The shot was from a small caliber pistol — perhaps a twenty-two.
It caught Simon Kane right in the center of his forehead. Only one shot was needed. He was dead even as he slumped in his chair.
Shayne hurled himself sidewise out of his own chair and rolled over the sill into the living room through the open glass doors. Within seconds, he was sheltered behind a big overstuffed leather chair with his own gun in his hand. He heard feet running through the plantings toward the far end of the house.
Seconds later, a gun was fired twice out in front of the house. From the sound of the two shots, he figured that was the.380 Browning Sally Comfort had been carrying.
Half a minute later, he heard a motorcycle motor kicked to life partway down the block. Then the cycle roared away.
Sally Comfort did not fire again, but he heard her at the front door calling, “Shayne! Mike Shayne! Are you all right, Mike Shayne?”
IX
Shayne called to Sally Comfort through the front door of the house and then opened it.
“Go back to the car,” he said. “Start the engine and wait for me. I’ll be right back.”
He went out on the patio and wiped the glass he had drunk from and any other spot where he might have left fingerprints. He did not touch the body. Simon Kane had died instantly and there was nothing that could be done for him.
Once clear of the house, Shayne lost no time in getting the car moving. Some of the neighbors must have heard the shots fired from Sally’s gun even if the pop of the twenty-two which killed the Old Man had gone unnoticed.
Of course, they might not have called the police. Most people nowadays prefer not to get “involved” and might prefer to believe a car had backfired twice.
Still... Shayne couldn’t count on that.
There was also the solitary bike rider to be accounted for. If he came back with his gang, Shayne preferred to be somewhere else.
Sally Comfort didn’t speak until they had covered several blocks.
“What happened back there, Mike?”
“Somebody killed the Old Man,” Shayne said. “Didn’t you figure that out?”
“Yes I did,” she admitted. “I heard a shot and then a man ran around the end of the house as I headed for the front door. He took off down the block and I fired at him twice. I wasn’t really trying to kill him, of course — just to hit his legs and stop him. I’m not used to a gun, though, and I missed. He got to his bike and took off.
“Then I called you. When you answered and there was no sign of Kane, I figured he had to be dead or at least badly wounded. Am I right?”
“Simon Kane is dead,” Shayne repeated. “One shot into the brain right through the forehead.”
“What will happen when they find him?”
“What do you think will happen?” Shayne asked bitterly. “The word will go round that I killed him, of course. Every place I show up tonight, somebody gets killed. Why would they blame it on anyone else this time?”
“I’m sorry,” Sally Comfort said. She sounded as if she really meant it.
“I’m sorry, too.”
“What are we going to do now?”
“I’m going to issue an invitation for whoever is behind this whole thing to come and get me,” Mike Shayne said. “It’s one of the oldest tricks in the game and I’ve used it before. It always works, because the killer can’t wait for me to come get him. He thinks he has to come after me, so he does. That gives me the advantage.”
“Once you bait the trap with yourself the other guy has to spring it? Is that the idea?” Sally asked.
“It’s not only an idea,” Shayne said, “it’s a system — an M.O. as they say in the manuals — modus operandi.”
“I know my Latin,” she said. “But what if he doesn’t come?”
“He will, because he knows that otherwise, sooner or later, I’ll come for him.”
“Suppose he hasn’t left a trail for you to follow to him? Apparently this one hasn’t. Everywhere we turn, we find ourselves in another dead end. This one hasn’t left any trail at all.”
“Don’t kid yourself about that,” Shayne said. “This one has killed or had a killing done three times already. He’s left a trail. All killers leave a trail. We haven’t found it yet, but we will. We have all the time in the world. He doesn’t. He has only till we catch up with him. Every second that passes cuts his time that much shorter. Sooner or later the strain will build up till he can’t stand it any more. I know. I’ve seen it happen too many times?”
“Suppose it’s more than one person?” Sally asked as they drove through the night. “Suppose one person put up the contract and somebody else killed Harry because he thought Harry was squealing? Maybe Rocky was killed by one of his own gang out of jealousy. He was a great ladies’ man and ruled his pack with an iron hand.
“Suppose the one who killed the Old Man was trying to get you instead and hit him by mistake. They could have been three separate killings and not related to each other at all. Isn’t that possible, Mr. Shayne? Can you say it isn’t?”
“Of course I can’t say that. I may even think it’s the way things are, but it doesn’t really change things. Whoever put out the original contract has got to find me to collect. He has to find me or send a hit man I can trace back to him. If there are other killers, too — then they have to find me or else risk my finding them to clear myself. One killer or three, it’s me they have to come to.”
“You make it seem so simple and logical and deadly,” she said and pressed her warm shoulder against his. “There’s only one part of the whole thing that doesn’t seem so simple and logical to me.”
“What’s that?”
“When he or they or whatever do come for you, Mike Shayne, how can you be sure they won’t kill you? How can you be so cool and calm and absolutely sure about that? That’s what I want to know.”
“Don’t worry your beautiful head about that,” he said. “Leave that part to me. Murder’s my business.”
A few minutes he said, “There’s only one thing I have to figure out right now — and you haven’t mentioned it.”
“Give me credit for some brains,” Sally said. “You’re wondering where you can go to wait for this killer to come and put his big foot in the trap you’ll have all ready and waiting for him.”
“Right,” the big man said. “Normally I’d go home or stay with someone known to be a friend. I can’t do that tonight because the police are after me, too, and they know all my places as well as anyone else in town. If I go to one of them, I’ll be picked up. They’ll hold me a while for my own protection if for no other reason.
“No killer will come after me in a holding cell or in Chief Gentry’s office. Of course I could hide out. I know places nobody could find me — but that defeats the whole idea. I need to have the killer find me.”
“By this time everybody must know I’m with you,” Sally Comfort said. “The killer will know it, too. Why don’t you stay with me?”
“If the killer can figure I’m at your house, so can the cops,” Shayne said. “That place will be staked out right now and I can’t even go near it to take you home. I’ll have to drop you where you can catch a cab.”
“Forget that,” Sally Comfort said. “I’ve gone this far with you. I’m not about to drop out and go home now. Besides I didn’t mean to stay at our house in town. Harry has — I mean had — a cabin out in the Glades where we can spend the night. He and his boys used it for parties and as a hunting and fishing camp. It’s not far out of town.”