Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 6, May 1961

“I guess,” his wife said without much enthusiasm, still obviously not satisfied with what Shayne had told her.

There was nothing Shayne could do about that. Barry Trimble might go ten years without taking a drink, then fall off the wagon and decide to carry out his threat. It was a situation in which the only permanent solution was hope.

Bidding the Coles goodbye and telling Harlan Wright and Lydia Mason he was glad to have met them, the redhead left.

IV

At eleven thirty that night Shayne was having a cognac and ice water nightcap in his apartment when the phone rang. Setting down his glass, he went to answer it.

“Mike?” a frightened feminine voice said in his ear. “Mr. Shayne, I mean.”

“Mike is all right,” he growled. “What is it, Marie?”

“Barry just phoned. His voice was so thick with drink, I could hardly understand him. He said he’s on his way over here to kill me.”

“Is your husband home?” Shayne asked sharply.

“It’s his bowling night. No one’s here but Harlan, and he’s downstairs in bed. I’m phoning from bed too, as a matter of fact. I took Barry’s call on my bedside extension. The doors are locked, but both the front and back doors have glass panes. If he’s beserk, he could knock out a pane and reach through to unlock the door.”

“Do you know where he phoned from?”

“I haven’t any idea. I don’t think it was a pay phone, because there wasn’t any operator’s voice first. Barry was right there when I answered.”

“You don’t get an operator’s voice on pay-phone calls anymore,” Shayne said. “They’re all dial. It’s a fifteen minute drive from here to your place. I want you to call the police and tell them to come fast. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

“Oh, Mike, I can’t drag the police into this,” she wailed. “It will be in the papers.”

“You won’t need a contract renewal if you’re dead,” Shayne snapped. “Call them.”

“But Mike—” Her voice ended in a gasp as there was a crash of glass far in the background.

Shayne said, “Marie!”

“That was the front door,” she whispered.

“Lock your bedroom door,” the detective said rapidly. “I’ll have the cops there in a matter of minutes. Hang up now, so I can dial.”

“All right,” she said in a panicky voice, and the phone went dead.

Shayne dialed police headquarters and barked the information to the desk sergeant in quick, staccato words. The call took him less than thirty seconds. Then he slammed down the receiver, grabbed his coat from where it was draped over a chair and shrugged into it on the way to the door.

He headed for South Miami with his accelerator to the floor. At stop lights and stop signs he slowed only enough to make sure there was no cross traffic, then whizzed on through. Where there was cross traffic, he blasted it to a stop with his horn and nosed through as soon as the other cars came to screeching halts.

If he had been driving like that to a party, he thought grimly, cops would be sounding a siren at him before he had gone two blocks. But because he wanted a police car to appear, so that it could clear the rest of the way with its siren, there wasn’t one in sight anywhere. It was the way the dice always seemed to fall.

Nevertheless he made the fifteen-minute drive in nine minutes flat, slamming to a halt behind a police radio car parked in front of the stucco home. As he long-legged it across the lawn, he noted that the front door stood wide open and every light in the house was on. The upper glass pane of the door was shattered, he saw as he entered the house, and broken glass was strewn all over the floor just inside.

He found Harlan Wright, pale-faced and tousle-haired, seated in his wheelchair in the front room. The man was in pajamas.

When Shayne gave him an inquiring look, Wright said huskily, “I don’t know what happened. It takes me five minutes to lift myself out of bed into my chair. By the time I got out here, cops were running upstairs. They’re still there.”

Shayne went up the stairs three at a time. He reached the top just as a uniformed officer came from a bedroom door. Shayne knew the man, whose name was George Gannon.

“Hi, Mike,” Gannon said in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“I phoned in the complaint,” Shayne growled. “I was talking to Mrs. Cole on the phone when the door pane broke. Is she all right?”

Gannon gave his head a regretful shake. He nodded toward the open bedroom door.

Stepping to the door, Shayne looked in. A second police officer, whom Shayne didn’t know, was peering into the bathroom. Marie Cole, wearing a black lace nightgown, lay face up on the bed. Her face was purple and her swollen tongue protruded grotesquely from her open mouth. Her eyes were horribly distended.

“Strangled,” George Gannon said, unnecessarily from behind him.

His face trenched with anger, Shayne examined the door lock. When he turned the key, which was on the inner side, it worked perfectly. There was no sign that the lock had been forced.

“Was this door unlocked when you arrived?” he inquired.

Gannon said, “It was standing wide open.”