Shayne saw the startled look on Zamboni’s face change quickly to one of utter despair. He whirled around. “You’re a fool, Zamboni, both of you! How long did you think you could keep your son hidden with practically the whole state of Florida hunting him?”
Zamboni nodded tearfully. “I tried to warn him to go away Mr. Shayne — out of the country fast! But when you are young and in love—” He sighed. “You are a fool anyway. But Kara made him hide here. She told him that everything would soon blow over, and then they could get married. They are crazy about each other. My boy even wanted to run away with her when they first met, but she was too afraid of her husband. Voltane was a cruel, very jealous man.”
Zamboni fingered his mustache unhappily, and his voice had a frightened tone. “I lied to you this afternoon, Mr. Shayne. Kara has been here many times with Burt — to bring dishonor to my house.”
Shayne cursed himself inwardly for having fallen for Kara’s clever pretense. His face hardened, and he went on evenly, “You also lied about not knowing Voltane. I don’t say without cause. He was responsible for your wife’s death.”
Zamboni stiffened. He turned bitterly to the smiling portrait on the mantlepiece. “My boy’s mother. It was not her fault! The bullet that killed Voltane — Zamboni should have fired it!”
“But his son did,” Shayne said. “The vendetta is satisfied. Now where is he? Will he give himself up of his own accord, or will I have to go after him?”
Zamboni crossed himself, then shuffled slowly over to the foot of the stairs by the rifle cabinet. “Bambino,” he called, “it’s no use. It’s like I told you. Come down please, for Papa.”
A brief silence, then the sound of reluctant, descending footsteps, and Burton Adams, hollow-eyed but youthful and vigorous in T-shirt and faded dungarees, appeared.
Shayne identified him to Tim Rourke, who had been missing nothing. “Why did you stooge for Voltane last night?” he demanded.
Father and son exchanged furtive looks, then the boy fixed his sullen blue eyes squarely on the detective. He did not reply.
“You didn’t do it as a favor to him. You had as much reason to hate him as your father did. Why?”
Silence.
“You’d better talk,” Shayne said sharply. “Who was in on it with you? Willie Kling? Your father? Or was it your girl friend, Kara?”
Adams’ hands clenched into fists. Shayne pretended not to notice. He lit a cigarette, offered one to the boy. The youth refused, scowling.
Shayne went on quietly, “You’re in one hell of a spot, Burt. If there’s anything you want to tell me I’m listening.”
Burt stood silent, his handsome face inflexible. Shayne waited, then went to the telephone and dialed Operator. “Miami Police Headquarters—”
But the sudden wail of sirens interrupted the call, and he hung up. The doorbell jangled loudly, persistently, accompanied by the sound of heavy banging on the front door. Shayne dashed out of the room, unbolted the front door and admitted Chief Gentry and two uniformed policemen.
Gently howled. “Good grief! You again? I might have known!”
“I was just phoning you, Will.”
“You were in a pig’s kinetta! Somebody phoned Headquarters from this town that Burton Adams lives here.”
“He’s in the back waiting for you,” Shayne said cheerfully. “But I’m afraid he’s not in a very communicative mood.”
When Adams saw the policemen he edged slowly back toward the gun cabinet... then dove head foremost toward an open window. He was halfway out when Shayne caught him by the ankles and yanked him back into the room, causing him to land flat on his face with a sharp cry.
Shayne’s right arm locked vise-like around young Adams’ neck. He hoisted him to his feet and gestured to the officers. They pinioned the youth’s arms behind his back, and Gentry moved in close.
“Handcuff him!” he ordered.
Zamboni was clinging to the mantlepiece, staring up at the smiling face of his dead wife. Slowly he took down the frame, removed the picture, and tore it into pieces.
Then he sank into a chair and cradled his head in his arms. His shoulders shook with his sobbing.
VII
The redhead hurried through Lucy Hamilton’s specially prepared dinner of sirloin smothered in mushrooms in the cozy warmth of her second floor apartment, then returned with bleary eyes to the carbon copy of her eye-witness account of last night’s tragedy.
His rangy body was relaxed, but his mind was racing in high gear. So far, the only provable fact he had to go on was that Voltane had been killed by a bullet marked by Adams’ father.
The phone rang. Lucy picked up the receiver. She smiled, then handed it to Shayne. “Tim Rourke. I hardly recognized him. I think he’s sober.”
The reporter’s voice was in such a high pitch of excitement that he didn’t have to strain to hear his words: “Mike, I’m calling from headquarters. Zamboni just confessed! He said he murdered Voltane by switching Kara’s fake bullet and marking one of his own.”
Shayne hung up, frowning, now convinced more than ever that the truth lay in the secret of the trick itself. He had suspected from the beginning a not so simple substitution of bullets, the bona fide marked one for a dummy that could pass as the real McCoy and that would disintegrate when fired. But where murder was concerned, theory was not enough.
He suddenly recalled that his magician friend, Fred Keating, was opening tonight with Beatrice Lillie at the Playhouse in Coconut Grove. He put in a person-to-person call backstage and told the operator to ring back when she had Keating on the line. Lucy handed him a brandy, and the glass was almost empty when the phone rang and he heard Keating’s voice over the receiver.
“Mike, you old Hawkshaw! Don’t tell me — you called about Voltane! It’s a short intermission, so make it snappy.”
Shayne told him how he thought the bullet trick might have been done. Was he on the right track?
“From what I remember of Voltane’s version,” was the reply, “the principle you’ve mentioned is probably the one he used.”
“Which would mean,” Shayne went on, “that after the bullet is marked, it would have to be smuggled off the stage in some way, and the nub extracted from its shell. After that it could be slipped to Voltane to ‘palm’ in his mouth.”
The magician’s voice laughed sonorously. “Marvelous, my dear Holmes! And when the dummy is fired he hams it up properly and bares the marked one in his teeth — chord in G major!”
“Thanks, Fred, and best to Miss Lillie.”
At least that explained the slug in the dead magician’s mouth. The poor fool thought it was the marked one.
But it left unexplained who switched, or didn’t switch, or re-switched, bullets. It could have been Adams, it could have been Kara, it could have been Willie Kling. Even Zamboni’s story might just possibly be true.
If he had guessed correctly as to the principle involved, the answer now hinged on the exact manner in which the bullets had been switched. When Adams dropped his own into the plate Voltane had made a big deal out of: “...at no time do I or any of my assistants ever touch—”
Willie Kling was living in a small furnished room with an outside bath in a dank, creaky building a few blocks from Kara’s new abode. He did not answer when Shayne first rapped on the door. The third time he opened it a few inches, and snarled, “I’m not in!”
Shayne put his weight on the door and pushed Kling back. The man glared at him. “What the hell do you want?” he demanded.
“What you stole from your boss’s trunk last night!”