They were all gathered there in Michael Shayne’s private office and the walls were practically bulging to contain them. Will Gentry, cold-eyed and red-faced, chewing angrily on a black stogie, escorted Joel Cross who looked a lot the worse for wear after a night in jail, and Gerald Meany, shifty-eyed and hung-over, with a sullen air of bravado that wasn’t at all convincing.
And there was Attorney Hastings who hadn’t the faintest idea why he had been summoned to the conclave, and Timothy Rourke with a wad of copy paper ready, hopefully expectant that Shayne would pull some promised rabbits out of his hat. In one corner was Jake Sims, wet-lipped and nervous, seated beside Mrs. Meredith who appeared to be the calmest one of the assemblage and who was obviously eager to impart some of her serenity to Peter Cunningham who stood close to her chair trying to appear insolently self-confident but managing to look only sullenly defiant.
Lounging in the open door to the reception room, Michael Shayne towered over them all and grinned confidently, conscious of Lucy Hamilton at her desk behind him where she was pretending to clean out the drawers to make ready for her successor but was, Shayne knew intuitively, listening desperately to hear every word that was spoken in the inner office.
“This won’t take long,” Shayne said abruptly. “We’ve got two murders and an unexplained disappearance to clear up, and the estate of Ezra Hawley amounting to a couple of million dollars to be legally allocated. Each one of you here has a certain personal interest in one or another of these matters.
“Everything goes back to the diary kept by Jasper Groat on the life raft after his plane ditched in the ocean leaving only three survivors,” he went on in a conversational tone. “He and Beatrice Meany were both murdered because of the diary and because of a death-bed secret confided to Groat by the young soldier known as Albert Hawley who died on the raft before they could be rescued.
“Most of you who are here know that Albert Hawley was named as sole heir to his uncle’s fortune in Ezra Hawley’s will in the event that he did not pre-decease his uncle who died on the fifth day after the plane wreck occurred. Thus it became of the utmost importance whether young Hawley died on the fourth day, or lived until the fifth day.
“And Jasper Groat’s diary was the one irrefutable proof of the current date.
“Thus from the beginning it looked as though Groat had been murdered by whichever of the two parties stood to gain a fortune by suppression of the truth-the Hawley family, or Mrs. Meredith who is Albert Hawley’s legal heir. But the trouble with that theory was that Groat was murdered the night before the content of Ezra’s will was made public… assumedly before either party knew how important the date of Albert’s death was to them.
“That brings us to the death-bed confession made to Groat and at least partially overheard by Cunningham who eavesdropped while the soldier was dying. Joel Cross, the only other person here who has read the diary, will confirm the fact that it was a secret concerning the Hawley family, a ready-made basis for blackmail if Groat and Cunningham decided to use it for that purpose.
“But Jasper Groat had a strong sense of probity,” Shayne went on evenly. “He was practically a religious fanatic, and he resisted Cunningham’s arguments that they should blackmail the Hawleys with the diary.”
“That’s a lie,” broke in Cunningham. “You can’t prove a word of it.”
“I think I can,” Shayne told him. “On the afternoon before he was murdered, Groat made a long-distance call to Mrs. Leon Wallace in Littleboro telling her he had news of her husband who mysteriously disappeared a year ago while working as the Hawley gardener. He also made an appointment by telephone to meet Beatrice Meany at the Hawley house at eight that night to talk to her about her brother and Leon Wallace. He was murdered after getting out of a taxi at the Hawley house that night to prevent him from talking to Beatrice.
“I’ve gone to the trouble to give you all this background,” he concluded quietly, “because some of you know some of the facts, but no one except the killer knows all of them. Now, who were the two people who knew what was in the diary before Groat was murdered? Joel Cross and Peter Cunningham were the only two. It’s that simple. One of them killed Groat that night, and later killed Beatrice in my hotel room to prevent her from telling me what she had seen.”
“Then it musta been him,” smirked Peter Cunningham, pointing a blunt finger at Cross. “I was with Mrs. Meredith in the Biscayne Hotel when you left her suite to go meet Mrs. Meany. She was dead when you got there from what I heard. You ask Mrs. Meredith and she’ll tell you I was right there with her.”
