Brett Halliday

One Night with Nora

Chapter one

The night was hot, humid, and still in Miami. Clad only in pajama bottoms, Michael Shayne lay spread-eagled on the double bed, hoping for a vagrant breeze to cool his rangy body. For hours he tossed restlessly, and at last fell into a fitful sleep.

A slight sound awakened him. He opened his eyes and lay motionless, listening. The dim light of a waning moon shone through the open windows. He wondered what time it was and how long since he had fallen asleep. He turned on his side, and yawned groggily. He was about to close his eyes again when he saw the rectangle of yellowish light coming through the bedroom doorway.

A shuffling, slithering sound reached his ears. Wide awake now, and alert, he swung his long legs cautiously over the edge of the bed and stood up. Two steps took him to the bedroom doorway. The living-room door was ajar, and the light from the hotel corridor faintly outlined objects in the room.

Leaning against the doorjamb, Shayne observed a sexless, shapeless figure seated in a chair near the wall. The figure was bent double, fumbling with something on the floor. Then it stood up, and hands caught at the hem of a garment, raised it; and when the garment was removed, the slender, curvaceous form of a woman stood before him. Her hair had fallen over her forehead. She tossed her head to fling it back, ran fingers through it, and glided noiselessly to the living-room door.

Briefly, her body gleamed like ivory in the yellowish glow. She eased the door shut. There was a slight click. She turned the knob, made certain the latch had caught, and then turned toward the bedroom guided only by the moonlight from the open windows.

Shayne took a quick step backward, frowning in deep perplexity. He felt a strong desire to stride forward, grab her, and demand the reason for her intrusion; but he did not move. He watched her glide past the door and go on to the bathroom a few feet farther on. She went in, closed the door, and snapped on the light.

Stepping forward again, Shayne stood for a moment watching the rim of light under the bathroom door. A muscle twitched in his angular jaw, and he rubbed it meditatively. In all the years he had been a detective this, he decided, was the most fantastic thing that had ever happened to him. Passion, anger, astonishment, and curiosity intermingled in him as a grin spread his wide mouth.

He crept back to the bed and stretched out on one side. As he waited for the woman’s next move, he tried to identify her silhouette, tried to figure how and why she had gained entrance to his apartment. He looked at the luminous dial of the electric clock on the bedside table. The time was 2:20.

Listening to the trickle of water in the bathroom, he concluded that he had never seen her before. He had no female acquaintances who would act in this manner, and there were no keys to his apartment in circulation among any persons of either sex.

Yet, this woman seemed to know her way about. She had ignored his open bedroom door and gone straight to the bathroom. She acted, in fact, exactly like a wife who had returned from an extra-marital assignation and did not want to awaken her husband.

Shayne’s body tingled again. He would be less than human, he told himself, if he were not intrigued by the situation. He found it extremely pleasant to lie there, in the dark with the knowledge that a naked woman was within a few feet of him, and that, in a few minutes she probably would slip quietly into his bed.

Shayne didn’t have long to wait. He heard the bathroom door open, the click of light, and the slow tread of bare feet coming toward him. His muscles stiffened involuntarily, and through half-closed eyes he watched her go around the bed. With difficulty, he kept his breathing deep and regular.

She smoothed the pillow on her side, then eased herself onto the far edge of the mattress. For a while she lay motionless, flat on her back, her arms circled above her head.

Presently she stirred, turned toward him and moved nearer. He heard the softly whispered word, “Darling,” and her finger tips trailed lightly across his chest.

Shayne gave up all pretense of sleep. He reached out a long arm, clamped a palm on her bare flank, and said, “Hi.”

Her muscles contracted convulsively under his grip. She raised herself on one elbow, and cried out in surprise and fright, “You’re awake!”

“How long did you expect me to keep on sleeping under these circumstances?” Shayne said in an amused voice.

She screamed, and leaped from the bed.

“You’re not Ralph!” she shouted in alarm.

“No,” he agreed. “I’m not Ralph.”

“Then who are you? What are you doing here?” she gasped, backing away. With one arm and hand she tried to cover her breasts, while with the other hand, she attempted to conceal the spot that Eve once covered with a fig leaf.

“Why shouldn’t I be here in my own bed?” Shayne demanded reasonably.

“But this is Ralph’s room. Where is he? What kind of trick is this?” The woman moved around the foot of the bed as she spoke. Her voice was strained with fright and anger. She grabbed at the top sheet to cover her nakedness, but it was firmly tucked in and did not give.

Shayne sat up and propped both pillows behind him. “This,” he told her coolly, “has been my apartment and my bedroom for more years than I like to remember. I’m turning on the light,” he warned. “Let’s see who you are and what this is all about.”

The woman sprang through the doorway as the light came on. Shayne glimpsed a heart-shaped face framed in brown hair, and a slender, youthful body only partly concealed by arms and hands.

“Please, please stay in there until I can get some clothes on,” she begged. “I’ll only be a minute. There has been a terrible mistake. I thought you were my husband. Please stay there.”

“Like hell I will,” Shayne grated. “And let you run out on me before I find out what this is all about?”

“No! I tell you it’s all a horrible mistake!” her voice was sincerely pleading. “I’ll get dressed in the bathroom and then I want an explanation. I don’t understand any of this, but I intend to get to the bottom of it.”

“I could do with an explanation myself,” Shayne growled. He glanced at the clock again. The time was 2:26. He was amazed that only six minutes had elapsed since he last noted the time. He retrieved his pajama top from the floor where he had tossed it earlier and pulled it over his tousled red hair. Then be lit a cigarette and leaned back comfortably against the pillows.

Shayne crushed out his cigarette, got up, and padded into the living-room in bare feet where he turned on the ceiling light. A black suède slipper and a gossamer bit of blue nylon lay on the floor beside the overstuffed chair where the vision had sat a short time ago. He picked them up, strode to the bathroom door, and knocked. “Don’t you dare come in here!” she screamed.

“I wouldn’t intrude for the world,” he retorted amiably. “You overlooked your brassiere and a shoe. Open the door a crack and I’ll hand them to you.”

She opened the door a trifle. Her hand groped through the aperture and he put the apparel in it. She drew back hastily, saying, “It was so dark out there.”

“Then why didn’t you turn on the light? You seem to know your way around pretty well.”

“I still think this is Ralph’s apartment,” she snapped angrily, “and that you’re playing some sort of—”

“Trick,” Shayne supplied ironically. “You’re beginning to sound like a broken record, baby. Get dressed and get out here, and we’ll talk about it.”

Shayne strode to the front door, opened it, and examined the lock carefully. There was nothing to indicate that it had been tampered with. He clicked it shut and went into the kitchenette where he switched on the light and tried the door leading to the fire escape. It was securely locked, and the key hung on the nail where he always kept it.

Shayne’s mouth was grimly set and his eyes were puzzled. His thoughts flashed back to several occasions when his apartment had been opened by police, or by Chief Gentry, himself. A few times both the front and back locks had been forced by criminals who had left plenty of evidence. He swore under his breath and muttered, “And now, bygod, a dame opens my door with a key, strips herself, and crawls into my bed.”

Shaking his red head savagely, he went to the refrigerator, took out a tray of cubes, and carried it to the sink. While tepid water ran over the bottom of the tray, he took two glasses from the china cabinet and set them on the drain-board; twisted the plastic container and spilled ice cubes into the sink. Then he filled the two glasses with ice.

“I just don’t know what to say,” said a girlish voice from the open archway behind him. “I’m completely confused. I’ve never seen you before in my life, but I know this is the right apartment.”

Shayne turned slowly and studied her for a moment. He said, “I’ve never seen you before, baby, but you look good.” His steady gaze went over her body. “Even with clothes on.”

“How dare you!” she exploded. There was maturity and courage in her uplifted chin and in the dark eyes that met his with angry challenge.

“Hold it,” Shayne ordered. “Stand where you are and let’s have a better look at you in the light.”

She wore a tailored suit of light material, beige or sun tan in color, that fitted her trim figure well. A vivid-yellow scarf was fluffed out under her chin. Her brown hair was tousled, giving her a youthful appearance.

“Well, what have you to say for yourself?” she asked curtly.

“Just this. My apartment is number one-sixteen. I live here. I don’t know your Ralph and I don’t know you. Have a drink?”

“I–I could use one,” she stammered.

Shayne’s back was turned while he filled the glasses with water. He swung around with them in his hands.

“How could there be a mistake?” she stormed. “The key fitted your door perfectly. The whole place is exactly the way it was described to me. It must be Ralph’s place.”

“It isn’t,” he said shortly, moving toward her. She stepped aside to let him pass into the living-room where he set the glasses on the battered oak desk. “Sit down and make yourself comfortable. Maybe we can make some sense out of this if we work at it over a drink. Cognac all right for you?” he added on his way to the liquor cabinet.

“Anything. Anything at all.” She crossed to a chair near the desk and sat down. “I haven’t got over my fright yet. I — you — well, you can’t expect me to be calm after finding myself in bed with a perfect stranger.” Her lips trembled and her hands were clenched together tightly in her lap.

Shayne’s brows quirked upward, and his gray eyes were wary. He padded to the desk holding a bottle of Croizet, gave her a crooked smile, and said, “It must have been quite disconcerting, if you’re telling the truth.” He began pouring cognac into her glass, and added, “Say when.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw her stiffen.

“What do you mean?” she flared. “Of course it’s the truth. Do you think I intended to go to bed with you?” Her glass was full to the brim. He filled his own glass and said amiably, “It would be a flattering assumption. I confess no woman has ever been so smitten with my charms that she forced entrance to my bedroom, but I can be optimistic, can’t I? If I hadn’t opened my big mouth so fast there in the beginning, maybe—”

“You — you beast!”

Shayne lifted his glass, held one out to her, and said, “Skip it. Let’s drink to what might have happened.”

A flush spread over her cheeks and she lowered her eyes as she took the glass in a trembling hand. “I’d have known,” she stated flatly. “Before you spoke a word, I sensed it wasn’t Ralph. But I kept telling myself it had to be. Don’t you see? Even when you said ‘Hi’ in a voice that sounded strange, I was so sure in my own mind—”

“Your drink,” Shayne interrupted. “It’s spilling. Suppose we drink to your husband. Then,” he went on firmly, “you can start at the beginning and tell me how you came to mistake my apartment for his.”

She took a drink, sputtered and coughed, reached quickly for the ice water, and gulped a mouthful. She regained her composure after a moment. The cognac seemed to ease her tense muscles. “I don’t know,” she murmured, “just where to start, because I still don’t understand. I was definitely told apartment one-sixteen. And the key fitted. Everything here is just the way I expected it to be — the kitchen door there, the bathroom, and bedroom.” She looked around with, wide, wondering eyes.

“Someone told you that your husband would be asleep here tonight?” Shayne asked patiently. “Someone gave you a key to my apartment so you could slip in? Why? I don’t know anyone who’d play a trick like that. Was your husband supposed to be expecting you?”

“Oh, no,” she answered hastily. “He didn’t know. That was the whole thing, don’t you see?” She took a small sip of cognac, and set the glass on the desk. “That’s why I undressed so quietly in here. I didn’t dare turn on a light for fear of wakening him. I knew that if I could just, you know, get in bed with him before he knew I was there, he’d have to—” She paused, her face crimson. “Can’t you see I had to do it?” she burst out. “Because I know he still loves me. It’s just his crazy pride. I had to have a chance to break it down, and show him that nothing is really different — that he’s still my husband, and I’m still his wife. You do understand, don’t you?” she ended, leaning tensely toward him.

“Hell, no,” said Shayne curtly. He took a sizable drink of cognac, leaned back in his swivel chair, and lit a cigarette. “Now, start at the beginning. What’s your name?”

“Nora Carrol. Mrs. Ralph Carrol.” She glanced down at a plain platinum wedding band and a diamond solitaire. She turned the rings on her finger as she continued, “We live in Wilmington. That is, we did, until Ralph came to Miami a few weeks ago to establish residence for a divorce.” Her shoulders sagged, and she lapsed into silence.

“And?” Shayne questioned sharply.

She lifted her face. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. Shayne got up, padded into the bedroom, and returned with a handkerchief. Flipping it from a square, he tossed it in her lap. She wiped her eyes and face, drew a long breath, and expelled it with a tremulous sigh.

“I suppose I have to tell you all of it. You’ll never believe me unless I do. Well, we’ve been married less than a year. We were terribly happy. Ralph was so sweet, at first.

“Then he started getting those anonymous letters accusing me of the most dreadful things. He didn’t believe them, of course, but when they kept coming he began wondering. He started spying on me. That made me angry, because he didn’t love me enough to have faith in me.

“So, I did a dreadfully foolish thing. I began flirting to get back at him. And then, there was a week-end party and I–I drank too much.” She jerked herself erect and added in a stricken voice, “Well, I made a damned fool of myself.” She covered her face with Shayne’s handkerchief.

Shayne took a long drink, lit another cigarette, and waited patiently.

Nora Carrol dropped the moist handkerchief in her lap and resumed. “I don’t really blame Ralph for being angry and leaving home before I could even try to explain and ask him to forgive me. But he left me such a curt note, I felt awful. He wouldn’t answer my letters, and he wouldn’t talk to me when I called him long-distance. So, I came to Miami. It was just too terrible for words! He wouldn’t let me go to his room! When I tried to talk to him in the lobby he cut me dead. Then, he checked out of the hotel that very night, and nobody knew where he went.”

Shayne said, “H-m-m. When was all this?”

“About two weeks ago.” Nora Carrol took a drink of cognac, washed it down with ice water, and continued. “I went back to Wilmington and talked to our lawyer there. He tried to help me and was very understanding, but he said there wasn’t a thing in the world I could do if Ralph was determined to get a divorce.

“You see, he had plenty of evidence from that horrible week-end, and he said I didn’t have a chance of getting alimony or anything.” She stopped talking suddenly. Her brown eyes were dull and inscrutable behind a mist of tears.

Shayne sipped cognac, smoked, and waited. When she showed no sign of continuing the story, he said bluntly, “But you didn’t give up.”

“No. I was just thinking. You see the lawyer told me there was one chance, a slim one, for me. I love Ralph so much I was ready to grab at anything. So, when he outlined the plan, I didn’t hesitate for a moment.”

“What sort of plan?” Shayne demanded.

“Well, he said that if I could find out where Ralph was staying, and if I could persuade him to come back to me for just one night it would be enough to nullify what I had done. It would do away with Ralph’s grounds for divorce — everything. There’s something in the law about it. I don’t quite understand, but it seems that if a husband takes his wife back after, well, after she’s made a mistake like I did, then the law says it doesn’t count and can’t be used against her as evidence later.”

Michael Shayne emptied his brandy glass. He nodded slowly, avoiding her eyes. “So that’s what you planned to do? Slip into your husband’s bed and use your sex appeal to win him back, at least for one night. After that, no matter how much he wanted to be rid of you, he wouldn’t have further legal grounds for a divorce action.”

“You make it sound depraved and indecent!” she flared angrily. “It’s not true. I do love Ralph, and I know he loves me. All I could think of was making him remember how much we loved each other so he would forgive me, and we could start all over again.”

“So, we come to tonight,” the redhead said casually. “Fill me in on that.”

“I can’t,” she said brokenly. “I can’t explain it at all. All I did was follow Mr. Bates’s instructions to the letter.”

Shayne’s eyes were very bright. He swiveled forward in his creaky desk chair and asked, “Who is Bates?”

“Why, he’s our lawyer in Wilmington. I just told you.”

Shayne creaked back and said, “Go on, Mrs. Carrol.”

“Well, he, Mr. Bates, suggested that we might get a detective in Miami to find out where Ralph had moved to. Then I could try once more for a reconciliation. It all seemed so simple and logical when we planned it in Wilmington,” she went on in the faltering tone. “A detective was to get a key to Ralph’s room. All I had to do was unlock the door and slip in sometime after midnight. I just knew it would work.”

“Sure, it would have worked. You would have had him right back if you’d gotten into his bed instead of mine. The question is, how the devil did you make such a mistake?”

“I don’t know,” she cried wildly, straining forward with her hands clenched. “Do you think I would have subjected myself to this — this inquisition if I had known? I flew down from Wilmington yesterday and checked in at the Commodore. Everything was arranged. There was a message for me from the detective, enclosing a key to Ralph’s room and a sketch of the apartment, so I could get around in the dark without waking him too soon. I was to wait in my room until the detective phoned that Ralph came in for the night. He called me about one o’clock. I waited awhile, until I felt sure Ralph would be asleep; then I taxied over here and slipped quietly upstairs. And that’s all.” She made a gesture of finality with her hands, reached for her cognac glass, took a long swallow, chased the liquor with ice water, and sank back in the chair as though exhausted.

Shayne tugged at his ear lobe, his gray eyes somber. He considered her story and wondered how much of it was true. Her words and her tone had the ring of sincerity, but it was impossible for him to understand how anyone could have mistaken his apartment for the one occupied by her husband, considering the years he had lived here and how well known he was to all the employees.

Shrugging his wide shoulders, he swiveled forward and picked up the telephone, waited a moment until a hoarse and unfamiliar voice said, “Yes, sir.”

He frowned at the instrument and asked, “Is this Dick?”

“No, sir. Dick is sick and I’m substituting for him. Can I help you?”

Shayne hesitated, then asked, “Do you have a Ralph Carrol registered here?”

“One moment, please.”

Nora Carrol slid to the edge of her chair. “Please,” she pleaded, “oh, please don’t tell him.”

Shayne held up a broad palm for silence and covered the mouthpiece with his fingers. “Hold it,” he whispered. “Let me find out if your husband is in this hotel.”

He waited a moment.

“Mr. Ralph Carrol is in two-sixteen. Shall I ring him, sir?” the clerk asked.

Shayne hesitated, then said, “No, thanks. Skip it for now.” He slowly cradled the receiver and said, “Your husband is in two-sixteen, one floor directly above. Could you have mistaken the number?”

“No. That is, I don’t see how I could have. The key opened your door. The same key wouldn’t fit both of them, would it?”

“If it does,” Shayne growled, “the management is going to get hell in the morning. Let’s see that key.” He held out a broad palm and waited while she picked up a black suède purse. After a period of digging and fumbling she produced a flat brass key and handed it to him.

Shayne observed its shiny newness, turned it over and found that it had no room number stamped on it. Otherwise, it appeared to be a duplicate of the familiar one he had carried on his key ring for so many years. He shrugged, tossed it on the desk, and asked, “Do you want to go up one flight and try it on your husband’s door? He should be sound asleep now, and you should be able to seduce him without too much trouble.”

Nora Carrol sprang to her feet, and said angrily, “You’re insufferable! You make my wanting Ralph back sound cold-blooded and bitchy.”

“Maybe,” said Shayne moodily. “I’m sore at being wakened so enticingly and so futilely. Call me tomorrow and let me know how you make out.”

“Thanks for releasing me,” she replied acidly, “and I hope I never see you again.” She took a couple of steps toward the door, but stopped abruptly as heavy, measured footsteps sounded in the corridor.

A knock sounded on the door, hard and insistent. Running to Shayne, she breathed, “Do you suppose they called Ralph from the desk to say you’d asked about him? If he finds me here with you like this—” Her eyes were frantic, and her gesture indicated Shayne’s pajamas and bare feet.

Shayne was on his feet. “Whoever it is,” he said swiftly, “get into the bedroom and keep out of sight.” He picked up her two glasses as he spoke and shoved them into her hands. Nora sprinted into the bedroom and closed the door.

A louder knock came, accompanied by a gruff voice that ordered, “Open up.”

Shayne glanced over his shoulder to make certain the bedroom door was closed, then opened the front door.

He scowled at the florid-faced, bulky man who stood on the threshold.

“Thought I recognized your voice, Will,” he said casually. “Come in and tell me what the hell keeps you awake at this hour of the morning.”

Chapter two

Police chief Will Gentry had been Shayne’s friend and antagonist for many years, and a frequent visitor to the detective’s second-floor suite. He entered the room stolidly and glanced with interest at the glass of ice water and empty cognac glass on the desk.

“So you’re up, too,” he pointed out mildly. “Bad conscience keep you awake?”

Shayne closed the door and followed him to the center of the room while Gentry settled himself in the chair Nora Carrol had just vacated.

“Too hot to sleep,” the redhead replied. “My conscience is as pure as a lily right now.” He seated himself, picked up the cognac bottle, and said, “Drink?”

Will Gentry shook his graying head and took a thin black cigar from his breast pocket. “Too hot for drinking, too,” rumbled Gentry. He bit off the end of the cigar and lit it, then asked, “What do you know about Ralph Carrol?”

Shayne’s glass was against his lips. He held it very still, arched ragged red brows meditatively, and didn’t reply for at least twenty seconds. He set the glass down and asked, “Who was that again?”

“Carrol. Ralph Carrol.”

“Oh, yeh, Carrol. I thought that was what you said. What’s your interest?”

Gentry’s slightly protuberant eyes met Shayne’s in a level gaze. “I’m asking the questions right now, Mike. How well do you know Carrol?”

“I don’t,” said Shayne promptly.

“Don’t waste time lying to me. When did you see him last?”

“I never saw him in my life, Will. Not to my knowledge.”

“Why did you call down to the desk a few minutes ago to ask if he was registered here?” probed the chief.

Shayne hesitated, lowering his lids over the glint of excitement and interest in his eyes. Finally, he blurted out, “How the devil do you know that? It hasn’t been more than five minutes ago.”

“That’s why I’m particularly interested,” Gentry told him patiently.

“There could be a thousand reasons,” said Shayne lightly. “Maybe I had a date with his wife and wanted to be certain the guy was in bed and would stay put while I kept it.”

“Cut it, Mike. I just want one reason. The real one.”

Shayne sobered and said quietly, “I’m not sure I can give you the real reason without betraying a confidence. I certainly can’t without knowing your reason for asking.”

“If it’s any news to you,” Gentry rumbled, “Ralph Carrol is dead. You know better than to hold out on a murder investigation.”

Shayne’s eyes were hooded, his face expressionless, but he was thinking fast. In a sense, the chief’s statement came as no great surprise. From the moment Gentry asked his first question about Carrol, Shayne had realized that it must be something like this that placed the Chief of Police in the hotel at the same time Shayne made his query to the desk. The substitute clerk had relayed the information to the police, of course. A bad break for the detective which would not have occurred if Dick had been on the switchboard.

“In that case,” he said, after a short silence, “I think you’d better get your answers from the source, Will.” He strode across to the bedroom door, and opened it.

Nora Carrol jumped up from the edge of the bed, a question forming on her lips. Shayne led her into the living-room and said to Gentry, “This is Mrs. Ralph Carrol.” And to the girl he explained gently, “Will Gentry is our police chief. He tells me your husband has been murdered.”

She went white and swayed against him. “Murdered?” she gasped with a convulsive sob. Shayne put his arm around her waist and half carried her to a chair opposite Gentry and eased her onto it. He held his brandy glass to her lips. “Drink this,” he ordered.

Gentry had risen, his rumpled eyelids rolled high as he stared at the girl in complete bewilderment.

Nora Carrol stiffened. Resisting Shayne’s efforts, she seemed ready to spring from the chair. She looked up into Gentry’s agate eyes, then subsided meekly and drank the remaining ounce of liquor in the glass. A series of retching coughs came with her sobs. Shayne thrust the water glass into her hand and stood over her while she gulped it down.

“Get hold of yourself,” said Shayne swiftly. “Sit right where you are, and repeat your story to Chief Gentry. And tell all of the truth this time. If you lied to me in one single instance before, now is the time to change it.”

“I didn’t lie,” she protested, suddenly shaken from her shock and grief by his accusation. “Why should I?”

“I don’t know,” he growled. “But I’ll be getting some clothes on and I’ll leave the bedroom door open while you’re talking. You might just happen to remember something else, this time, that’ll be important.

“She’s all yours, Will,” he went on to Gentry. “When you’re through with her, you’ll know as much about this as I do.”

He turned away to the bedroom, and scowled heavily, as he listened to Nora Carrol’s tearful, anxious questions about her husband’s death.

Gentry parried them, giving her no more information than he had given Shayne. Ralph Carrol had been murdered and the police were in his apartment one floor up, investigating the affair, at the time the substitute clerk reported Shayne’s inquiry about the dead man.

In the bedroom, Shayne stripped off his pajamas and began dressing. Through the open door he heard the girl give Gentry the same story she had told him, with only minor and unimportant variations. Her voice broke several times when she spoke of her relationship with the dead man.

He finished dressing and strolled into the living-room buttoning the sleeves of a fresh white shirt as she completed her recital. He grinned briefly at the expression of open disbelief on Chief Gentry’s broad, florid face.

Circling the pair, he sat down in the swivel chair and refilled his cognac glass. He rocked back and listened with interest as Gentry asked the same question he himself had asked upon learning that Ralph Carrol was occupying the suite directly above.

“Could you have mistaken the number, Mrs. Carrol?” Chief Gentry asked. “Are you sure you were told to come to one-sixteen instead of two-sixteen?”

“I’m positive.” Nora Carrol was composed now, dry-eyed and tight-lipped. “It was written out in the instructions that were waiting for me at the hotel when I arrived yesterday; and distinctly repeated again over the telephone tonight.”

“I suggested some such mix-up, too,” Shayne told Gentry moodily. “A sure way to check would be to try the key Mrs. Carrol has on her husband’s door. That’s it right there on the desk. I’m interested in finding out if a key made for two-sixteen also fits my lock.”

Gentry picked up the shiny new key and studied it. “All these Yale keys look alike to me,” he rumbled. “But we’ll have to leave the test to an expert, Mike. The first men who arrived here, after getting the report on Carrol, couldn’t get a duplicate key from the new man on the desk. He couldn’t find a master key, either. So they forced the lock of two-sixteen to get in, and it’s jammed. It would be impossible to make the test right now.”

Shayne thought for a moment, then said, “Look, Will, I’m damned anxious to know whether this is just a crazy mistake, or whether this woman was given a key to my room, and sent here for some definite purpose, while her husband was being murdered. Seems to me a lot depends on that. Let’s do this. Call upstairs and have the key to number two-sixteen brought down. If it doesn’t unlock my door, then we’ll know that this key couldn’t possibly unlock his.”

“Good enough.” Gentry reached for the phone and spoke into it briefly.

Shayne went into the kitchenette to replenish his glass of ice water. When he returned, he said, “I think it’s our turn to have a little dope from you, Will. When was Carrol murdered?”

The chief removed the soggy cigar from his mouth and aimed it at the wastebasket “There was a telephone call about two twenty-five. A man called. Didn’t give his name. He was excited, and all he said was that there was a dead man in room two-sixteen at this hotel, and then he hung up. A patrol car got the flash and got here a few minutes later.

“They wasted a few minutes trying to get a key, as I told you, then they broke in. The lights were out and everything in the room was in perfect order. Carrol’s body was naked, and he evidently died without a struggle. He had been stabbed with a sharp silver paper knife.” Gentry paused, his agate eyes regarded Nora solemnly. “Did your husband own a silver paper knife, Mrs. Carrol?”

“Why, y-yes.” Her composure wilted at the question, and she began to sob again. “I d-don’t know whether he brought it with him. He m-may have. He always opened his letters with it.” She stiffened abruptly and demanded, “How do you know it’s Ralph who’s dead? There must be some mistake, some kind of mix-up like the one that brought me to this apartment instead of his.”

“The body was identified as Carrol’s by the elevator operator and the bellboy,” Gentry told her in a kindly tone. “I’ll want you to make a positive identification, of course.” He rose heavily when a knock sounded on the door. “That’ll be the key of two-sixteen.”

He went to the door, followed by Shayne, opened it, and took the key from the young patrolman who stood there. Shayne watched with keen interest as Chief Gentry tried it in the lock. The key slid in about halfway and refused to go farther. “You want to try it?” he asked Shayne.

Shayne removed the key and examined it carefully. It was old and tarnished, and plainly stamped with the numerals 216. He tried it in the lock, and as before it stuck halfway and would go no farther. Shaking his red head, he admitted sourly, “No soap,” and handed the key to the waiting patrolman.

Gentry dismissed the young officer. “All right, Hagen. Take it back, and tell Sergeant Hale to stay there until I come up.”

