Harlan Wright said, “Mr. Shayne located Barry, Marie. He’s coming over tonight to cut your ears off.”
The platinum blonde’s eyes widened. Shayne growled, “Your brother has a misplaced sense of humor, Mrs. Cole.” He threw a glance at Lydia Mason.
Norbert Cole said, “You can make any report you have in front of Lydia, Mr. Shayne. She’s like one of the family.”
The redhead shrugged. “All right, then, Mrs. Cole, your ex-husband is living in a rooming house at South Portage and Labat. He has a dishwashing job at Schwartz’s Cafe, a few door from the rooming house. He isn’t interested in any revenge. He said to tell you he plans to stay on the wagon.”
“Barry stay on the wagon?” she said unbelievingly.
Norbert Cole said, “If he does, there isn’t much to worry about. It’s only when he’s drunk that he goes nuts.”
Shayne said, “He admitted being a Jekyll and Hyde drinker. He blames drink for what happened and doesn’t want a repeat. I’m inclined to believe he really means to stay away from the stuff, though of course I can’t guarantee that he will. But my opinion after talking to him is that you aren’t in any danger from him so long as he stays sober.”
“He was sober when he threatened to kill me five years ago,” she said dubiously.
“He insists it wasn’t meant as a threat. He says when he promised to wring your neck, it was just an angry remark. He has no intention of coming anywhere near you.”
“How’s he feel about me?” Cole asked.
Under ordinary circumstances Shayne wouldn’t have repeated Trimble’s exact words in order to shield his ex-wife’s feelings. But his opinion of Marie Cole had been steadily dropping ever since he first met her and he was beginning to doubt that she had any feelings other than concern for her own skin.
He said dryly, “He’s holding no grudge against you for marrying Marie. He said all you have is his sympathy.”
The woman flushed. Harlan Wright chuckled delightedly and she threw him a baleful glare. Norbert Cole and Lydia Mason discreetly showed no reactions at all.
Shayne rose to his feet. “I guess that about winds it up, Mrs. Cole. If you don’t think he’s capable of staying on the wagon, I suggest you lock your doors at night and stay off the streets when you’re alone for a time. If he does stay sober, I don’t think you have to worry.”
“How will I know whether or not he’s sticking to his resolution?” she inquired dissatisfiedly.
The redhead shrugged. “You have a problem. As things stand, you don’t even have much grounds to ask for a police guard, unless he does get drunk and tries to commit some overt act. About all you can do is be careful and hope he stays on the wagon.”
“Couldn’t you make a periodic check on him?”
Shayne shook his head. “I’m not a nursemaid, Mrs. Cole. I agreed to see him once and give you my opinion. If you want a regular check kept on him, you’ll have to hire some other investigator. It isn’t the sort of case that interests me in the least.”
“Well, could I at least call on you if he threatens me again?”
“If he does that,” Shayne agreed. “Phone me any time if you think you’re in real danger, and I’ll come running.”
Norbert Cole rose to show the redhead to the door. “That ought to be satisfactory, Marie,” he said. “With Mr. Shayne on tap for emergencies, there isn’t anything to worry about. We certainly appreciate what you’ve done, Mr. Shayne. Don’t we, Marie?”
“I guess,” his wife said without much enthusiasm, still obviously not satisfied with what Shayne had told her.
There was nothing Shayne could do about that. Barry Trimble might go ten years without taking a drink, then fall off the wagon and decide to carry out his threat. It was a situation in which the only permanent solution was hope.
Bidding the Coles goodbye and telling Harlan Wright and Lydia Mason he was glad to have met them, the redhead left.
IV
At eleven thirty that night Shayne was having a cognac and ice water nightcap in his apartment when the phone rang. Setting down his glass, he went to answer it.
“Mike?” a frightened feminine voice said in his ear. “Mr. Shayne, I mean.”
“Mike is all right,” he growled. “What is it, Marie?”
“Barry just phoned. His voice was so thick with drink, I could hardly understand him. He said he’s on his way over here to kill me.”
“Is your husband home?” Shayne asked sharply.
“It’s his bowling night. No one’s here but Harlan, and he’s downstairs in bed. I’m phoning from bed too, as a matter of fact. I took Barry’s call on my bedside extension. The doors are locked, but both the front and back doors have glass panes. If he’s beserk, he could knock out a pane and reach through to unlock the door.”
“Do you know where he phoned from?”
“I haven’t any idea. I don’t think it was a pay phone, because there wasn’t any operator’s voice first. Barry was right there when I answered.”
“You don’t get an operator’s voice on pay-phone calls anymore,” Shayne said. “They’re all dial. It’s a fifteen minute drive from here to your place. I want you to call the police and tell them to come fast. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“Oh, Mike, I can’t drag the police into this,” she wailed. “It will be in the papers.”
“You won’t need a contract renewal if you’re dead,” Shayne snapped. “Call them.”
“But Mike—” Her voice ended in a gasp as there was a crash of glass far in the background.
Shayne said, “Marie!”
“That was the front door,” she whispered.
“Lock your bedroom door,” the detective said rapidly. “I’ll have the cops there in a matter of minutes. Hang up now, so I can dial.”
“All right,” she said in a panicky voice, and the phone went dead.
Shayne dialed police headquarters and barked the information to the desk sergeant in quick, staccato words. The call took him less than thirty seconds. Then he slammed down the receiver, grabbed his coat from where it was draped over a chair and shrugged into it on the way to the door.
He headed for South Miami with his accelerator to the floor. At stop lights and stop signs he slowed only enough to make sure there was no cross traffic, then whizzed on through. Where there was cross traffic, he blasted it to a stop with his horn and nosed through as soon as the other cars came to screeching halts.
If he had been driving like that to a party, he thought grimly, cops would be sounding a siren at him before he had gone two blocks. But because he wanted a police car to appear, so that it could clear the rest of the way with its siren, there wasn’t one in sight anywhere. It was the way the dice always seemed to fall.
Nevertheless he made the fifteen-minute drive in nine minutes flat, slamming to a halt behind a police radio car parked in front of the stucco home. As he long-legged it across the lawn, he noted that the front door stood wide open and every light in the house was on. The upper glass pane of the door was shattered, he saw as he entered the house, and broken glass was strewn all over the floor just inside.
He found Harlan Wright, pale-faced and tousle-haired, seated in his wheelchair in the front room. The man was in pajamas.
When Shayne gave him an inquiring look, Wright said huskily, “I don’t know what happened. It takes me five minutes to lift myself out of bed into my chair. By the time I got out here, cops were running upstairs. They’re still there.”
Shayne went up the stairs three at a time. He reached the top just as a uniformed officer came from a bedroom door. Shayne knew the man, whose name was George Gannon.