This Is It, Michael Shayne

by Brett Halliday

  “I see. Hold on, Captain.”

  Shayne hung on, the trenches in his cheeks deepening, and sweat standing on his forehead. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his face, then held out his hand for the drink Lucy was bringing in. He had time for a quick swallow before the man at headquarters said:

  “I don’t know where you got your information about Miss Lally, Captain. She isn’t here. However, it’s possible Chief Gentry has made contact and is with her now. May I call you back?”

  “Don’t bother,” Shayne grunted, dropping the instrument on its prongs and glaring at it. He took another drink, and Lucy handed him an ice-water chaser.

  “Did you find out anything, Michael?” she asked.

  “I think it’s all right. I don’t believe Beatrice is in any danger. Will is out of the office—probably meeting her some place they arranged over the phone.”

  “I’m glad it isn’t anything worse than that,” she breathed. “I got to thinking, back there in the kitchen, and I was afraid it might be the murderer and she was in danger. And it would have been my fault.”

  Shayne’s gray eyes were bleak and staring. He said, absently, “You had no way of knowing it wasn’t me.”

  “But I should have known,” she persisted. “I should have known it was a trick to get her out of here when she gave me that hocus-pocus about not even telling me where she was to meet you. That was a dead giveaway, but instead of using my head I got mad. She did look young and pretty with her glasses off; and I guess she has got what you’d call sex appeal,” she ended in a small, self-accusing voice.

  Shayne finished his drink, set the glass down, and went over to put his arms around her. Tears swam in her eyes and he kissed her lids gently, forcing the tears to her cheeks. He kissed her lips not so gently and said:

  “Now will you stop accusing me of making assignations with other women?”

  She nodded her head, gasping for breath, and she was laughing when he let her go. “What will you do next, Michael?”

  Shayne’s mouth twisted in a humorous grin. “About what, angel?”

  “Michael Shayne! You know very well what I mean. About Miss Lally.” Her cheeks flamed suddenly and her eyes were very bright.

  “I’ll have to find Will and see if he’s ready to play ball with me by keeping Burton Harsh’s name out of the papers.”

  “He will agree, won’t he? If they catch Ralph Morton and pin it on him?”

  “Probably.” He thought for a moment, asked, “How did Beatrice leave here? Afoot or by cab?”

  “She phoned for a cab to pick her up here. I gave her the number.”

  “What company?” Shayne picked up his hat and jammed it down over his unruly red hair. “With the new radio dispatching system they’re using and with two-way radios in the cabs, it’s not difficult to check the destination of any fare.”

  “Why do you want to check her destination? That is, if you’re sure Chief Gentry has her.”

  “I’m not sure of anything. What company did she call?”

  “Martin’s Cab Company. The one I always use.”

  Shayne rubbed his jaw reflectively and muttered, “I don’t know anybody at Martin’s.” He reached for the telephone, asking, “What’s the number?”

  Lucy called the number as he dialed. When the cab company answered, Shayne said:

  “One of your cabs was called to this address to pick up a party about twelve-fifteen.” He gave Lucy’s street number and continued casually, “I’m afraid she got mixed up and went to the wrong address. Would it be difficult for you to check your records and let me know exactly where she went?”

  “It wouldn’t be difficult,” the voice said, “but we don’t give out such information without authorization. If you’d like to give me the correct address I can check and let you know whether they are the same.”

  “Okay,” Shayne said in a resigned tone. “I didn’t much hope you’d fall for that. This is Michael Shayne speaking. I’m a detective and I’m trying to trace the party who left this address in one of your cabs at approximately twelve-fifteen.”

  “A detective?” The voice was more dubious now. “If this is a legitimate police matter—”

  “I’m private, but it’s still legitimate. What in hell do I have to do to get it—a court order?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m just the night dispatcher and don’t have authority to give out such information except to the police.”

  Shayne muttered an oath and hung up. Lucy stood beside him, her young face anxious again. “It’s all my fault for letting her leave here,” she said.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he assured her, “but I’d better check personally with Will.”

  “Is there anything I can do, Michael?”

  “Sure. Go back to bed and get your beauty sleep.” He caught her to him roughly and kissed her, then turned her around by the shoulders and gave her a little shove toward the bedroom. “I’ll call you if anything turns up,” he promised, and hurried out

  Chief Will Gentry was alone in his private office when Shayne reached police headquarters a few minutes later. Gentry rolled his heavy lids up slowly and watched the detective’s approach with weary, solemn eyes.

  “How’s it with you, Mike?” he rumbled. “Did that fellow call you back?”

  “I didn’t suppose you were interested any more.” Shayne swung a straight chair around with the back toward Gentry and straddled the seat, folded his long arms across the top and rested his chin on them. “Rourke told me you had the Morton case busted wide open with her husband tagged for the killer.”

  Gentry drummed blunt fingers on his desk. “Two or three things don’t check very well,” he grated. “We pretty well place him in her room at six-fifteen, but that letter she wrote said six-thirty, Mike.”

  “And her watch was an hour slow,” Shayne reminded him. “So that may have meant seven-thirty.”

