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

“You don’t need the kind of weapon you’re thinking about. I can do any shooting for both of us. I need the weapon you don’t know you have.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ll spell it out,” Shayne said. “What we need now is your brains. You knew old John. I didn’t. You’ve been in and out of this place a lot while he was alive. You know things about what sort of man he was, how he thought, how his mind worked — things like that.”

“I don’t know,” Harris said. “I think you’re giving me more credit than I deserve. Old John was a mean, cruel man. He never told a man like me how he thought of things or how his mind worked. He was just mean.”

“You’re right,” the redhead said. “He wouldn’t have told you a thing if he knew that was what he was doing. He told you without knowing it. Little things. Things he didn’t know he was giving away. Now tell me, boy — fast — where would he hide his treasure?”

“Uh. I... don’t—”

“Fast. Tell me.”

“In the big room downstairs,” Harris blurted out.

“Fine. Fine. Let’s go down there now.”

They went through the hall, where Shayne left the single bulb burning and down the wide flight of stairs. In the living room the detective turned off the light. Enough reflected light from the city came in through the windows so that they could make out essential details once their eyes became accustomed to the semi-darkness. Anyone coming up to the windows from outside would be instantly visible from within.

“Now, you tell me why you said this room,” Shayne said.

“I don’t know. It just came to mind.”

“I realize that. But why this particular room?”

“Well,” Cal Harris said hesitantly, “I guess maybe because it was his favorite room. He spent most of his time in here. Sometimes he even slept down here on the couch or even in a chair. He made me come early to work for him and when I’d knock he was always in here already.”

“So this was his favorite room. That’s good thinking. Go on from there.”

“Okay,” said an encouraged Cal Harris. “Now he was such a mean man he wouldn’t trust nobody or nothing. If he did hide something that meant a lot to him, like money, it would be where he could keep an eye on it. Leastwise where he could keep an eye on the hiding place. Otherwise he’d always be worried that somebody had got to it. Anyway, that’s what I think.”

“I think you’ve got a good head on your shoulders,” the detective told him. “Everything I’ve learned about human nature agrees with your line of thought. Now let’s take it one step further.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” Harris said. At the moment Shayne had spoken a big airliner, gaining altitude as it took off from the Miami Airport, had thundered by low over the house. The roar had drowned out the words.

“When the wind’s a certain way them things go over here one after the other like a train of cars,” Harris explained when they could hear again.

“I said take your line of thought a step further,” Shayne said. “If he hid something in this room, what sort of hiding place would it be? A safe in the wall? Under the floor?”

“Neither of them,” Harris said. “Leastwise not in this here room. I painted this one last time it were done and there’s not any hiding places back of them walls. I had to scrape old wallpaper off every inch and I ought to know. Not under the floors neither. Them had to be sanded down and varnished. I’d have located any such places even though I wasn’t looking for them.”

“I guess you would,” said a disappointed Shayne. “So now think hard and try to put yourself in the old man’s place. If you were him, now where would you hide something in here?”

They both sat quietly for several minutes, peering about the cluttered room in the semi-darkness.

That’s how they came to hear the footsteps coming up through the yard toward the windows.

Whoever was walking out there was trying very hard not to make any noise. At times the steps ceased completely as the prowler either stopped moving entirely or hit a patch of soft grass. Unfortunately for the two he stayed away from the windows.

Cal Harris eased himself over very quietly to where Shayne sat. “I can go in the dining room and see out the windows there,” he whispered.

Shayne nodded. “Be careful. Don’t let him see you,” he whispered back.

He himself wanted to stay in the room which probably held the hidden treasure. He figured that would be the room the prowler would most likely head for first and he preferred having Cal Harris out of the way in case of a fight.

Mike Shayne himself got quietly out of the chair where he’d been sitting and eased over to the window. Behind him he was barely able to hear Cal Harris leaving the room. In spite of his two canes, the partly crippled boy moved like a shadow. Once he was in the hall it was impossible to hear him at all.

By the time the big detective got to the window the prowler outside was out of sight behind some flowering bougainvillea vines and hibiscus bushes that grew against the old house to the left of the living room windows.