“What is that thing?” Stallings demanded. “The fender can’t be smashed. I tell you it can’t.”
“You’ll hang, Stallings,” Shayne told him quietly, “just because your chauffeur neglected to get that fender fixed today.”
“By God,” said Painter softly, “this is a robe from the Patterson Sanitarium, all right. Must have been stuffed in there when he stripped it off her.”
“No — no,” Stallings argued in a choked voice. “I don’t know how that got there. It’s a frame-up. I’ve been framed, I tell you. That fender was all right an hour ago.”
“Framed, hell!” Shayne snorted. “Why, it had to be you, Stallings. You were the only one who knew the girl was going to my office. No one else could have done it.”
“That’s not true. I’m not the only one. He knew.” Stallings pointed a shaking finger at Arch Bugler. “I phoned Bugler and told him what Baldy said. He’s the one—”
“You dirty rat.” Bugler’s laboriously cultivated purr deserted him. He came out of his chair with a gun in his hand.
Whit Marlow had been sitting quiet throughout Shayne’s recital. His silence was more that of a man stunned by grief than by the revelations of the redheaded detective. He came to life like a snarling tiger and rushed Bugler with flailing fists.
“You doped her — you killed her! You killed Helen! You strangled my wife. Why didn’t you kill me, too? You had the opportunity when you doped me in your office.”
Bugler’s pistol was aimed at the young man’s heart, his finger on the trigger when two Miami Beach policemen caught his arms from behind and pinioned them to his side, disarming him with deft, strong hands. Another policeman was busy taking the handcuffs from Shayne’s wrists to shackle Bugler.