Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 29, No. 4, September 1971

Then he heard the noise of steps outside the window. He was out of his chair like a flash, gun out and ready in his hand. The steps went past the window. They were unsteady and shuffling. Shayne began to relax.

When the knock on the front door came, Mike Shayne was in the hallway waiting.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“It’s me, Mr. Shayne,” someone said in low tones outside the door. “Cal Harris. Sally said I should talk to you.”

“All right,” the big redhead said. “Come in fast when I open the door.”

He turned the key and opened the door just enough for the young man to enter. Cal couldn’t move very fast. To walk at all he had to use two heavy oak canes. That accounted for the shuffling noise his feet had made outside the window.

“Stand still,” Shayne said. He frisked the man expertly. Outside of the canes he had no weapon more effective than a pocket knife with a two-inch blade.

“Why did you come?” Shayne asked.

“Sally said I could trust you,” Cal Harris said. “Mister, we both figured that right now I need somebody I can trust.”

“You do indeed,” Shayne said. “Come into the main room here and sit down. Now, first of all, did you kill the old man?”

“Only if wishes could do it,” Cal Harris said. “I admit I hated him like everybody did, but I didn’t kill him. I don’t care what nobody says. I wasn’t in this place last night.”

He said that last so emphatically that Shayne decided to take a chance. “You were seen here,” he said.

“I know,” Cal Harris admitted. “Why do you think I ran and hid out? I was only on the grass outside, though, when old Buck saw me and shot at me. I was never in the house.”

Shayne thought hard. “Where was Buck when he shot at you?”

“Over across the street on his porch. I seen the muzzle flash when he fired, and I ducked around the corner.”

“Come on,” Shayne said. “I want to see about something.” He was remembering what Jane Mullen had told him earlier.

They went upstairs to the big bedroom where John Wingren had slept. Sure enough there was a small round hole in the window screen, and he could see where the projectile had struck the iron fire dog in the fireplace. A smear of lead and a chip in the iron marked the spot of ricochet.

“Buck Smith’s been lying to me because he thought he shot John Wingren when he fired at you,” Mike Shayne said. “But the old man was shot in this room through that window. No shot fired from Smith’s house could possibly have done it.”

Cal Harris was silent. He just watched and listened.

The big man got down and put his head by the mark on the firedog. He sighted from there to the hole in the window screen.

“Near as I can make out,” he said, “the shot that hit Wingren had to come from up in that big oak tree out there.”

The mass of the tree’s foliage showed as a dark blur against the reflected lights in the sky.

“Right from that tree,” Shayne said.

He saw the muzzle flash in the midst of the foliage and threw himself sideways and down on the floor. Even Shayne with his catlike, almost instant reflexes would have been too slow, if the sniper’s aim had been better. As it was, he swore afterwards he’d felt the wind of the bullet on his cheek.

Cal Harris swung one of his heavy canes and knocked the table lamp which Shayne had lit to the floor of the room, where the bulb smashed.

“Don’t move,” Shayne shouted. “With the light off he can’t see in here.”

He himself crawled swiftly to the window and peered over the sill. The tree from which the shot had come was a big one with low-hanging branches and bushes around its base. The sniper, whoever he was, could have dropped down easily out of sight of the window and made his escape in safety.

Shayne put his gun back in its holster.

“From now on we better stay away from windows,” he told Harris.

“Now you know I didn’t do any killing,” Cal Harris said. “I sure couldn’t have fired that shot.”

“I never did think you were guilty,” the detective said. “But this doesn’t prove anything except that if you did kill the old buzzard you had an accomplice. That, or maybe somebody else is cutting himself in on the act now.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Harris said in a discouraged tone. “I am innocent.”

“You don’t have to argue it with me,” Shayne said. “I don’t believe you’re the killer type. We’ve got to get busy and prove out a couple of things though.”

“Won’t somebody have heard that shot and call the police? What do I do then?”

“You leave the worrying about that to me. That shot was from a small caliber gun, probably a twenty-two. I barely heard it myself, and people around here seem to have wax in their ears when it comes to gunshots.”

“Then what do we do?” Harris asked.

“Partly we wait for him to come in after us. He may think that shot got me. If he does, he won’t wait long coming after you. That is, if he knows you’re here. Anyway, there’s something in here he wants. It might be evidence he left last night, but I think more likely it’s old Wingren’s money. Whichever, it’ll bring him in.”

“I haven’t any weapon,” Cal Harris said.