Stranger in Town (9 page)

“Last what?”

“Traffic accident.”

“Oh. Well I got to admit we have been having more than our share hereabouts lately. That’s the way it goes. Nothing happens in a couple of years, and then you get a batch. Seems like sure-enough maybe there is something in that old saying that things go by threes. Hadn’t thought of it before, but Mule last night did make the third in a month. Funny, ain’t it? There was a young girl about a month ago. First bad accident, I do believe, for three-four years.”

“Happen here in town?”

“No. That was out on the highway, too. Forget her name, but she was a pretty little thing they said. Driving an old Ford coupe that went off the road on a curve, too. Rolled over half a dozen times before it landed.”

“But she didn’t burn up, too?” Shayne asked, masking his alert interest.

“No. Some driver saw it happen and pulled her out. She was banged up bad and died on the emergency operating table at the Sanitarium before recovering consciousness.”

“The Sanitarium?” Shayne couldn’t conceal his interest in this revelation. “The same one outside of town?”

“Yeh. It was the closest place to take her.”

“The man who saw it happen,” Shayne persisted. “What did he say caused the accident?”

“He never did say. Nobody ever did know who he was. He just dropped her at the Sanitarium and drove away in the excitement without ever giving his name. Never did show up to make a report.”

“Like the man who brought the Buttrell girl to your hospital just the other night,” said Shayne slowly. “You seem to have a lot of anonymous Good Samaritans operating in Brockton.”

“We do, don’t we for a fact? Well, you know how it is sometimes. A guy is maybe out some place where he ain’t supposed to be that time of night. Maybe he’s playing around with somebody else’s wife. So he does what he can to help out and then beats it without giving his name. Can’t blame him much. Not if he’s married to a battle-axe like I am.” Grimes laughed heartily and applied himself to his beer.

“That’s probably the explanation,” Shayne agreed. He changed the subject abruptly. “One thing I wondered about last night.” He laughed wryly and went on: “Gave me a completely wrong idea about the efficiency of your police department, I guess. Maybe I wouldn’t have stuck my neck out like I did if I hadn’t seen this other thing.”

“What was that?”

“While I was in that bar where you picked me up. There was a ruckus and one man got beat up. I
saw
the bartender call the police, but nobody ever did come to investigate it. Gave me the idea you boys were pretty slip-shod… and that turned out to be my mistake.”

“Is that so?” Grimes looked mystified. “They called the cops and nobody came?”

“That’s right. At least half an hour before I left and you and Burke pinched me. It got my goat to have you so on-the-ball for a parking ticket when you didn’t even bother to check the other.”

“I can see how that’d be, sure-enough,” agreed Grimes. “Funny, though. We got three radio cars on the streets all night. Any report of trouble should be covered in five minutes after it hits the despatcher.”

“That’s why,” said Shayne, “I asked you about the reputation of the joint. If maybe it was a place you cops stayed away from.”

“Nothing like that in Brockton. Must be some mistake.” Grimes was obviously nettled by Shayne’s implication against the probity and efficiency of the Brockton police. He glanced at his watch. “Take a walk up to the station with me and we’ll check what happened to the call. We may be a small town, but we got a system set up just as good as they got in Miami, I betcha.”

Shayne said, “I’d like to.” He left three dollars on the table and they went out together.

The Brockton police headquarters was like hundreds of others in similar towns which Shayne had seen throughout the country. It was housed in a modern, three-story brick building with court-rooms and city office above, and Grimes led Shayne around to a side door where they entered a small room divided in half with a shoulder-high counter. A uniformed man sat on a high stool behind the counter and yawned somnolently as they entered.

Grimes nodded as he led Shayne toward a rear door, and the man stopped yawning long enough to say, “Hi Georgie,” and to look at Shayne with a curious frown.

Grimes opened the rear door onto a wide corridor and turned to the right, telling Shayne, “The file room’s up here at the end. Only take us a minute to check and see…”

He broke off abruptly as a side door opened in front of them and a big man stepped into the corridor.