He closed the door. “That knocks the accidental theory in the head, Mike,” he said. “If we can believe Mrs. Carrol, she was deliberately sent to this hotel, and to your apartment tonight, with a key that opened your door, at just about the same time her husband was being stabbed to death on the next floor. What I want to know now is why.” He sat down heavily and plucked a fresh cigar from his pocket.

“That is the question I want answered,” said Shayne grimly. “And I think we’d better ask the guy who sent her here. Who is he?” he demanded abruptly of Nora Carrol.

She jerked her head up, blinking tears from her eyes. “Wh-at? Who is whom?” she faltered.

“Who is the detective who located your husband in this hotel and told you he was in one-sixteen? Who furnished you with a key to my place, and telephoned you a little after one o’clock to say the coast was clear for you to attempt a reconciliation? What’s his name and where can we locate him?”

Nora Carrol’s damp brown eyes turned slowly from Shayne’s bleak and demanding gaze to Gentry’s set and uncompromising mouth.

“I think he’s quite well known in Miami,” she said. “His name is Shayne. Michael Shayne.”

Chapter three

Incredulous silence followed her quiet pronouncement of Michael Shayne’s name. Unaware of the bombshell she had exploded, she lowered her head to dab at her eyes.

Shayne recovered his speech first. “No, by God!” he began hotly.

“Hold it, Mike,” the chief interrupted with an angry bellow. “I don’t want a word from you. Drink your cognac and keep your mouth shut. If you say one word, and I mean it, Mike, one word, before I’m finished, I’ll have you taken in and locked up until I get to the bottom of this.”

Shayne nodded morosely. He took a long drink, lit a cigarette, and said quietly, “Go to it, Will. I’m just as curious as you are.”

The angry interchange between the two men brought Nora’s head up again. A frown creased her smooth forehead, and she appeared genuinely confused. “Isn’t Mr. Shayne a well-known detective?” she asked Gentry in a meek voice. “I understand he has a very good reputation.”

“Depends on who you ask about him,” growled Gentry. He shifted his unlit cigar across his mouth, bent forward, and planted a hand on each broad thigh. “Describe Shayne for me, Mrs. Carrol.”

“Why, I haven’t met him personally. I thought I told you that. There was a letter from him, enclosing the key, waiting for me when I checked in yesterday. Then two telephone calls — one in the afternoon to check my arrival and confirm everything, and the other one at one o’clock.”

“I see,” mused Gentry. “And what sort of voice did Mr. Shayne have?”

“Why—” She hesitated. “A rather nice voice, I thought. He was very businesslike and pleasant.”

“Would you recognize the voice again?”

“I don’t know. Possibly.”

“Did he leave a number where you could reach him?”

“No, he didn’t. I asked him for it the first time he called, but he said it wouldn’t be necessary; and besides, he would be moving around and couldn’t say where he’d be.”

“This letter from him with the key and the instructions, was it on a printed letterhead? Do you recall the address?”

She frowned again, biting her underlip, then faltered, “I think so. I’m not positive, but I seem to recall a printed letterhead. It was typewritten and signed with his name,” she ended brightly.

“Do you have it with you?”

“Oh, no. Why does all this matter, Chief Gentry?” she asked. “Isn’t Mr. Shayne the one to answer these questions?”

“I’ll get to that presently. I’ll want to see that letter of his, Mrs. Carrol. When you leave here I’ll send a man with you to your hotel to pick it up.”

“But I tore it up. I didn’t know it was important, and he asked me to destroy it. I thought it was a rather silly precaution, but I did.”

“I see.” Gentry’s tone was a gentle purr, but his big, florid face turned slightly purple. “That’s very interesting. Did he say why he wanted the letter destroyed?”

“Oh, something about his taking a big chance, and that it was illegal for him to get me a key like that; and if anything went wrong, he might lose his license.”

“But you did have letters from him while you were still in Wilmington?” the chief probed.

“No. But Mr. Bates did. Two or three, I think.”

“Do you have one of those with you?”

“No. I didn’t actually see them myself. Mr. Bates handled all that.”

“How did you first contact this Michael Shayne, Mrs. Carrol?”

“I didn’t. Mr. Bates did.”

“And this was two weeks ago?”

“Around then.”

Gentry grunted and settled back in his chair. He turned to Shayne and said, “So there you have it, Mike. What’s your explanation?”

“I think,” said the detective grimly, “you should introduce Mrs. Carrol to me. We neglected that little nicety when we met so informally about an hour ago.”

“Then she’ll probably be quite interested,” he growled. “This is Michael Shayne, Mrs. Carrol. One of the best-known private detectives in Miami, possibly in the whole country.”

Up to this point she had been listening with curiosity and interest. Now, she paled, and her dark eyes rounded in astonishment. She drew a long, audible breath, and stared at Shayne as though he had suddenly sprouted an extra head.

For a moment she seemed speechless. Then color flushed her cheeks, and her eyes flashed angrily. “You’re Michael Shayne?” she exclaimed in astonishment.

“That’s right.”

“You sent me your own key!” she raged. “You tricked me into coming here to your room!”

“I didn’t send you my key,” Shayne returned savagely. “And I didn’t trick you into coming to my room.” He jerked his head around to face Gentry. “You know me better than that, Will.”

“She’s the one who’s accusing you,” said Gentry placidly. “Not I.”

“I suppose you both think I slipped upstairs and murdered her husband,” he went on with bitter irony, “as part of my little strategem to lure her into my bed.”

“What would you think if you heard the same story?” Gentry parried angrily.

Shayne hesitated and tugged at his ear lobe. Then he said, “I honestly don’t know. But if I’d known a guy as long as you’ve known me, I wouldn’t believe a thing like this.”

“All right,” growled Gentry. “I don’t think you murdered Carrol. Does that satisfy you?”

“No.” Shayne’s voice was cold and his eyes were bleak. He stood up impatiently, shoulders hunched, his angular jaw jutting. “Somebody has lied about this whole thing,” he stated flatly. “But I give you my word of honor, Will. I never heard the name Ralph Carrol until approximately two-thirty this morning, when this dame slipped into my apartment, took off her clothes, and crawled in bed with me. If that doesn’t satisfy you, you’d better lock me up.”

Will Gentry made a slight gesture and said, “That’s good enough for me, Mike.”

“Fair enough. Why don’t you relax with a drink while we try to get to the bottom of this mess?” He strode toward the liquor cabinet, saying, “Scotch?”

“About two fingers on the rocks.” The chief turned to the girl and said, “Now Mrs. Carrol, don’t you think you’d better start telling the whole truth?”

“I have,” she vowed. “Every word is the truth. If this man is really Michael Shayne and he didn’t send me the key, and telephone me to come here last night, who did?” Shayne came in from the kitchenette with Gentry’s drink and set it on the desk within easy reach.

“You still insist this man told you his name was Michael Shayne?” Gentry asked.

“Definitely.”

The chief’s deep sigh was expelled with a sound between a grunt and a weary groan. He took a long sip of the pale drink and said, “How do you read it, Mike?” Shayne sat down and leaned forward with his arms folded on the desk, his face a mask of concentration. “Accepting her story at face value for the moment, how and why would anyone impersonate me? Let’s work on the how first.” Turning to Nora, he continued, “You say your only contact with this detective was through a lawyer in Wilmington. That is, until you arrived in Miami yesterday and took over.”

“I’ve told you over and over that Mr. Bates handled everything from there,” she said irritably.

“This Bates is your lawyer?”

“Well, he’s actually Ralph’s lawyer. But he took my side against Ralph in the divorce action.”

“And you have no knowledge of the actual mechanics of how he contacted this detective in Miami who represented himself to be me?”

“No. I really don’t know.”

Shayne considered for a brief period, then concluded, “I think we should clear up the Wilmington end first, Will. Why don’t you call Bates right now?”

“But it’s three-thirty in the morning,” Nora protested. “He won’t be in his office.”

“Then give us his home telephone number, if you have it,” Shayne cut in tersely. “He should be notified of Carrol’s death, anyway.”

She opened her purse reluctantly and took out a small address book. “It’s just terrible to wake him up like this and tell him Ralph has been murdered. Could I talk to him, please. The shock will—”

“After I’ve asked a couple of questions,” Gentry promised. “Have you found the number?”

She nodded and read it from the book through blurred eyes.

Gentry got long-distance and gave the number in Wilmington, Delaware. Shayne moodily poured himself more brandy, took a fresh handkerchief from his pocket, pressed it into Nora’s hand.

Only a few seconds elapsed before he said, “Mr. Bates? Chief Gentry calling from Miami. A man who is registered in a hotel here as Ralph Carrol of Wilmington has been murdered. I understand he was a client of yours.” He waited placidly while an excited voice crackled into the receiver and mingled with Nora’s audible sobs.

“No, we haven’t any real clue as to the killer yet. But there are a couple of questions you can answer. Is it a fact that you advised and aided Mrs. Carrol in coming to Miami yesterday to attempt a reconciliation with her husband?”

He nodded his head while listening to the lawyer’s reply, then said, “I see. Yes, she’s right here and wants to speak to you as soon as I’ve finished. It appears right now that her husband was killed before she was able to see him. The important thing I need from you right now, Mr. Bates, is the name of the private detective in Miami who located Mr. Carrol for you, and made the arrangements for Mrs. Carrol to enter her husband’s suite in the middle of the night.”

Again he listened, then sent a sardonic glance toward Shayne as he said, “Shayne, eh? Michael Shayne. Yes. I do know him personally. That confirms Mrs. Carrol’s story, vehemently denied by Shayne.”

The redhead came to his feet, reached for the phone, and demanded angrily, “Let me talk to him, Will. I’ll cram that lie down his throat.”

Gentry fended him off with a curt gesture and a stony look. “That’s right,” he continued. “Shayne is here with me, too, and denies categorically ever hearing of you or the Carrols before tonight.”

He was listening again and shaking his head at Shayne’s impatient attempt to get hold of the phone. “I agree that it doesn’t seem to make sense either way, Mr. Bates.”

“Ask him,” Shayne demanded hoarsely, “how he claims to have contacted me. How, and to what extent he is supposed to have communicated with me and me with him.”

Gentry nodded and relayed the questions to the Wilmington lawyer. After a moment he covered the mouthpiece with his palm and said to Shayne, “He wrote to you a couple of weeks ago, briefly outlining what Mrs. Carrol planned, and you replied promptly offering to do the job for five hundred in cash, if he could fix it to get Carrol registered in this particular hotel. You claimed to know the layout of the apartments and the management here, and said you wouldn’t have too much trouble getting a key. As Carrol’s lawyer, Bates was in touch with him all the time, and he suggested that Carrol come here, giving some excuse that Carrol accepted.”

“Nice ethical lawyer,” Shayne grated, “setting his own client up for the kill.”

“That’s not true,” Nora protested. “Mr. Bates is nice. He was doing it for me — for both of us, really, because he felt that Ralph would regret the divorce later.”

Gentry gave not the slightest evidence that he had heard the woman. His rumpled lids were lowered at half-mast. “Bates’s story is that Michael Shayne steered Carrol to this hotel, got his five hundred cash in advance, then telephoned Bates two days ago to say that the key was ready for Mrs. Carrol when she arrived,” he reported solemnly, ruefully. “Also, he wired Michael Shayne to expect her at the Commodore yesterday and to take over from there. He sounds factual as hell, Mike, with all the data at his finger tips.”

“Every word of it is a goddamned lie,” Shayne burst out. “Good Lord, Will! You can go through my office files. Ask Lucy. I can prove I never wrote those letters or sent any wires. Lucy will verify that. Everything goes through her, as you know.”

Gentry shook his head slowly. “I just don’t get it,” he said in a low rumble. “If you’re lying—”

A voice was rasping through the receiver, and he uncovered the mouthpiece to say, “Perhaps you’d like to speak to Mrs. Carrol now.” He held the instrument out to her.

She seized it eagerly and exclaimed, “It’s Nora, Mr. Bates. I just don’t know anything. I didn’t even see Ralph before they told me he was dead. It’s all so horrible!” She paused, listened, nodded her head, and continued. “Yes. Everything was fixed for me to go to his room. The key was at the hotel just as it was arranged, and the detective phoned me twice. Only—” Her voice faltered on a convulsive sob. “Only there was some awful mistake. It was the wrong apartment. I got into the detective’s room instead of Ralph’s. Yes,” she accented shrilly. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He sent me the key to his own apartment here at the same hotel, and he was waiting for me — in bed. He pretended he was asleep when I slipped in, thinking it was Ralph. I don’t know, Mr. Bates. I think they’re all in it together. The Chief of Police is a crony of his, and you’d better come down here.”

The rangy redhead growled an angry expletive and snatched the instrument from Nora’s hand. “Michael Shayne speaking,” he rasped. “Mrs. Carrol is right. You’d better high-tail it down here fast. And bring all the evidence in your possession purporting to back up your story.”

“I will certainly do that, Mr. Shayne.” The lawyer’s voice was precise and icy. “If Mrs. Carrol is telling me the truth—”

“If she’s telling the truth,” Shayne broke in savagely, “then you’re lying your fool head off. I tell you—”

“I refuse to discuss the matter further over the phone with you, Shayne,” Bates cut in. “Please put your friend, the Chief of Police, on the wire again.”

Shayne snorted with disgust and handed the phone to Will Gentry who said curtly, “Gentry speaking.” He listened for a time, his face gradually turning the color of raw beef and his eyes narrowed to slits. Then he said, “That’s exactly what we want you to do, Bates. If you’re not in my office by one o’clock tomorrow — today, that is, I’ll have a warrant served on you in Wilmington.”

He slammed the receiver down and fixed his agate gaze on Shayne. “God help me if you’ve put me out on a limb this time, Mike. Mr. Bates is convinced that the Miami police force is in a dastardly plot with you to rape Mrs. Carrol and murder her husband. He’s flying down in the morning with documentary evidence and all the necessary legal writs to put us both in Raiford for life.”

Shayne managed a crooked grin. “That’s just fine, Will. There’s nothing I’d rather see right now than Lawyer Bates’s documentary evidence.”

Gentry picked up his glass and drank its watery content, grunted, and settled back in his chair. He took another cigar from his pocket, lit it, and puffed a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling.

Shayne turned to Nora Carrol and said, “There’s going to be a showdown. Whatever cute plan you and your shyster lawyer had, when you came down here, is going to blow up right in your faces. You’d better get out from under while you can, baby. If you didn’t kill your husband, you’d better spill the truth, so we can find out who did.”

“I? Kill Ralph?” She had been leaning back, her head resting comfortably against the chair, her eyes partly closed. She lifted her shoulders wearily and said tearfully, “I’m so tired and so confused! Can’t I go now, please?”

Will Gentry put his big hands on his chair arms and pushed his bulky body up from the deep chair. “I guess we’ve done about all we can here. There’s still the formal identification of your husband’s body. If you’ll come upstairs with me, Mrs. Carrol, we can get it over with.”

She shuddered, buried her face in Shayne’s big handkerchief, and said in a muffled, pleading voice, “Is it necessary, Chief Gentry? You said the — the body had been identified by people here in the hotel.”

“With all the impersonations floating around,” he told her gruffly, “we can’t be certain that the man registered here as Ralph Carrol is actually your husband. You’re the only one who can make a positive identification, and it might clarify a lot of things.”

Nora Carrol removed the handkerchief from her face and sprang to her feet. Her eyes brightened, and she said hopefully, “Then you think it might not be Ralph, after all?”

“That remains to be seen,” he told her. “Come along and we’ll find out.” He took her arm in his pudgy palm and propelled her toward the door, saying, “Stick around, Mike. We’ve got things to talk about.”

“Want me to come along?”

“No. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

The telephone rang when Gentry and Nora Carrol reached the door. Gentry stopped, turned, and listened when Shayne answered it. When a man’s high-pitched and excited voice came over the wire, the redhead pressed the receiver tight against his ear, hoping to keep the sound from Gentry’s range of hearing.

The man was saying, “Shayne? Am I glad to reach you! You’ve heard about Carrol, huh?”

Shayne arched his ragged brows at Gentry, groaned, and said into the mouthpiece, “For chrissake, honey, why don’t you go to bed and sleep it off? Do you know what time it is?”

Gentry hesitated briefly, then opened the door and went out with Nora, leaving it ajar. Shayne listened for the chief’s stolid footsteps in the corridor with one ear, and heard his caller’s plaintive words with the other.

The man said, “What’s the matter? Did I wake you up? This here is Ludlow talking. Don’t you know about Carrol?”

“What about him?” Shayne demanded cautiously as the footsteps outside died away.

“He’s dead. He was dead when I got there, Shayne. Look, I don’t know what this is all about or how much I’m on the spot, but I can’t afford any trouble. If there’s any chance of me being fingered in this, I want to get my story in first. I didn’t give my name when I reported to the cops. I don’t know how you figure in it, but I know your reputation, and I know you’ll give it to me straight. Can you keep me out of it? Or should I quick call headquarters again and say I was scared the first time and didn’t know what I was doing, and then give them all the dope?”

Shayne heard a wheezy, long-drawn breath over the wire, as though Ludlow had not taken time to breathe during his long, rapid recital. He asked sharply, “How did you get my phone number?”

“From Information. I didn’t think about it at first. I knew you wouldn’t be at your office. That’s why I didn’t call you before the police. But I got to worrying about them dragging you into it, and then you telling about me, and I’d be in a spot for not coming clean right away. How do we play now?”

Shayne was thinking fast. “Who did you say this is?” he asked in a low voice.

“Ludlow. You know.” There was a gasp, then a pause. “This ain’t Shayne,” he yelped. “The cops are already—” A sharp click stung his eardrum.

Shayne cradled the receiver slowly and sat tugging at his ear lobe, trying to remember someone named Ludlow, when the telephone rang again.

He picked up the receiver and heard the substitute operator on the lobby switchboard saying, “Here’s Mr. Shayne now.”

“I’ve been trying to get you,” a husky voice complained. It was furred with sleep or with too many drinks, “I’ve just heard the shocking news about Ralph Carrol over the radio. Nora’s name wasn’t mentioned. Do you think she is involved?”

“Who’s calling?” Shayne asked.

“You wouldn’t know my name, but it’s very important that I see you at once, Mr. Shayne. If the police don’t already know, we’ve got to keep Nora out of it. I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars to forget everything you know about tonight.”

Shayne said, “Ten grand is a nice round sum. Who’s offering it?”

“It doesn’t matter, does it? I have the cash. All I need is your assurance that you won’t tell the police about Nora.”

Shayne said, “I think we’d better talk this over. Where are you?”

“Not so fast,” the furry voice objected. “How do I know you’re not already in touch with the police?”

“You don’t. But if I don’t get away from here quick I will be in touch with them.” He glanced at his wrist watch. Gentry had said he’d be back in five minutes. Four of them were gone. He had a minute left. “Where can we meet?”

“I don’t trust you,” the husky voice said querulously. “I’ve heard all sorts of things about your tricks. If you’re on the level and willing to keep your mouth shut for ten thousand dollars, leave there as soon as you hang up and drive north on Biscayne Boulevard. It’s three forty-two by my watch. You should reach Seventy-Ninth Street about four o’clock. Pull into the closed gasoline station on the southeast corner and wait there for me. If you’re on the square and there are no cops, you’ll get your money.”

Shayne said, “I’ll be there at four o’clock, in a black Hudson, and alone.” He broke the connection, got up, and went to the front door which Gentry had left open. He listened for a second, and hearing no sound from above, Shayne closed the door quietly and hurried back to the telephone.

He gave Lucy Hamilton’s number, and when her sleepy voice answered he said rapidly, “Listen carefully, angel, and don’t ask questions. Get dressed fast. A light-colored suit, if you have one. Wear a yellow scarf fluffed out at your throat. Bareheaded. Call a taxi while you’re dressing. Go to the Commodore Hotel and ask at the desk for your key. You’ve forgotten your room number, having just checked in yesterday afternoon. You’re Mrs. Ralph Carrol, or Nora Carrol, from Wilmington, Delaware. If they insist you took your key with you when you went out about one o’clock, say you lost it or something; but get a key to Mrs. Ralph Carrol’s room and get inside. Look for a letter to Mrs. Carrol from Michael Shayne giving a sketch of the layout of my apartment. It should be easy to find. Then get out in a hurry, and back to bed. I’ll see you later on at the office. Got it?”

“I think so,” Lucy told him “Is anything wrong, Michael?”

“Plenty. You’ve got maybe ten minutes to get that letter and get out of there. Good luck.”

Shayne hung up, sweat streaming down his trenched cheeks. He long-legged it to the door, grabbed his hat from a hook near by, went out and down the corridor to a side stairway leading to an exit that didn’t take him through the hotel lobby.

Chapter four

Lucy Hamilton held the receiver to her ear and broke the connection with her finger, then dialed from memory the number of a taxicab company that she had called many times before. She gave her address and asked for a cab to come at once.

She stripped off her nightgown on the way to her bedroom, tossed it on the bed, hurried into the bathroom where she splashed water over her face, patting it dry as she went to the clothes closet.

A light suit, Michael had said. She found a creamy-beige pongee. Hastily she donned panties, bra, and a slip, then, the suit. Stockings and pumps took another minute. Frantically searching through a drawer for a scarf, she found one of canary-yellow with small black figures. She tied it around her neck, fluffed the ends out, ran a comb through her brown curls, took three one-dollar bills from her purse, and tucked them into her coat pocket. She grabbed a compact and lipstick and raced from the apartment.

It had taken less than five minutes, she thought breathlessly, as she descended the stairs. Another three to reach the Commodore, and she would have two minutes left of the ten Shayne had allotted her for the assignment.

A taxi swerved to the curb. Lucy got in and said, “The Commodore Hotel. And please hurry.”

The cab pulled away with a jerk that sent Lucy back against the seat. Pulling herself erect she opened the compact and leaned forward to apply lipstick and a dusting of powder in the faint glow of light from the meter box.

There was no time to ask herself questions, or to wonder why she had been aroused at this hour to attempt illegal entry to some woman’s room in search of a letter signed by her employer.

To say that this was merely routine, that she was accustomed to such assignments, and accepted them in her stride without question, would be an exaggeration. But several years’ service as secretary to the redheaded detective had taught her something about the nuances in his voice, and his curt orders tonight left her in no doubt as to the urgency of this task.

There would be time for questions later. Right now, Lucy concentrated on getting her face fixed and on achieving enough poise to enter the lobby of a strange hotel and convince the night clerk she was a guest named Mrs. Carrol, who had mislaid the key to her room and, also, foolishly forgotten the number.

The taxi swerved onto Biscayne Boulevard, and pulled up in front of the hotel entrance, with brakes squealing. The meter showed thirty cents. Lucy pressed a dollar bill into the driver’s hand, left the taxi without waiting for change, hurried to the revolving door, and swung through into the empty lobby. She slowed her steps and walked sedately to the desk.

A thin young man tried to hide the end of a prodigious yawn, when he saw her coming. Lucy used her nicest smile when she reached the desk, and tried to look wistful and worried and hopeful at the same time. “I seem to have mislaid my key, or forgot to take it with me. Did I, by any chance, leave it at the desk? I just can’t remember.”

He said, “I’ll see, madam. What number?”

“That’s just it.” Lucy’s blush was genuine, her tone uncertain. “You see, I just checked in yesterday, from Wilmington. I was so excited about actually being in Miami, for the first time, that I just didn’t think of anything else. The name is Mrs. Carrol,” she added, as though she really expected him to recognize her and the name was merely redundant information.

The clerk consulted a card file briefly, slid one partially out, and asked, “Mrs. Ralph Carrol?”

“Of course,” said Lucy.

“Room three-sixty,” he told her, then turned to the key and mail cubicles, reached into one, and took out a key attached to an oval piece of leather. “The extra is here, so you must have left yours in your room when you went out.” He held the key out to her.

Lucy wanted to grab it and run to the elevator. But she smiled gratefully and said, “How thoughtless of me. But I was so excited.” She thanked him as she took the key, and did not try to restrain herself as she tripped to the elevator, where a uniformed operator waited outside the open door. She stepped inside and said, “Three, please,” and breathed a deep sigh of relief.

On the third floor she was thankful for the bright lights in the corridor and arrows pointing directions for room numbers. She found 360 just around a corner, and her heart pounded madly as she knocked.

There was no response, and, after waiting a few seconds, she inserted the key and turned it. The door opened quietly and she stepped inside the dark room, felt along the wall for a light switch, found it, and the room was flooded with light from a frosted ceiling fixture.

Turning to close the door, she heard movement behind it. Suddenly a blanket descended over her head, shutting out the light and completely enveloping her body.

Instinctively she fought back in wild panic, but strong arms pinned her arms against her body. Then she was lifted in the air, smothering and gasping for breath, and carried across the room where she was dumped on the bed. A man’s weight held her down.

Her feet were free, and she kicked wildly, but something was tightened around her waist. It felt like a strong belt or strap, imprisoning her arms in the dark folds of the blanket. She was left like that, kicking and struggling to free herself.

She pulled one hand free, loosening the band so that the other hand slipped out easily. She twisted and tugged frantically, her lungs stifling for lack of oxygen. She felt herself rolling off the bed. She landed on the floor with a dull thud, staggered to her feet, and pulled the blanket upward inch by inch until her head was free. Drawing in a deep breath of air she sank down on the edge of the bed and looked around.

She was alone. The light was still on and the door closed. The band, that held her a prisoner in the blanket, was a wide red patent-leather belt with a large silver buckle. She unbuckled it with trembling hands, dropped it to the floor, and tossed the blanket over the foot of the bed.

Still trembling from shock and gasping for breath, she got up and started toward a wide chest of drawers above which a mirror hung. Her knees were weak, and she moved slowly. The top of the chest held only toilet articles. She started to open the top drawer when a key turning in the door startled her.

Lucy whirled and looked about wildly for a place to hide, but, before she could move, the door opened and a woman looked at her with wide, startled eyes. Behind her stood a young policeman, a head taller than the woman, who stared at her with wonder and curiosity.

Lucy Hamilton summoned all the presence of mind and knowledge gained as Michael Shayne’s secretary, and used one of his favorite tactics of leaping to the attack, instead of waiting to be attacked.

“Who are you?” she demanded, “and what are you doing in my room? Officer! Go after the man who just attacked me here in my room. Don’t stand there gawking.”

“A man?” Nora Carrol gasped. “In my room? I don’t see any man.” She shrank back against the officer. “What does she mean? This is my room. What is she doing here?”

“I don’t know, but we’ll find out,” he said. He caught Nora Carrol’s elbows, moved her aside, stepped forward, and confronted Lucy. “What’s this about a man attacking you?”

“Just what I said,” she answered vehemently. “I’d just come into my room — about three minutes ago — and turned on the light when a man leaped at me from behind the door and threw a blanket over my head. See it there on the bed all rumpled up? Then he threw me down and buckled that red belt around my arms. I had a terrible time freeing myself. You must have met him in the hallway!”

The patrolman looked at Lucy’s tousled hair, at the belt, and the blanket.

“Don’t listen to her, officer. This is my room.” Nora Carrol’s voice was an outraged wail. “What’s the matter with everybody in this city? Are they crazy?”

Lucy made a pretense of looking wonderingly around the room, noting the smart suitcase standing open on the stand at the foot of the bed, and articles strewn on the floor.

“There evidently is some mistake, officer,” she said in a tone of dismay. “These aren’t my things.” She looked down at the key to the room which had fallen to the floor in the struggle. “But the clerk gave me that key when I stopped for mine on the way up. I’d forgotten my number and assumed he’d given me the right key. Then, when I was attacked as soon as I opened the door—” She laughed lightly and with embarrassment. “I was so frightened I didn’t notice anything different. I just this minute got free, and was going to comb my hair before calling the police.”

She looked at Nora again, as though really seeing her for the first time, and her face brightened. “Why, we’re dressed almost exactly alike,” she exclaimed. “That must have confused the desk clerk and he mistook me for you and gave me your key. Whoever attacked me probably made the same mistake.” She took a couple of steps forward, saying, “You’d know more about your room companion’s idea of a joke than I. I’ll just go down to the desk and get my own key.”

The young officer blocked her way. “Wait a minute now. There’s something funny here. She is dressed like you, Mrs. Carrol, about the same size and all. But what about this man she claims threw a blanket over her head and tied her up?”

