The Corpse That Never Was Read Online Free PDF

distinctly recalled the light breeze blowing in from the bedroom which dissipated the odor.
    He said, “As a matter of fact, Mr. Armbruster, I’m quite certain that the bedroom window was open at the time.”
    “Aha! But no one… including you, Shayne… thought that significant?”
    “Frankly, no. We had no reason to suspect…”
    “Exactly what I have been trying to point out to you,” crowed Eli Armbruster triumphantly. “It was all so cut-and-dried. Thinking back over it now, you can’t be positive there wasn’t a third person in that apartment when the shotgun went off, can you? A third person who went out the bedroom window onto the fire escape while you were running up the stairs and breaking down the locked door?”
    Shayne shook his red head and confessed, “No. I can’t be positive. On the other hand…”
    “Wait a minute,” ordered Armbruster peremptorily. “Stop right there, Shayne. This is all I asked in the beginning. That you allow a tiny iota of doubt to enter your mind. No more than that. Only that two and two do not have to always equal four. Will you take the case?”
    “I still don’t admit there is a case, Armbruster. I think you’ll be wasting your money…”
    “Whose money is it?” bristled the erect old man. “I’ve got millions to waste if I see fit, Shayne. All I want from you is your promise to suspend judgment and make a thorough investigation of this affair, putting aside any preconceived ideas of what may or may not have happened before you broke the door into that apartment. I want to know who Robert Lambert was, how he met my daughter, and what he meant to her. I don’t expect you to whitewash Elsa, Shayne. I want the truth… so far as you can ascertain what the truth is. For this, I will pay you a retainer of ten thousand dollars. This is not contingent on anything… except that you will take the case and investigate it to the best of your ability.”
    Shayne said, “I’m afraid you’ll be wasting your money, Mr. Armbruster.”
    “Will you allow me to be the judge of that?”
    Michael Shayne hesitated, and then shrugged his wide shoulders. “It’s difficult to turn down a fee like that,” he conceded. “You’ve hired yourself a private detective, Mr. Armbruster.”
    “Splendid. But that is only one part of my proposition, Shayne.” The old man leaned forward and his voice became deadly serious. “I will pay… happily… an additional fifty thousand dollars for evidence that will convict Paul Nathan of my daughter’s murder.”
    Shayne blinked at this. He shook his red head slightly, as though to reassure himself that he had heard correctly. “You’re not trying to tempt me, are you?”
    “Tempt you, Sir?”
    “To manufacture evidence,” Shayne said evenly.
    “Certainly not,” snapped Armbruster. “I’m convinced in my own mind that Paul Nathan engineered my daughter’s death somehow.”
    “In the name of God, how?”
    “You’re the detective, Shayne. That is for you to discover. I know the man is a wastrel and a scoundrel. A thoroughly evil man, Shayne. I am convinced that he married my daughter only because she was a wealthy woman, and when he discovered that she was also a strong-willed woman who had no intention of turning her fortune over to him, I am certain in my own mind that he plotted her death.”
    Shayne said, “That is a strong accusation.”
    “I mean it to be. I would gladly make it publicly if that would accomplish anything. I warned Elsa. I begged her months ago to give the man a divorce and a cash settlement that would take him out of her life forever. She refused. Elsa was a peculiar woman, Shayne. There was a lot of Armbruster in her. She had a feeling for property. What she bought, she held onto. In her own mind, I am convinced that she realized full well that she had bought a husband when she married Paul Nathan. She was perfectly willing to pay the price but she had no intention of relinquishing her