Read Online Counterfeit Wife by Brett Halliday - Free Book Online

stand back with his gun ready while Getchie drove the car away from the door and then let him have it when he leaped out into the glare of the headlights.
    The palm of his hand was still on the door. He felt it quiver and knew that the bumper was being withdrawn.
    He waited, the jagged bottle held belly-high and ready. Let them wonder what he was doing. Let them come in after him. This was his only chance—less than one in a thousand now.
    A minute passed. Half of another minute. He could hear nothing except the subdued sound of an idling motor.
    He felt a telltale quiver of the door as a hand touched the knob. He was ready and he hit it with his lame left shoulder the instant the knob turned.
    The door flew open; Shayne collided with a bulky body just outside. The headlights blinded him, but he smelled the sweat of Getchie’s body and saw the dazzling gleam of a razor raised in a swift arc.
    Shayne’s right arm was already driving the broken bottle forward and upward. It ripped through the corded muscles of the Negro’s arm and into the black face. An inhuman screech rattled in the Negro’s throat as he reeled backward and down.
    A gun roared again and again in the confines of the underground garage. Shayne had leaped over the falling body and outside the circle of illumination where Getchie lay horribly twisted with his hands pressed to his face.
    Shayne crouched beside the rear wheel of the car that had blocked the door of his prison and waited for Perry’s next move.
    Perry had fired three times from somewhere back along the wall near the stairway where the headlights didn’t reach, and now he was waiting for Shayne to show himself. Shayne had the wild hope that the man carried no extra ammunition. Perhaps he could, by strategy, inveigle him into firing enough wild shots to empty the .38.
    Shayne moved along on hands and knees to the front of the car, keeping it between him and what he guessed to be Perry’s position, studying the situation carefully and trying to decide his next move.
    The motor in the car that had been backed around to throw light on the doorway was still idling. It stood a few feet beyond the car Shayne was hiding behind, and he saw that if he could get to it and turn off the headlights, his chances of coming out of the cellar alive would be much improved.
    Reflected light lay on the concrete floor between the two cars, and Shayne dared not risk crossing between them. He crouched silently for a time, closing his mind to Getchie’s moaning and to everything except his next move.
    He finally began to inch cautiously back toward the far wall of the garage where other cars were parked, taking an angling course. His shoeless foot stubbed against a hard object, and he swore under his breath. He felt for it, grasped it, and threw it hard toward the dark wall beyond him.
    Perry’s .38 roared twice in quick succession. Then there was utter silence except for the slackening tempo of Getchie’s moans. Shayne guessed that the Negro was dying.
    Shayne reached the wall of the garage, slid along it behind the parked cars until he reached a point which he calculated placed the car with burning lights and idling motor between Perry and himself.
    Still inching forward in a half-crouch, alert for some sound of movement from Perry and hearing nothing, he decided the man was playing it smart, waiting Shayne out, close enough to the stairway and the street door to prevent the detective from getting past him. Shayne had the hope, too, that Perry was holding his fire after those five shots.
    Shayne reached the rear of the car with the idling motor and felt his way cautiously along the side of it. The front door stood open. He had only to reach inside and switch off the headlights. He hesitated, his mind wary and active. Perry would still be guarding the exits with gun and flashlight. Things wouldn’t be much different with the car lights off.
    He made one last survey of the dimly lighted garage before reaching in