The Corpse That Never Was Read Online Free PDF Page A

thoughtfully, “No. Under the circumstances that sort of procedure didn’t seem called for.”
    “Exactly. Under the circumstances. Now… who is this man who signed his name Robert Lambert?”
    “I don’t know what success the police have had in tracing him.”
    “None,” said Armbruster triumphantly, pointing a lean forefinger at Shayne. “Up to this point they have not discovered one single clue leading to his identity. Why not? I’ll tell you why not. Because they don’t really care. What difference does it make after all? The case is closed. A man named Robert Lambert is dead and my daughter is dead. Do they know it was Lambert himself who wrote those notes? Suppose they were clever forgeries? Do they know my daughter had been meeting him there frequently? Perhaps she was just lured there last night.”
    “And induced to drink a cyanide cocktail against her will?” Shayne tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice because he liked the old man and admired the indomitable spirit which refused to accept the obvious, but he didn’t quite succeed because Armbruster flushed slightly and his penetrating blue eyes glittered with anger.
    “I expected better of you, Shayne. You’ve gotten a lot of publicity in Miami and there’s been a public image built up of you as a man of imagination and of unorthodox methods which have produced results in the past and solved crimes which the police considered insoluble. I believe there is even a fiction writer who has made a small fortune writing up your cases in book form and selling millions of copies of them. Yes, goddamn it, Mr. Shayne. It is not inconceivable to me that Elsa was lured to that apartment last night and induced to drink a cocktail containing cyanide against her will. Without her knowledge, at least. My daughter had a peculiar taste in drinks. Her favorite potion was equal parts of heavy, dark rum and crème de menthe. Have you ever tasted that particular mixture?”
    Shayne couldn’t repress a faint shudder as he confessed, “Not that I recall.”
    “I suggest you try it so you’ll know what I’m talking about. I think you will then agree with me that a lethal dose of cyanide or any other poison could be introduced into that concoction without the drinker’s knowledge. Now, do you begin to see what I’m getting at, Shayne? If you can throw away all your preconceptions, do you see how each physical fact in that seemingly cut-and-dried suicide set-up might be interpreted differently?”
    Shayne took a long pull on his cigarette and tried to readjust his thinking to fit Eli Armbruster’s ideas. It was very difficult. He had seen it, damn it. Armbruster hadn’t. He said slowly:
    “I’m sorry, but as you probably already know, I was just downstairs one flight when it happened. I heard the blast of the shotgun, Mr. Armbruster. I ran upstairs and broke in the locked and chained door.”
    “I know you did. That’s one of the reasons I have come to you. Stop just a moment and think, Shayne. How much time elapsed between the time you heard the gun go off and the moment you burst into the room?”
    Shayne considered his reply carefully. “Probably three or four minutes. Not more than five, certainly.”
    “Ah.” Eli Armbruster grunted his satisfaction. “So, by your own admission, from three to five minutes went by between the time the shotgun was fired and anyone entered that apartment?”
    “The door was locked and chained on the inside,” Shayne reminded him.
    “Mr. Shayne. Does that building have fire escapes as required by the building code?”
    “Yes.”
    “Can they be reached through each separate apartment?”
    “Yes. Through the bedroom windows mostly.”
    “Were the bedroom windows of that particular apartment locked on the inside last night?”
    Michael Shayne hesitated, scowling heavily. He recalled standing there with his back to the door looking down at the two bodies, and the acrid smell of discharged gunpowder in the room. And he