Free The Uncomplaining Corpses by Brett Halliday Page A

about the man you were to send and appeared deeply gratified when I informed her the fellow had talked with Mr. Thrip earlier and had departed.”
    “Who locks up at night?”
    “It is one of my duties, but Mr. Thrip is often in the library late and he allows me to retire without closing up in there.”
    “Is that what happened last night?”
    “Yes, sir. Otherwise I would have tested all the windows and the tragedy might have been averted.”
    Shayne changed the subject abruptly, asking him about the other servants.
    There were, it appeared, two maids, a cook, and the chauffeur besides the butler employed in the Thrip mansion. They all slept on the third floor and the butler said they had all retired about 11:30. The butler explained that the corps of servants was quite inadequate to the duties to be performed, and that they were usually tired and retired early. The servants were aware of a strain upon the household and it was impossible for them not to learn of existing conditions by a word overheard here and there. They were a little on edge and nervous, but they had been given to understand that there was a private detective guarding the house and all of them had slept more soundly than on any night since Mrs. Thrip began receiving the threatening notes.
    After learning that Mr. Thrip had been left in the library, that Mrs. Thrip was in her bedroom, and that Dorothy and Ernst were out last night instead of “having a gang in the house,” Shayne demanded to be taken to Mr. Thrip .
    With a be-it-on-your-own-head look on his long face, the butler acquiesced and led Shayne up the stairs, past the closed door of the fatal room, and to a door standing ajar just beyond.
    The man started to rap, but Shayne caught his arm and pulled it back when he heard Thrip talking to someone inside. Pushing the butler aside after a gesture commanding perfect quiet, Shayne opened the door silently and walked into a living-room connecting two bedrooms, a duplicate of the one across the hall between Dorothy and Ernst’s rooms.
    Thrip was talking over the telephone. He sat in a low chair with his back to the door. He wore a dressing-gown of black satin with yellow piping. Smoke curled up from a partly smoked cigar in an elaborate smoking-stand beside the chair, Moving silently forward on the thick rug, Shayne saw that the French phone was a jade color ornamented with gold.
    “Why don’t you come out in the open so that I can know what I’m fighting?” Thrip was saying irritatedly . “Your veiled threats mean nothing to me. I won’t listen further to such nonsense. Reveal your identity and I’ll deal with you.”
    Shayne was standing behind Thrip when he clicked the instrument on its prongs and turned to pick up his cigar.
    It was as if Thrip felt rather than heard Shayne in the room. He turned, frowned, and demanded fretfully, “How did you get in and what do you mean by eavesdropping?”
    “I’m a detective,” Shayne’s wide mouth curved in a sardonic grin. “I didn’t want to interrupt your interesting conversation so I waited until you finished.”
    “You’re well supplied with brazen effrontery, Shayne,” the realtor observed bitingly. “After what took place in the next room last night I should think you’d hesitate to show your face in my house.”
    Shayne laughed shortly. He slouched down into a chair and ill a cigarette. “Granting that Darnell did choke your wife, you’re as much to blame as I am, Thrip .”
    Thrip’s face turned darkly florid. His underlip trembled like a pendulum gone out of control. “You’d better leave, Shayne. I don’t propose to listen to your insults.”
    “I’m staying, and you’ll listen to what I have to say.” He crossed his long legs and settled his left arm comfortably. He took a deep puff from his cigarette, emitted smoke slowly, and said, “Don’t forget that I know why Darnell was here—why he jimmied the window and—the reason for his coming upstairs at an early