The Uncomplaining Corpses (22 page)

Shayne said, "Of course. It was
Thrip
all the way.
Not only one murder, nor two—but three.
His wife, Darnell, and finally Meldrum."

“How utterly preposterous.”
Thrip
laughed hollowly. “With this convincing evidence before you—” He gestured toward Meldrum’s note.

Shayne said, “Exactly. The note clinches the whole thing against you,
Thrip
. I promised you I’d deliver evidence into the hands of the police that would convict Mrs.
Thrip’s
murderer. There’s the evidence. I’ve kept my promise to the letter. It’s a hell of a trick to charge a man six thousand bucks for his own conviction, but you should have thought of that when you made me the offer.”

“I don’t get it,” Gentry growled. “Here’s this note to
Renslow
—”

“The note wasn’t sent to
Renslow
. That’s the answer. Neat, wasn’t it?
Thrip
got the note from Meldrum some time yesterday. He realized the jig was up unless Meldrum was permanently silenced. He had already suggested to me that
Renslow
had sent the extortion notes, and had explained that
Renslow
stood to profit by his sister’s death.

“That made
Renslow
a swell suspect, and Meldrum’s failure to put a salutation on the note gave him an idea for getting rid of Meldrum and framing
Renslow
for it—

“Shut up!” he exclaimed viciously when
Thrip
tried to break in. “You tried to frame me in the first place with your lie about planning a fake jewel robbery. You had that note delivered to
Renslow
at the Tally-Ho so he’d just have time to reach the apartment by midnight. You got there ten minutes early and raised a ruckus so the police would be called, killed Meldrum, and ducked out just before
Renslow
showed up. As you planned, the police arrived in time to catch
Renslow
there with the body. You had naturally hoped he’d stick the note in his pocket and be caught with it. That would supply the motive for him to have murdered Meldrum, and with his past record there wasn’t a chance for him to wriggle out—and his share of the estate would go to you. When you learned he had torn up the note and it was in my possession you were glad to pay six grand to have it turned over to the police. All right, they’ve got it. And I hope you like your bargain.”

“Good heavens!
the
man has lost his senses.”
Thrip
appealed vehemently to Painter and Gentry. “This is the most outrageous tissue of lies—”

Buell
Renslow
was on his feet gripping Shayne’s arm fiercely. “You’re right. You must be right. I didn’t understand that note from Carl. I saw it for a frame but I didn’t know what to do. After just getting out of stir—”

“Everything’s okay now.” Shayne patted his shoulder. “Take it easy. Nobody’s going to frame you. Hell, didn’t you pay me five thousand berries to keep you out of jail?”

“What did you mean about Darnell?” Gentry demanded. “And a fake jewel robbery?”

“That’s a little secret between Mr.
Thrip
and me,” Shayne told him grimly. “For months,” he went on, “our upright Mr.
Thrip
has been planning one of the most cold-blooded and most nearly perfect murders I’ve ever run up against. He’s the man who wrote those extortion notes to his wife. Maybe he first actually hoped to collect from her on them. She told me he urged her to pay the demands when they first came. When she refused to be intimidated, he got another and what he hoped was a
  better
idea. He used the notes as an excuse to his wife and to Painter for hiring a private detective to guard his house. He gave me a different story. He didn’t mention the notes to me. He asked me to send a man out to plant evidence of a burglary and steal an empty jewel case as a means of collecting insurance on the jewels.”

Shayne paused, eying the financier coldly.
Thrip’s
body seemed shrunken, the flesh hung limply from his jowls.

“I fell for his story,” Shayne admitted bitterly. “Not hard enough to accept the job, but I did send Joe out there—to get murdered, as it turned out. I refused to help him stage the fake robbery,” Shayne went on slowly, “because at that time I represented the insurance company he was going to victimize. One of the few things I don’t do is to bite the hand that writes a pay-check. But I happened to run into Joe Darnell, who was trying to go straight and starving at it.
Thrip
had promised to leave a thousand-dollar bill in the empty jewel case. I didn’t see why Joe shouldn’t have that bill.”

