“Me?” Gentry scowled heavily.
“Sure. When you pointed out to me how prompt the man with the rifle was after the Herald came out. Remember? You said he checked into the hotel at six twenty-two. Just twenty-two minutes after the first edition was out.”
Gentry sputtered, “I don’t get it. Twenty minutes is plenty of time to read a paper and check in at a hotel.”
“But you’re forgetting the call that came in while I was in your office. About the kid killed near the railroad yards. I told you he had been in my room with a phony message at five forty-five… fifteen minutes before the Herald came out.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“It was perfectly clear that the boy was sent to my apartment to learn its exact location. He was just a punk they picked up. They grabbed him as he came out of my hotel, got the information, then bumped him. The rifleman who signed his name B. Antrim knew which hotel room to rent in the hotel opposite… and which window to watch for his try at putting me out of the picture.”
Gentry said glumly, “Come again.”
Shayne lifted his arms and clasped his hands at the back of his head, took a deep, painful breath, and said, “That made it absolutely a cinch that whoever was after me didn’t have to wait to read the paper about the murder. He already knew, and that made it Carlton. He was the only person, other than Mrs. Wilson and the police, who knew that Clem Wilson talked to me before he was shot… the only other person who knew I was keeping the information to myself.”
Gentry subsided, venting his disgust with a half-hearted snort.
Herbert Carlton’s voice was out of control when he said, “It all sounds perfectly absurd. I don’t know what all your gibberish is about. What about that threat I received… these wounds I got while those men were abducting me? What about my car fenders being smashed when they rammed into me? And what about the boss who listened outside the cabin while we were locked inside?”
Shayne let his head loll against the chair. He said, “I have already said you were your own best witness… or worst… in the crime you committed. You wrote an anonymous threat to yourself at the same time you wrote that note to me. A check will show they were written on your typewriter. And as for the wounds on your face, the tape looks mighty clean. People don’t tape up bruises. They tape up scratches where there has been blood.”
He came up from his chair in one movement, stepped forward swiftly, and ripped a strip of adhesive from his cheek. There was no wound underneath. He pinned Carlton’s arms behind him with his two hands, held him with his left while he stripped the last piece of tape from his face. Then he dragged him toward Gentry, saying, “Look, Will. A boy scout would be smarter than Carlton. There’s not a scratch on him.”
He shoved Carlton away from him and continued, “Sure the boss was right there at the cabin. Inside the room with me… trying his goddamnest to get me to spill how much Clem Wilson had told me. Why, you were even afraid of your own gunman… made him check his gun with the other hood outside. That was cute, too, the way you tripped me and gave Gene a chance to get away. And the way you murdered Frazier in cold blood before he had a chance to say anything to incriminate you.”
Carlton kept going backward until he leaned against the wall. He stared at Shayne with the eyes of a hunted and cornered animal. “What makes you think I shot Wilson? What possible motive could I have had?”
“Because you were fool enough to try to sell the wrong man some of those fake gasoline coupons you and Frazier were forging. I don’t know why you decided to go out selling them that night. But you picked Clem Wilson. You should have let Frazier do the dirty work. Murder and racketeering were new to you, and you got panicky and went back and killed Wilson while he was phoning me.”
“So he did tell you?” Carlton moaned and continued frantically, “I knew I shouldn’t have waited…” Appalled by his admission, his knees gave way and he sank to the floor.
Gentry was sending out quick puffs of smoke from a cigar. He turned on Shayne and demanded, “If Wilson did tell you it was Carlton, why the hell did you go through all this hokus-pokus?”
“Wilson didn’t tell me anything. He didn’t have time. And that’s why you had me on the spot every time you got tough and demanded that I tell you.”
“But you said you knew it was Carlton right after six o’clock this morning,” Gentry rumbled. “Why the devil did you go on walking into trouble… nearly getting yourself killed?”
Shayne wearily paced a few steps and back, stood facing the others in the room, letting his cold gray eyes rest upon each before passing to the other. Captain Ott had taken the erring young soldier away, and Kline, Brannigan, and Miss Taylor were huddled together on the couch.
“By that time,” Shayne said, “I was smoking out a lot more skunks. I couldn’t afford to arrest Carlton and call it a day. Besides, I had to have more proof against Carlton. Then, these others kept coming at me as long as they didn’t know exactly who I was after. Except Kline, of course. Manny Markle sent me after him.”
The telephone rang shrilly. Gentry went in to answer it. He came back and nodded to Shayne. He said, with a hint of apology in his tone:
“You’ve rung the bell again, Mike. My boys picked up Carlton’s two gun pals just where you thought they’d be. They were getting ready to take out in a motor launch from Carlton’s boathouse.”
Gentry struck a pose of heavy authority. His shoulders straightened; his voice was harsh when he said, “All right, you,” waving a pudgy arm around the room, “the party’s over. We got enough on all of you. Get going out the door.”
Shayne said wearily, “Just a minute, Will. This is the first case I’ve ever worked on where there was no possibility of a fee. You know I never have asked for any credit in solving a case. I’ve always let the police department have it, but this is different.”
Gentry’s face grew very red and he started to speak, but Shayne waved him down.
“I’ve got to appear as witness against all these people, and I want credit for solving the case, because it’s my only compensation. I’ve got to avenge a certain young lady,” he went on, his mouth unsmiling. “She’s a very young lady, only four or five months old. Her name is Jessica. Her father is… was… Eddie Seeney.”