“I don’t believe one word of it,” Nora cried indignantly. “There couldn’t have been any man in here. And I don’t believe that night clerk made a mistake, either. I just checked in yesterday, and I don’t remember ever seeing him before. Besides, if he had given her my key, thinking it was me, he would have said something about it just now when we came in.”

“That’s right. Seems like he would.” The young policeman was completely nonplused, aware of the authority of his uniform and the responsibility that went with it.

“Maybe it is like you say,” he told Lucy. “But I’ll go down to the desk with you to check.”

“Very well,” she said with what dignity she could muster, while in her mind she rapidly figured her chances of getting out of the room, and the hotel, without being chased by the officer.

As though divining her thoughts, he closed the door and said, “You wait right here, miss,” then added to Nora Carrol, “and if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got orders from the chief to take a look around before I leave.” Nora hesitated, biting her underlip. “If you must, but please hurry, and get out and leave me alone.” She spoke wearily, took out a small handkerchief, and pressed it to her eyes; then collapsed on the bed, her shoulders shaking with sobs.

Lucy watched the officer make a superficial search of the room. It gave her a feeling of satisfaction when he didn’t find anything.

He stopped beside the bed after finishing. “We’ll be going along now,” he said awkwardly to the sobbing widow. “Lock your door on the inside, and you’ll be safe enough.” She nodded her head vigorously but didn’t reply.

He stepped over to Lucy, took her arm officiously, and led her out, saying, “I hope it was just a mistake like you said, miss, but when it’s murder, a man in my position can’t afford to take anything for granted.”

Lucy caught her breath inaudibly. “Murder?”

“That lady’s husband. She was all broke up about it when she had to make identification of his body.”

“How awful!” Lucy exclaimed instinctively.

It was murder, and Michael was somehow involved in it. If only he had told her something of what it was all about! But he didn’t, and it was up to her to play it by ear and make up the melody as she went along.

She had no idea of the consequences that might result if the police learned her reason for being in Mrs. Carrol’s room. They would know, of course, that Michael had sent her there.

She was in a desperate quandary as the elevator descended. Once she faced the clerk at the desk, and he told his story, she knew that the policeman, who had her by the arm, would insist upon taking her before Will Gentry to explain her presence in the room, and this might be extremely bad for Michael.

There was no way in the world she could avoid arrest. But if she could remain unidentified, for a time, at least, while she was locked up on some charge that had nothing at all to do with murder, it might give Mike a break. When the elevator reached the ground floor, and they stepped out, she grasped the officer’s sleeve, drew him aside, and said plaintively, “All right, then. I’ll tell you the truth. I tried to bluff you, but you were too smart to fall for it.”

The young officer seemed pleased with the compliment. He looked again at Lucy’s disheveled hair and admitted, “At first I did think you’d been attacked like you said. But all that about the clerk mistaking you for Mrs. Carrol just because you were dressed something like her and look a little like her, well, it didn’t sound like the truth to me. After you’ve been on the force a while you get a kind of feeling about things like that. What were you doing up there?” he demanded, his voice suddenly gruff and authoritative.

“I must look a sight,” Lucy parried. She ran her fingers through her hair and tried to pat it into place, thinking desperately. “Well, it was my boy friend’s idea, really. He thought it up and we’ve been pulling the same stunt for months without ever getting caught before.”

“Prowling hotel rooms, eh?”

Lucy nodded and hung her head guiltily.

“How did you work it?” the officer asked, his eyes bright, alert.

“Like tonight, you know. We’d case a joint until we spotted somebody that looked enough like one or the other of us, get a key to the room and—”

Lucy Hamilton launched into a story of petty thievery and criminal activity, alternately acting tough, begging, cajoling, and sniffling. She blamed her male accomplice who had taken to dope of late. This had made her decide to send the hop-head hopping after tonight, and get herself a decent job, and settle down.

“I swear I’m through with this sort of thing from now on. I’ll never do it again. I swear I won’t, officer,” she ended, her fingers tightening on his arm, her eyes looking up into his imploringly. “Just let me off this time, huh?”

He shook his head, gulped, and looked away from her pleading eyes. It was clear that the officer believed her story and was sorry for her.

Lucy was quick to press her advantage. “Can’t you see that it was just tough luck I got caught tonight, officer? On the very night I’d made up my mind to quit the whole rotten business. Another two minutes would have made all the difference in the world to me! If you’ll just let me go this time!”

“Sorry, miss,” he said harshly. “You’ll have to tell it to the judge. We’ll want to find this accomplice of yours, and we’ll need you for a witness. The force is working night and day to rid the community of crime,” he continued, his tone filled with pride and determination. “Come on over to the desk and we’ll talk to the clerk.” He caught her arm firmly.

At the desk the clerk looked her over with interest and confirmed her story about the manner in which she had gained possession of the key to 360. Then she was led out to a police car waiting at the curb.

Her only hope, now, was that Chief Gentry would be busy elsewhere, for at least a couple of hours, and that she would not be brought into contact with anyone on the police force who would recognize her as Michael Shayne’s secretary.

Her hope was short-lived. A reporter from the Herald was lounging at the desk when she was brought in. He glanced at the pair without much interest. Then his bleary eyes widened in recognition as he studied Lucy more closely.

He was a short, fat man, partially bald, and, as the young officer propelled Lucy nearer the desk, he jumped up and exclaimed, “What’s up? You’re Lucy Hamilton, Mike Shayne’s secretary, aren’t you?”

“Hell, no. Who’s that?” She looked him in the eye and screwed her face up defiantly. “I ain’t nobody’s secretary.”

The fat reporter whooped with laughter. “Okay, sister. But that’s what the shamus insists on calling you. What gives, Hagen?” he asked the young officer.

Hagen was plainly shocked. He studied Lucy with a puzzled expression on his face. “You say this is Shayne’s secretary?” he asked incredulously.

“Sure. Lucy Hamilton. Who did you think you had in tow?” the reporter said. “How about a story?”

“I—” He gulped and turned to the night sergeant, “Is the chief in his office?” he asked.

“Yeh. He’s expecting a report from you.”

“Hold her right here,” said Hagen nervously, “while I speak to the chief. I don’t — uh — know what the charge will be.”

Lucy shrugged and sat down on the wooden bench in front of the desk. It was evident that the desk sergeant had never seen her before, and she was determined to play her role until she was called into the chief’s office.

She studied the fat man out of the corner of her eye. She felt sure he was a reporter, but she couldn’t recall his name. He had to be the Herald reporter who had followed Shayne’s career for years. He didn’t like the detective because he had so often been scooped on Shayne’s exploits by the redhead’s close friend, Timothy Rourke, of the rival Daily News. Lucy decided she might as well play her role to the hilt.

“You, bud, got a reefer on you?” she asked in a harsh voice.

The reporter laughed immoderately, stood up, and held out an open pack of cigarettes. “Will a plain old Camel suit you, Miss Hamilton?”

Lucy said dejectedly, “I guess it’ll have to, if that’s the best you’ve got.” She took one, put it between her lips, and when he bent forward to light it, she looked up into his face and said pensively, “Can you get hold of Michael?”

He put the match to the cigarette, and, as she drew on it, he said, “Afraid not. The way I hear it, Gentry would like to do that very thing right this minute. You want to make a statement about the murder of Ralph Carrol?”

“I can’t, but Michael might give you a scoop if you could find him and tell him I’m here.”

Hagen came up to them looking subdued and harassed.

“Come with me, Miss Hamilton,” he grated. “The chief wants you.” He took her by the arm and lifted her from the bench. When the reporter started to follow them, he turned and said curtly, “The chief said alone.”

“Hey! What’s the charge?” the fat man called to him, but Hagen did not answer. He led Lucy firmly to a door in the rear and ushered her into Gentry’s office.

The chief was savagely chewing on the cold butt of a black cigar.

“Good morning, Chief.” Lucy’s voice was demure.

“What the hell kind of game are you and Mike playing, Lucy?” he demanded in a thunderous rumble.

She stiffened her shoulders and said, “I want to see a lawyer.”

“You’re going to come clean and tell me what you were doing in Mrs. Carrol’s hotel room. What’s this story about some man jumping you there?”

She said, “I want to see a lawyer.”

Gentry pounded his fist on his desk, took the soggy cigar from his mouth, glared at her, and said slowly, “If you don’t talk, Lucy, lots and fast, I’m going to have you booked as a common hotel thief, on every charge confessed by you to Officer Hagen.”

Lucy clamped her lips and said nothing.

The chief hurled the cigar butt viciously in the general direction of a brass spittoon, and stood up heavily.

“Book Miss Hamilton on the basis of her confession, Hagen,” he said in a weary voice. “I’m going home and get a few hours’ sleep.”

Chapter five

Michael Shayne left his hotel through the side door unobserved and long-legged it to the row of garages at the rear of the building. The faint light from a low-hanging moon afforded enough light for him to unlock his private garage, and back his black sedan out without turning on lights.

He followed a sweeping gravel drive that led to the street at the other end of the block from the hotel, avoiding the front entrance, where he knew there would be a concentration of police cars.

He eased into the street and made a right turn before switching on his headlights. He then drove swiftly to Flagler, and east to Biscayne Boulevard where he turned north and stepped hard on the accelerator to keep his four-o’clock appointment at Seventy-Ninth Street.

Relaxed behind the wheel, Shayne started thinking about the events of the past few hours. He began with the rustling noises he had heard coming from his apartment living-room. Everything had happened so fast after that, climaxed by Gentry’s entrance announcing Ralph Carrol’s murder, that he had not had time to think clearly and figure things out.

Now, his reaction was vehement anger that someone, somewhere in Miami might be representing himself as Michael Shayne, and in a divorce action! The sort of thing he never touched, no matter what fee was offered, much less for a lousy five hundred dollars. He shook his head viciously and told himself that this sort of thinking would get him nowhere.

Forcing himself to discard for the moment the sessions with Nora Carrol and Gentry, he went back to the telephone calls immediately following their departure. First, the man who had given his name as Ludlow had expected him to recognize his voice and know what he was talking about.

Ludlow had said, “He was dead when I got there... I didn’t give my name when I reported to the police because I didn’t know what your position was, but I know enough of your reputation... if they drag you into it, and then you tell about me, I’ll be in a spot. Wait a minute... this ain’t Shayne. The cops have already—” Then the click of the phone and silence.

That was fairly clear, Shayne thought morosely, or would be, if he were mixed up in the situation as Mrs. Carrol and the Wilmington attorney claimed. He summed up the Ludlow angle.

Ludlow had discovered Carrol’s body, reported it to the police, and was now panicky. He wanted to be assured that he could be kept in the clear. He had been certain that Michael Shayne had arranged the reconciliation scene. He had gotten Shayne’s apartment number from Information. That made sense. Anyone seeking to reach him at three-thirty in the morning would get his number from that source. But Ludlow suddenly came to the conclusion that Michael Shayne’s voice didn’t sound right. He had hung up. He had expected another voice to answer, but had been too excited and afraid, at first, to recognize his error.

Scowling through the windshield, he thought of Nora Carrol and wondered how much of her story was true.

He turned his thoughts to the more immediate future when he would meet his second caller at Seventy-Ninth Street. The man had said, “You wouldn’t know my name... but it’s very important. We must keep Nora out of it... ten thousand dollars to forget everything you know about tonight... I don’t trust you... if you’re on the square and there aren’t any cops, you’ll get your money!”

Ten thousand dollars! A nice round sum, as Shayne had told the man over the phone. But what was it being offered for? That had not been made clear. Was this caller another who believed that he had set the scene for Mrs. Carrol’s entrance to her husband’s bedroom? Or did he know the truth and was offering Shayne money to keep still about what actually happened?

There was almost no traffic on the boulevard, and the roadside filling-stations and refreshment stands were dark.

The designated station on the southeast corner of Seventy-Ninth appeared to be deserted when Shayne pulled into the drive. There was no car, and no sign that his caller was waiting. Shayne parked in front of the pumps and cut off his motor. He looked at his watch and saw it was three minutes past four. He yawned, took out a cigarette, and leaned forward to press in the dashboard lighter.

There was a faint sound in the night silence at his right. He jerked his head aside to see the figure of a man materialize in the faint moonlight from the deep shadow of the station building.

The man moved toward Shayne’s car. Still leaning forward with the unlighted cigarette drooping from his lips, his fingers on the lighter, as he waited for it to heat and pop out, Shayne watched the man come toward him.

He was medium-sized and wore a hat that shadowed his face. He stopped beside the open right-hand window and asked cautiously, “Shayne?”

The lighter popped forward. Shayne straightened with the glowing disk in his hand. This voice was husky, too, but not furred with sleep or drink as it had sounded over the telephone.

Shayne said, “Yeh. Expecting me?” He put the lighter to his cigarette.

The man said, “Yeh.” He opened the door and slid into the seat, looking at Shayne curiously. “You’re the private eye? I’ve heard lots about you.”

Shayne leaned forward to replace the lighter. From this lower position he glanced sideways and upward beneath the hat brim. His companion was young and thin-faced with commonplace features and a blond mustache.

Shayne settled back and asked, “What’s all this about ten grand?”

“Ten grand?” The young man laughed nervously. “I wouldn’t know about that. I was just to meet you here, see?” He closed the car door and added in a cautious voice, “You drive west a ways on Seventy-Ninth while I watch to make sure there’re no cops following.”

Shayne took a long drag on his cigarette. “You mean you’re not the man who telephoned me?”

“Gosh, no. I was sitting in this bar, see? There was this man sitting beside me and he asked, did I want to make fifty dollars fast. Well, with me down to my last buck, I says, ‘Sure,’ and then,” he paused, putting his head out the window to look back. “I’m supposed to make sure nobody follows us,” he said nervously. “You’d better start driving toward Little River a ways. Then I take you to him, see?”

Shayne started the motor and swung out into the intersection and west on Seventy-Ninth. “This man who hired you, what does he look like?”

“I dunno,” said his companion vaguely. “Middle-aged, I guess. Broad-shouldered and wearing horn-rimmed glasses.”

“You were sitting in a bar,” Shayne prompted. “When was that?”

“Half hour ago, I guess. I was sitting there, just killing time with a last drink before going home to the wife, I hadn’t noticed him much, until he sat up suddenly and gave a jerk that knocked over my drink. I started to get sore, but he apologized and ordered me another one. I could see he was pretty excited about a newscast that was coming over the radio.” Again he interrupted his story to look back as they rolled across the F.E.C. tracks. “Make the next right turn,” he ordered, “and take it slow for a few blocks.”

Shayne slowed down and made the turn, then asked, “What was the newscast about?”

“Mostly about a murder. Some fellow named Carrol that’d been found dead in a hotel. Stabbed to death, I think. You could tell that was what made him so jumpy. Stop here,” he ordered abruptly, “and turn off your lights. We’ll wait a few minutes and if nothing comes along I’ll show you where to go.”

The redhead cut his motor and lights, and rolled to a stop beside the pavement.

“After he bought me another drink for the one he’d knocked over,” the young man went on with evident relish, “he asked me if I’d listened to the murder report from the first. Said he hadn’t paid much attention until the murdered man’s name was mentioned. He wanted to know if I’d heard them mention the dead man’s wife.” He turned for another look at the deserted street behind them. “I told him they hadn’t, and that sort of worries me now,” he confided earnestly to the detective. “Because I hadn’t been listening careful. I didn’t hear them mention anything about the dead man’s wife, but I thought he was just curious. I didn’t think it mattered much. So I said no — you know, the way a man will in a bar. Just making conversation, sort of. And then he asked me if they’d mentioned your name, Michael Shayne. So, I said no again, and then he got up and went back to the telephone.”

The man again looked back, then said, “It’s okay, I guess. I got to be sure no cops follow us. That was the thing he told me to be careful about when he came back from telephoning. I don’t get my fifty bucks if anything like that happens. Drive back to the boulevard now, and turn north from Seventy-Ninth Street.”

Shayne started the motor, made a U-turn, cruised back to Seventy-Ninth, and turned east to recross the railroad tracks.

“I sure hope I didn’t give him the wrong steer,” the thin-faced man went on dubiously, “about the radio not mentioning Mrs. Carrol’s name. That’s what interested him most, I’m sure. Was I right, do you think? I swear I didn’t hear them say anything about a woman. Just that the police had an anonymous tip, and found the guy dead in his bed. Did you hear the broadcast?”

“No. But I’m quite sure you were right in saying they didn’t mention her,” Shayne reassured him. He reached the Seventy-Ninth Street intersection and again swung north on the boulevard. “How long do we keep this game up?”

“It’s just a little ways now. Take it easy and I’ll tell you. Is this really going to be a payoff? Is that what you meant by asking me about ten grand? That’s what you dicks call ten thousand dollars, isn’t it? Why’s the guy so worried about you bringing the cops? Is he the murderer? Gosh, if I’d thought that I’d of turned down his fifty bucks flat. But you’re used to it, huh? Playing ball with murderers? Or was it maybe the wife that did it and he’s covering up for her?”

“I don’t know,” said Shayne absently. “How far is it now?”

The young man was peering ahead uneasily. “The next turn-off, I think. Yeh, that’s it. To your right and down to the bay. That’s where he said to bring you.”

Shayne turned right off the boulevard, drove past a couple of small frame houses, and then along a deserted stretch of paved street that dead-ended against the shore of Biscayne Bay.

The moon was dipping low on the horizon and there the faintest pre-dawn glow was in the sky. His headlights picked out a parked car at the end of the street. Its front bumper touched the steel cable stretched across the road.

Shayne let his car roll up on the right side of the car and looked curiously into the front seat. It appeared to be empty.

As he bent slightly forward and down to cut off his lights and motor, he felt his passenger shift his position on the seat beside him. He started to turn in that direction when a bomb exploded against his head.

Chapter six

The morning sun, in a cloudless sky, slanted through the windshield and one window of the car. Michael Shayne’s body lay uncomfortably sidewise on the front seat, his right leg was bent beneath him, and his left foot drooped against the brake pedal.

Consciousness returned slowly. He tried to shift his numb right leg. The movement brought searing pain to his head. He opened his eyes a crack, and the bright sunlight stabbed his injured nerves like a lance.

He closed his eyes quickly, and lay for a long time trying to remember what had happened. For a while he lay inert, then memory flooded his aching head.

The ride with the young punk, the detours, and finally, their arrival at a spot on the bayfront. The car parked there had been empty. The man who was anxious to pay him ten thousand dollars to keep Nora Carrol’s name out of her husband’s murder had been nowhere in sight. He recalled his mustached companion’s description of the man who had hired him — big, broad-shouldered, and wearing horn-rimmed glasses. And he remembered the explosion.

Vaguely, he wondered what time it was, but dreaded opening his eyes again.

Bit by bit the incidents of the night floated through his mind in confused sequence, and all of a sudden he was possessed by a terrible anger. Anger at himself for being so stupid, and at the punk who had taken a shot at him.

He pulled himself up slowly to a sitting position. His head throbbed violently. He rested it on folded arms atop the steering-wheel, and kept his eyes closed.

After a while he opened them, and, gritting his teeth against the pain, he shifted his position and looked in the rearview mirror. A wave of nausea swept over him. Pain throbbed at the rear of his right temple. His hairline partially concealed the raw wound, an abrasion between the ear and the right temple. There was considerable swelling, and a circle of dried blood surrounded the injury. He turned his head carefully and looked down at the dried blood on the cushion.

There was utter silence on the isolated shore of the bay. Through aching eyes he saw that the sun was well up and shimmering on the smooth surface of the water. The other car was gone, of course, and his watch showed that the time was 9:18, and that he had been out cold for about five hours.

He got out of the car and forced his cramped legs to hold him erect. He staggered to the cable barrier, ducked under it, and made his way down the sloping embankment. Taking a handkerchief from his hip pocket, he wet it in salty bay water and gingerly removed the bloodstains from the wound and the side of his face. He took off his light suit jacket, found bloodstains on the collar, threw it across his left arm, and went up the incline with the damp handkerchief against his face.

He examined his car before getting in, and found a jagged hole in the metal top of the sedan, close to the windshield and almost directly above the steering-wheel. The impact had pushed the jagged edges of metal outward, and he knew the gun had been fired from below, and inside the car.

It was all clear now. The young man, the supposedly innocent bystander who had met him at the filling-station, and told a glib story of being hired for the job of guiding him, had drawn a gun as Shayne drove up to park beside the waiting car, and fired it when he was looking to his left, expecting danger from that direction.

It was a smart trick, he conceded grimly. Had he not turned his head leftward and lowered it a little he would probably still be lying in the front seat of his car with a bullet hole through his brain. As it was, the shot had barely grazed the bone, but the impact had rendered him unconscious.

Again he swore at his stupidity, certain, now, that there had been no other man in the deal.

He got in the car, opened the glove compartment, and took out a pint bottle half filled with cognac. He drew the cork and drank deeply. The warmth of the liquor cleared his mind. He started the motor and drove to the boulevard to join a stream of city-bound cars.

He stopped at the first drive-in he came to, and he went into a small foyer, where a rack of morning papers caught his eye. A Herald extra was inked across the front page in huge letters, and beneath it a headline in bold black type read:

Mike Shayne’s Girl Friday Jailed.

Shayne glared at the headline, picked up the extra, and went into the restaurant with it tucked under his arm.

He was spreading the paper out on the table when a shapely blonde clad in a yellow halter and sky-blue shorts came to his booth.

“A pot of coffee to start with,” said Shayne tersely.

“Coming up,” she said, and whirled away.

It was air-conditioned in the roadside restaurant, but beads of sweat stood on Shayne’s forehead and trickled into the trenches of his cheeks as he began to read.

Petite, brown-haired Lucy Hamilton, long-time secretary and confidant of Private Detective Michael Shayne, was jailed early this morning on orders from Chief of Police Will Gentry. Miss Hamilton was charged with common burglary.

The arresting officer was Patrolman Mark Hanna Hagen, who was personally commended by Chief Gentry for apprehending Miss Hamilton and securing a full confession from her.

According to an exclusive interview granted by Officer Hagen to a representative of this paper, he surprised the prisoner lurking in the bedroom of a local hotel which had been engaged the previous afternoon by another guest.

“She claimed that it was just a natural mistake,” Officer Hagen stated. “That she was a guest in the hotel and the clerks had given her the wrong key. She also tried to cover up with a story of having been attacked by some man immediately upon entering the room, which prevented her from noticing her mistake until she was caught there.”

The story went on to say that due to the early hour of the morning, and the fact that he had seen no one fleeing from the hotel, he correctly assessed Miss Hamilton’s story to be an outright falsehood.

Miss Hamilton tearfully confessed to a long career of petty hotel-room thievery, aided by a male accomplice whose name she steadfastly refused to reveal.

Shayne’s head ached and his nostrils flared with anger. He was interrupted by the waitress with a pot of coffee and cup and saucer which she set before him.

“Three scrambled eggs with crisp bacon and buttered toast,” Shayne ordered curtly. He sipped his coffee as he resumed reading the Herald’s version of Lucy’s arrest.

The next paragraph told of the modus operandi as set forth in Lucy’s confession, of Officer Hagen’s frank admission that he had no idea whatsoever of the real identity of Miss Hamilton, nor of the bombshell that would be exploded by her arrest. Thinking it merely a routine crime, the up-and-coming young officer immediately hustled her to headquarters and booked her on a Jane Doe warrant when she refused to give her name and the name of her accomplice.

At police headquarters, however, she had the misfortune to be recognized by an eagle-eyed representative of the Herald as none other than Lucy Hamilton, secretary to the notorious and headline-grabbing crime-buster, Michael Shayne.

As soon as her identity was established, Miss Hamilton was taken before Chief of Police Will Gentry for questioning where it is believed she refused to implicate her employer by naming him as her accomplice.

When questioned on this point, Chief Gentry refused to give a statement to the press, stating only that Miss Hamilton had stood on her constitutional rights and refused to divulge further information without advice of counsel.

Shayne folded the paper four ways, put it in his pocket, eased his chair back, got up, went to a telephone booth, and dialed a number.

When a man’s voice answered, he grated, “Have you read the Herald extra?”

“Mike!” the voice exploded. “Of course I’ve read it. What the devil is this all about?”

“What have you done about it?”

“Nothing yet. I’ve practically blasted the telephone system trying to reach you.”

“Hell of a mouthpiece you are!” Shayne cut in bitterly. “Take your butt in both hands and get down there and release Lucy.”

“Sure, Mike.” The voice was placating, but worried. “What’s it all about?”

“What the hell do you care?” Shayne interrupted hotly. “Get her out of jail. I need her at the office.”

“Right. Where’ll you be?”

“At my office. I’ll expect her in half an hour.”

Shayne hung up. All through the Herald article he had felt sick with a sense of guilt and responsibility for Lucy’s predicament. Now that he had unloaded part of it on his lawyer’s shoulders, he managed a semblance of a grin for his secretary’s determination not to involve him.

“The crazy kid,” he muttered to himself as he returned to the table where the waitress had placed his breakfast.

The pain in his head had subsided to a monotonous throb, and the aroma of bacon and eggs reminded him that he was very hungry. He poured another cup of coffee and attacked his breakfast with relish.

The Herald’s story didn’t bother him. They had been sniping at him, ineffectually, for a long time.

The important thing now was that Lucy had evidently been unable to get the letter he had hoped she would find in Mrs. Carrol’s room. So that angle was out. So what angle was left?

One break for him, a lucky one, was that neither Gentry nor Officer Hagen had disclosed to the Herald reporter the name of the woman whose room Lucy was in at the Commodore. If they had hooked up Lucy’s arrest with Carrol’s murder, or had gotten to Nora Carrol, and been told by her that Michael Shayne had lured her into his bed at the time her husband was murdered, there would have been an entirely different story in the Herald.

Shayne wiped sweat from his face as he considered this. It would be only a matter of time, of course, until the story did come out. A lot depended on Bates and what he did or did not bring with him from Wilmington in the way of documentary evidence.

In the meantime, there were other angles screaming for investigation. A big clock above the counter told him the time was ten o’clock. He gulped the last of his coffee, put two one-dollar bills on the table, and went out to his car.

Eight minutes later he parked his car near his office on Flagler Street.

Two huge plain-clothes men stood in the corridor just outside his office door, and both appeared acutely uncomfortable at his approach.

Controlling his anger, Shayne said, “Morning, boys,” pleasantly. “You here to drag me in for prowling hotel rooms in the wee small hours of the morning?” He recognized one of the men. Len Sturgis.

Sturgis dragged a hat from his bald head and said, “Nothing like that, Shayne. You going to open up now?”

“Sure. Sorry I’m late.” He unlocked the door, opened it, and asked, “Been waiting long?”

“Not too long,” said Sturgis.

They started to follow him inside, but Shayne blocked the doorway. “Only clients allowed inside.”

“We got a search warrant,” Sturgis insisted. “Give us credit, Mike, for waiting instead of busting in before you got here.”

Shayne hesitated, his lips flattening against his teeth. Then he stepped back. “All right. I give you credit for not breaking in. Let’s see your warrant.”

Chapter seven

Sturgis, the senior detective, gravely unfolded a document he had taken from his pocket and handed it to the detective. Shayne read it through carefully, his rangy body still blocking the doorway.

“All right. Come right in, the joint is yours.” He turned his back on them, crossed the reception room, and went into his private office, where he pulled out one of the steel drawers of a filing-cabinet and reached inside.

“Hold it, Mike,” Sturgis said from the doorway. “You know I can’t let you destroy evidence.”

“Evidence of what?” Shayne demanded.

“What we’re looking for. Your file on Ralph Carrol.”

Shayne’s hand came out holding a bottle of cognac. He said, “Everything in this cabinet is ancient history, including this cognac, I hope. You won’t mind if I destroy a little of it?” He carried it back to his desk and sat down. “Go right ahead and examine my files. If you find anything on the Carrol case I’ll be interested to see it.”

“Where do you keep recent correspondence? No use tearing everything up.”

Shayne poured cognac into a glass and took a drink. “You’ll have to ask Lucy about the current files,” he said. “I don’t know where she keeps things.”

“You know she won’t be here today,” said Sturgis patiently.

“All right. So you lock her up on a bum rap and then come crying around because she’s not here to help you go through my private papers. To hell with it.” He settled back and lit a cigarette.