Shayne again paused in his rapid recital, his lips twisting wryly. “I guess you can stick me for compounding a felony. I told Joe to go on out there and pretend he was going through with it—to grab the money but leave the jewel case and leave no marks of a forced entry—which I thought would be a sweet double-cross on
Thrip
.

“But he already had a tougher double-cross planned.” Shayne shrugged his shoulders. “The jewel case story was no more than a decoy to get a man of questionable character into his wife’s boudoir at night so he could kill the poor devil in cold blood and hand a dumb cop like Painter a perfectly solved murder with a victim who couldn’t deny his guilt. He might have got away with the whole thing if Meldrum hadn’t accidentally come from his daughter’s room at the psychological moment and seen him strangling his wife. Always on the lookout for a blackmail angle, Meldrum realized what his information was worth and he detained Ernst downstairs long enough to let
Thrip
finish the job. Does that add up?”

“A damnable tissue of lies,”
Thrip
sputtered. “Not supported by a single provable fact. The man is insane. With not one iota of proof—”

“There’s your proof.” Shayne gestured toward Meldrum’s note. “As soon as I read it I knew it had not been addressed to
Renslow
originally. Meldrum knew
Renslow
quite well. He knew
Renslow
was intimate with Mona. If he was asking
Renslow
to meet him in Mona’s apartment, he would have said just that—Mona’s apartment.
Not
three-o-six Terrace Apartments. The note was obviously addressed to someone unacquainted with Mona. Check up on
Thrip’s
movements at midnight, Will, and I think you’ll find he wasn’t at home.”

The strength oozed out of Arnold
Thrip’s
body. He swayed back, put a trembling hand on the table to support
himself
, guilt in every feature and movement.

Shayne stepped back and glanced at his watch. A loud knock sounded on the door. He said, “That’ll be the press. You and Painter give
Rourke
the story, Will. And play up my refusal to go into the jewelry insurance racket to the AP man. I want that to make headlines in the New York papers. There’s an insurance executive up there who’s going to come crawling on his knees when he reads how I was too ethical to play a gyp game against him.” He went to the door and admitted
Rourke
and another reporter, hesitated with his hand on the knob. “Before you get tied up in this press conference, Will, how’s for getting on the phone and ordering
Phyl
released? I haven’t seen that girl for more than twenty-four hours—and that’s a hell of a long time to keep a man and his wife separated.”

Gentry laughed and started for the telephone. Shayne hurried down the corridor with one hand deep in his pocket, where his fingers curled lovingly about the double wad of bills.

Chapter Twenty-One:
“SHAYNE SPEAKING…”

THE ELEVATOR HAD JUST STOPPED in the basement of the Dade County courthouse when Shayne’s roadster rolled down the incline and stopped. Phyllis stepped from the conveyance accompanied by a uniformed policeman. Shayne’s car lights shone dimly in her face and he saw that she looked pale, but her chin was square and tilted as she stepped toward his roadster.

Shayne opened the door for her, and she said icily, “It was nice of you to come.”

“I wouldn’t have missed this for the world, angel,” he said with a grin. “From now on I want to be in on and enjoy all your new experiences.”

Phyllis shuddered and got in beside him. “The worst thing is that long trip in a nonstop elevator. I thought—I was—going to smother.”

Shayne drove on through the basement and came out into Miami’s bright sunlight on the west side. When he looked down at Phyllis she had her lower lip caught between her teeth. For a moment he thought she was going to cry. Her chin was slightly unsteady. He laughed and asked, “Well, how do you think you’re going to like detecting, angel?”

She said, “Don’t you start that, Michael. You could at least have come to see me and—keep me—so I wouldn’t be so worried that maybe something terrible had happened to you.”

“What I should do is take you straight home and give you a good beating,” Shayne told her. His right arm went around her waist and held her like a vise. The wheel wobbled a little and he controlled it with his left hand.

“I wouldn’t blame you,” she said in a small and solemn voice. “I wouldn’t blame you at all.”

“There you go taking all the pleasure out of it. Who wants to beat a quiescent woman? Where’s your spunk? Why don’t you say, ‘You and who else
is
going to beat me?’”

