the facts, but no one except the killer knows all of them. Now, who were the two people who knew what was in the diary before Groat was murdered? Joel Cross and Peter Cunningham were the only two. It’s that simple. One of them killed Groat that night, and later killed Beatrice in my hotel room to prevent her from telling me what she had seen.”