He was fat as well as being big in every direction. Well over six feet, with spreading shoulders and a thick torso, he had a huge paunch that hung out over his belt, his eyes were almost hidden by puffy rolls of fat on each cheek, and triple chins overlapping each other beneath an absurdly small and pouting mouth.

He stopped in the center of the wide passageway, filling it to the extent there was scarcely room for a man to pass on either side, and glowered at Grimes and Shayne as they approached.

Grimes slowed uncertainly and said in a placating voice, “Hi, Ollie. This here’s Mr. Shayne from Miami. Chief Hanger, Mr. Shayne. Being in the business himself, Mr. Shayne wants…”

Chief Ollie Hanger snorted loudly, like a sweated horse that has plunged his nose too deeply into a water trough.

“The big city shamus, huh? What’s he suckin’ up to you for, Grimes?”

“Like I was going to say, Chief. He just wants…”

“Well, we don’t want his kind in Brockton. You hear that, Shayne?”

Shayne said, “I hear you all right.” His fists were balled lightly by his sides and a muscle jumped at the left side of his tightened jaw, but his voice was placid.

“Get him out of here, Grimes. We do all right in Brockton without any help from private cops. Better get on out of town, Mister, before John Burke or some of the others like him catch up with you and run you in again.”

Shayne shrugged his own wide shoulders. He said mildly, “Tell Burke and your other tough boys that I’ll be expecting them next time.” He turned abruptly and walked back down the corridor, opened the door into the small side room and went out without looking back.

Fifteen minutes later he was in his car speeding out of town northward toward Orlando.

THE HENDERSON HOUSE in Orlando was a neat stuccoed bungalow on a quiet side street flanked by similar bungalows on either side. There was a small area of neatly clipped lawn on either side of the walk leading up to the front door and a flame vine in riotous bloom over the front door.

It opened immediately to Shayne’s ring, and he was confronted by a precise little man with a perfectly bald head, wearing rimless glasses and a worried expression on his rather pale face. He wore neatly pressed brown trousers with a white shirt and neat bow tie, and a shabby corduroy smoking jacket, and had a shortstemmed meerschaum pipe in his hand. He looked up into Shayne’s face with soft brown eyes behind the rimless lenses and said nervously, “Yes? What can I do for you, sir?”

“I’m Shayne. From Brockton. I spoke to you on the phone…”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Shayne. Of course. Come right in. Do come right in.” The professor led the way down a short hall to a living room some twenty feet square. It was comfortably though shabbily furnished, and gave the impression of disorder though of basic cleanliness. A black Scottie lay outstretched on the brick hearth before the firescreen and rolled incurious black eyes at them without moving his body.

Professor Henderson paused in the center of the room, looking about vaguely as though surprised to find himself there. “I’m afraid… ah… you’ll have to excuse the appearance of things here. Bachelor quarters, you know. With Jean away this week. But do sit down, Mr. Shayne. You’ll find that chair comfortable if you don’t mind a few dog hairs.”

The professor seated himself across from Shayne in what was evidently his favorite lounging chair, with a shaded reading lamp by its side, a low table holding a tobacco humidor and large ash tray, and littered with ashes and spilled flakes of pipe tobacco. A large book in brown leather binding lay upside down open in the middle on the wide arm of the professor’s chair. He sat bolt upright and removed the glasses that pinched the bridge of his nose and held them deliberately aloft between thumb and forefinger.

“Now, sir. I understand you are a detective from Brockton.”

“That’s right, Professor Henderson. We don’t want to alarm you at this point, but there does seem to be some question about the identity of the girl who was previously identified as Miss Buttrell. Have you succeeded in making a definite check on your daughter’s present whereabouts?”

“I haven’t, Mr. Shayne. I put in another call to Roy Larch in Apalachicola after you telephoned, but his house doesn’t answer of course. The entire family is away on a cruise in the Gulf as I told you. And I have every reason to believe Jean is with them. Certainly,” he went on with nervous asperity, “the Larches would not have just gone on their cruise Friday if Jean had not arrived when they expected her. It simply isn’t like Roy and Maria. They have a daughter Jean’s age, you see, and Jean was to be company for her on the cruise. If anything had happened to prevent Jean’s arrival, they would certainly have contacted me before sailing without her.”

