Stranger in Town (17 page)

“No… what?”

“Maybe that’s a clue. To me. I hadn’t thought about it before, but I must be sort of irreligious. But I forgot. You already know who I am and all about me, don’t you? Jean Henderson?” She repeated her own name uncertainly.

Shayne said, “You’re a modern young woman who has evidently been reared with a liberal attitude toward religion. So you thought he was being hypocritical and told him so?”

“Not in so many words.” She smiled at Shayne and it was the first real smile he had seen on her face. “But I did tell him that kind of talk sounded sort of silly when he admitted he was sleeping around at the same time, and then he sighed very dolefully and said if he could only get away from his wife and Brockton and make a new start in the world that he’d be the happiest man on earth.

“But it was impossible, he said, on account of every cent he had on earth was invested in his business here, and it was in his wife’s name, and from one year to another he just couldn’t seem to get any extra money laid aside that he could use to make a new start somewhere else.

“And about that time we were getting close to the hospital, and he begged me not to tell anyone who had brought me there—to just let him go on without trying to find out who he was or anything like that. So, of course I promised. I felt sorry for him, and I did appreciate him stopping to pick me up under those conditions. Plenty of other men, I thought, might just have speeded up instead of stopping, for fear of getting involved in something that would cause them trouble at home.

“So he pulled up under a street light in front and I got out of the back seat, and I saw his face just that once when he turned his head to wave to me before driving on. And when I saw how middle-aged and meek he was I felt sorrier for him than ever… and that’s why I just
couldn’t
get him in trouble last night when they pushed me inside the bar and told me to pick him out from the men inside.”

Michael Shayne set his empty glass down and lit a cigarette as Jean Henderson finished her story. He tugged at his earlobe thoughtfully while he considered the meager information she had been able to furnish about the man he had seen waiting in the rear booth the previous night. He hadn’t really appraised the man carefully. Had just given him an incurious glance when he first entered and was looking for a place to be comfortable while having his drink.

But there had been something about the man’s appearance that now tugged at Shayne’s memory. Something he had noticed and forgotten, but which had almost been brought back to his memory by something Jean had just said. He didn’t struggle to get the memory back. It would come to him faster if he let it lie.

He said, “After Mr. Buttrell took you away and you passed out in his car after drinking a malted milk… you say you woke up a prisoner in a room where you were kept locked in until last night? What sort of room was it?”

“Just a room,” she said helplessly. “Not quite as big as this one. With a single bed and a dresser and vanity. There was a tiny bathroom opening off it, and two windows in one wall that were solidly boarded-up outside the glass. Just a… an impersonal kind of room.” She puckered up her face in thought.

“That’s it,” she said finally. “It
was
impersonal. Just like this hotel room Like any hotel room. You had a feeling hundreds of other people might have occupied it briefly, but none for a long enough time to leave the slightest imprint of their personality on it. It was very quiet inside the room,” she went on slowly, “almost as though it were soundproofed. There was an airconditioning duct so I didn’t lack air. I think it must have been a farmhouse. Out in the country at least. I never heard any traffic.”

“And you saw no one all that time except the men you call Gene and Bill?”

“No one else. One of them would unlock the door three times a day to bring my meals on a tray. It was good food and there was plenty of it. And whichever one brought it would sit and talk to me while I ate. They wouldn’t answer a single question, except that I would be released as soon as I told them more about the man who had picked me up on the road. They kept at me about him all the time. About him and about whether I remembered any farther back than I did at first. I didn’t mind Bill so much, but something about Gene frightened me terribly. Something cold and… and reptilian almost.” She shuddered. “He’d sit and look at me with those cold eyes and I’d have the most awful feeling that he would
enjoy
killing me. That he hated me for being alive.”

Shayne nodded and said grimly, “Your instincts were fairly valid, I think. Tell me about last evening.”

“Bill brought my supper. And Gene came in, too, just as I finished eating. He told me we were going for a little ride. He said they were going to blindfold and gag me and take me out to a place where the man would be. It would be a barroom, he said, and I was to walk in the door alone while they stayed outside… and they’d shoot me if I said a single word to anyone except the right man. I was to go right up to him and say something… and then I was to turn around and walk out the door where Bill would be waiting for me.