Sturgis’s partner came to the door and said, “Hey, Len, there’s a file out here at the reception desk marked ‘Current Correspondence.’ Nothing in it on Carrol.”

The telephone on Lucy Hamilton’s desk rang. Shayne got up and trotted into the outer room. The other detective turned hastily toward the phone. Shayne slammed a big hand on his shoulder and jerked him back.

“Keep your goddamned hand off my phone.” All the frustrated rage that had been boiling inside the redhead since early morning was in his voice.

“Better be careful who you push around, shamus,” the big plain-clothes man growled while the phone continued to ring.

“Hold it, Gene.” Len Sturgis spoke placidly from the inner doorway. “Let him answer his phone.”

The detective stepped aside reluctantly. Shayne picked up the receiver and barked, “Hello,” but all he heard was the buzz of the dial tone. He slammed the instrument down and turned to face the detective. “Next time you get in my way like that, I’ll give you a hell of a good excuse for putting me in a cell with my secretary.”

“You listen to me, shamus,” the man began belligerently, but Sturgis stopped him with a curt: “That’s plenty, Gene. A search warrant doesn’t give you the right to push anybody around. Get on with searching the files.”

Shayne turned back to the desk, fumbled with the buttons, found and pushed the one that sent calls directly into his private office, then went back to his own desk.

Len Sturgis was standing in front of the steel filing-cabinet with all the drawers pulled out. He said, “Don’t pay any attention to Gene. What does give on the Carrol murder, Mike? You holding out on the chief?”

“I’m not holding out a damned thing,” Shayne said bitterly. “You tell me about Carrol.”

“We got nothing,” Sturgis assured him. “The guy was found lying on his bed murdered, front and back doors locked tight. No visitors anybody knows about. No suspicious fingerprints in the joint. There’s his wife — the dame Will Gentry brought up to identify him. All I know is, the chief is plenty steamed up about catching Lucy Hamilton prowling Mrs. Carrol’s hotel room.”

Shayne took another drink and, avoiding Sturgis’s eyes, asked, “How do you know it was Mrs. Carrol’s room? The newspapers missed that item.”

“Yeh. But I was there when Gentry sent Mark Hagen to take her to her hotel. I heard him telling Hagen on the side to take a look around to see if he could find a letter from you in her room. So it’s easy to figure where Hagen found your secretary, and what she was looking for. Now there’s a gal for you!” he went on admiringly. “Damned if she’s not worth ten of the jerks, like Gene in there, that I got to work with. She sure took Hagen for a ride, and he don’t even know it yet. That story he gave the Herald!” Sturgis chuckled. “You mind too much if I lift a drink, Mike?”

“Help yourself,” Shayne said absently.

So, Gentry had caught it, too? Nora Carrol’s faint hesitancy before she declared she had destroyed her letter from Michael Shayne! Well, Gentry had been in the business as long, or longer, than he, himself. It wasn’t surprising that the police chief had been just as quick to check the possibility that she was lying about destroying the letter.

His thoughts were interrupted by Timothy Rourke’s sanguine voice saying, “Hi there, Gene. You taking over Miss Hamilton’s job?”

Then Shayne heard quick footsteps in the corridor. He shoved his chair back and stood up as Lucy Hamilton entered the outer office. She wore the light suit and yellow scarf, and looked trim and personable despite her incarceration.

Shayne stepped around the desk, took her in his arms, and held her tightly, pressing her face against his chest.

Timothy Rourke sauntered in. The hard-bitten reporter from the Daily News had a cynical smile on his cadaverous face. He stopped just inside the door and struck a melodramatic pose as he declaimed, “My kingdom for a camera! If only I could get a shot of this and print it with the caption, ‘All is Forgiven!’ I might get myself an extra, too.”

Rourke was an old and privileged friend. Shayne grinned at him briefly over Lucy’s head, then slipped his fingers under her chin and tilted her face upward. “Was it tough, angel?”

“Not so bad.” She was smiling now, and her eyes were luminous. “I wasn’t worried in jail. Not really. After all, Michael, it wasn’t the first time. Remember New Orleans?”

Shayne nodded somberly. He remembered New Orleans. They had been arrested together that time. That was when he first met Lucy Hamilton. She hadn’t known him at all, but she had trusted him from the very beginning.

He took his arm from around her waist and said, “Sturgis, here, and his pal out there, have a search warrant, angel. They’re looking for our file on the Carrol case. Can you help them find it?”

Lucy shook her head and looked at Sturgis with astonishment. “Carrol? Carrol who?”

“Ralph Carrol,” Sturgis supplied. “The guy who was bumped in the apartment right above Mike’s last night.”

“Then you’re wasting your time,” Lucy told him. “We don’t have any file on any Carrol.”

Shayne shrugged and said, “There you are, Len. Right from the horse’s mouth.” He patted Lucy’s shoulder and added, “Show him where and how you file everything.” He turned to Rourke who was sitting on a corner of the desk swinging one thin leg back and forth.

“Did you and Lucy come here together?” he asked.

“Almost. She was delayed a minute in the corridor — ah — by a powder puff, I believe.”

“Where did you find her?”

“I’ve been hanging around waiting for you to spring her ever since I got the flash she was locked up. Where in hell have you been, Mike? And, for chrissake, what happened to your head? Nobody’s been able to locate hide or hair of you since you ducked out of your hotel about four o’clock. Will Gentry is fit to be tied.”

“Gentry can go fly a kite,” said Shayne shortly, ignoring the reference to his wound. He glanced at Lucy and Sturgis who were busy at the filing-cabinet, then asked Rourke in a low voice, “What do you know about this whole thing?”

“Only what I read in the Herald, and tidbits I’ve picked up here and there.” Rourke spread out his bony fingers and lowered his slaty eyes to examine them carefully. “The rumor is floating around that you’re in the Carrol murder up to your neck. I’ve heard all sorts of stuff, including something about Carrol was suing his wife for divorce and naming you as corespondent.”

Shayne grinned briefly, then said, “You can deny that one categorically.”

“How do you fit into it, Mike? Can I also deny that Mrs. Carrol was sleeping with you last night while her husband was getting himself bumped off?”

Shayne signaled for him to keep his voice low and glanced significantly at Lucy. “Are they saying that?”

“And more,” Rourke assured him. “No one seems to know what any of it is about, and Gentry refuses to make any statement. I’ve got to have something, Mike, to combat the Herald’s extra.”

“I’ll give you something just as soon as I get it myself,” Shayne promised. He paused abruptly and listened to heavy footsteps in the outer office.

Will Gentry rumbled, “Making any headway, Benton?”

“Not much, sir,” Detective Gene Benton replied. “Shayne has been throwing his weight around and refusing to help any.”

The chief came stolidly through the inner doorway.

His face was gray and rumpled, and his suit looked as though he had slept in it. “Where in hell have you been, Mike?” he demanded.

“Places,” he replied.

“You damned sure ducked out of sight in a hurry. You knew I’d be right back when I left your apartment, but you were gone when I got there.”

Shayne shrugged and said, “Someone has to solve your murder cases for you.”

“All right. So you’ve solved it. That’s just fine.” Gentry turned to Sturgis and asked, “You and Benton about through here?”

“We haven’t found anything, Chief.”

“I didn’t expect you to,” Gentry told him gruffly.

“Just sent them here to needle me a little, eh?”

Gentry looked at him with weary eyes and growled, “Why did you send Lucy to Mrs. Carrol’s hotel room last night?”

“For the same reason you sent Hagen home with her, I guess. The way she acted I had a hunch that letter she said was signed by me might still be lying around. I wanted it.”

“Why?” Gentry thundered.

“I was curious to see the signature. Damn it, Will,” he burst out, “don’t try to make something out of it that isn’t there. If I were lying and trying to cover my tracks in this thing, it wouldn’t do me any good to get hold of that particular letter. The Wilmington lawyer claims he has others signed the same way. If I were going to destroy hers, I’d have to get hold of his, too.”

“That’s what I’ve been thinking,” the chief said ominously, “for the past fifteen minutes or so, at least. I just got a call from Bates in Wilmington. His office has been burglarized and the entire file of correspondence with you has been stolen. So right now I’m wondering where you were between four and nine o’clock this morning.” He fixed his agate eyes on Shayne’s purplish wound and fished a cigar from his breast pocket.

Chapter eight

Shayne moved around the desk, rubbed his chin. thoughtfully, sat down in the swivel chair, and leaned forward with his arms folded on the desk. He said, “Sit down, Will, and let me get this straight. You say this lawyer in Wilmington claims his office was robbed last night of the file on me?”

“That’s right. Broken into early this morning. Nothing else taken that he can see. Just your letters to him and his carbons to you.” He pulled a chair nearer and sat down opposite Shayne, turned to Detective Sturgis and said curtly, “You and Benton may as well beat it. You’re not going to find anything here.”

Sturgis left the room to the accompaniment of Shayne’s blunt fingers drumming on the desk. He said absently, “So Bates’s alleged documentary evidence has disappeared.”

“Conveniently for your denial. Did you go to all the trouble of flying up to Wilmington to steal that file?” the chief asked heavily.

“I swear to God, Will, I can’t get it through my head you’re serious. From the very beginning when that woman came to my room, it stunk of a frame-up between her and this Wilmington shyster. Don’t ask me what kind of a frame,” he went on angrily. “I don’t pretend to even guess what they thought they were gaining by that story.”

“Trouble is, Bates doesn’t appear to be a shyster at all. I’ve checked on him, and the Wilmington police give him a clean bill. One of the most respected attorneys in town. On top of that, there’s every evidence that his office was broken into early this morning, around six-thirty or seven o’clock. So, you can clarify things a lot by proving you couldn’t have flown up there and pulled the job. Just tell me where you were between four and nine.”

“You’re not going to like it,” Shayne warned him.

“Probably not. Don’t tell me you were with a dame whose name you can’t divulge on account of her husband’s the jealous type.” Gentry pursed his lips over the cigar and struck a match to it.

“No.” Shayne turned his head to grin at Lucy Hamilton who was tidying the files and listening earnestly. “I wish it were,” the redhead said candidly. “You’d like it better than this. I was parked out on Biscayne Bay, north of Seventy-Ninth Street, all that time, Will. All by myself.”

“That’s just fine,” Gentry grunted. “That fixes everything up just dandy.”

Shayne put a finger tip near the raw wound. “A bullet did this. A forty-five, I’d guess, from the size of the hole in the top of my car. Will it make things any better if I get a doctor’s affidavit that a wound like that could knock me out cold for five hours?”

Lucy Hamilton hurried to him. “Michael!” she cried out. “I thought you’d just been in a fight and somebody had hit you! What is this all about? Who’s the man in Wilmington, and who is the woman you say was in your room last night? Who shot you? And why, Michael?”

She examined the wound gravely and anxiously. “I’m going right out and get some bandage.”

“Sit down while I give this part of it to Will,” he told her gruffly. “I’ll fill you in on the rest of it later.”

Timothy Rourke, who had transferred his emaciated body from the edge of the desk to a chair, sprang up from his sprawled position, and dragged up a chair for Lucy. She sat down on the edge of it, and the reporter resumed his seat.

“There was that telephone call just as you were leaving my apartment with Mrs. Carrol,” Shayne reminded the chief. “The guy sounded drunk or frightened or both, and wanted to know if we could keep Mrs. Carrol’s name out of her husband’s murder investigation. I figured I’d learn more by playing him along, and agreed to meet him. I was in a hurry to keep the date. I called Lucy and told her to get over to the Commodore and find that alleged letter from me before Mrs. Carrol got there.” He paused, turned to Lucy, and suggested, “You give your end of it, angel. What was that junk in the Herald?”

Lucy Hamilton’s face flushed. “It wasn’t junk. It happened exactly the way I told Officer Hagen. Just as I opened the door and turned on the light. Somebody had evidently searched the room. Things from her suitcase were all scattered around. I just didn’t know what kind of trouble you were in and I tried to play it safe.” She looked at the chief, but his protuberant eyes were half hidden by a puff of smoke.

Shayne gave Lucy a crooked grin and said, “You get a whole row of A’s for effort, angel. And when we get this mess cleaned up, Tim’ll make you ‘Heroine for a Day’ in a Daily News scoop.”

Rourke stopped to pat her shoulder on his way back to his chair. “And we’ll have a celebration. Just you and me.”

Gentry interrupted him with an angry snort, and Shayne resumed. “This man on the phone wouldn’t give his name, but he offered me ten grand if I could make certain Mrs. Carrol’s name would be kept out of the investigation. You can’t blame me for rushing out to check on him, Will.”

“And now you’re going to claim you sat in your car while he took pot shots at you?” growled Gentry.

“Just about,” Shayne conceded morosely. He settled back and related exactly what had happened. “It was nine o’clock when I woke up. I took time to clean the dried blood off my face with bay water and examine the car for a bullet hole, then headed toward town. I stopped on the boulevard for breakfast, and saw the Herald extra. That was the first I knew about Lucy. I called my lawyer from the roadside restaurant, then came on to my office and found two goons waiting at the door with a search warrant.”

“Honest to Christ, Mike, do you expect me to believe that story?” Gentry asked in a wondering voice.

“Take a look at the evidence, the bullet hole in my car. Get a doctor to look at my head, and tell you what else beside a bullet could have done it. Analyze the blood on the cushion where I lay passed out for five hours. You don’t think I held a gun to my own head and pulled the trigger, do you?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Gentry told him, somberly considering his cigar butt before discarding it. “This fellow you claim you met at Seventy-Ninth, he wouldn’t be the one who jumped Lucy at the Commodore, I suppose.”

“That’s out,” Shayne stated flatly. “He couldn’t be. I started as soon as I finished talking to Lucy. By the time she got dressed and to the Commodore, I must have been halfway out there. He was waiting at the filling-station, after having parked his car by the bay, and he had walked back to meet me.”

“So that makes two little men who no one can prove were there,” Gentry growled. “Plus another one in Wilmington who broke into a lawyer’s office to remove incriminating letters you claim weren’t there. How can you expect me to believe any of this, Mike?”

Shayne said soberly, “I don’t. But you can try.”

“I am trying.”

“Keep on working on it,” Shayne urged. “It’ll come easier after a while. Once you make up your mind that I’m telling the truth, you’ll be on the right track.”

“But you can’t prove a damned thing you say, Mike.”

“And you can’t disprove anything I say.”

“I’ve got the statements of Mrs. Carrol and Bates,” Gentry reminded him, “and they’re in direct contradiction to yours.”

“Okay. Let’s analyze those statements. Take Bates’s story. He claims I replied to his first letter by demanding five hundred dollars in cash before taking the case. You know damned well that’s not the way I run my business. If I were going to accept the job, I’d do it and bill the client later.

“Wait a minute!” Shayne held up a big hand to ward off Gentry’s protest. “That’s not all. Bates claims he suggested I get a key to Carrol’s room for his wife’s use in ending a divorce action. No matter what you believe about anything else I’ve told you, you know goddamned well I’d have turned an assignment like that down flat. I don’t fool around with that sort of thing at any price, not even when it’s offered in advance.”

Gentry’s broad, ruddy face was impassive. He shifted his weight wearily in the straight chair. “But for a promise of ten thousand—” he began.

“And if I were going to take a job like that,” Shayne cut in, as though completely absorbed in his own thoughts and unaware of the chief’s words, “I sure as hell wouldn’t spot the guy in my own hotel to do the job.”

“It would make it easier for you to pull,” Gentry pointed out with a weary sigh, “as Bates explained to me over the phone.”

“I’d be a hell of a detective if I couldn’t get a duplicate key from any hotel in town,” Shayne growled.

“Then who in hell furnished Mrs. Carrol with a key to your room last night?” Gentry exploded.

“That’s what we’ve got to find out.” His head wound throbbed in a dull, steady pain, and his voice was suddenly weary. “We need to know a lot more about Ralph Carrol and his wife, and Bates, before we can even begin to guess the inside workings of the deal.”

“I’m getting a full dossier on all of them,” the chief told him in a gentle rumble. “From my preliminary investigation he appears to have been a well-known young businessman. And I told you the Wilmington police gave Bates a clean slate. Damn it, Mike, are you trying to build up a hypothesis that someone impersonated you in this whole affair?”

“Either that,” said Shayne slowly and thoughtfully, “or Bates, at least, is lying from the word go. Frankly, I see the latter as much more feasible. I don’t see how anyone could impersonate me. There’s a possibility that it might be carried through, of course, after the first contact was made. But we don’t yet know what mail address or telephone number was furnished Bates for contacting a man who might have called himself Michael Shayne for some reason of his own.

“But Bates claims he wrote directly to me in the beginning. Lucy would have a record of any such letter if it had reached me here.” He paused briefly, glancing aside at Lucy, noting Timothy Rourke’s slaty eyes burning excitedly in their cavernous sockets, then turned back to Gentry’s blank stare. “If Bates’s correspondence reached this office, there is only one thing you can believe, and will have to accept, Will, and that is that Lucy double-crossed me and decided to play detective on her own. Knowing I wouldn’t touch a divorce case, she answered the letter, gave my name and her own apartment address. But I don’t think Lucy is that hard up for five hundred bucks.”

“Michael! You can’t believe that for a moment!”

“Of course not,” he assured her. “And if you had pulled such a stunt, I’m sure you wouldn’t have given a dame a key to my apartment after midnight. So you see, Will, there just isn’t any physical explanation for the stunt being pulled. Looks to me like an apparently reputable attorney in Wilmington is lying in his teeth.”

“That may be,” said Gentry after a brief silence.

The telephone on Shayne’s desk rang. As he reached for it, Gentry pushed forward in his chair. “That may be for me,” he said. “I’m expecting an important call and left word at my office to transfer it here.”

Shayne had the receiver to his ear and his palm over the mouthpiece as Gentry spoke. He motioned for silence, removed his palm, and said, “Yes?” After listening for a moment he said, “That’s quite correct. Give it to me slowly while I make a note of it.”

Lucy was out of her chair, pushing a pad and pencil within reach of his right hand. She stood beside the desk watching and listening and frowning at the notes he made on the pad.

He said, “Yes, I have all that. Thanks very much for your co-operation. If there’s anything further I’ll contact you.” He hung up and shoved the pad toward his secretary. “On the Mitchell case, Lucy. That was a Mr. Levine, general manager of the Argus Trucking Company. His records show that Mitchell did take a truck out without authorization at ten o’clock yesterday morning.” Lucy dutifully took shorthand notes of every word her employer said on the pad beneath his own scribblings, but her expression was one of complete bewilderment. Her back was turned to Gentry, but she looked up to meet the burning curiosity in Timothy Rourke’s eyes. There was a knowing grin on his thin lips.

“That cleans up the Mitchell thing,” Shayne said briskly. “Suppose you let me know as soon as you get more detailed information from Wilmington, Will. I still think Bates should come down here so we can question him about those letters and phone calls he claims to have had from me.”

Gentry’s rumpled lids were half lowered, his eyes inscrutable. He said, “Yeh,” wearily, and stood up. “I’ll send the doc over to look at your head and have my boys check your car. If the external evidence checks with your story we’ll have a little more to go on.”

“Sure. My car is in the parking-lot around the corner. You might try for fingerprints, but I doubt if you’ll find any. After putting me out like a light, he had plenty of time to wipe everything clean.” Shayne pushed his chair back and got up to accompany the chief to the outer office.

Gentry said to Rourke, “Coming along, Tim?”

The reporter shook his head lazily. “I’d like more of a fill-in from Mike. I’ll be around for a statement before we go to press, Chief.”

Gentry moved with his usual solid tread. Shayne strode past him and opened the door to the outer office. As the chief went out, he said, “This is a cockeyed case, Will. I’ll keep in touch with you.”

“Vice versa,” Gentry supplied in a clipped voice. “Don’t worry, I will, until you come clean with me, Mike.” He caught the doorknob and slammed it shut.

Shayne stood for a moment listening to his footsteps going toward the elevator, his thumb and forefinger massaging his left ear lobe. Then he turned and strode back to his office.

Rourke paced the floor, his thin nostrils flaring, and his slaty eyes burning in their deep sockets. He stopped, faced the redhead, and asked, “What is the Mitchell case, Mike?”

“Oh, that!” Shayne sat down at the desk, glanced at Lucy who looked up from the note pad in her hand with round, questioning eyes. He drew in a deep breath and said, “I may as well give it to you, both of you. I’m going to need all the help I can get from now on.”

“Did I give myself away when you told me to take notes? I’d never heard of any Mitchell case, but I tried to be calm.”

“You were perfect, angel,” he assured her. “That call was actually for Gentry, from some clerk at the airport who’d been checking flights to Wilmington for Will. He had been given this number to call, and mistook me for Gentry when I answered.” He poured himself a short drink of cognac and drank it. “Their records show that Michael Shayne bought a round-trip ticket to Wilmington on the four-twenty plane this morning and returned on a flight arriving here at nine-ten. There is going to be hell to pay when Will finds out about this.”

After a moment of shocked silence, Rourke whirled to face his old friend and said, “Then your story about getting shot was a phony?”

“No, there was nothing phony about that,” Shayne told him grimly. “But we know now that there is some guy, representing himself as Michael Shayne right here in Miami, impersonating me! It’s dollars to doughnuts he flew up to Wilmington for the express purpose of removing the files on Bates’s correspondence with him from Bates’s office.”

“Then he must be the man who threw the blanket over my head in Mrs. Carrol’s hotel room last night,” Lucy said excitedly.

“Probably,” Shayne interrupted her. “We can assume he was there searching for the same letter I hoped you’d find. Picking up the pieces and destroying all the evidence after he learned that Carrol was dead and there would be an investigation that would surely point to him as an impersonator, if nothing else.”

“But you just got through proving to Will Gentry that such a thing was physically impossible,” Rourke protested.

“I only pointed out how improbable it was,” Shayne told him moodily. “But this seems to eliminate the theory that Bates was lying. Wasn’t it Sherlock Holmes who said that after you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth, no matter how improbable?”

Rourke shook his head dubiously. “That’s a pretty important item of information to hold out on Gentry.”

“What the hell else could I do?” Shayne demanded angrily. “You saw how Will’s mind was working. With that to clinch it, he couldn’t have done anything else except arrest me. This is one time I can’t afford the luxury of going to jail. I’ve got a few hours, maybe, to find out who murdered Carrol, who left me lying for dead in my car this morning, and who is parading around as Mike Shayne.”

Gloom settled over Rourke’s cadaverous features. “That’s a fair-sized order. It appears no one has actually seen the guy. There are supposed to be those letters from him directing that payment be made in cash, but now they’ve disappeared. Where do you start?”

“With Ralph Carrol’s murder.” Shayne’s voice was abruptly vigorous and decisive. “In the end, everything must come back to that. You know anybody in Wilmington who can give me a hand getting the inside dope if I fly up there?”

The reporter thought for a moment, then said, “There’s Ed Smith on AP. He’s run their desk there for years. Want me to call him?”

“Sure.” The telephone rang as he spoke. He gestured to Lucy to take the call, saying, “Get rid of whoever it is. I think you’d better come with me, angel. Call the airport about planes, but don’t use my name for a reservation.”

Lucy drew her chair nearer the desk, picked up the receiver, and said sweetly, “Mr. Shayne’s office.”

“You stay here, Tim,” Shayne said to the reporter. “Keep an eye on things and dig everything you can out of Will.”

He turned as Lucy said into the mouthpiece, “Hold on a moment, Mr. Margrave. I think Mr. Shayne will be most interested.” She leaned forward and whispered, “Would you be interested in investigating the murder of Ralph Carrol? A Mr. Margrave is very anxious to retain you in that capacity.”

She covered the mouthpiece with her palm when Shayne said, “Frankly, this is one time I can be had, and I won’t argue about the size of the retainer.”

He took the phone and said, “Mike Shayne speaking.”

Chapter nine

Shayne listened attentively for a while, then said, “I understand perfectly, Mr. Margrave, and I’m glad to say I’m free to go right to work on it. I’ll want all the information you can give me about Carrol the first thing.”

He paused again to listen, and said, “The Roney Plaza. In about half an hour. It will be a pleasure.”

He hung up and grinned exultantly at Lucy and Tim Rourke. “Looks like I won’t need that plane reservation to Wilmington, for a time at least. Mr. Margrave is Ralph Carrol’s business partner. He happens to be vacationing on the Beach, and he’s quite displeased with the way the local police are investigating Carrol’s death.”

The lanky reporter’s brows were drawn together in a frown of concentration. “Margrave,” he muttered to himself, then suddenly jerked himself erect. “Wait a minute. I get it now. There was an interview with him in the Herald a few days ago. A blast at Big Business and the pernicious methods they use to run small competitors out of the picture. I think his firm faces a huge lawsuit brought against them for alleged stealing of patents or some such.”

Shayne thought for a moment before saying, “This gives me a basis of operation, anyway. A starting-point.”

“Does Margrave know you have a personal reason for taking the case?” Rourke asked.

“I don’t believe so. That’s something I haven’t thought through. How many people in this affair are contacting me in the belief that I’m the other one, the pseudo Mike Shayne, who was handling the job for Carrol? How about that, Tim? Has my name been mentioned publicly in connection with Carrol? I didn’t read the paper beyond the story of Lucy’s arrest.”

“I don’t think your name was mentioned in the Herald story about Carrol. There was just a short item about him.”

“Then it couldn’t possibly have been on the early newscast.” He paused, fingers drumming on the desk and his eyes thoughtful. “The two phone calls, they had to come from people who knew Mike Shayne was supposed to be smuggling Mrs. Carrol into her husband’s room. Have you heard the name of Ludlow mentioned in connection with Carrol?”

Rourke shook his head.

“Who’s he?”

Shayne related details of the first call he had received just as Mrs. Carrol and Gentry were leaving. “The man who called in the anonymous tip on Carrol, evidently. Beyond that I haven’t the faintest idea who Ludlow is or how he came to discover Carrol’s body.” He sprang up, and the swift movement brought a sharp throb to his injury. He touched the swollen area gingerly. “Does your car happen to be around close, Tim?”

“Right out front in the No-Parking zone.”

“How about loaning it to me for a run over to the Beach? If I pull mine out of the parking-lot before Gentry has gone over it, he’ll be sore and accuse me of hiding something.”

“He was going to send a man over to examine your head, too,” Lucy said anxiously. “Shouldn’t you wait here for that and let the doctor put something on it?”

“I really would need to have my head examined, if I hung around for that, instead of getting over to find out what Margrave knows. Where are your keys, Tim?”

Rourke came to his feet and suggested, “I’ll drive you over. I’ll hang around the Roney lobby while you see Margrave, and then brace him. He’ll be the lead for my story.”

Half an hour later the redhead and the reporter entered the luxurious lobby of the Roney Plaza Hotel. Rourke handed his car keys to Shayne as they crossed to the bank of elevators. “Go ahead and use my car, when you’re through with Margrave,” he suggested. “You may have a lot of places to get to. I’ll hop a taxi back to the office.”

Shayne pocketed the keys. “I’ll try to set it up for you when I leave.”

“I’ll be right here when you come down.” Rourke lifted a thin hand in farewell as the detective entered an elevator and went up, then he sauntered to a chair facing the elevators.

Shayne found the door to Margrave’s suite slightly ajar. He pushed the button, and a voice called, “Come in.”

A wide entrance hall opened onto a spacious living-room, luxuriously furnished, with an eastern exposure of wide windows overlooking the Atlantic. The curtains were drawn back and the morning sun streamed into the room. Shayne blinked at the brightness and at the man sitting beside the wheeled dining-table near the windows.

He was a big man with coarse black hair that looked as though it hadn’t been combed for days. He had heavy, black brows, a square face with a bulbous nose, and an aggressive jaw. He wore cerise pajama bottoms, and his naked torso basked in the warm sunlight, as he busily wolfed down a breakfast of ham, eggs, and a stack of pancakes.

“Mr. Margrave?” Shayne inquired.

He nodded, munched methodically, swallowed, then boomed, “You’re Shayne, I take it. Pull up a chair and join me.”

“I’ve had breakfast, thanks.” Shayne’s feet sank into the deep carpet as he crossed the room to a comfortable chair near the table. He sat down facing his host who speared half a fried egg and a generous portion of ham which he crammed into his big mouth.