“It would seem so,” Shayne agreed. “And for your sake, I hope you’re right.” He lit a cigarette and looked around the small room frowningly, got up to walk to the fireplace to inspect more closely a framed picture of two young girls on the mantelpiece.

They were about seventeen and fifteen in the picture, he judged. The younger had a piquant, laughing face that brought a sense of bubbling gaiety into the quiet room. The other girl had a broad forehead and a serenely beautiful face. She was, undoubtedly, one of the most beautiful girls Shayne had ever seen.

And she was also, undoubtedly, the girl in the white dress who had come up and spoken to him in the Brockton bar the preceding evening—the original of the photograph on the front page of the Brockton Courier—the girl who had been positively identified as his daughter by a man who said he was Amos Buttrell from the Roney Plaza Hotel in Miami Beach.

The professor had risen and stood close beside Shayne. The sun-tanned top of his bald head came slightly above the detective’s right shoulder.

“Jean and Jeanette,” he said softly. “Taken two years ago. Wonderful girls, both of them. Yet so different. Jeanette was completely irrepressible. So like her dear mother who left us three years ago. Such a comfort after Mrs. Henderson was taken. We were a close-knit trio, Mr. Shayne. The long shadow cast by their mother’s passing was just beginning to dissipate when tragedy struck again last month. When Jeanette was…” His voice faltered and he gulped audibly. “… when she was killed in a motor accident as I told you. It was a difficult blow. A terrible blow. Jean is all I have left. If anything has happened to her now…”

Shayne continued to look straight ahead at the picture of the sisters. His eyes stung and he set his teeth together tightly. He turned away abruptly and went back to his chair and sat down. The professor remained before the fireplace, peering near-sightedly at the photograph with head lifted and both hands thrust deep into the patch pockets of his smoking jacket.

Shayne cleared his throat and said, “I can see they’re lovely girls, Professor. I certainly hope Jean is safe and this is wholly a false alarm. But as you said, it does seem quite a coincidence that both accidents happened near Brockton. What was your younger daughter doing in the vicinity when the wreck occurred?”

“Jeanette?” The professor turned troubled eyes on him and slowly replaced his glasses. “She was on her way to visit a school chum in a small village beyond Brockton for a few days. Driving her own small car. I thought it was perfectly safe. She was seventeen and had had her own license for a year. A very careful driver, I thought. Never had an accident before. And then… like a bolt out of the blue…” He shuddered and pain contracted his ascetic features. He turned slowly and reseated himself, mechanically picking up the meerschaum and uncovering the humidor to dip the bowl inside.

“I think the cause of the wreck was never determined,” said Shayne thoughtfully.

“No.” The professor was carefully packing tobacco into the bowl with his thumb. He got a kitchen match from his pocket, struck it on the underside of the table beside him and drew flame into the pipe. “Your police theorized that she lost control of the light car on a curve and went over the bank. Some passing motorist rescued her from the wreckage and rushed her to the nearest hospital but she succumbed to an emergency operation without regaining consciousness. And he disappeared in the night without leaving his name or telling exactly what happened.”

“I didn’t have any part in that investigation,” Shayne told him gravely as Henderson emitted a cloud of blue smoke that almost obscured his features. “Was there any possibility that the other motorist was somehow responsible for your daughter’s accident, and
that
motivated his abrupt disappearance after doing what he could for her?”

“The possibility was mentioned. However, I believe a subsequent careful examination of her car proved conclusively no other automobile was involved. It didn’t seem terribly important to me at the time. No matter how it came about, nothing would have given Jeanette back to me.”

“Were you perfectly satisfied with the treatment she received at the hospital she was taken to?”

“Why not, Mr. Shayne? I had no reason to question… are you intimating, sir, that there was laxity in the care she received?”

“I’m not intimating anything,” said Shayne bluntly. “I’m groping around in the dark. She wasn’t taken to the regular Brockton hospital, you know. But to a small private sanitarium on the outskirts of town.”

“So I understand. Because her condition was obviously serious and it was much the closer of the two to the scene. At least, so I was informed by your own chief of police who came in person to break the news to me.

“I’m sure the Sanitarium was closer.”