One Night with Nora

by Brett Halliday

  “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 scat. 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.”
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  “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.