“So they put a gag in my mouth and blindfolded me and led me out to a car and put me in the front seat between them and drove awhile and then stopped and picked up the one they called Mule. He got in the back seat and Gene drove some more and I could tell we were in the center of some town, and then they stopped and took off the blindfold and gag and we were right in front of the place where you were sitting in the booth. And you know the rest of it,” she ended simply. “I hadn’t thought of getting away. It just came to me suddenly that it was my one chance when I saw Bill run in the door to help the other two. I ran behind them and was out the door before they saw me, they were so busy with you. And right at that moment,” she went on with a timid attempt at a smile, “I was glad I’d picked you out for them instead of the right man because I knew
he
would never have given enough trouble to bring Bill in and give me a chance to get away.”

Shayne scarcely heard her final words. He sat up and snapped the fingers of his right hand excitedly. It had come to him! Something about the man’s outward appearance last night, coupled with a phrase of his that Jean had repeated a short time previously.

A phrase that only a certain type of man would use in normal conversation. A minister, or perhaps a doctor. But he was neither. He had explained to Jean that he was tied to Brockton by owning a small business which did not earn him enough to make a get-away.

A small businessman who talked the way that man had talked to Jean when he picked her up on the road.

It came to Shayne suddenly. Jean was beginning to talk again, but Shayne leaped to his feet without hearing her. He caught up the telephone directory and turned to the yellow, Classified pages in the back. In a town of forty thousand, he didn’t know how many such business concerns would be listed, but he didn’t believe there would be a great many.

There weren’t. There were only four listings under the heading he wanted. He reached for pencil and paper to write down the four addresses, then hesitated. Not knowing the town, he would have to ask directions for getting to each one. It might take hours going from one to another until he struck the right man.

He settled back beside the telephone with the open book in his hands and grinned reassuringly at Jean who had risen from her chair and was demanding to know why he was acting so pleased with himself.

He said, “I’ll explain in just a moment. First, I want to invite your friend up to have a talk with us.” He lifted the phone and gave the hotel operator the first number on the list.

When a cool female voice replied, he said, “I’d like to speak to the proprietor, please.”

She said, “Certainly, I’ll call Mr. Johnson.”

Mr. Johnson had a rounded voice that might have been sonorous had it not obviously been hushed. “Yes
sir?
What service may I render?”

“I’m not well acquainted in Brockton,” Shayne told him. “And my wife…” He paused and gulped audibly. “It was very sudden. Could you come at once to my room in the Manor Hotel to discuss the details privately. I just don’t feel up to going out and…”

“Precisely. I understand only too well, sir, and our services are yours to command. Ah… your name?”

“Mr. Shayne. Room four-ten.” Shayne hung up on Mr. Johnson’s eager assurance that he would be around at once.

He called the second number and a mellifluous voice informed him that Mr. Magner of the Final Tryst Funeral Home was entirely at his disposal. Having been assured by Mr. Magner that he was, indeed, the proprietor and owner of the Final Tryst, Shayne made the same arrangements with him and hung up.

His third call brought forth the information that the owner of the Home was in Arizona on a vacation, that he had been gone for two weeks and was not expected back for another week. The manager, however, pleaded to be of service, but Shayne cut him off and called the fourth number.

A pleasantly seductive female voice cooed back at him over the wire, and when Shayne asked for the proprietor, she assured him that he was speaking to her at that moment and that nothing would fill her cup of happiness so full to overflowing as to personally take care of whatever his needs might be.

Shayne grinned wryly at this offer, and told her, “Another time, lady, I may take you up on that. But I wonder if I could deal with your husband this time?”

She was extremely sorry, but she was
Miss
Elroy, and if he would put his problem in her hands he was assured he would never regret it. He politely declined the invitation and hung up, turned to Jean and told her confidently, “Sit down and relax. He’ll be here very shortly.”

“Who
will be here?”