Shayne was fishing a cigarette from the pack in his pocket when a woman’s voice spoke from his left. “Maybe you’d prefer to share my breakfast, Mr. Shayne?”

He turned his head slowly. She was curled up on a rose silk divan against the opposite wall. She was young and startlingly beautiful, with hair so black that it shone with a glossy, bluish sheen in the sunlight. By contrast, her face appeared unnaturally white, relieved only by the bright-crimson gash that was her mouth. She wore a white nylon gown beneath a sheer silk dressing-gown, belted tightly around her slender waist. Her feet were bare, and a pair of white satin slippers lay on the couch.

Propped against fluffy colorful cushions, her right arm dangled over the side of the couch, and she held a highball glass in her left hand. A bottle of whisky, and ice cubes in a silver bucket, stood on the coffee table beside her. As he stared at her in astonishment, she lazily lifted the glass to her lips, and returned his gaze with frank curiosity over the rim of it.

“Nonsense, Ann.” The gruff asperity of Margrave’s voice was muffled by the food in his mouth. “I’ve told you a thousand times that no sane person would touch the stuff before lunch. You’re turning into a lush, and I don’t like it.”

Shayne shifted his chair to a vantage point that included them both in his range of vision. He saw an expression of rebellious hatred cross the girl’s face and disappear, leaving her features as white and placid as before.

Margrave swallowed, took a drink of black coffee, and said, “My daughter has an idea it’s smart and modern to get half-tight at breakfast and try to stay that way all day. She simply doesn’t understand that no man could conduct business in that state. You tell her, goddamit.”

“On the contrary,” Shayne told him gravely, “I think it’s an extremely good idea.” He lifted a goblet of ice water from Margrave’s breakfast table, emptied it into the silver pitcher, and went across to the girl, saying, “Will you pour, Miss Margrave? Or, is it Miss Margrave?”

A mischievous light twinkled in her eyes. “It is,” she answered, “but anyone who defies my father and drinks with me at breakfast must certainly call me Ann.” She set her glass down and reached toward the bucket. “Ice, Mr. Shayne?”

“A couple of lumps, and make it Mike.”

Standing with his back to Margrave, he looked down with interest and pleasure at the sinuous body of the girl as she put ice in his glass and poured whisky over it. She was in her early twenties, he thought, long-limbed and lithe.

Margrave cleared his throat loudly and warned, “You’ll need a clear head for this business, Shayne. I have no intention of paying out good money for nothing.”

Ann Margrave paused uncertainly, with less than an inch of liquor in his glass. Without turning his head, Shayne said, “That’s right. You haven’t hired me yet, have you? So I’m just a guest, Ann, and you needn’t spare the horses.”

The mischievous twinkle in her eyes spread over her face and she poured more whisky. She looked up at the wound on his head and said, “Maybe you do need a big one.”

Shayne grinned at her. “You should see the other fellow,” he told her lightly, and turned back to the table with the glass half filled. “I always like to get certain things straight in the very beginning,” he went on to Margrave. “I get paid for results in my work, and the way I achieve those results is entirely my affair.” He sank into his chair, took a drink of liquor, and asked evenly, “Do you want to discuss your partner’s death? Or shall I just have this drink and forget the whole thing?”

Margrave opened his mouth to reply, closed it slowly, turned his eyes away from Shayne’s hard gaze, and dug his fork into a triangle of stacked pancakes. He deluged it with syrup and bent over his plate to put it in his mouth. After chewing and swallowing, and chasing it down with a large swallow of coffee, he said, “I do want to discuss Ralph Carrol’s murder — to retain you on the case. I merely thought, that is, I learned a long time ago that if I take one drop of liquor in the morning I’m knocked out for the rest of the day,” he added defensively.

“Some people are like that,” Shayne conceded. He set his glass down and lit a cigarette, then asked, “Why call me in, Mr. Margrave? What makes you think I can do more than the police?”

“The police!” snorted Margrave. “They’re hamstrung! They’ve had their orders already, you can be sure of that! What have they accomplished thus far? Nothing! And they won’t!” He pointed his empty fork at the redhead. “You’re different. At least I’ve heard you are. They say when you take a case you follow through come hell or high water, no matter whose toes get stepped on.”

“Whose toes,” asked Shayne with interest, “are the police avoiding this time?”

“Their masters’, of course! The entrenched power of illimitable wealth. Big Business. My partner was assassinated, Shayne, because he dared to stand up like a man and challenge the Vulcan Chemical Corporation of Delaware. That is lèse-majesté in these United States.”

“Wait a minute,” said Shayne. “Are you implying that the Miami police department takes orders from Vulcan?”

“Not directly, of course. But good God, man, let’s not quibble! It is the power of monopoly that has been challenged. When Ralph Carrol could not be bought off or frightened off, he was removed, as an object lesson to any individual who has the integrity and courage to stand up against the entrenched interests.”

Shayne settled back and said, “You’d better give me the whole story.”

“I shall.” Margrave hesitated with his fork ready to stab the last wedge of pancakes. Suddenly, he placed it on his plate and pushed the plate aside. “It’s common knowledge and a matter of record which can easily be verified. Carrol was a research chemist — a genius. He was hired by Vulcan when he graduated from college six years ago and placed under a slave contract to labor in their laboratories with hundreds of other bright young men, all seeking new ways of enriching the corporation. He worked diligently, on a miserly pittance, for more than five years. He developed various processes, over that period, which earned millions for the corporation.

“A year ago Ralph Carrol paused to take stock of the situation. He wasn’t embittered, you understand. He had accepted the position with Vulcan, fully realizing that he was placing his brains and ability at their service, in exchange for the salary they paid him. But was it a fair exchange? What did the future hold for a man like Ralph Carrol?”

The monologue rolled out smoothly and without pause. It was clear to Shayne that this was a rehearsed speech, which Margrave had delivered often.

“A continued pittance! A few thousand dollars doled out to him each year in exchange for ideas which were worth millions! In the end, after years of faithful service and giving his all to the corporation, a miserly pension. Enough to keep body and soul together until he died.

“That is what Ralph Carrol clearly foresaw in the future, sir, as he stood at the crossroads of his life and took stock. He had no capital to fall back on, only his supreme confidence in his own genius and ability.

“To make a long story short, he resigned his position and came to me for advice. We formed a partnership and I set him up in a small laboratory of his own. And there, in six months’ time, on his own initiative, and spurred on by the knowledge that he would be allowed to retain a fair share of the profits in any new discovery made by him, he justified my faith and his own by perfecting a new plastic, which will undoubtedly revolutionize the industry. It is worth millions,” Margrave went on impressively. “Once we get into large production, all the previous plastics will become obsolete. You can easily see the tremendous stake a firm like Vulcan has in such a discovery. You can easily understand the lengths to which they might go to suppress the new process or to gain control of it for themselves.”

“Even to murder?” asked Shayne dubiously.

Margrave shrugged his massive naked shoulders. “Let us not be naive, Shayne. What is one man’s life to a corporation? One man who stands between them and millions of dollars in profits? You’re not a child. I imagine you’ve investigated many murders committed for a few hundred dollars.”

“But will Carrol’s death stop the manufacture of the plastic?” Shayne asked. “Certainly, you’re not going to tell me that the secret process died with him — that you can’t go on with it.”

“No. I’m not going to tell you that, Shayne. We are already in limited production and can go ahead. No, the plot is much more subtle and ingenious than that. You see, as soon as Vulcan learned about Ralph’s discovery, they immediately brought suit to gain control by having the courts declare it actually belonged to them. That suit is now pending before the courts of Delaware.”

“On what grounds?”

“They base their suit on the allegation that Ralph actually made the discovery in their laboratories and while in their employ. He was working under a contractual agreement, you understand, which stipulates that any discovery made by him while in their employ becomes the property of the corporation. It is their contention that Ralph realized the tremendous value of the discovery as soon as he came upon it, and that he suppressed the truth. That instead of reporting it to his superiors, he faked a set of notes on his work which indicated the experiments were a failure, and then resigned, taking his secret with him for his own private enrichment.”

Shayne nodded slowly. “If they can prove that, I suppose they would win the suit.”

“Absolutely. If they can prove it. Which they can’t, of course. There’s not a word of truth in it. Ralph Carrol was an honorable man. When he left Vulcan he took nothing with him but his own genius. The process was developed completely in our own laboratory. This we can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt, despite the false affidavits they have secured from former co-workers, who have been liberally bribed to state the opposite.”

Shayne picked up his drink which was now well diluted with melted ice. “Tell me in exactly what way Carrol’s death will benefit Vulcan.”

“With Ralph out of the way and unable to testify in his own behalf, they have a much better than fifty-fifty chance of winning a judgment against us,” said Margrave bitterly. “The false testimony they bring into court will stand uncontested. Ralph Carrol himself was the only person on earth who knew exactly what went on during those months they claim he was working on the process — the only person who could tear the false testimony to shreds and prove otherwise. And now that threat has been neatly removed by the simple expedient of murder. Who else had a motive? Who else was ruthless and powerful enough to hire assassins to do the job?”

Shayne drank a third of the watery liquor and set the glass back on the table. “You haven’t anything else to go on?” he demanded. “No actual proof at all?”

“Naturally not. That’s up to you, I should think. Find the man or men who drove the knife into Ralph’s heart. You’ll find the Vulcan Corporation behind it. Once you have the actual killer, I think it won’t be too difficult to prove whose money hired him.”

Shayne said, “I see. Now, just for the record, what about Carrol’s private life? Any motive for murder there?”

“None. Positively not,” Margrave asserted vigorously. “He was a fine young man. Not an enemy in the world.”

“Do you know his wife?” Shayne asked casually.

“Very well, indeed. Nora’s a wonderful woman. Loyal to the core.”

Shayne turned his head at a curious sound from the divan across the room. He saw Ann Margrave set her glass down hastily and clamp a handkerchief to her mouth, coughing and sputtering as though a drink had gone down the wrong way. She stood up suddenly, and drew the robe tightly about her slim body, and started for one of the bedrooms. “You’ll have to excuse me,” she said in a muffled tone.

Margrave scarcely glanced at his daughter as she went out, but continued, “I realize you will want to check every possibility, and I expect you to do so. But I’m certain you’ll find nothing in Ralph’s private life that could possibly have led to murder. There’s only one answer and by god! I hope you are the man to come up with it, since the police refuse to listen to me.”

Shayne gently tugged at his left ear lobe. “I suppose you know that Nora Carrol was in Miami last night?”

“Indeed?” Margrave looked surprised, but not unduly so. “Poor child. I imagine she came down to plead with Ralph again not to go through with his contemplated divorce. He was making a grave mistake, as I told him more than once.”

“I have it on good authority that Carrol had unquestionable grounds for his divorce.”

Margrave’s heavy face clouded, and he made a gesture with a big hand, as though brushing aside an annoying insect. “Legally, yes,” he admitted with a sigh. “I believe Nora did — ah — commit an indiscretion. While under the influence, you understand. But who are we to sit in judgment on a fellow being? ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.’ I said that to Ralph. I talked to him like a father about Nora. ‘How sinless are you?’ I asked him. ‘Did you come to marriage with clean hands? Have you never given way to temptation?’” He sighed again and shook his tousled head. “But Ralph was young and passionately jealous. He seemed determined to humiliate Nora publicly.”

“Who was the man in the case?” Shayne asked.

“Eh? Oh, I see. The entire subject is distasteful to me,” said Margrave reluctantly, “but it is a matter of public record. Young Ted Granger was named corespondent by Ralph. His own cousin, by the way. A harmless but foolish young man. It’s my impression that he was wholly to blame for the entire affair, and that he was hopelessly in love with Nora, and I think worked hard to break up her marriage with Ralph.”

Shayne took another long swallow of his drink and made a grimace of distaste. “Who recommended me to you, Mr. Margrave?” he demanded abruptly.

“What’s that? No one directly recommended you. I’ve heard of your reputation, naturally, and some months ago, in connection with another affair entirely, I happen to know that my attorney had you discreetly investigated with a view to retaining your services. It was later decided to drop the matter, but your name stuck in my mind. So, when I realized the local police could not be trusted to follow the only actual lead in Ralph’s murder, I thought of you at once.”

“What’s the name of your attorney?”

“Mr. Bates in Wilmington.”

“Was he also Carrol’s lawyer?”

“Bates handles all the legal affairs of our firm.”

“What was the nature of the other affair when I was considered and investigated?” Shayne persisted.

“It was a personal matter,” Margrave told him curtly. “It can have no possible bearing on Ralph’s death.”

“I’ll have to be the judge of that.”

“Very well,” the big man agreed reluctantly. “Ralph received some nasty anonymous letters. He was furious and wanted a detective brought in, but I was able to persuade him to drop the matter.”

Ann Margrave re-entered the room as her father spoke. She was stunning in a clinging white sport frock, the wide belt, pert little hat, and two-toned shoes matched the scarlet rouge on her full mouth. She carried a small white purse in one white-gloved hand. She said in a flat voice, “I’m going out. ’By, Pops. Good-by, Mike.”

Shayne came to his feet holding his almost empty glass up in a salute. “Good-by, and thanks for the breakfast.”

She said, “You’re very welcome,” in the same flat tone, and went out.

“These modern children,” said Margrave heavily. “I won’t see Ann again until she comes reeling home this evening.”

Shayne set his glass on the table and remained standing. “What sort of anonymous letters were they?”

“What’s that? Oh, the ones Ralph received. Nasty, scurrilous things. That was months ago and there can be no possible connection.”

“Having to do with his wife?”

“Yes. Accusations against Nora. Will you take the case, Shayne?”

“Gladly. I’ll want to see Bates and learn all I can about the Vulcan lawsuit.”

“Of course. I assure you, that is the crux of the matter. Mr. Bates is coming down today, I believe. He telephoned me early this morning as soon as he was informed of Ralph’s death. I’ll let you know as soon as he arrives. I’ll be glad to give you a retainer. Any reasonable amount. I want you to spare no expense whatever in pinning this murder where it belongs.”

Shayne said, “Mail a check for a thousand to my office. I’ll be in touch with you.” He turned away, suddenly impatient to be away from the hotel suite and from Mr. Margrave.

Timothy Rourke came to his feet when Shayne stepped from the elevator. He hurried to the detective, his eyes burning with curiosity in their deep sockets. “What goes, Mike?”

Shayne paused to confess, “I forgot to mention that the Press was waiting downstairs. But go on up, Tim. You’ll get plenty of dynamite for a headline, if you have the guts to print it.”

He brushed past the reporter and was halfway across the lobby when Ann Margrave came up to him. She caught his arm with desperate fingers and said intensely, “I’ve got to talk to you. How about you buying me a drink?”

Shayne said, “Fine. Here? Or some place else?”

“Some place else,” she said with decision. “If Father saw us together he’d kill me.”

“I’ve got a car outside. Let’s go.”

Chapter ten

They were both silent as Shayne wheeled the borrowed car out of the Roney driveway onto Collins Avenue and turned north. Ann Margrave sat tense and still beside him, staring ahead, her gloved hands gripping the small purse in her lap.

He drove north a few blocks, turned west on a side street, and pulled up in front of a small restaurant and bar where he knew the drinks were good and there would be few customers at this hour.

They went into a long, air-conditioned room with a small bar near the entrance.

Shayne took Ann’s arm and led her to the rear, peering into empty booths. He selected the last one. When they were settled, she looked at him with an odd intensity in her light-blue eyes, and for the first time since meeting her, Shayne saw a tinge of color in her cheeks.

“I’m not a drunkard,” she denied vehemently, as though Shayne himself had just accused her. “It’s just that — oh — damn it, I like to get Pops’s goat. When he starts pontificating, I want to scream. So, I take a drink instead.”

“Does that help?” Shayne asked gravely.

“Enough of them do.”

Shayne held up a warning hand for silence when he saw the waiter approaching. “Now, what’ll you have?”

“What would you suggest?” she said, taking the cue.

“Black coffee.”

“That will be fine,” Ann Margrave told the waiter. “With a double slug of cognac in it, please. Croizet, if you have it.”

Shayne lifted his ragged red brows and grinned appreciatively. “The same for me, but plain, with a glass of iced water on the side instead of coffee.”

When the waiter went away, Ann said, “I simply had to talk to you. I thought I’d retch back there when you asked Pops if he knew Nora and he said she was wonderful — loyal to the core!” Venom dripped from her voice.

“Isn’t she?”

“She’s a bitch on wheels.” Her eyes were as cold as blue ice, but after a moment the angry curl of her lips relaxed, and she went on in a tired, flat tone. “She ruined Ralph’s life. She’s as much to blame for his death as though she stabbed him in the heart herself, which she was perfectly capable of doing, and probably would have if she’d been around last night.”

Shayne settled back, took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and held them across to her. She took one and leaned forward to light it from his match. He lit one for himself, and said, “So you disagree with your father about Mrs. Carrol’s true character?”

“I disagree with Pops about practically everything,” she answered listlessly. “Did he happen to mention, for instance, that Nora was his mistress before she hooked Ralph?”

“No. He didn’t mention that.”

The waiter brought their drinks, and at a signal from Ann poured the cognac into her coffee, then went away.

“Well, she was,” she assured him. “For several months. Then she suddenly went after Ralph.”

“Was this before your father and Ralph Carrol became partners?”

“Oh, yes. While Ralph still had his job with Vulcan. While he was still perfectly satisfied and happy with his work,” she went on with gathering bitterness, “when he could still call his soul his own and wasn’t ashamed to look the world in the face.”

Shayne warmed the brandy glass in his hands. “Tell me about Ralph. Have you known him long?”

“I’ve been in love with him ever since I was fourteen. That’s nine years. And don’t laugh.”

Shayne said, “I’m not laughing, Ann.” He took a sip of brandy and waited for her to continue.

“Most people do. They started laughing nine years ago when I first started chasing after him. Maybe it was a silly girl crush in the beginning, but it turned into love, as soon as I was old enough to know what love really is.”

“Did Ralph reciprocate?”

“He was beginning to. I was wearing him down, all right. Psychologists say that any normal person will respond to adoration. Ralph was always sweet to me. I’d see him on vacations when he was away at college, and later when he came back to Wilmington to work there. We weren’t actually engaged,” she went on with the appearance of striving to be honest and objective, “but he was coming to it. Then he met Nora, and everything was ruined.”

“How long ago was this?”

“A little more than a year.” Ann sighed and took a drink of black coffee laced with cognac. “Everything was different after that. Ralph changed completely. I don’t know how she managed it.” Her hand trembled as she set the cup down, splashing the contents into the saucer. “She just flung her sex in his face, I guess. He was always so shy and sweet. She just overwhelmed him.” Ann paused to puff on her cigarette. She made a distasteful grimace, and mashed it out. “Nora had had enough experience, God knows, and knew how to get a man she wanted. And she decided she wanted Ralph.”

Shayne was silent for a moment, thinking hard. “And you say Nora had been having an affair with your father prior to this?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t Ralph mind?”

“I don’t suppose he knew,” she said with contempt. “I tried to tell him what she was, but it only made him fearfully angry. He said people misjudged her and that I was just nasty jealous.”

“How did your father feel?” Shayne probed.

“Frankly, I suspected afterward it was something Pops and Nora cooked up together,” she confessed after a brief hesitation, her brooding gaze fixed on Shayne, “to get Ralph away from his job and in partnership with Pops to make this new plastic. Because that’s what happened. She began working on Ralph, giving him delusions of grandeur, and convincing him he was being unfairly exploited by Vulcan. Up to that time he was happy with the arrangement and with his work. They paid him a very good salary and he never thought of complaining until Nora got her hooks into him.”

“Are you saying you suspect your father sent his mistress to make love to Ralph Carrol,” Shayne asked incredulously, “and marry him, in order to persuade him to quit his job as research chemist for Vulcan and team up with him? He didn’t know about this new plastic at that time. It hadn’t been discovered yet, or invented, or whatever. What you suggest would imply an extraordinary and blind faith in Carrol’s ability to come up with something very valuable.”

Ann said, “Nuts. If you think, for one moment, Pops ever invested a nickel in blind faith, you just don’t know Pops. He can talk himself blue in the face without convincing me the new plastic wasn’t in the bag before he ever sicked Nora onto Ralph. Don’t you see? That’s why he did it.”

Shayne tugged at his left ear lobe and studied the girl with narrowed eyes. “Then you think the lawsuit is completely justified? That Ralph did break faith with Vulcan and reserve for his own benefit a discovery actually made while in their employ and while utilizing their research facilities?”

“Certainly,” she said impatiently. “I’m practically positive of it, even if I can’t prove it. And there’s something else I’m morally certain of, too, even if I can’t prove it, either. That is, that Ralph came to his senses, after finding out what sort of woman Nora was, and, as soon as the divorce was final, he was going to quit Pops and go back to Vulcan and admit he was wrong.”

“If that were true,” said Shayne absently, “it would remove any motive at all for Vulcan desiring his death. If they were aware of his intention,” he added after a moment’s hesitation.

“I know. And while you’re being logical about it you can go right ahead and mark that down as a motive for Pops. Now that Ralph is dead, the lawsuit will probably drag along for months or years and probably end in some sort of compromise. Don’t think I haven’t thought about that,” she went on fiercely, a hint of color coming into her white face. “It’s all I have thought about since I heard about Ralph this morning. That, and where Pops was last night when it happened.” She lifted her coffee cup with trembling fingers and drained it, while her eyes met his in a cold blue challenge.

Shayne took a sip of cognac and didn’t say anything.

“So I’m an unnatural daughter,” Ann Margrave resumed in a biting voice, and set her empty cup in the saucer with a clatter. “All right, I am. I hate Pops. Do you hear me? I hate his guts. If he did do it I hope they hang him.” She blinked her lids and twin tears ran down her cheeks. She didn’t wipe them away.

“Do you think it possible that Ralph might have dropped the divorce action and gone back to Nora?” Shayne asked.

“No. She had done her best to persuade him. But Ralph wasn’t having any more. She had managed to twist him around her little finger once before when he was fed up and ready to quit, but this time it was for sure.”

“This first time you mention, was that on account of the anonymous letters?”

Ann Margrave didn’t try to hide her surprise at Shayne’s abrupt question, but she parried with one of her own. “So Pops came clean with just everything?” Her tone was one of ironic disgust.

“Perhaps not everything,” Shayne said easily. “What do you know about it?”

“I know that Ralph tried to laugh them off, but I think they started him wondering.”

“What did the letters accuse her of?”

“Oh, all sorts of things. Probably all true.”

“Including her previous affair with your father?”

“Yes. He and Pops had a big row about that, and, of course, Pops swore up and down it was all a big lie. After the way she behaved with Ted Granger, I guess Ralph realized the letters weren’t lies, after all.”

“And they never discovered who wrote the anonymous letters?”

“No.” She looked at him steadily, but spots of high color flared in her cheeks. “They never did.”

“So now we come to Ted Granger. Fill me in on him and exactly what happened.”

“Ted’s all right,” she said carelessly. “Sort of an innocent bystander and an awful fool. He’s Ralph’s cousin and doesn’t amount to much, and there was this weekend party where Nora got tight and made a terrific play for him. But, when they got caught and Ralph used that as grounds for divorce, Ted went all heroic and noble and took all the blame on himself. Maybe one night with Nora was enough to make a man fall in love with her,” she went on, her scarlet lips curling with contempt. “Ted went mooning around afterward declaring he would marry her if she would have him. But she didn’t want him. She wanted Ralph, or at least a good hunk of Ralph’s money as alimony.”

“Did Ralph have much money?”

“Only what he made from his invention. Of course, Pops says it’s worth millions.”

“But not if Ralph admitted what you think is the truth and turned it back to Vulcan.”

“No. Though I think there would have been some sort of settlement. They’re always generous about giving a share in a discovery to whoever makes it.”

“Your father says not,” Shayne commented dryly. “According to him, Ralph made several valuable discoveries during the years he worked in the Vulcan laboratories, and received nothing from them.”

“That’s just a lot of talk,” she stated flatly, “to make it sound as though Ralph had a good excuse for leaving them and going in with him.”

“Did you know that Nora had planned to make one last effort to get her husband back?”

“No. But I’m not surprised. I know she came down once before to work on him, but he wasn’t having any.”

“Then you didn’t realize she was in Miami planning to see her husband last night?”

One look at Ann’s face was enough to convince him she hadn’t known. “Then Nora must have done it herself,” she burst out excitedly. “Well, if you really want to solve this case, Mike Shayne, you go after her instead of Vulcan.”

“What would her motive be?”

“She wouldn’t need a motive,” Ann Margrave fold him promptly, “except having Ralph spurn her again. She’s got a vicious temper. You find out where she was when it happened. That’s all.”

Shayne grimaced and emptied his cognac glass. He didn’t think it would be polite to tell the girl that it looked very much as though Nora Carrol had been in his bedroom at just about the right time. Instead he asked, “Who else might have known about Nora’s plan?”

“Pops, I guess. And Mr. Bates, the lawyer.”

“How about Ted Granger?”

Ann’s eyes had grown dull and her tone was apathetic when she said, “I don’t know why she would have told him. Unless maybe just to stop him from mooning around her.”

“What sort of man is Bates?”

“He’s all right. Just a lawyer.”

“Do you think Bates believes Carrol discovered the plastic after leaving Vulcan?” Shayne pressed her.

“Who knows what a lawyer believes?” she said with disinterest.

Shayne looked at his watch, caught the waiter’s eye, and beckoned to him, then asked, “Can I take you back to the Roney?”

“What for?” she demanded. “This is just as good a place to get tight as any.”

Shayne cautioned, “Don’t get too tight. I may need some more help from you later on.”

The waiter came with the check. Shayne laid a bill on the tray and said, “After I go and the young lady has drunk that up, throw her out or make her buy her own.”

The waiter looked at the bill, smiled, and said, “Yes, sir,” and went away.

Shayne said, “There’s one more question right now, Ann. Do you know anyone named Ludlow?” He stood up abruptly.

She thought for a moment and shook her black head slowly. “I’ve never heard the name. And if you must go, send that waiter back here with a double shot of the same — without coffee.”

Shayne nodded and gave her a crooked grin. “You’ve been a big help, Ann. Call me if you think of anything else that might be relevant. Leave a message with my secretary if I’m not in.”

He pressed his knuckles against her white cheek, said, “So long,” and hurried out.

Chapter eleven

Back in his office, Shayne settled down at his desk and hoped to get some answers to the dozens of questions chasing each other around in his mind. One of the most perplexing was exactly what Margrave had expected to gain by making his vehement and somewhat absurd accusation against the Vulcan Chemical Corporation.

He realized that large, long-established and supposedly solid organizations sometimes engaged goon squads or hatchet men to gain certain objectives, mainly in the realm of labor relations. And he had not the slightest doubt that murders had been discreetly arranged in the past, and would be in the future.

But the idea of the Vulcan Corporation stooping to murder in order to win a lawsuit against an individual seemed incredible, especially when the method employed by the killer was a knife, actually a letter opener, evidently owned by Carrol himself. Hired killers were apt to use less personal weapons, such as a blast of machine gun bullets after the victim had been lured to a certain position at a specified time.

Yet, Margrave — the man who had willingly advanced a thousand-dollar fee, and who insisted that no expense be spared — was positive that Vulcan had engineered Carrol’s murder, and he expected Michael Shayne to prove this fact.

Against Margrave’s sober and businesslike accusations there were those of his unsober and romantic daughter, Ann, plainly bitter and frustrated, whose long crimson nails were eager to claw Nora Carrol’s eyes out, but who would settle for a verdict of guilty for Nora Carrol as her husband’s murderer.

The wound in Shayne’s head throbbed dully, distracting his thoughts. He poured cognac into the glass on his desk and drank it, swiveled back in his chair, and closed his eyes.

The drink relaxed his body and eased the pain, and his mind became more alert. Ann Margrave had indicated that Vulcan not only had a good chance of winning the suit without resorting to murder, but that Carrol was determined to throw in the sponge, as soon as his wife’s influence was completely removed by divorce, and admit he had connived with Margrave to withhold from them a discovery which, under his contract, was their property.

If Ann could be believed.

That was an important point — a crucial point, maybe. It was quite possible that Ann was blinded by her hatred of Nora. At the moment, Shayne was willing to bet a large sum that Ann was the author of the anonymous notes Carrol had received about his wife.