“We will ask Mrs. Meredith presently,” Shayne assured him, “but first I want to settle one thing once and for all. Yesterday while I was questioning Cross about Beatrice’s death, I asked him pointblank if Leon Wallace’s name was mentioned in Groat’s diary. He denied that it was, but refused to let me read the diary myself to check. Well, I have read it… and Joel Cross is right. Wallace’s name is not mentioned once.”
Shayne reached into his hip pocket and pulled out Groat’s leather-bound journal and tossed it onto his desk in front of Will Gentry. “Any of you want to see for yourselves?”
Jake Sims popped to his feet with a squeak of outrage as Shayne produced the diary. Matie Meredith sat as still as though she were carved from stone, only her eyes betraying the emotion that was boiling up inside her.
Shayne grinned across at Sims as Lawyer Hastings’ dignity deserted him and he made a snatch for the diary which Gentry covered with a heavy hand.
“That’s the evidence, Chief,” Hastings exclaimed frantically. “Don’t you understand what Mr. Shayne has been saying? A two-million-dollar estate is dependent on whether Albert Hawley died on the fourth or fifth day.”
“Why don’t you just ask Cunningham?” suggested Shayne as his grin widened. “I understand he’s prepared to swear it was the fifth day… thereby throwing the estate to Mrs. Meredith.”
Cunningham made strangled sounds in his throat and glared at the diary. “That was when…” He glared accusingly at Sims. “I thought you said Shayne was gonna…”
“Shut up,” roared Sims. “This is some kind of trick. Don’t let Shayne…”
“Let him say it, Jake,” admonished Shayne. “He agreed to testify that way after you assured him the diary wouldn’t be produced as evidence to prove him a liar. Shame on you, Jake, for thinking you could bribe an upright citizen like me to withhold evidence.
“Go ahead and glance through it, Will,” he added to the chief. “It’s a little past the middle, Mr. Hastings will be delighted to know that death occurred on the fourth night… before Ezra Hawley died.
“And now I’ve got one more little experiment to make before we wind this thing up,” he added as Gentry began turning the pages of the diary with Hastings breathing down his neck. “Give me that copy of the Herald, Tim.”
Rourke stopped scribbling furiously long enough to produce a folded newspaper from his pocket and pass it to the redhead. Shayne opened it out to the frontpage story of the rescue and held it in front of Cunningham, pointing out the picture of Albert Hawley which the Herald had dug out of their morgue for the occasion.
“Do you recognize that man, Cunningham?”
The airplane steward wet his lips nervously, looking at the picture and caption beneath it. “Sure,” he croaked. “That’s Albert Hawley. Can’t you see it says so right there?”
“I know what it says. But I want you to tell us whether that’s a picture of the soldier who died on the life raft with you and Groat.”
“Of course it is,” he stammered. “Albert Hawley. Why shouldn’t I recognize him after being with him four days on a lousy raft?”
“No reason you shouldn’t,” agreed Shayne smoothly. “If it weren’t for the fact that Albert Hawley had his photograph snapped in Chicago last night posing as Theodore Meredith.” He produced the glossy print of Meredith that Ben Ames had sent him, and laid it in front of Gentry. “Albert Hawley didn’t die on the life raft, Will. A soldier who was masquerading as Hawley died. His real name was Leon Wallace. And here’s his picture.” He laid the wedding picture of the Wallace’s beside the recent one of Hawley. “See if that doesn’t look a little more like the man who died,” he said to Cunningham.