A little gurgle came out of her throat and she snuggled her face against his arm. She said, “Oh, Mike! I love you!”

Shayne nearly smashed a fender on an oncoming car when he turned the corner. He was laughing outright and holding Phyllis tighter. He drove down Second Avenue and turned toward the hotel apartment just as a group of men emerged from the front door. A man was snapping pictures of the group.

Phyllis lifted her head, nudged Shayne with her elbow and said, “Look. There’s Mr. Gentry. There must have been some trouble here at the hotel.”

“The portly gentleman sporting the silver-plated bracelets and who is having his picture taken is none other than Arnold
Thrip
, angel,” he told her quietly.

“Arnold
Thrip
?”
Phyllis leaned forward and peered through the windshield. “Do you mean—was he—?”

“The white-haired man standing in the rear is Buell
Renslow
,
Leora
Thrip’s
brother,” Shayne went on, ignoring her question. “I have an idea he is going to make up for some twenty-five years spent in the penitentiary from now on. He is one man who is going to appreciate being on the outside.” Shayne grinned broadly.

“But—” Phyllis began.

“Turn off the question box,” Shayne commanded playfully. “Do you think I’m going to spend this time answering questions about criminals and what not when I haven’t had you in my arms for over twenty-four hours?”

“But—”

“Listen, angel, tonight we’re going to have dinner on the boardwalk at the
Roney
Plaza and listen to the ocean waves and look at the moon. I’ll tell you all about everything then.”

Phyllis chuckled happily as he stopped the car at a side entrance to the hotel apartment. “Thank goodness I don’t have to go through the ordeal of begging you to marry me, the way I did the last time we were there,” she said. They went through the side entrance and through the lobby. Shayne stopped the desk and asked if there were any messages. The clerk shook his head negatively, and Shayne said:

“I’m expecting a long-distance call later in the afternoon. The one I want will be from New York. Don’t bother me with anything else.”

The clerk said, “Yes, sir,” and scribbled a note on a pad.

They went up to the fourth floor and into their living-apartment. Without a word, Phyllis went into the bedroom and changed from her sports suit of flamingo and white into the blue satin hostess gown which somehow added to her poise and sedateness.

When she joined Shayne in the living-room, she said, “If you think you’re going to keep me waiting until night to find out why I stayed in that horrid jail, you’re mistaken.” She went over to him and plopped herself into his lap and twined her arms around his neck.

Shayne grinned. “There’s not much to tell except that your brilliant husband found out after his own clever fashion that
Thrip
was the murderer.”

“Whose murderer?” she demanded.

“Everybody’s.
He killed his wife and Joe Darnell and Carl Meldrum.” He chuckled. “Don’t tell me that you didn’t acquire all such relevant information from Meldrum while you were wasting your sex appeal on him. What the hell was the matter with the guy anyway? Didn’t he appreciate what you had on the ball?”

Phyllis’s slender body melted against him. She put a cool, smooth hand over his mouth and said, “You just hush. You know I was trying to help.”

He held her tight. He kissed her dark hair and smoothed the satin gown with his big hand. “Don’t ever do anything like that again,
Phyl
.”

“I did mess things up, didn’t I?” she admitted wearily.

Shayne crushed her in his arms. “You put me on the spot too, angel.”

“But—after listening to
Leora
Thrip
, I was sure Carl did it all. It was funny, though, because he was kind of drunk and he kept telling me that
Leora
Thrip
was a fine woman and that she had a big heart.”

“I have an idea she was, angel.” Shayne sounded drowsy. “Meldrum saw
Thrip
murder his wife. He wanted
Thrip
to get away with it so he’d have a hold over him. He overplayed his hand when he forced
Thrip
to come to that apartment at midnight.”

Phyllis shuddered and sat up. “It’s all like a bad dream now. Do you mean that Mr.
Thrip
was the man who came to the apartment while I was in the bedroom scared to death? That he killed Meldrum and then slipped out again and that other man—
Renslow
—came in and I didn’t know the difference?”