Why Margrave had called him in on the murder investigation was still an enigma. There was the matter of public relations, of course. Quite naturally, the police had refused to consider the Vulcan Corporation a serious suspect. Perhaps Margrave merely sought headlines and sensational news stories by hiring Shayne to investigate the corporation. It was an exciting theory, and one that would be eagerly picked up by the press throughout the country, if a man with Michael Shayne’s reputation were to make such a statement. No matter how guiltless the corporation, or what the outcome of the investigation, some of the stigma would linger. It might well affect the judgment of a jury when the suit against Carrol’s estate came to trial.

Another disquieting question, at the moment, was whether or not Margrave had been aware of Nora’s plan to quash the divorce, and did he know that Nora believed Michael Shayne to be the man who had arranged it for her? If so, he had certainly given no indication of that knowledge or belief during their interview. Still, it was quite possible, and he considered the ramifications of the idea thoroughly.

Had Nora communicated with Margrave since Carrol’s death to tell him how the plan had miscarried?

There were so many things he didn’t know, he reminded himself irritably. He made a mental list.

The identity of Ludlow.

The identity and motive of the man who tried to kill him.

The identity of the man who attacked Lucy in Nora’s hotel room.

The identity of the man who had represented himself as Michael Shayne to Bates, and the method by which he had carried out the impersonation.

Had Nora Carrol been furnished a key to his room by mistake, or for some definite reason?

Shayne swore angrily under his breath when he reached this point in reviewing the unknown quantities.

Everything pointed to some sort of prearrangement. With Ann Margrave’s information of the actual relationship between husband and wife, which was somewhat at variance with Nora’s version, this began to make sense. Ann was positive that Ralph Carrol had ceased to love his wife and that a reconciliation was impossible. If this were true, Nora must have suspected that her husband would refuse to let her stay through the night, and thus the attempt was doomed to failure.

Taking that as a reasonable hypothesis, another way of putting Carrol on the spot must have suggested itself. The exact reverse of the usual divorce setup where a husband is lured into the other woman’s room where he can be discovered by detectives who will testify in court.

If Nora had been desperately determined to hold Carrol as her husband, the redhead reasoned, she might well have arranged such a frame-up with the detective who called himself Shayne. Ludlow, then, might well be the witness who had planned to catch husband and wife together in the bedroom and whose testimony would serve to throw the divorce action out of court.

At this, point in his thinking, Shayne took the classified telephone directory from a desk drawer, opened it at the P’s and found the heading: Photographers: Commercial.

Running his forefinger down the list his eyes glinted with interest when he came to the name Ludlow, John P. in small type. The address was on North Miami Avenue. He pressed a button for an outside line, and dialed the number. A woman’s voice answered, repeating the number. Shayne said, “Mr. Ludlow, please.”

“I’m sorry,” the voice replied, “but Mr. Ludlow is not in.”

“When do you expect him back?”

“I’m not sure.” There was a brief pause, then: “Can I help you?”

“I don’t know.” Shayne managed to sound a trifle uncertain and embarrassed when he added, “It’s — ah — a rather delicate assignment. I was given Mr. Ludlow’s name.”

“I understand.” The voice purred encouragement. “Who is speaking?”

“Mr. Bigelow, of the law firm of Barnes, Bigelow, and Carson,” he improvised swiftly. “It’s on behalf of one of our clients. I believe it would be better to speak directly to Mr. Ludlow. If you’ll have him call me?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but Mr. Ludlow is out of the city for a few days; but our Mr. Pilcraft is thoroughly discreet, and I suggest I have him call you.”

“I prefer to make this arrangement with Mr. Ludlow himself. If you will tell me where he can be reached out of town—”

“I’m sorry, but I really can’t say,” she said, the purring quality gone from her voice.

“Could you give me his home telephone number?” he persisted. “I might get the information there.”

“I can’t give out that information. If you’d like Mr. Ludlow to call you when he returns—”

“It won’t be necessary,” he told her, and hung up. He took out the alphabetical directory and searched through the L’s. This yielded a N.W. 18th Street address for John P. Ludlow. Shayne dialed it, and another woman’s voice said, “Yes?”

“I’d like to speak to Mr. Ludlow.”

She said, “He’s not here,” and hung up.

Shayne settled back and rubbed his jaw reflectively. It looked as though he had struck pay dirt. He got up abruptly and went into the outer office where he paused at Lucy Hamilton’s desk and said, “If Tim calls, tell him his car is parked in front where it was before. Here are the keys.” He tossed them on the desk, looked at his watch, and added, “You stay in till I get back, huh? Have some lunch sent in. There may be some calls.”

“Of course. But Michael—”

“Hold the questions, angel,” he said on his way to the door, “until I get some answers.”

“Oh! You!” she flung after him.

Shayne closed the door quietly but firmly on her protests, and long-legged it to the elevator.

At the parking-lot, an excited attendant hurried over to tell him that the police had been going over his car. Shayne got behind the wheel and started the motor, saying, “It’s okay, Jim,” and drove away.

The Ludlows’ number on 18th Street was a small stucco bungalow in the middle of a row of small stucco bungalows. A little girl of three or four was making sand pies in a sandbox under a coconut palm in the unkempt yard. She looked up and watched Shayne gravely as he went up the walk to the front door and rang the bell.

A woman came to the door, wiping her hands on her apron. There were lines of irritation and worry on her thin face; her lips were tight and her eyes coldly wary as she surveyed the stranger on her doorstep.

“Mrs. Ludlow?” he inquired.

“Yes.” She stood at the hooked screen door and made no move to open it.

“I’m very anxious to see Mr. Ludlow,” Shayne told her smoothly. “I called his office but the girl said he was out and that you might be able to tell me where to reach him.”

“Was that you called awhile ago?” she demanded.

“Yes.” Shayne tried what he hoped would be a disarming smile. “My business with your husband is so important that I thought I’d run out and explain personally.”

“What business?” she demanded in a clipped voice.

“I represent a local firm employing more than a thousand people, and we want to have individual photographs taken for use on a new type of identification badge we’re issuing.”

“Why pick out Jack for a job like that?” She spoke with bitterness, and from her words Shayne felt she implied that there were many better-known commercial photographers in Miami who would be a more logical choice.

“It happens to be a personal contact with one of our executives,” Shayne explained. “When the project was discussed at conference this morning, one of our vice-presidents said your husband was just the man for the job, and he’d like to see him get it. Naturally, we don’t like to go over his head, and besides, I gathered he was an old friend of Mr. Ludlow’s. It’s a matter that has to be decided today.”

“I see.” For an instant hope came into her eyes, but it went away. “It’s just our luck for him to pull a stunt like this when something good was coming up. I don’t know where he is,” she ended listlessly.

“But you must have some idea,” Shayne persisted. “When he left home this morning—”

“He wasn’t home this morning,” she interrupted. “Not since last night. He phoned this morning and said he’d be away a couple of days on business. He never tells me anything,” she went on, her lips tight and her voice weary. “Ask that big blonde he keeps down at the studio. He tells her things, I guess.”

“I see,” said Shayne gently. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Ludlow.”

He went back to his car and drove slowly to North Miami Avenue and turned southward toward the address of Ludlow’s studio.

He found the number above an entrance crowded between a shoe-shine parlor and a delicatessen. Faded lettering on the door read: Ludlow Photographic Studio. Beside the door was a plate-glass window with heavy drapes drawn.

Shayne hesitated for a moment with his hand on the doorknob. The “big blonde” angle sounded promising, but thinking back to his telephone conversation, he didn’t know what approach to try on her. He shrugged, opened the door, and heard a bell tinkle inside.

He entered a small square studio furnished with two easy chairs, a couch, several large movable light fixtures on adjustable standards with huge silver reflectors, and a portrait camera mounted on a tripod in one corner.

Against one wall was a luridly painted backdrop depicting a beach with palm trees reaching out to the ocean. A covering of dust on everything gave the room the appearance of disuse.

A narrow corridor led back along the right-hand wall, and as Shayne closed the street door he heard the clack of high heels on the bare floor.

She was blond, not more than three inches shorter than Shayne, and carrying at least as many pounds which were strategically distributed. She paused, just inside the studio, and studied the redhead with a direct and pleasant gaze that was frankly curious.

She said, “Something I can do for you?”

“That will depend on a lot of things,” said Shayne with a grin. “Are you married, for instance, and is the guy the jealous type?”

She didn’t smirk or look coy. She merely continued to study him impersonally. “You didn’t come here to ask me that.”

“No. It just popped out unintentionally. Is Jack around?”

“No. You a friend of his?”

“From way back. I’ve always felt kind of sorry for Jack, knowing his wife, but he never mentioned you.” She showed visible signs of thawing and took a couple of steps forward, as though about to ask him to have a seat, when the telephone in the back room rang. She said, “Excuse me a minute,” and went to answer it.

Shayne followed her down a short hall to a door on the left which opened into a small, cluttered office. The telephone was on a desk to the right of the door, and her back was toward Shayne as she leaned over to answer it.

She said, “No. He won’t be in today,” paused, and reached for a pencil. She jotted down a telephone number, then said, “I’ll have him call you tomorrow or next day,” and cradled the Receiver.

There was a strong overhead light, and, lounging against the threshold watching her, Shayne saw that she had the clean fresh coloring of a buxom farm girl. He was much closer to her here in the smaller room, and when she turned to face him his mouth spread in a slow grin.

Her eyes widened and the pleasant expression on her face changed slowly to one of dismay, and then to fear or anger, or both. She drew in a sharp breath and exclaimed, “I know who you are now. I’ve seen your pictures in the paper. You’re that private dick, Mike Shayne. Get out! Haven’t you caused Jack enough trouble already?”

“Not half as much trouble,” Shayne told her grimly, “as I’m going to cause if you don’t tell me where he is.”

“I don’t know.” Her eyes blazed with angry defiance. “And I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”

“You’re making a mistake,” he said gravely. “Don’t you know he’s mixed up in a murder?”

“If he is, you got him into it. Get out!”

Shayne said mildly, “All right. But tell your boss the longer he hides out the worse it’ll be for him.” He turned, went down the hallway to the studio and across it in firm strides that echoed loudly. The bell tinkled when he opened the door, and he marked time for a couple of steps, then closed it quietly. He waited a moment, listening, before tiptoeing back through the studio.

He reached the office doorway just as the blonde seated herself at the desk with her back to him and lifted the telephone. Watching over her shoulder, Shayne memorized the number she dialed.

After a moment she said sharply, “Three-one-nine, please.” Her breathing was audible, and beads of perspiration glistened on her plump neck.

“But I know he must be in,” she said impatiently. “Ring him again.”

Then, as though a sixth sense warned her, she turned her head and glanced toward the door. Her eyes rounded, and her mouth sagged open, when she stared up into Shayne’s face. She slammed the phone down and sprang up with her hands clawed.

Shayne beat a strategic retreat and reached the outer door in a few long strides. He hurried to a public-telephone sign on the corner, went in, and dialed the number she had dialed.

A voice said, “Hotel Trainton. Good morning.”

Shayne hung up and went out to riffle through the telephone directory. The Trainton Hotel was in the southwest section of the city. He trotted out to his car.

Some twenty minutes later he entered the gloomy and unprepossessing lobby of the Trainton and went to the desk, where an elderly man in shirt sleeves was leaning on the counter chewing tobacco.

“A friend of mine checked in early this morning. Three-one-nine, I think he said. Is he in now?”

The clerk shook his grizzly head. “Just had a phone call for him. He didn’t answer.”

“You see him go out?”

“Didn’t notice. Took his key if he did.”

Shayne said brusquely, “I’m afraid there’s trouble. Get a duplicate key and let’s go up.”

The old man shifted his wad of tobacco and continued to lean on the counter. “You the cops?”

“Private.” Shayne took out his wallet, showed his card, and extracted a ten-dollar bill. “Let’s get going.”

The bill disappeared, and the clerk turned to pluck a key from a box behind him. A bellboy was dozing on a bench near the desk. The clerk nudged him awake as he went by and said, “Watch the desk a minute, Ned,” then led the way to the elevator.

Shayne followed him down a musty, dimly lit hall to a door on the left. After a perfunctory knock he inserted the key and eased the door open. The shade was drawn at the single window and the room was quite dark. The clerk switched on an overhead light, grunted, and stepped back with a gesture for Shayne to look inside.

Wearing only a pair of shorts, the occupant of the room lay sprawled face downward on the bed. There was a strong odor of whisky in the tightly closed room. “Reckon he’s dead?” the old man asked impassively. Shayne brushed past him to the bed. He touched the man’s bare shoulders and, finding the flesh warm, flopped him over on his back. He stood looking down at a thin, sallow, unshaven face sparsely whiskered, wide-open mouth, and closed eyes.

“Dead drunk,” Shayne told him shortly. “Thanks. I’ll take care of him.”

“Well, I do declare,” the old man said. “So that’s how come he didn’t answer.”

Shayne caught the clerk’s arm, propelled him out the door, closed and locked it after him, then turned to look swiftly around the room. A corked fifth of cheap whisky, about one-fourth full, lay on the floor beside a pair of shoes and socks. A brown suit and white shirt were piled on a chair.

When he lifted the coat to examine it he saw the Argus flash camera in a leather case. He found a shabby billfold in the inner coat pocket. It contained John P. Ludlow’s business card, and he didn’t look further. He went to the window and raised the shade to the top, opened the window as wide as it would go, then stalked into the bathroom and turned cold water into the tub.

Returning to the bed, he leaned over and shook Ludlow vigorously, but all he got was a slobbery mumble. The eyes stayed shut and the body limp.

He stepped back and surveyed the photographer with a frown of disgust. He was thin to the point of scrawniness, with sharp elbows and big-boned wrists, lean shanks, knobby knees, and splayed feet. Cords stood out on either side of his sunken throat, and his open mouth showed yellowed teeth with two lowers missing in front.

Shayne lit a cigarette and went to the bathroom door to watch the level of water slowly rise in the tub. When it was half full he returned to the bed, lifted the limp figure in his arms, carried it into the bathroom, and dumped it into the tub.

Ludlow thrashed and shivered in the cold water. His eyes came open and he stared about wildly, mumbling curses. He tried to grab the edge of the tub to pull himself up.

Shayne shoved him back each time he tried to get out, and finally held him down until his lips began to turn blue. Then he caught Ludlow’s arm and lifted him to his feet. He helped the shaking man to remove his sodden shorts, steadied him when he stepped onto the bath mat, handed him a towel, and said curtly, “Rub yourself down with this.”

In the bedroom, Shayne retrieved the whisky bottle and a glass that had rolled under the bed, poured a good two inches of liquor into the glass, and returned to the bathroom. The photographer was sitting on the toilet seat with his head lolling back against the tank.

“Snap out of it,” Shayne demanded sharply. “Here, drink this if you think you can hold it down.”

Ludlow looked up, his teeth chattering, and tears streaming down his cheeks. He tried to take the glass, but his hands trembled too violently to hold it. Shayne put an arm around his shoulders, pressed the glass to his lips, and ordered, “Swallow.”

Ludlow gulped half the whisky down, shuddered, and sputtered. “God! ’S horrible.”

“Finish it.” He held one hand at the back of Ludlow’s head and pressed the glass against his lips again. The photographer swallowed mechanically. His trembling gradually subsided, and color came into his face.

Hauling him roughly to his feet, Shayne took a towel and began rubbing his body vigorously, pummeling any fleshy spot he could find with his fingers. He wondered how, in the name of God, a buxom blonde could fall for a guy like this!

When Ludlow started howling with pain from the redhead’s rough treatment, Shayne shoved him into the bedroom and onto the bed, pulled the sheet over him, and growled, “Stay there and relax. When you’re over the shakes we’ll talk.”

The photographer blinked Watery eyes at him and said, “You’re Mike Shayne,” in a feeble, fearful voice. “What’s happened? What went wrong last night?” His teeth started chattering again.

Shayne poured the rest of the whisky in the glass and held it out to Ludlow, who shuddered and said, “God, no!” Then he dragged himself to a sitting position, took the glass, and drained it. After a period of gagging and screwing his thin face into a grimace of distaste, he asked, “How’d you find me here? What do you want with me now?”

“I want some information.” Shayne tossed the man’s clothes on the foot of the bed and sat down on the chair. “How did you recognize me just now?”

“Saw your picture in the papers often enough. I tried to phone you last night after I found Carrol dead. Somebody answered your phone but he didn’t sound like you.”

“Start back at the beginning,” Shayne ordered. “The whole Carrol deal. So that we won’t be at cross-purposes, I should explain that I never even heard of Carrol until after he was dead.”

“Hold on,” Ludlow protested. “When you called me yesterday—”

“I didn’t call you,” Shayne cut in sharply. “But I gather that somebody did — someone who claimed to be me.”

“Sure. Said it was Mike Shayne calling, and he had a job for last night.” He paused, squinted at the redhead, asked, “Is this straight? It wasn’t you?”

“No. That’s why I want to know all about it. From the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.”

“There isn’t much,” he mumbled. “I thought ’twas you, naturally. I didn’t ask any questions. He said there was fifty bucks in it for one picture — a bedroom picture in the dark — so I figured a divorce setup. Number two-sixteen at that hotel, he said, at exactly two-twenty in the morning. The door to the sitting-room was to be standing open, and I was to walk in and go straight back to the bedroom, as quiet as possible, and get my one shot and beat it.”

“Wait a minute,” Shayne interjected. “Are you positive of the apartment number? Two-sixteen? Could it have been one-sixteen and you made a mistake?”

“Not a chance. I can’t afford to make mistakes in my business. I wrote down the number and repeated it back to you — him. I got there early and cased the joint. I found a side entrance and stairway where I could get up and down without anybody seeing me from the lobby. Then I went and had a drink and came back at two-fifteen and went up. It was exactly two-twenty when I went in.”

“You didn’t meet anybody going up or down the stairs?”

“Not a soul.”

“And the door of two-sixteen was open?”

“That’s right. Standing ajar like I was told it would be. I had my camera ready and went in. Couldn’t hear a sound from the bedroom, but that wasn’t any of my business. I figured maybe they was busy — you know. So I went to the doorway and set off my flash. My God! I was scared stiff when I saw him in the flashlight. Alone, and dead on the bed with blood all over.

“I beat it fast,” he continued after a brief pause during which he covered his face with both hands and pressed his eyes with his finger tips. “All I could think about was staying in the clear by phoning the police. Then, if they did find out, they couldn’t say I covered up. Later, I got to thinking, and tried to call you at a number I got from Information. Somebody answered and said it was you but the voice didn’t sound right. I thought it was the cops and hung up.” He paused again and regarded Shayne with puzzled eyes. “Say, it was you that time. It was your voice.”

“That’s right. You mean my voice sounded different from the one who first called you. How was it different?”

“I dunno,” he said, his bloodshot eyes reflective. “Sort of heavier, yours was. Not so much rasp in it. Anyhow, I got scared and hung up and thought maybe I’d better hide out. So I checked in here. If it wasn’t you that called me yesterday, who was it?”

“That,” said Shayne with a frown, “is one of half a dozen sixty-four-dollar questions. Exactly what did the man say?”

“Just what I told you. That it was Mike Shayne calling and he had this job for last night.”

“How were you supposed to contact him?”

“I wasn’t. He didn’t give me any number or any way to contact him. I asked him about it, and he said I wasn’t, on any account, to try and call him or anything. That his part in it was strictly on the Q.T.”

“Where were you to deliver your picture?”

“To a lawyer in Wilmington, Delaware. I’ve got the name and address written down.”

“Bates?”

“That’s it. Bates. He said the lawyer would pay me for the job. Most jobs like that I’d want cash before doing it, but knowing Mike Shayne’s reputation I wasn’t worried. You know who killed Carrol?”

“I don’t know one goddamned thing about it,” Shayne growled. He stood up and looked at his watch. It was noon. “Here’s what you’d better do,” he continued after a moment’s thought. “Relax for a while and get rid of that hang-over. Then go straight to police headquarters with your camera and the picture you got last night. See Will Gentry, the chief, and tell him exactly what you told me. Leave out the part about phoning me last night and about this talk we’ve had. Just tell him you got frightened and holed up with a quart of whisky and passed out. As soon as you woke up sober, you realized it was best to go to the police and get it off your chest. He’ll ask you if you can recognize my voice over the phone and stuff like that, and if he makes a test I hope you’ll tell him the other voice was different. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Ludlow weakly. “Say, how did you find me here?”

“Don’t blame your blonde at the studio,” Shayne told him pleasantly. “She did her best to cover up for you. I outsmarted her, that’s all.”

Ludlow sighed and lay back on the pillow, and Shayne went out, leaving him staring up at the grimy ceiling.

Chapter twelve

Chief Will Gentry was seated alone in a rear booth of a small restaurant a block from police headquarters when Shayne entered a short time later. He looked up from a cup of jellied beef broth and frowned as the redhead slid into the seat opposite him.

“Doc Meeker tells me you dodged out on having that head wound examined, Mike,” Gentry rumbled.

Shayne picked up the menu. “I had a hot lead that had to be followed up fast,” he answered. “I did leave my car in the lot for you.”

“What was the lead?” Gentry demanded.

“Margrave. Ralph Carrol’s business partner.”

“Oh? Trying to sick you onto the Vulcan angle, eh?” he asked with distaste and disinterest.

“Yeh,” he muttered, running his eye over the menu. He beckoned the waiter, ordered lamb stew and coffee, then continued to the chief, “Did you talk to Margrave?”

“He called me early this morning and talked a blue streak about soulless corporations who keep an army of gunmen on the payroll to wipe out small competitors. I sent Lieutenant Hanson over to see him, but it sounds like hogwash to me. You go for it?”

“He made out a fair case,” said Shayne reflectively. “I checked around afterward and got a slightly different slant.” Without mentioning Ann Margrave’s name or her statements about the personal relationships between herself, her father, and Nora Carrol, he outlined the possibility that Carrol might have been planning to drop his defense of the lawsuit and thus leave his partner out of the picture.

“If this were true and Margrave knew it,” he pointed out, “it gives him a much stronger motive for murder than Vulcan. Actually, Carrol’s death will have produced exactly the opposite result from the one Margrave tried to hand us. The suit will probably drag along for months or years, while he continues to manufacture his plastic. I’d check Margrave’s alibi carefully if I were you.”

The waiter brought a plate of cold cuts and a bottle of beer and set them before Gentry. “We’ll check, all right,” he told Shayne. “What still bothers me is the crazy hookup with you last night. The woman being given the key to your room by mistake or design, and Bates’s insistence that you were working for him. Tied with your flat denial, and the removal of Bates’s correspondence with you from his files; what in hell does it add up to, Mike?”

“I’m beginning to swing around to the belief that somehow or other Mrs. Carrol and Bates are telling the truth and that they believed they were dealing with me.”

“A while ago you were working hard to prove it would have been impossible for anyone to impersonate you.”

“Yeh,” he muttered absently. “I still don’t see how it was worked. Suppose somebody finds out that Bates is thinking of hiring a private detective in Miami for a job, and that he is inclined toward me. Suppose this man simply has a letterhead printed, gives his own address instead of mine, and writes Bates a letter saying he’s heard about the job and is willing to take it on. Bates would naturally reply to the printed address and I would never know a damned thing about it.”

“A pretty elaborate hoax just to collect a small fee,” said the chief.

“I agree. If that were the only thing that came out of the impersonation. But don’t forget that the setup actually culminated in murder.”

“You mean it was planned that way in the beginning?”

“I don’t know.” Shayne spread out his big hands. “I don’t know a damned thing more than you do. Carrol was murdered at just about the time his wife was supposed to be with him. The only reason she didn’t discover his body is that she had been sent to my room instead of to his.”

The waiter came with his order, and when he went away Gentry said, “So you think it was pure accident that she had the wrong key?”

Shayne spooned a portion of stew onto his plate, took a mouthful, and chewed it with relish. “I just don’t know what to think,” he confessed. “I certainly don’t believe it was pure coincidence that Carrol was murdered just a few minutes before she was slated to slip into his bed. Somebody evidently had the right key. I understand he was murdered in his bed. That doesn’t sound as though he got up to let his killer in.” He buttered a hard roll, took a bite, and chewed ruminatively.

“Who is in a position to pull this impersonation of you?”

Shayne shrugged. “Margrave, for one. He must have been aware that Mrs. Carrol was arranging with Bates to hire me to locate her husband. Being Carrol’s partner, he probably knew where Carrol was all the time. He may even have offered to look me up for Bates when he came down here. That would make a letter from me to Bates, on a forged letterhead, perfectly plausible. Margrave was on the ground, and it looks as though he might have had a motive.”

“Maybe you’ve got something there, Mike. But what about the man who got you on the bayfront and tried to kill you? That wasn’t Margrave. You saw him.”

“It certainly wasn’t Margrave,” Shayne agreed. “But he could have hired somebody for that while he was stealing the letter back from Mrs. Carrol’s hotel room. Then, he could have flown to Wilmington, and stolen the rest of the fake letters from Bates’s office so there’d be no way of tracing them to him.”

“Sounds complicated as hell,” Gentry growled, “but I’ll check with the airlines to see if he did make such a trip.”

“He wouldn’t have used his own name. Much more likely, just to complicate matters further, he’d have bought a ticket in my name.”

Gentry laid his knife and fork on his empty plate and said sourly, “I guess that’s out. I checked this morning with the only line flying a schedule that would fit, and they haven’t reported back yet.”

Shayne avoided the chief’s gaze when he asked casually, “What results did your boys get on my car? You willing to accept my story about being creased by a bullet and staying knocked out for five hours?”

“I’ll accept it,” said Gentry, “unless further evidence turns up to disprove it. They didn’t get any fingerprints, but everything else reads the way you told it. If you did arrange the bullet hole and the blood on the cushion, it was a pretty damned elaborate setup, and I don’t know when you had time to do it and get up to Wilmington and back.”

“Thanks,” said Shayne gravely. “Then I guess you won’t throw me in jail if I tell you that a man using my name did fly to Wilmington and back early this morning.”

He held up a hand to cut off Gentry’s grunt of surprise. “The airline called my office right after you’d left,” he explained swiftly, changing the facts a little to soften what he had done. “You’d left my number for them to call, you know, and the clerk thought it was you on the phone and gave me the report before I realized what it was. A man who said he was Michael Shayne flew to Wilmington at four-twenty and returned at nine-ten, giving him just about enough time in Wilmington to burglarize Bates’s office and get back.”

“Damn it, Mike!” Gentry exploded. “You didn’t tell me.”

“Hold it a minute, Will. The thing was dumped into my lap without my asking for it, and you know the mood you were in about then. You would have had to arrest me while you investigated further. And I had already had the call from Margrave that sounded like an important lead. But I’m giving it to you for what it’s worth now.”

“Margrave,” rumbled Gentry. “He fits like a glove. He is familiar with Bates’s office, probably knows just where his files are kept.”

“Right. Now if you can get hold of the employee who sold the plane ticket, and the hostesses who flew up and back, and if any of them can identify Margrave, we’ll have a case.”

“But there’s still one thing that doesn’t make sense,” Gentry protested. “If Margrave had been impersonating you, aren’t you the last person in the world he’d call in to work on the case? He’d stay as far away from you as possible.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time a murderer called me in on a case, hoping I’d pin it on somebody else,” Shayne pointed out.

“We damn sure have some questions to ask him,” said Gentry firmly. “And right now I’d better get back to my office. Bates is due to fly in from Wilmington about now.”

“That’s one session I want to sit in on.” Shayne hastily finished his lunch, and they went out together.

At headquarters the chief stopped at Homicide to order an immediate and thorough investigation of Margrave, with particular emphasis on his movements since the preceding midnight. From there, they went back through the corridor to Gentry’s private office where they found Bates waiting for them, accompanied by Patrolman Hagen who had been detailed to meet him at the airport.

Attorney Bates was a medium-sized, middle-aged, precise sort of man. He offered a cold, limp hand to Chief Gentry, and studied the redhead with disapproving interest when Gentry said, “Michael Shayne, Mr. Bates.”

