“And about that time we were getting close to the hospital, and he begged me not to tell anyone who had brought me there-to just let him go on without trying to find out who he was or anything like that. So, of course I promised. I felt sorry for him, and I did appreciate him stopping to pick me up under those conditions. Plenty of other men, I thought, might just have speeded up instead of stopping, for fear of getting involved in something that would cause them trouble at home.
“So he pulled up under a street light in front and I got out of the back seat, and I saw his face just that once when he turned his head to wave to me before driving on. And when I saw how middle-aged and meek he was I felt sorrier for him than ever… and that’s why I just couldn’t get him in trouble last night when they pushed me inside the bar and told me to pick him out from the men inside.”
Michael Shayne set his empty glass down and lit a cigarette as Jean Henderson finished her story. He tugged at his earlobe thoughtfully while he considered the meager information she had been able to furnish about the man he had seen waiting in the rear booth the previous night. He hadn’t really appraised the man carefully. Had just given him an incurious glance when he first entered and was looking for a place to be comfortable while having his drink.
But there had been something about the man’s appearance that now tugged at Shayne’s memory. Something he had noticed and forgotten, but which had almost been brought back to his memory by something Jean had just said. He didn’t struggle to get the memory back. It would come to him faster if he let it lie.
He said, “After Mr. Buttrell took you away and you passed out in his car after drinking a malted milk… you say you woke up a prisoner in a room where you were kept locked in until last night? What sort of room was it?”
“Just a room,” she said helplessly. “Not quite as big as this one. With a single bed and a dresser and vanity. There was a tiny bathroom opening off it, and two windows in one wall that were solidly boarded-up outside the glass. Just a… an impersonal kind of room.” She puckered up her face in thought.
“That’s it,” she said finally. “It was impersonal. Just like this hotel room Like any hotel room. You had a feeling hundreds of other people might have occupied it briefly, but none for a long enough time to leave the slightest imprint of their personality on it. It was very quiet inside the room,” she went on slowly, “almost as though it were soundproofed. There was an airconditioning duct so I didn’t lack air. I think it must have been a farmhouse. Out in the country at least. I never heard any traffic.”
“And you saw no one all that time except the men you call Gene and Bill?”
“No one else. One of them would unlock the door three times a day to bring my meals on a tray. It was good food and there was plenty of it. And whichever one brought it would sit and talk to me while I ate. They wouldn’t answer a single question, except that I would be released as soon as I told them more about the man who had picked me up on the road. They kept at me about him all the time. About him and about whether I remembered any farther back than I did at first. I didn’t mind Bill so much, but something about Gene frightened me terribly. Something cold and… and reptilian almost.” She shuddered. “He’d sit and look at me with those cold eyes and I’d have the most awful feeling that he would enjoy killing me. That he hated me for being alive.”
Shayne nodded and said grimly, “Your instincts were fairly valid, I think. Tell me about last evening.”
“Bill brought my supper. And Gene came in, too, just as I finished eating. He told me we were going for a little ride. He said they were going to blindfold and gag me and take me out to a place where the man would be. It would be a barroom, he said, and I was to walk in the door alone while they stayed outside… and they’d shoot me if I said a single word to anyone except the right man. I was to go right up to him and say something… and then I was to turn around and walk out the door where Bill would be waiting for me.
“So they put a gag in my mouth and blindfolded me and led me out to a car and put me in the front seat between them and drove awhile and then stopped and picked up the one they called Mule. He got in the back seat and Gene drove some more and I could tell we were in the center of some town, and then they stopped and took off the blindfold and gag and we were right in front of the place where you were sitting in the booth. And you know the rest of it,” she ended simply. “I hadn’t thought of getting away. It just came to me suddenly that it was my one chance when I saw Bill run in the door to help the other two. I ran behind them and was out the door before they saw me, they were so busy with you. And right at that moment,” she went on with a timid attempt at a smile, “I was glad I’d picked you out for them instead of the right man because I knew he would never have given enough trouble to bring Bill in and give me a chance to get away.”
Shayne scarcely heard her final words. He sat up and snapped the fingers of his right hand excitedly. It had come to him! Something about the man’s outward appearance last night, coupled with a phrase of his that Jean had repeated a short time previously.
A phrase that only a certain type of man would use in normal conversation. A minister, or perhaps a doctor. But he was neither. He had explained to Jean that he was tied to Brockton by owning a small business which did not earn him enough to make a get-away.
A small businessman who talked the way that man had talked to Jean when he picked her up on the road.
It came to Shayne suddenly. Jean was beginning to talk again, but Shayne leaped to his feet without hearing her. He caught up the telephone directory and turned to the yellow, Classified pages in the back. In a town of forty thousand, he didn’t know how many such business concerns would be listed, but he didn’t believe there would be a great many.
There weren’t. There were only four listings under the heading he wanted. He reached for pencil and paper to write down the four addresses, then hesitated. Not knowing the town, he would have to ask directions for getting to each one. It might take hours going from one to another until he struck the right man.
He settled back beside the telephone with the open book in his hands and grinned reassuringly at Jean who had risen from her chair and was demanding to know why he was acting so pleased with himself.
He said, “I’ll explain in just a moment. First, I want to invite your friend up to have a talk with us.” He lifted the phone and gave the hotel operator the first number on the list.
When a cool female voice replied, he said, “I’d like to speak to the proprietor, please.”
She said, “Certainly, I’ll call Mr. Johnson.”
Mr. Johnson had a rounded voice that might have been sonorous had it not obviously been hushed. “Yes sir? What service may I render?”
“I’m not well acquainted in Brockton,” Shayne told him. “And my wife…” He paused and gulped audibly. “It was very sudden. Could you come at once to my room in the Manor Hotel to discuss the details privately. I just don’t feel up to going out and…”
“Precisely. I understand only too well, sir, and our services are yours to command. Ah… your name?”
“Mr. Shayne. Room four-ten.” Shayne hung up on Mr. Johnson’s eager assurance that he would be around at once.
He called the second number and a mellifluous voice informed him that Mr. Magner of the Final Tryst Funeral Home was entirely at his disposal. Having been assured by Mr. Magner that he was, indeed, the proprietor and owner of the Final Tryst, Shayne made the same arrangements with him and hung up.
His third call brought forth the information that the owner of the Home was in Arizona on a vacation, that he had been gone for two weeks and was not expected back for another week. The manager, however, pleaded to be of service, but Shayne cut him off and called the fourth number.