“Either Mr. Johnson or Mr. Magner,” he told her. “I’m inclined to pick Magner as my candidate right now. Of the Final Tryst, you know?” he ended blandly.

“I don’t know.” Enough of her spirit had returned under the relaxing quiet of her talk in Shayne’s hotel suite to cause her to stamp her foot on the floor. “Why are you looking so smug?”

“Because we’ve got our man on the hook. Don’t you understand yet? He’s an undertaker, Jean. A funeral director, I suppose he calls himself.”

“However do you know?”

“Who else,” demanded Shayne, “would call your relatives your ‘loved ones’ when he mentioned how worried they must be about you? Who else… in business for himself as he told you he was? And think back on the man sitting in the rear booth last night nursing half a warm highball in his hand.” He laughed confidently and got up to pour himself a small drink while he waited for the two undertakers to come to him.

“Let me do the talking, Jean. You sit back there on the side and stay as relaxed as you can, and listen. Break in on us if anything is said that strikes any chord in your memory.”

THEY HADN’T LONG TO WAIT. When his bell rang not more than ten minutes after he finished telephoning, Shayne was glad the man had turned out to be an undertaker instead of plumber.

He opened the door and found a short, rotund man in the hallway, with a cherubic, moonlike face that expressed tactful sympathy for his host’s supposed bereavement.

He intoned, “Mr. Shayne? Johnson is my name, sir. You asked me to call on you…”

“I know I did.” Michael Shayne stood with his body blocking the doorway and made no move to step aside. “I’m sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Johnson, but I’m afraid I’ve changed my mind in the interim. Later, perhaps? The next time something of this sort happens.…”

The elevator stopped again at the fourth floor as Shayne spoke, and Mr. Johnson turned his head to see the man who got off and hurried toward them. His round features tightened in an unpleasant grimace, and he turned back to Shayne with asperity. “I’m afraid I don’t understand why you called both Mr. Magner and me. It’s hardly ethical…”

“Just changed my mind,” Shayne told him heartily, leaning out to look down the corridor and make certain that Mr. Magner was, indeed, the man Jean Henderson had been supposed to point out the night before.

Shayne recognized his mild, horselike face immediately, and he drew back, telling the other undertaker, “After phoning you, I suddenly recalled that I had met Mr. Magner before and had promised to give him all my business. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

Mr. Magner came up as he spoke, and stopped to address his competitor in surprise:
“Mr.
Johnson. Do you consider it good ethics to try and push in ahead like this when it was
I
who was summoned?”

Johnson grunted something indistinguishable as Shayne stepped out to shoulder him aside and take Magner’s arm firmly. The smaller man gasped and tried to shrink back when he saw the detective’s rugged face, but Shayne pulled him forward through the door and closed it firmly in Johnson’s face.

Mr. Magner stood aside helplessly, his face ashen and his eyes flitting nervously from the girl curled up in the deep chair across the room and back to Shayne.

He gulped deeply and said in a high, thin voice, “You… you are the man last night, aren’t you?” He wet his lips desperately and turned back to Jean. “And… and Miss Buttrell there…?”

“Not Buttrell,” Shayne said flatly. He put his hand on Magner’s shoulder and pushed him back toward a chair. “We’re going to have a long talk, so make yourself comfortable. Her name is Jean Henderson and she’s told me about how you picked her up on the road and ducked away after dropping her in front of the hospital.”

“I had done everything I could for her under the circumstances. I assure you that I had.”

Shayne sat down in front of him and waved his protestations aside with a big hand. “That’s not the point. If she had come up to you in the bar last night instead of stopping at my booth… those men would have killed you outright. Thinking I was the man they wanted, they tried to kill me instead. Why?”

“I don’t… that is, I… if you knew how terribly I felt last night, sir, when I saw that awful thing happen right in front of my eyes. I realized it was some terrible mistake. I was so taken by surprise to see her come in the door. I’d thought I was perfectly safe coming there… that she was in Miami and no one could possibly recognize me. And I was simply petrified when those thugs assaulted you. I beg you to understand and forgive me for not speaking up manfully to say there had been a mistake.”