“So you are the so-called private detective,” Bates observed icily, “who now denies having had any part in this affair. Also, if I did not misunderstand Mrs. Carrol on the telephone this morning, either intentionally or through sheer stupidity, you furnished her with a key to your apartment instead of her husband’s; and you lured her there at midnight under false pretenses, at about the same time, it appears, that someone was murdering Ralph Carrol under this convenient arrangement. Do you mean to say this man isn’t under arrest?” he continued, turning to Gentry.

“You can cut that out right now,” growled Gentry, his ruddy face purplish with anger. “This is Miami, and I’ll ask the questions.”

“Very well, sir. What questions have you for me?” He sat down in a straight chair near Gentry’s desk and waited.

The chief sat down and started to speak, but Shayne broke in swiftly. “Most important is this — when and how do you claim you first contacted me to take on the job of locating Ralph Carrol in Miami?”

The lawyer frowned and said, “It was about two weeks ago when I first wrote. I do not have the precise date because my office was burglarized early this morning and all the pertinent correspondence removed.”

“We’ve only your word for it,” Shayne reminded him. “It’s the sort of lie you would tell if asked to produce proof that was nonexistent. Is there anyone else who can testify to such correspondence?”

“Is this fellow accusing me?” Bates demanded of Gentry. “I assure you that I have no intention—”

“We want facts, not speeches.” Shayne cut him off angrily. “You claim you wrote me a letter two weeks ago suggesting that I fix a frame to put Carrol’s wife into her husband’s bedroom. How was that letter addressed?”

“I protest your phrasing,” said Bates curtly. “I suggested no frame-up. I merely asked if you were capable of arranging a certain matter for my client.”

“Just who was your client?” Shayne demanded. “I understand you act as attorney for Carrol and Margrave, yet you admit conniving with Carrol’s wife to put her husband on the spot.”

“I do not feel the need of justifying myself to you,” said Bates in a voice of outraged dignity. “Perhaps you’ll explain your eagerness to have Ralph Carrol in your hotel, in the light of what happened later, and why you deliberately lured Mrs. Carrol into your bedroom.”

“Let’s skip that right now. I don’t know yet what reason anyone had for wanting Carrol in my hotel. Tell me how your first letter to me was addressed.”

“To your office, of course. You replied promptly on your own letterhead, as I am positive you are fully aware.”

Shayne shrugged and turned to Gentry. “There goes the only idea I had for the way it was worked. You want to question him about the lawsuit, Will?”

“You talked to Margrave,” Gentry said. “Go ahead with it yourself.”

“All right. What is the present status of the Vulcan suit against the partnership of Carrol and Margrave?”

“I don’t see that the question is at all relevant,” Bates told him, “and professional ethics make it impossible for me to—”

“Answer Shayne without so much legal palaver,” Gentry ordered.

“Very well. The suit is pending in the state courts,” he said evenly.

“Who will win it? What are the rights in the case?”

“I am attorney for the defense,” Bates reminded him in an icy tone. “I don’t defend cases I expect to lose.”

“Do you know that Carrol was going to give the whole thing up and admit he was in the wrong when he left the corporation?”

“Certainly not,” snapped Bates.

“Would you have known it if he had been considering such a course?” Shayne probed.

“I most certainly would. I was in his complete confidence.”

“Assuming that Carrol had such intention, though you were not aware of it, wouldn’t it have been quite a slap in the face to you and quite a financial loss to Margrave?”

“I’m not sure I thoroughly understand the question,” Bates said.

“Put it this way. If Carrol had been planning to throw in the sponge with Vulcan out of court, it would have been a legal defeat for you, and would have effectually dissolved the partnership and halted the manufacture of the plastic, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes. It would have had that effect,” the lawyer conceded. “But I don’t see—”

“But now that Carrol is dead the situation is changed,” Shayne interrupted. “By legal maneuvers, you can probably avoid a final decision for years and eventually attain some sort of compromise. In the meantime, the surviving partner can continue to market the disputed product at a nice profit. Isn’t that also true?”

“Quite possibly. I confess I haven’t given much thought to the legal situation resulting from Ralph Carrol’s death.”

“From information we have,” Shayne said, “it looks very much as though Margrave knew that Carrol was on the verge of making this discovery while he was still in the Vulcan laboratories, and put pressure on him to keep it a secret and get out so they could make a profit on it together. Would you like to comment on that?”

“No. Except to warn you that it is a libelous statement and best not repeated.”

“Do you know that Margrave and Nora Carrol were quite friendly before she married Carrol?”

“I know they were acquainted. It was common knowledge.”

“Intimately acquainted?” Shayne persisted.

“Really, sir,” the lawyer protested in a shocked tone. “This is not a matter I care to discuss further.”

“Why not?”

“I do not see that it could have any possible bearing on Ralph Carrol’s death.”

“From where I sit,” said Shayne patiently, “it looks as though it might be very important. There were anonymous letters, I believe, accusing Mrs. Carrol of having been intimate with Carrol’s partner.”

Bates clamped his lips together and did not reply.

“Who wrote those letters?” Shayne demanded.

“Authorship was not established. They were definitely scurrilous and not worthy of attention.”

“But they led, indirectly, to the divorce Carrol was contemplating when he was killed.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” Bates parried.

“Mrs. Carrol admitted it herself last night,” Shayne told him. “She said her husband became suspicious of her after receiving the letters, and began watching her. This made her angry, and drove her to drink too much on a certain week-end party when she committed an indiscretion with a certain Ted Granger, which Carrol was using as evidence to divorce her without alimony. Isn’t that true?”

“It is true that Carrol was basing his divorce action on her affair with young Granger,” said Bates cautiously. “How much the anonymous letters contributed to that affair is anyone’s question. Ted has been quite gentlemanly about the unfortunate episode, and openly admitted everything that happened was entirely his fault. He has publicly stated his desire, and his determination, to marry Nora Carrol, if and when the divorce was granted.”

“And she was just as determined to hang on to Carrol,” Shayne stated. “How many people knew of her plan to come down here and compromise her husband?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. It hardly seems a subject she would discuss with many people.” The Wilmington lawyer’s tone was sharp with disgust.

“Margrave?” the redhead demanded.

“I would think not. Not to my knowledge, at least.”

“Are you certain Margrave didn’t know you planned to retain Michael Shayne for the scheme?”

“I can’t say I’m certain. It would be a complete surprise, however, to learn that Mr. Margrave knew anything about it.”

“How about Ted Granger?” Shayne probed. “Don’t you suppose she told him what she planned?”

Attorney Bates hesitated and glared at the redhead with cold, angry eyes. “Any conjecture I might make on that score would not be evidence.”

“You’re not on the witness stand,” Shayne reminded him. “Have you reason to think she confided in Granger?”

Bates shifted his position slightly, then said, “From my slight knowledge of the — ah — alleged scandal, I would say there is a possibility she did. Granger flew down with me from Wilmington. He feels extremely bad about the whole affair, and he confided to me that he came to give Mrs. Carrol what comfort he could. He talked rather excitedly and in a roundabout way, but now that I think back over the conversation, I believe that perhaps he did mention Nora’s plan to see Ralph last night. He — ah — was most anxious to have me promise that I would not volunteer the information to the police; and was greatly upset when I related the gist of your call last night, and explained that the decision did not lie in my hands. All this serves to give the inference that he was aware of Nora’s plan,” he pointed out in his dryly legalistic manner, “but I don’t understand how that fact can have any importance.”

Shayne had been standing over the lawyer. He sat down abruptly and said, “Perhaps it doesn’t matter,” wearily. “But right now I’m going along with the theory that Carrol was killed by someone who knew exactly what Nora planned to do. The motive probably was to prevent the reconciliation taking place and, quite possibly, the timing arranged to put Nora on the spot and frame her for the murder.”

“And I suggest that such a theory is absurdly fantastic,” said Bates with tight-lipped decision.

“Can you give us a better one? From everything I’ve heard, Ted Granger was enough infatuated to give him a good motive for wanting reconciliation blocked.”

“But not to the point of committing murder.”

“No one ever knows,” Shayne told him gravely, “when that point is reached.”

“But Granger had no opportunity,” Bates objected. “He was in Wilmington.”

“When?”

“Last night. I’ve just told you he flew down with me.”

“He could easily have been in Miami last night, and he could have flown back to establish an alibi.”

Bates shook his head slowly and he almost smiled. “Not Ted. It’s not in his character. He and Ralph Carrol were cousins, and quite good friends. That is one reason he felt so bad about having allowed himself to become involved with Nora.”

“But he was involved with her,” said Shayne, “and now with Carrol dead and Nora legally a widow, he comes dashing down here to comfort her. You can’t deny that.”

“I’m not attempting to. Let me point out that your case against Granger falls to pieces because of one insurmountable contradiction. In the first place you hypothecate that he killed Nora’s husband for love of her. Yet at the same time, you suggest he chose a time and method that was bound to involve her, and quite possibly bring an accusation against her — against the woman he loves, and hopes to marry,” Bates elaborated. “You can’t have it both ways, Mr. Shayne.” Again a half-smile was on his thin lips.

“All right.” Shayne turned to Chief Gentry. “I can’t think of anything else, Will. But if I were you I’d check with Wilmington damned carefully to determine whether Granger actually spent the night there.”

“If you’re finished with your questions,” Bates said, “may I ask a few of my own?” He turned to the chief.

“Go ahead. But leave out your accusations about the corruptness of the Miami police,” Gentry warned in a deep rumble.

“Do you actually accept this man’s denial that he was retained by me to locate Ralph Carrol?” the lawyer demanded sharply. “Do you believe that he did not agree to make arrangements for Carrol’s wife to visit him last night?”

Will Gentry answered with a blunt: “Yes.”

“Do you believe me to be lying about the matter?”

Gentry hesitated, glancing doubtfully at Shayne. “I don’t go that far. I don’t believe Shayne does, either. I think you were taken in by an impostor, and that you thought you were dealing with Shayne, but that it was someone else altogether.”

“How do you explain such a hoax? I had letters from him — telephone calls.”

“We’re guessing,” Shayne interjected, “that your first letter to me was intercepted somehow. That the person who got hold of it had a letterhead printed, using his own address and telephone number instead of mine. Naturally, you would have no reason to suspect you weren’t dealing with me.”

“How could my letter have been intercepted?” Bates asked with incredulity, his pale eyes shifting from Shayne to Gentry.

“I won’t even try to answer that,” Shayne growled. “The most likely place, I should think, is before it ever reached the mail. In Wilmington. In your own office, perhaps. Could your secretary have been careless and showed it to someone?”

“Certainly not. It’s quite impossible. Miss Evans is completely trustworthy.”

“Perhaps she gave it to someone to mail for her,” Shayne suggested casually. “Think back over the routine in your office. You dictated the letter, no doubt, and she typed it. It was probably given to you to sign. There were, doubtless, clients in and out of your office while this was going on. When did Margrave come to Miami?” he threw at the lawyer abruptly.

“Why, a week or so ago. Certainly you don’t suspect—”

“Someone got hold of that letter and prevented it reaching me. Someone who was able to write you on forged stationery, a day or so later, from Miami, exactly as though I were replying. Someone,” he went on harshly, “who supplied Mrs. Carrol with a key that ostensibly would open her husband’s door. But it was a key to my apartment instead of Carrol’s, and she was sent to my room just about the time her husband was being murdered on the floor above.”

“Why?” demanded Bates in bewilderment. “What possible reason could anyone have for doing those things?”

“It must tie up with Carrol’s death,” Shayne told him. “When we know how, we’ll probably know who.”

Gentry’s telephone rang. He answered it, listened a moment, then said, “You’d better pick him up and bring him in for questioning on suspicion,” and hung up.

In answer to Shayne’s unspoken question, he said, “That was a report on your friend at the Roney. He claims he was in bed early last night, but no one can verify it. I’ll get after the airlines and see if I can get witnesses up here.”

“And check on a later flight,” said Shayne. “Anything after four-thirty that stops in Wilmington. Maybe you can put it closer.” He added to Bates, “Did Granger contact you this morning?”

“Yes. He phoned about ten, after hearing the news about Ralph. When I told him I was flying down, he invited himself to join me.”

“Any flight between four-thirty and eight, then,” he told Gentry. “I don’t suppose he used his right name, or that the stewardess will be back in Miami yet but someone in the ticket office might remember him.” Shayne stood up and started for the door.

“Where you headed, Mike?” Gentry asked.

“To have a talk with the widow and her boy friend from Wilmington. Then I’d like to see Ann Margrave again and find out where she was at two o’clock this morning.”

Chapter thirteen

A vagrant idea was nagging at the back of Shayne’s mind. It wasn’t clear, yet. He didn’t know exactly what it was or what he hoped it might prove but it was a point that had subconsciously bothered him ever since early in the morning when he and Gentry talked by telephone to Bates in Wilmington.

Upon reaching his car he got in and sat for a moment before starting the motor. In the rush of events since Carrol’s murder, he hadn’t had an opportunity to check at his hotel. This seemed a good time to do it, so instead of driving directly to the Commodore, he stopped off at his hotel.

The clerk on the desk had known the rangy detective for years and greeted him affably. “Bad business in two-sixteen last night, Mr. Shayne. Anything new on the Carrol murder?” His eyes flickered upward to the wound on Shayne’s head and a smile of admiration was forming on his lips when the redhead snapped at him in mock anger.

“Hell of a thing for Dick to be sick last night when it happened. The man you had on the switchboard didn’t even warn me I was trying to call a stiff when I asked for Carrol.”

“We’re all sorry about that, Mr. Shayne,” the clerk told him soberly, lowering his voice and glancing at an elderly couple near the desk. “And that’s something I’ve been wanting to see you about in private. Dick called up this morning and told me to tell you he tried to call you at your office about ten o’clock, but no one answered.”

Shayne’s memory flashed back to the call he had been prevented from taking by the interference of one of Gentry’s men, the burly, surly Gene Benton. He asked, “What did Dick have on his mind?”

“Something that worried him when he heard about Mr. Carrol being murdered. He knew it might be important, but Dick sure wouldn’t spill it to the cops unless you gave him the okay. It’s about your man casing Mr. Carrol’s apartment last week.”

Only a muscle twitching in his left cheek gave an indication of Shayne’s intense interest. This was it. This was what had been nagging at him.

“My man?” he asked quietly. “I thought all of you knew I work alone.”

“Dick didn’t give me too much on the phone,” the clerk said apologetically, “but that’s what he said. You did have an assistant a couple of months ago. Remember? You brought him in and introduced him around and said he was to use your room any time he wanted.”

Shayne’s eyes were very bright, but he said, “Yeh, Nash,” casually. “For a couple of weeks in January. He was around last week asking about Ralph Carrol?”

“Dick didn’t say it was him. Just said he was your man. ’Course we all know you always worked by yourself, but I recollect you did have this man that one time, and—”

“I remember,” Shayne cut in impatiently. “What’s Dick’s home number?”

“Oh, you can’t get him there now, Mr. Shayne. He was taken to the hospital for an operation at noon. He just wanted me to tell you he hadn’t spilled it and wouldn’t unless you said to.”

Shayne took out his wallet and laid a ten-dollar bill on the desk. He said, “Thanks. Send Dick some flowers.” He hurried out and headed for Nora Carrol’s hotel.

He stopped at the desk in the Commodore and asked for Mrs. Carrol’s room number. The clerk gave him the information and indicated the house phones on a counter a few feet away. “If you wish to speak to her,” he suggested delicately, “perhaps you’ll wait. I believe she has a caller now.”

Shayne trotted to the row of phones, lifted one, and said, “Room three-sixty,” and Nora Carrol answered immediately.

He said, “Mike Shayne downstairs. I’ll be right up.” He hung up before she could protest or acquiesce, and stalked to the row of elevators, found one waiting that put him on the third floor within a minute of his call. Thirty seconds later he stopped in front of three-sixty and rapped.

Through the closed door he heard movement inside the room and the blurred murmur of voices. He rapped again, hard and insistent.

A shrill cry of panic responded. “No, Ted! My God! No!” Nora Carrol’s voice echoed in Shayne’s ears followed by a blast of gunfire.

Shayne tried the knob fast. He drew back across the corridor, ready to lunge at the door with his left shoulder, when the door flew open.

Nora Carrol stood just inside, her hair disheveled and her face contorted with fear and horror. Tears streamed down her cheeks. The acrid smell of gunsmoke drifted up from the muzzle of a.45 automatic on the floor, and just beyond the gun a man’s body lay crumpled on its side.

“I tried to stop him! I tried to!” She sobbed the words over and over. “But he went crazy all at once.”

Shayne was beside her with an arm around her. He looked somberly down at the body of the man who had tried to kill him, in the front seat of his car, some nine hours earlier. Blood was gushing from a hole at the base of his throat, just beneath his chin.

Heeling the door shut, he half carried and half dragged the distraught widow to the bed. He let her down gently. “Cry it out while I call the police. But first tell me one thing. Is it Ted Granger?”

“Yes. He— he—” Her voice choked and she turned on her side, covered her face with both hands, and sobbed wildly.

Shayne picked up the telephone on the bedside table, asked for an outside line, and gave Will Gentry’s private number at police headquarters.

When the chief answered, he said, “Shayne, Will. I’m with Mrs. Carrol in three-sixty at the Commodore, and Ted Granger is lying here on the floor — dead.”

He listened a moment, then said impatiently, “It looks that way. I’ll try to calm Mrs. Carrol down and have her ready to answer questions when you get here. Better bring Bates along if he’s still around.”

He hung up and stood with his back to the corpse and the hysterical widow on the bed. His wound throbbed like a dull, steady rhythm on a drum, but he scarcely felt it as he turned slowly to make a careful survey of the room.

The dead man was in his shirt sleeves. His hat and jacket lay on a chair near the door. Everything was neat and tidy, and there was no indication of a struggle of any sort.

Shayne lit a cigarette, walked around to the other side of the bed from where Nora lay, and sat down. He studied her moodily, listening to her choking sobs. He took long drags on his cigarette, remembering the first time he had seen her, completely nude, and outlined in the faint light from the open door of his apartment, as she moved toward it to close it on the night latch before getting into his bed.

Suddenly he caught her shaking shoulder in a firm grasp and said curtly, “That’s about enough histrionics. So the guy is dead, and that makes two of your men rubbed out in twelve hours. But there’s still Margrave left.”

Her sobbing subsided slowly, and, for a moment, she lay still. Then she lifted herself on one elbow, glared at him, and said in an outraged voice, “What do you mean by that crack?”

“Don’t forget that Margrave has the invention now,” he said cynically. “That’s why you switched from him to Ralph in the first place, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do.”

Nora Carrol was suddenly stricken again, and tears flowed down her cheeks. “How can you say things like that,” she sobbed, “when Ted is — when he’s l-lying there on the f-floor?”

Shayne said pleasantly, “Skip it if you like. It really doesn’t matter now, I guess.”

At the sound of footsteps hurrying down the hall, he got up and went to the door to admit Will Gentry and Attorney Bates. Officers from the homicide squad, a worried hotel manager, and curious guests pressed in behind him.

“Come in with your notebook, Jervis,” Gentry said to a young officer. “You, too, Bates. Rest of you stay out until I call you.”

He closed the door, looked at Granger’s body, then at Shayne, with lifted brows; and finally at the bed where Bates sat beside Mrs. Carrol, holding both of her hands in his.

Officer Jervis was seated at a table across the room with notebook and pencil ready. “Take this down,” the chief ordered. “Statement from Michael Shayne.” He turned to the redhead and waited.

“I came here straight from your office. Called Mrs. Carrol from the desk and said I was on my way up. I knocked on her door and heard voices, and some sort of movement. Then Mrs. Carrol screamed, ‘No, Ted. My God! No.’” Shayne’s utter lack of inflection on the words gave them a dramatic impact that no emphasis could possibly have done.

“This was instantly followed by one shot inside the room. I was all ready to hit the door with my shoulder, but Mrs. Carrol jerked it open from inside. She was sobbing and hysterical, and this is what I saw.” He gestured toward the dead man and the gun. “A dead man with a gun lying beside him. She told me it was Ted Granger and that she had tried to stop him, but he had suddenly gone crazy. I phoned you and haven’t touched anything except the telephone.”

He paused, then added calmly, “That’s about the size of it, Will. I haven’t tried to question her. There’s one thing more you should know right now. Granger is the man who called me on the telephone a little before four o’clock and offered me ten grand to keep quiet about Mrs. Carrol. He is the man who shot me, as I parked my car on the bayfront, and left me for dead. It’s a fair guess that the gun on the floor is the same one he used on me.”

Will Gentry nodded gravely. “The hole in the roof of your car came from a forty-five slug. We found an ejected cartridge on the floor.” He turned to Nora and said, “Your turn now, Mrs. Carrol. Start at the beginning and tell us everything you know about this.”

She was sitting tensely erect beside Bates, her face strained and white.

“I was surprised when Ted came about half an hour ago. I thought he was still in Wilmington. He had called me from there early this morning, you see, excited and worried about something. He begged me not to admit I knew he was in Miami last night. He swore that he had nothing to do with Ralph’s death — that it was something entirely different. I didn’t exactly promise him, but I did say I wouldn’t tell unless I had to.” She paused, moistened her lips, and hesitated.

“Then he showed up here about half an hour ago,” Gentry prompted her.

“Yes. He begged me, again, to promise I wouldn’t give him away. I said I would unless he told me why. Then he got excited and finally blurted out wildly that he had killed a man in Miami early this morning and had flown back to Wilmington and fixed an alibi that would stand up if I didn’t ruin it for him.

“I was horrified at first because I thought he meant he had killed Ralph, but he swore he hadn’t done that. He said he was frightened when he heard about Ralph and was afraid I had done it, and so he had killed you to protect me.” She looked directly at Shayne as she spoke.

“I was terribly confused and didn’t know what to think. I hadn’t heard you were dead. Of course, I hadn’t seen you since — there at the hotel, and I didn’t know for sure what might have happened. And then there were the two of you, you know. You saying it wasn’t you who’d been working for Mr. Bates, and all that. So, I just didn’t know.

“Well, Ted went all to pieces and simply groveled and begged me not to tell. And about that time you called from downstairs and said you were coming up.

“As soon as I hung up I said to Ted, ‘You see. You didn’t kill Michael Shayne. That was Mr. Shayne on the phone, and he’ll be up here in a minute.’ Then Ted went completely crazy. He raved at me for turning against him, and said he had killed Ralph for my sake; and now it was all over and he was going to kill himself and finish it. He got that pistol from inside his shirt and waved it around. I tried to stop him and just then you knocked. He jerked away from me and — and did it. I never — I just can’t believe it of Ted,” she ended brokenly. “I never suspected him for a moment. I still can’t really believe he killed Ralph.” She leaned against the Wilmington lawyer and began sobbing afresh.

“He did his best to kill me,” Shayne said grimly. “I wonder, now, if for a different reason than the one he gave us. Not to protect you, but to protect himself because of something the pseudo Michael Shayne knew. Did he say anything about how or why he killed your husband?”

“There wasn’t time. It all happened so fast. Just while you were on your way up.”

“You knew all the time he was here in Miami last night,” growled Gentry. “Didn’t you suspect him?”

“No. I didn’t,” she cried vehemently. “I just couldn’t think Ted would kill anyone.”

“You knew that he knew you were supposed to see your husband,” Shayne charged.

“Yes. I told him yesterday afternoon, right here in this room, after he trailed me from Wilmington. He was begging me to let Ralph go ahead and get the divorce so I could marry him, and I told him flatly that I loved Ralph and didn’t intend to give him up. And to make him realize it was final and definite, I told him what I was going to do, and made him go away.”

“You didn’t happen to give him the key to your husband’s room?” asked Shayne cynically, “and then get a duplicate of my key so you could pretend there was a mistake, and put yourself in the clear on whatever happened to your husband?”

“I certainly did not. I don’t know why I was given the wrong key, unless you did it yourself,” she ended with unexpected spirit.

“How do you suppose Granger found out where to locate your husband?”

“I don’t know. I may have told him the name of Ralph’s hotel, but I don’t think so.”

“But not the room number,” Shayne suggested. “Not one-sixteen instead of two-sixteen?”

“No. I’m certain I didn’t give him the number. Just the name of the hotel. I was so angry with him for following me down here—”

“That might begin to add up to something,” Shayne cut in, turning to Gentry. “If Granger went away from here in the afternoon knowing she planned to see her husband last night, and if he was determined to prevent her from doing so, it’s possible that Granger could have gone to the hotel and asked for Carrol, and that he got hold of a duplicate key to two-sixteen somehow, or had one made. But nothing in all this explains why Mrs. Carrol was given the key to my room. And we still don’t know who impersonated me on the job.”

“We can still check Margrave,” said Gentry doubtfully. “They’re bringing him in. We’ve got the ticket seller and the hostess from the four-twenty flight coming in to see if they can identify the man who called himself Michael Shayne. You willing to stand in a line-up with Margrave, Mike?”

“Of course.” Shayne nodded abstractedly, deep in thought. “You’ve also got an ejected forty-five shell from my car to check with this gun of Granger’s.”

Attorney Bates had sat tight-lipped and quietly consoling the widow. Now, he rose from the bed and said firmly, “If you’re through questioning Mrs. Carrol, may I suggest that I take her down and transfer her to another room. Unless you prefer to return to Wilmington immediately,” he added gently to Nora. “In that case I’ll be glad to—”

“Mrs. Carrol had better stick around awhile,” the chief broke in bluntly. “We’ve quite a bit of checking to do yet, and there may be further questions. But put her in another room, by all means, so my men can have a free hand in here.”

Bates took Nora’s arm, assisted her from the bed, and escorted her from the room.

Chief Gentry called the homicide squad in, then said to Shayne, “That’s all for us here, Mike. Margrave is probably at headquarters by this time.”

On their way to the elevator, Gentry asked with interest, “How does it look to you now, Mike? Anything smell about this setup?”

“No,” said Shayne honestly. “Everything Mrs. Carrol said checks with what little I heard outside the door. Of course, we’ve only her word for any of it, but if everything else checks out, I don’t see how we can disprove it.

“But there’s still a guy around Miami who’s been taking my name in vain,” he went on angrily, “who gave her the wrong key and the wrong number last night. He’s the man I want to get my hands on right now.”

Gentry was quiet in the elevator, but when they were in the lobby and moving toward the front door, he said, “I still like Margrave.”

“But why, Will? When I gave you Margrave, I was postulating the whole hoax on the belief it had been a deliberate and carefully premeditated plan to get rid of Carrol. But if Granger is the killer, that knocks Margrave out. He had no motive for impersonating me.”

“We’ll know more about that if the airport employees identify him. Coming along?” he asked when they reached the sidewalk.

“In a few minutes,” Shayne hedged, going to his own car. “I still want to have a go at finding out one thing from Ann Margrave, and I only hope she’s still sober enough to tell me.”

Chapter fourteen

The waiter in the small bar off Collins Avenue recognized Shayne with a broad grin when he entered. The place was now well filled with late lunchers; but the waiter led Shayne to the rear where Ann Margrave still sat at the same table where they had talked earlier. She was leaning forward with her left elbow on the table, her chin cupped in her palm, the remains of a highball close to her right hand.

“Still working on the money I left you?” he asked the waiter.

“Yes, sir.” He glanced at his tab. “She’s only had ten since you left.”

“In that case,” said Shayne gravely, “by all means bring her another. And a double cognac for me.”

“Yes, sir.” He smiled amiably and went away. Shayne put his finger tips on Ann’s shoulder and said, “Hi.”

She lifted her head slowly and looked up at him with disinterest. Her eyes had a glazed expression, but she enunciated perfectly when she answered, “Hi, yourself. And who the hell are you?”

“Your favorite detective. Remember?” He moved around and slid into the seat opposite her. “The one who pays for all your drinks,” he added.

“Oh, that one.” She tilted her glass and squinted at the contents. “Then why the hell don’t you?”

“What?”

“Pay for a drink.”

“Coming right up,” Shayne said cheerfully as the waiter arrived with reinforcements.

The girl was quite drunk, he realized, and in a dazed, half-hypnotic state. The truth might well come through if he took it very, very gently, and did nothing to shock or frighten her.

He lit a cigarette and waited until she had a few sips from the fresh highball before asking casually, “Were you this tight last night?”

“Much, much tighter. I was floating. If I don’t get to floating in the evening I never go to sleep.”