“That is the secret the dying soldier confided to Groat,” he went on to Gentry. “You’ll notice Groat didn’t call him Hawley after he died. He referred to him merely as ‘the soldier.’ Old Lady Hawley didn’t want her precious boy drafted into the army,” he went on sardonically, “so she arranged with the gardener to take his place in the draft and serve in his name, sending Mrs. Wallace ten grand to keep her quiet, and another thousand every three months in envelopes pre-addressed by Wallace. And Matie helped out by getting a Reno divorce from Hawley and then remarrying him under the name of Meredith. Which I should have guessed just as soon as I learned that Albert Hawley had obligingly remade his will after his divorce still leaving everything to his ex-wife. It was the only way he could be sure of inheriting Ezra’s money without admitting the truth and being indicted as a draft dodger. That stuck in my craw from the beginning… the fact that a divorced husband left everything to his ex-wife, but I didn’t have brains enough to realize the significance of it.”
There was silence in the office and every eye in the room was on Mrs. Meredith. She squared her shoulders and broke the silence with an incisive voice:
“All right. I never did think Albert could get away with it. His mother planned the whole thing and used up her own money hiring Leon Wallace to go into the army in Albert’s place. I was against the plan from the beginning, but I loved Albert and finally agreed to get the divorce and remarry him under a different name.” She shrugged her shapely shoulders and smiled coldly. “I don’t think that’s against the law.”
“This is all very interesting,” said Will Gentry heavily. “There’ll be a federal charge against Hawley for evading the draft. But we’ve still got two murders here in Miami. Let’s get back to them. A while ago, Mike, you said it was between Cross and Cunningham. I’ve already established that Cross has no alibi for the time of either killing. If Cunningham can produce one…”
“Sure I can,” Cunningham cut in eagerly. “I told you I was right in Mrs. Meredith’s hotel room while the Meany dame was getting bumped off. Shayne will tell you so himself. I was sitting right there when he left to meet her at his place.”
“That’s right,” Shayne agreed amiably. “But the question is: How long did you stay with Mrs. Meredith after I left?”
“Half an hour at least. She’ll tell you.” He appealed to Matie. “We talked about it last night and you mentioned how you fixed me a drink and…”
“Let her tell it,” said Shayne sharply. “I think Mrs. Meredith might have been willing to perjure herself by giving Cunningham an alibi… last night,” Shayne explained to Gentry. “At that time she thought she needed his testimony to prove that her ex-husband didn’t die until the fifth day on the raft. But that doesn’t make any difference now because we know it was Wallace who actually died on the raft. I wonder if she is as willing to perjure herself this morning to save Cunningham’s neck.”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Meredith coldly. “There has never been any question of perjury or of alibis. But Mr. Shayne himself can’t deny that Mr. Cunningham was in my hotel suite when he left to meet Beatrice. That seems to me all the alibi that’s needed.”
“It would be,” said Shayne, “if I’d gone direct to my hotel from the Biscayne. But I didn’t. I wasted fifteen or twenty minutes getting your Chicago address from the house dick at the Biscayne and sending a telegram to your husband signed with your name. Plenty of time for Cunningham to get to my place ahead of me and strangle Beatrice… unless he did stay with you for half an hour.”
“But he didn’t,” she said calmly. “As soon as you left the room he muttered something about another appointment and hurried out. I had no idea that he had done anything to Beatrice,” she went on virtuously, “because I thought you’d gone directly to her and that he couldn’t possibly have done it. But I have no intention of lying to protect a murderer.”
Peter Cunningham made a strangled sound in his throat and whirled on her with big hands opened menacingly. “It’s all a pack of lies. Jasper Groat was my best friend, and I didn’t have nothing against the Meany dame.”
Shayne said, “He’s the only possible one, Will. Cross had no motive for Groat’s murder. Hell, he was tickled to death to buy the diary for his paper. But Cunningham had to kill Groat to cash in on the Leon Wallace story. And then he had to kill Beatrice when he learned she was waiting for me in my apartment. I practically handed her to him on a silver platter,” he ended moodily. “I’d given him my address the night before, and then he heard me tell Lucy over the telephone that I had a stop to make before I saw Beatrice… I even mentioned twenty minutes. That gave him all the time he needed to get to her and break her silly neck. Look at him carefully, Will. Don’t you see he fits Matthew’s description of the killer better than either Cross or Meany? No wonder Matthew got balled up this morning and couldn’t positively identify either of them. Put Cunningham in a line-up and see what happens.”