“Where were you floating?” he asked with a crooked grin.

“Round and about.” She gestured vaguely. “Here and there, hither and yon.”

“Was your father sore when you floated into the hotel suite?”

“Didn’t see him.” She giggled. “Took off my shoes in the hall and floated right into bed.”

Shayne frowned fleetingly, then asked, “How long after Nora married Ralph did you get the cute idea of writing him anonymous letters about her?”

“Took me a long time to think of it.” She took a sip of her drink, then continued. “Gave up at first, and thought I’d just let her have the poor jerk. But after she made him quit his job and he got so unhappy and all, I said to myself, ‘Damn it, Ann, where’re your guts?’ So, I did it. Christmas present,” she giggled. “First one was Christmas present.”

“You sent the first one on Christmas?”

“Umm.” Her glazed eyes suddenly beamed with delight.

“Do you happen to know,” Shayne asked carefully, “exactly how far they went in the matter of hiring a detective to check up on who wrote the letters?”

“Don’t know. Pops knew I wrote them, of course, and he gave me hell. Made me promise to stop.” She lifted her highball glass with both hands and drank deeply. Then she slowly fell forward and dropped her head on her arm, spilling the remainder of the drink on the table.

Shayne’s gaze was bleak as it rested on her blue-black hair. Her eyes were closed and she breathed evenly. He tossed off his drink and called the waiter.

“Call a taxi to take Miss Margrave to the Roney Plaza,” he said, and laid a five-dollar bill on the table. “Give the driver whatever part of this you think he deserves, but you see that she gets to the hotel.”

“Yes, sir,” the waiter replied. “I’ll take care of it right away.”

Shayne’s steps were long and rapid and springy as he hurried out to his car to drive back to Miami. He was moving now. He had something. Not much, but it was definitely something. With one answer from Bates, the correct answer, he would really be ready to move.

Will Gentry had Margrave in his office when Shayne hurried in. The manufacturer looked sweaty, harried, and angry. Margrave leaped to his feet when the redhead entered, and leveled a forefinger at him. “What sort of games do you think you’re playing?” he snorted. “Chief Gentry says it was your idea to drag me in for interrogation — to be forced into a police line-up like a criminal. Damn it! I retained you to protect my interests. You’re fired, do you understand?”

Shayne ignored the pointed finger and Margrave’s angry outburst, but turned to Gentry and asked with interest, “Anything doing?”

Gentry shook his graying head wearily. “I’m afraid it’s a bust. None of the airport employees identified him. If you’ve got nothing else to go on—”

“I’m not surprised, Will,” Shayne broke in impatiently. “I think we can drop Margrave. Where’s Bates?”

“In the next room, frothing,” Gentry rumbled. “Talking about habeas corpuses and suits for false arrest. See here, Mike—”

But Shayne was halfway across the room, headed for another door. Attorney Bates was seated at a desk in the smaller office, talking into a telephone in his dry, precise voice.

Shayne reached him in two strides and put his big hand over the mouthpiece. “I need just one answer from you,” he said curtly. “Did you write me a letter soon after Christmas about investigating the anonymous letters Ann Margrave wrote to Carrol?”

“What’s this?” sputtered Bates. “Can’t you see I’m on the telephone?”

“You’re off it now.” He took his hand from the mouthpiece, pressed his finger on the prongs, and broke the connection. “Did you go so far as to write to me at that time?”

“I think I did,” the outraged lawyer snapped. “Later when Mr. Margrave informed me that his daughter was responsible, we dropped the matter, of course.”

Shayne drew a deep breath and relaxed. “How did you get my address for that first letter?”

“I believed I addressed it simply Miami, Florida. I assumed you were well-enough known to receive it.”

“And I replied to that letter early in January,” Shayne persisted.

“You did. I should have been suspicious of your professional standing and ability at the time from the eagerness you showed for that assignment.”

“But you weren’t?” Shayne pressed him. “When this thing about finding Ralph Carrol came up later, you again wrote to me, but this time used the address on my letterhead?”

“Why, yes, I did.”

Shayne whirled and was on his way out. Re-entering Gentry’s office, he did not slacken his long strides as he passed through, but flung over his shoulder, “Let Margrave go, Will. I’m on my way to get a guy the airport people will identify as Mike Shayne.”

Chapter fifteen

Lucy Hamilton was pushing aside a luncheon tray, brought in from the drugstore downstairs, when Shayne entered the office. She said in a worried voice, “There hasn’t been a thing, Michael.” Then, noting the expression on his face, she stopped abruptly. “What is it? You look like the cat that ate a cageful of canaries.”

Shayne grinned happily. “I’m beginning to feel like one. Take a look back in the records, angel,” he went on swiftly. “Bill Nash. The punk I hired to hold down the office while you were on vacation. I want his address.”

Lucy frowned and turned to a filing-cabinet beside her desk. “Why do you want him? You fired him before I got back because you caught him snitching petty cash.”

“He was a lazy, no-good s.o.b.,” Shayne agreed cheerfully. “And if you ever take another vacation, I’m going to close up shop and go with you. But I want him now.”

Lucy drew out a card and read aloud, “William C. Nash. The Dillmore Hotel.”

“Get me the Dillmore, angel.”

She consulted the directory and dialed a number. When someone answered, she said, “Just a moment, please,” and handed the receiver to Shayne.

“Mr. Nash. William Nash.”

A girl’s voice said, “I’m sorry. We have no Mr. Nash at the present.”

“Do you have a Michael Shayne registered?”

“No, sir. I’m sorry.”

“Look, honey,” said Shayne persuasively. “This is very important. Bill Nash was living there a couple of months ago, the first two weeks in January, for sure. Will you check and see when he left? And what forwarding address you have?”

“It’ll take a few minutes.”

Shayne said, “I’ll hold on.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and explained to Lucy. “You heard enough this morning to realize that a lawyer in Wilmington claims he hired me to locate Ralph Carrol in Miami a couple of weeks ago. He didn’t, but he swears he had letters and phone calls from me. I just learned that he first wrote me early in January, while you were on vacation and Nash was in the office. Nash evidently decided to turn detective himself, and kept the letter from me, had some Michael Shayne letterheads printed, and replied to Bates on one of them. God knows how many cases he may have picked up.”

The girl’s voice was on the wire again. He said, “Yes?”

“Mr. Nash checked out on January fifteenth. He didn’t leave any forwarding address, but had us hold his mail. He drops in to pick it up occasionally.”

Shayne said, “Is there any mail there for him now?”

“Yes. Two letters that came several days ago.”

“Thanks. You’re a sweetheart and I’ll buy you a drink next time I’m around.” Shayne bent forward to cradle the receiver. He tugged at his ear lobe for a moment, muttering, “Bill’s biggest trouble was the bangtails. Where is the Dillmore Hotel?”

Lucy looked at the open directory and gave him a number in the seven-hundred block on North-East Second Avenue.

Shayne took a small address book from his pocket, read a telephone number to Lucy, asked her to dial it, and then reached for the receiver.

A man’s voice answered, and Shayne said, “Len? Mike Shayne. How they running these days?” He grinned as he listened. “That’s good. Look, Len, do me a favor? Where would I go on the seven-hundred block on North-East Second Avenue to lay two bucks on a filly’s nose?” The redhead gave Lucy Hamilton a left-eyed wink as the voice came over the wire. He said, “Maybe you haven’t got it in your head, Len, but check, will you? It’s damned important. Sure, I’ll hang on.”

Shayne waited for several minutes, then said happily, “That’s just what I wanted. I’ll do you a favor some day.” He tossed the instrument to Lucy and went out fast. Ten minutes later he pulled up at the curb, in front of a dingy bar and grill, half a block from the Dillmore Hotel.

Half a dozen loungers were clustered at the end of the bar, near the television set, watching a baseball game. The bald-headed bartender languidly chewed on a frayed matchstick and drew two steins of beer.

Shayne slid onto the front stool and waited until the bartender drifted toward him. “A slug with a beer chaser,” he said, and lit a cigarette. When his order was placed before him he asked casually, “Seen Bill Nash around lately?”

“Not much. He moved, you know. Drops in sometimes. I don’t know you, do I?”

“No. But you’re Joe, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“Bill’s moved, and I can’t locate him. I remember he told me once that you handled all his bets, and I figured maybe he still laid a few with you.”

Joe chuckled. “He phones one every day. Regular as clockwork.”

“Know where he hangs out?”

“Can’t say as I do.”

“But you do have a phone number where you can reach him,” suggested Shayne with a grin. “Just in case a broomtail should happen to drop in and whinny a hot tip.

“I might, and I mightn’t. You a friend of his?”

“We’re old pals. I’ve got a deal I could use him on if I knew how to get in touch.”

“That so?” Joe asked without much interest.

Shayne had a bill in his hand. He folded it to show the $10.00 denomination. “Bill’s phone number is worth this to me.”

Joe moved back warily, eyeing the bill. “Must be a big deal.”

Shayne shrugged. “You’ll be doing us both a favor.”

The bartender propped both elbows on the damp bar, directly in front of Shayne, and said in a sneering tone, “If you’re such a good friend of Bill Nash’s, whyn’t you save yourself money by taking a look down at the end of the bar and talking to him yourself?”

Shayne looked at the bartender with surprise and suspicion, then narrowed his eyes at the group watching television. “What the hell you giving me?” he said angrily. “None of those men even halfway look like Bill.”

The folded bill was expertly plucked from his fingers, and Joe said pleasantly, “Just wanted to make sure you’re a pal of his.” He moved to the center of the bar and consulted a book stashed under the counter. He returned and gave the redhead a number which he wrote down in his little black book. He shoved a half dollar across the bar and said, “I’ll tell Bill I saw you.” He went out without touching the drink he had paid for.

At the first public telephone down the street he dialed a number and said, “Mike Shayne. Give me an address that fits this telephone number.” He had the information in less than a minute, an address on North Miami Avenue in the Forties.

Some twenty minutes later he was standing before a door opening from the street onto a stairway leading up to an apartment above a cigar store. He went up and tried the door at the top. It opened readily into a shabby sitting-room with shades drawn against the sunlight. He crossed to an open door on the right and looked into a small bedroom.

Bill Nash lay on his back. His mouth was laxly open, and with every breath he emitted a snorting snore. Shayne stood on the threshold regarding the man with distaste. “Little man has had a busy night,” he muttered under his breath.

Turning back to the living-room he let up one of the shades, opened the window, crossed to a table with a portable typewriter on top, and opened the center drawer. There was stationery inside. He drew out one sheet and read the letterhead neatly printed:

MICHAEL SHAYNE

Private Investigations

It carried Nash’s North Miami Avenue address and telephone number. He took the sheet with him when he went into the bedroom and shook Bill Nash ungently.

His former employee sat up with a grunt. His jaw gaped when he saw the redhead leaning over him. Shayne slapped him with his open hand before he could speak.

Nash fell sideways on the bed and cowered there, holding his hands up to ward off another blow.

“Don’t, Mr. Shayne! Don’t hit me again. I swear I’m sorry, but I didn’t mean any harm.”

“Shut up,” Shayne growled, towering over him and holding out the forged letterhead. “Where’s the correspondence with Bates about the Carrol case that you stole from Wilmington this morning?”

“I burned it all up.” Nash cringed and clawed at the flimsy sheet as if to pull it over him for protection. “Soon as I heard on the radio that Carrol was dead, I knew it was a bad mess. But I never meant any harm. It just seemed like a smart angle when I started it. You were turning down that kind of case all the time and I didn’t see why I couldn’t get in on some of them. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“How many other cases did you take on in my name?” Shayne demanded, his right palm poised above Nash’s face.

“Only three or four,” he vowed in a whining tone. “All stuff I knew you’d turn down, divorces and like that. I was all ready to quit when I got that second letter from Bates.” He paused to moisten his thin, dry lips, and added, “So I thought I might’s well do one more.”

“Why did you give Mrs. Carrol the wrong key last night?” grated Shayne.

“The wrong key?” His teeth chattered nervously, and he gulped before adding, “I didn’t. What you mean? I gave her the key to her husband’s apartment so’s she could slip in and get him caught with her to stop the divorce.”

Shayne let the letterhead flutter to the bed as he caught the man’s scrawny shoulders and, holding him aloft with his left hand, he clenched his right fist and drew it back.

“So help me, God,” he warned, “I’m going to coldcock you if you don’t tell the truth. Did you think it was funny to send her to my room instead of her husband’s, or did somebody pay you to do it that way?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Nash swore, writhing and twisting in the redhead’s grip. “I had the lawyer get him in there on account of they knew I’d worked for you and wouldn’t think anything if I asked for a key.” Shayne slapped his face with cold, precise, and carefully calculated force. Blood spurted from Nash’s flattened nose and a deep gash in his upper lip. He cried out in agony, choked, and spit out two front teeth in a mouthful of bloody froth.

The redhead lowered him until his feet touched the floor, but he still held Nash inexorably with his left hand. “That’s just a sample,” he said with frightening calm. “I’ll knock every goddamned tooth down your throat if you don’t start talking.” He shook Nash like a rag doll. “Who paid you to switch keys on Mrs. Carrol?”

Nash’s eyes bulged with fear. His body went limp in Shayne’s grasp and, as he drooled and sputtered wildly, he denied any knowledge of what Shayne was talking about.

Giving up in disgust, the redhead tossed him across the bed where he lay in a heap. “Get into some clothes,” he ordered, stalking into the other room. He found a bottle half full of whisky, took a long drink out of it, then went back to the bedroom. Nash was trying to staunch the nosebleed with the top of his pajamas.

“You can let it bleed,” he told Nash flatly, “or you can get into the bathroom and put cold water on it. I’ll give you five minutes. Then, we’re going to headquarters whether you have any clothes on or not.”

Back in the living-room he took several sheets of the forged letterheads and stuffed them in his pocket, looked at his wrist watch, and was angrily aware of the dull, throbbing pain in his wounded head.

He returned to the bedroom on the second to find Nash wearing a blood-spotted shirt and trousers, and groping on the floor for his socks.

“You’re all right the way you are,” he growled, taking him firmly by the elbow and jerking him erect. He swung the arm up in a half nelson behind his back and shoved him out to the stairway and down to his car at the curb.

Nash huddled in the corner of the front seat, sniffling and choking, while Shayne drove to headquarters.

Parking in the police lot, he yanked Nash out and half carried him in the side entrance and back to Gentry’s office.

Timothy Rourke was with the chief when Shayne kicked the door open and tossed him inside. “There he is, Will. I hope I left him enough teeth to talk with.”

Gentry rolled his rumpled lids up and stared at the bloody, barefoot man. “Who the hell is it?” he thundered.

“What the hell is it would be more appropriate,” Timothy Rourke said mockingly, and his nostrils flared like a bloodhound on the scent.

“The name is Bill Nash,” Shayne grated. “I had him in my office pinch-hitting for Lucy a couple of months ago. He got smart and tried to grab up all the new cases that came in while I wasn’t around. Bates’s letter was one of them.

“I got everything from him,” he went on grimly, “except the straight about mixing up my room with Carrol’s. Maybe your boys’ technique will be better than mine for that.”

Pulling the forged letterheads from his pocket, he tossed them on Gentry’s desk and started out.

Rourke sprang up and caught his arm. “Look, Mike, give me the dope. What’s new?”

Shayne stopped in his tracks. “Take a look at the forged letterheads I gave Gentry, Tim,” he said thoughtfully. “This is a good chance to clear up the thing on Lucy in the Herald extra. Say she was there in the line of duty, helping me to solve a murder.”

“You mean—”

“I mean that Lucy was trying to get hold of a letter written on one of those letterheads when she broke into Mrs. Carrol’s room.”

Rourke beamed. “A good follow-up after Granger’s confession and suicide. Will do. And don’t forget I’ve got a private date with Lucy.”

“Lucy knows your preference for blondes,” Shayne told him with a crooked grin, “so watch your step.”

Chapter sixteen

Michael Shayne was comfortably relaxed in a deep chair beside the battered oak desk in his apartment. He was expecting a telephone call, and with cognac and ice water at hand, there had been pleasurable anticipation in the two hours of waiting. He had no doubt whatever that the call would come through sooner or later, and was perfectly content to wait.

It was nine o’clock when the phone rang. He lifted the receiver and said, “Hello, Nora.”

A little gasp came over the wire at his greeting. “How on earth did you know it was I?”

“I’ve been expecting your call. We have unfinished business, you know, you and I.”

She said, “Yes,” very quickly and eagerly, then paused for a long moment before continuing rapidly. “Mr. Bates has been telling me everything about the man who pretended he was you and all. And I realize I owe you an apology for having even suspected last night that you had intentionally given me the wrong key to — you know — to get me to come there and—” Her voice trailed off.

“Looking back on it now,” said Shayne pleasantly, “it doesn’t seem such a bad idea.”

Again there was a pause, a brief one. “That is sort of what I’ve been thinking, too,” she said with new warmth.

“Good. If you’re sticking around Miami for a while, why don’t we try it again some night?”

“That is what I wanted to talk about. I’m going back tonight. I’m all packed, and if you’re not doing anything special, I thought I might stop in to apologize in person.”

“I’m not doing anything special,” he assured her in a mellow tone, “except getting up right now to mix us a drink. Sidecars suit you?”

“Oh, yes. A sidecar will be wonderful.”

“You know your way and the room number,” he reminded her. “Don’t be too long.”

“I won’t. Right away.” Her voice held a sensuous lilt.

Shayne hung up, shaking his red head slowly. Women! He marveled. By God, they were wonderful. Talk about resiliency! Here was a dame, whose estranged husband and current lover had both died violent deaths, practically in her arms within the space of twelve hours, making a fast date with a new man whom she had encountered by accident.

Picking up the two glasses in one hand and the cognac bottle in the other, he carried them to the kitchenette where he squeezed a cupful of lemon juice and poured it into a cocktail shaker. He then added an equal amount of Cointreau and two cups of cognac, filled the shaker almost to the top with ice cubes, screwed the lid on, and went back to the living-room shaking it lazily.

He set the shaker on the desk, got two champagne glasses to place beside it, frowned at the arrangement of chairs, and moved his own a little. He then pushed another comfortable chair so that Nora Carrol’s knees would be practically touching his when they were seated. He turned on a floor lamp with indirect lighting, switched off the bright desk lamp, and was giving the sidecars a few extra shakes when he heard high heels coming up the hall. He went to the door and opened it.

Nora Carrol was bareheaded and wore a blue traveling-suit, simple in style, that revealed her curves. Her brown hair was brushed back from her flushed face, and she looked older than when he first saw her. Her dark eyes met his steadily and her lips parted in a diffident smile.

Shayne knew he could kiss her if he wished. This fleeting moment was the one in which the tone of their meeting would be established.

He put out one hand and touched her lightly between the shoulder blades, and a faint pressure brought her a step forward and into the curve of his arm. Her lips were cool and only slightly parted, but she made no attempt to withdraw them from the insistent and increasing pressure of his. She lifted her right hand and trailed finger tips across his cheek.

He released her then, and she stepped away from the circle of his arm at once, lowering her lashes, and saying with sharply indrawn breath, “I didn’t mean that. I don’t know what you’ll think of me.”

Shayne grinned and closed the door. “Exactly what I was thinking before you came,” he assured her. “That you’re pretty damned terrific.” He took her arm and led her to the chair facing his, unscrewed the cap from the frosted shaker, and poured the champagne glasses full. He handed one to her and held the other high. “Here’s to the wrong key,” he said buoyantly, “may you use it often.”

Her color deepened slightly, but she drank to the toast.

Nora glanced around the room, then studied her drink for a moment before saying, “That’s what I came to talk about,” in a low voice. “I keep thinking about last night—”

“I keep thinking about that, too,” Shayne told her helpfully. “It’s due to be one of my pleasantest memories.”

She lifted her glass, drained it, and held it out to him. “May I have another, please? I need several of these to make me stop feeling like a shameless wanton.”

“Have all you want, of course, but don’t stop feeling that way on my account. Men like nothing better than shameless wantons, if you don’t already know it.”

She took the glass and smiled fleetingly, drank half its contents, and accepted a cigarette and light from him. She settled back and said soberly, “I think I’d say it differently. That men like women who act like shameless wantons when they’re not.”

“You should know better than I,” he told her agreeably. “I was told today that one night with Nora has been known to change strong men into infatuated weaklings.”

“Who told you that?” she flared angrily.

“Don’t jump at me,” he said with a slight shrug. “I consider it one of the greatest compliments I ever heard.”

“Who said that about me?” she demanded.

“Ann Margrave.”

“Oh, her!” She made a gesture of dismissal and emptied her glass, and settled back again with her cigarette. “Ann is the perpetual adolescent. She chased after Ralph for years and she never did forgive me for marrying him.”

Shayne took a long drink, then asked, “So, you’re going back to Wilmington tonight. Do you have to?”

“Yes. I — Mr. Bates made the reservation. Of course, I have to go.” She smiled and added, “Which doesn’t leave us much time for those drinks.”

Shayne filled her glass the third time. “You don’t have to stay in Wilmington, do you?”

“Not forever, I hope.” She smiled quite gaily and sipped at her cocktail. “I wouldn’t call this really weak yet. A little more and I’ll be tight enough to tell you what I really came to say.”

“Have a little more by all means,” he invited with a wide grin. “If you should happen to miss that plane?”

“No,” she said quickly. “I really mustn’t do that. That’s why, well—” She fluttered her eyelids and took a deep drink, as though seeking courage to go on.

Shayne didn’t help her. He crushed out his cigarette, sipped, and waited.

“That’s the reason why I wanted to tell you I hope to come back to Miami in a few weeks,” she said breathlessly.

“I hoped you were going to say that, Nora.”

“Did you? Did you really?”

Shayne nodded. “We don’t have to pretend to each other, do we?”

“No. I guess we don’t, Michael.” Her voice was beginning to slur a trifle, caressing and sensuous. “So you won’t be shocked if I confess that I’ve been thinking, if I had the key to your room when I do come back, and, well, if — some night, when you were sound asleep, like last night, it would be something to anticipate — to look forward to and wonder when—”

“It would, indeed,” he said. “And I’m certainly not shocked, darling.” He half stood, reached across the desk to open the center drawer, took out the key she had left behind early that same morning, and held it up. “You really want to take this with you?”

“Oh, yes,” she exclaimed breathlessly. “I really do.”

Shayne drew it back, looking down at it broodingly. “I wondered,” he said flatly, “how long it would take you to realize your pretty neck was in danger as long as I have this key.”

“What do you mean?”

“I imagine you realized the danger in the beginning,” mused Shayne. “While Chief Gentry was here this morning. But you couldn’t very well ask for it then. It was some sort of evidence. You showed remarkable restraint by walking out and leaving it here as though it meant nothing to you.”

“What do you mean?” she demanded again, her voice rising shrilly on the last word.

“You’ve been pretty damned remarkable throughout this whole thing,” Shayne went on flatly. “What actually happened in your hotel room during the minute and a half you waited for me to reach your door? Did Ted Granger really shoot himself? Or did you grab the gun away from him, when I knocked, and then kill him?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Michael,” she moaned. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“This key isn’t any joke,” he told her harshly. “It’s going to unlock the death chamber for you, and you know it. I’m afraid we can’t touch you for shooting Ted Granger. You’re the only one who can testify as to what happened in that locked room. But you’ll never talk yourself out of murdering your husband, Nora. It just isn’t in the books.”

She slowly brought her emotions under control, sat back rigidly erect, and stared at him.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she told him calmly. “No matter what absurd theory you have about Ralph’s death, I couldn’t possibly have gotten into his room, if I’d tried. You know, yourself, that’s the wrong key.”

Shayne said dispassionately, “You made one slip, Nora. One tiny slip in some of the neatest and fastest work to beat a murder rap I’ve ever run into. Why did you close my door on the night latch last night before coming to bed?”

“Because I thought you were Ralph. I’d left the door open to have a little light to see to undress. You can’t be serious,” she pleaded. “You’re just joking, and I don’t think it’s funny at all.”

“If I hadn’t been standing in the bedroom doorway, if I hadn’t seen you go to close the door, it might never have come to me. But I couldn’t get that picture of you out of my mind. You looked good,” he went on angrily. “So damned good that it kept coming back to me. And finally I realized the truth. You knew perfectly well you weren’t in Ralph’s apartment. Your whole story was a desperate lie to alibi yourself.”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to get at at all,” she told him, her voice still calm and cold.

“Ludlow,” said Shayne grimly. “The photographer who was supposed to take a picture of you in bed with Ralph as clinching evidence to kill the divorce. We got it from Ludlow; and from Bill Nash, who was posing as Michael Shayne in the deal. You knew the setup. Everything was timed to the minute. They’ll testify you were to enter Ralph’s apartment at exactly two-ten. You were to leave the door ajar for Ludlow to follow ten minutes later, get undressed and into Ralph’s bed, and have the picture taken.

“And you did just that, Nora. The door was open for Ludlow at two-twenty. Ralph was there waiting for his picture, but you weren’t.”

“Where was I, mastermind?” she asked scathingly.

“You were in Ralph’s kitchen going out his back door onto the fire escape with his back-door key, which is just a common one that opens most ordinary doors. I tried my back-door key on his this afternoon and it fits, all right. You worked fast to get out of a hell of a spot after you stabbed him. You knew the photographer was due in that open doorway any moment. I imagine you ducked in the kitchen with your clothes in your arms about the time Ludlow walked in. Or did Ralph wake up before you were fully undressed, threaten to throw you out, and got you so angry you grabbed up the paper knife and let him have it, before you realized you were trapped there?”

“You’re telling it,” she said, feigning indifference, but her voice was unsteady.

“That’s right, I am,” he agreed pleasantly. “Anyhow, you did come out on the fire escape, bringing the backdoor key to two-sixteen with you, and down one flight to my landing. By that time, you’d had a moment to think. Ralph was dead, and the detective and photographer would place you in his room at the right time. If you could get into the apartment below, pretend you believed it was Ralph’s and that you had been given the wrong key by mistake; well, it was a crazy chance, but the only one you saw. And you took it, babe, with the aplomb of a seasoned murderess, may I say? I don’t know how much practice you’d had, but—”

“You actually sound serious,” Nora broke in, bewildered and frightened. “How can you possibly believe all that nonsense? I had no way of getting into Ralph’s room. That key doesn’t fit his door. You and the chief tried it last night.”

“No,” said Shayne grimly. “That was a big break for you. The merest chance, but it almost put you in the clear. The police had jammed the lock on Ralph’s door when they broke in, and we brought his key down here to try it on my door. It didn’t fit, of course. But we didn’t try this key on my door. You said you’d come in the front door and we assumed you had, and it didn’t occur to us to test it.

“But after it was all over and you had Ted Granger conveniently dead and framed for the job, you realized that I still had the key. ‘One of these days,’ you must have thought, ‘he’ll absent-mindedly try to open his door with that key I left behind, and it won’t open’

“You knew that would be the payoff. I’d immediately know your entire story had been a lie. But if you could get hold of this key, and get rid of it before I happened to try it on my door, you’d be clear. And you tried, honey,” he went on, his voice suddenly sympathetic. “God knows you tried. That’s why I expected your call tonight. I knew you’d call.”

Nora Carrol had been leaning back listlessly as he spoke, nervously toying with the suède purse in her lap. Her hand dived inside as he ended, and came out with a tiny.25 automatic. She sat up with teeth bared and her finger tight on the trigger.

“All right, you smart bastard,” she grated. “Once that key is gone you’ll never prove a thing. Give it to me.” Shayne shrugged and tossed it into her lap. “You can have it. I didn’t mention that you forgot something else. Your fingerprints are on Ralph’s back doorknob and on mine. If you had wiped those off—”

“I did wipe them off. You’re lying—”

Shayne jerked his right foot, that had the toe of his shoe under the edge of her chair, just as she realized what she had said. She pulled the trigger of her automatic, and the small bullet went over his head into the ceiling. He had her in his arms, with one hand clamped over the gun, while his other reached for the telephone to call the police to take her away.

Content

Brett Halliday
One Night with Nora

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven

Chapter eight

Chapter nine

Chapter ten

Chapter eleven

Chapter twelve

Chapter thirteen

Chapter fourteen

Chapter fifteen

Chapter sixteen