  “I haven’t forgotten that. And why the devil would a husband send threatening notes to his wife? Why would he want to run her out of town?”

  “Miss Lally might help you on that,” Shayne said blandly. “Did she tell you about Morton phoning her this morning?”

  “You know damned well Miss Lally hasn’t told me anything. If she knows where to locate him—”

  “Don’t feed me that, Will,” Shayne interrupted. “What I’m interested in right now is how much she told you about a certain party who visited Miss Morton last night and shot off his mouth about murdering her.”

  “How can she tell me anything when you’ve got her locked in your harem?” Gentry growled. “If you force me to get out a search warrant for her, Mike, I swear I’ll see you rot in—” With his murky eyes fixed implacably on Shayne’s face his voice gradually lowered and he stopped with his jaw dropping in consternation at the expression on Shayne’s face.

  Shoving his chair back, Shayne got up and leaned over the desk, said, “This is no time for horsing around, Will,” hoarsely and urgently. “Haven’t you got Miss Lally?”

  “Certainly not. Haven’t you?”

  “Please, Will,” he pleaded. “It’s important as hell. Do you swear you don’t know where she is?”

  “Rourke guessed she might be at your secretary’s apartment,” said Gentry, plainly baffled at Shayne’s tone and manner.

  “Tim!” Shayne’s eyes grew dangerously bright. “Where is he?” he demanded. “Where has he been the last half hour or so?”

  “Right now he’s out in the press room. For the last half hour or so he has been out with me in a squad car chasing down a bum steer on Ralph Morton.”

  Shayne straightened up, took off his hat, and clawed at his hair. He said slowly and absently, “Somebody has got her, Will. Somebody who wants her shut up permanently.”

  Chapter Ten

  Girl Hunt

  “WHAT THE DEVIL DO YOU MEAN, Mike?”

  “Just that. Somebody telephoned her at Lucy’s apartment about twelve-fifteen and pretended to be me and arrang
ed to have her meet him some place. Whoever did it was cagey enough to warn her not to tell even Lucy where she was going.

  “I thought, of course, it was you, Will,” he went on, his eyes bleak and a heavy scowl between them. “I knew you were sore about my keeping her away from you—and Rourke suspected where I had her. I was sure you’d suspect, too, when you started bearing down on finding her. I wasn’t too worried, except I was afraid my little game of hocus-pocus with a guy named Burton Harsh might be busted up. But if it wasn’t you or Rourke—”

  “It wasn’t,” Gentry said gravely. “I was sore about your hiding her, but I trusted you to take care of her. Who else knew where she was?”

  “That’s the hell of it, Will. No one knew. No one could possibly have known.” Shayne thrust his hands deep in his pockets and walked up and down in front of the desk.

  Gentry creaked his swivel chair back and chewed savagely on his cigar. “Yet someone phoned her there,” he growled. “If you’ve let the killer get hold of her, Mike—”

  “I know,” Shayne broke in harshly. “Don’t waste time throwing it up to me. She called one of Martin’s cabs to pick her up at Lucy’s place,” he went on swiftly. “About twelve-fifteen. I tried to find out from the cab company where she went but they refused to give me the dope. They’ll give it to you.”

  Gentry had already creaked forward and was reaching for the telephone. He spoke into it tersely while Shayne straddled the chair again and lit a cigarette with shaking hands, puffed on it while he went over in swift sequence everything that had happened since he deposited Beatrice Lally at Lucy’s apartment. Who could possibly have guessed where she was?

  Leo Gannet? He could have put a tail on his car when he left the Beach with the girl. Frowning in concentration, he went over every minute of the fast drive across the Venetian Causeway. He couldn’t swear there hadn’t been a car following him. He hadn’t thought much about it at the time. But he felt certain he would have noticed, instinctively, if there had been. He had worked at the business too long, developed a sort of sixth sense, and even when he wasn’t working and had no conscious realization that he was doing so, he always knew when a car was behind him—staying that certain distance behind.

  If not Gannet, who else? Harsh, Garvin, Morton, Paisly? These were the only names that had entered into any phase of the murder investigation insofar as he knew, and two of them he hadn’t even met.

  Edwin Paisly? He was apparently a newcomer in Miami and probably didn’t know he had a secretary.

  Burton Harsh was not a newcomer. Harsh knew all about Michael Shayne, as did any constant newspaper reader in the city. He had known how to reach him at his hotel apartment, and had recognized him by sight at the Golden Cock. Also, Harsh had contacts in the city. It wouldn’t be difficult for him to learn that Lucy Hamilton was his secretary.

  Did he have reason to suspect that was where Beatrice was hiding? Shayne’s clenched palms were wet and his eyes tightly shut as he went over his conversation with Harsh. Harsh had not once, that he recalled, named Miss Lally, but referred to her as that secretary. She was the person he feared most. Had he, in his distraught mind, figured it out and decided, after all, not to trust the arrangement they had made?

  He had been careful to close the door of the telephone booth in the beer joint, and even interpose his body between Harsh and the phone when he dialed Lucy’s number. It was possible to hear the faintest whir of the dial, he knew, but he couldn’t accept the probability that Harsh could discern the number he dialed.

  He had often heard rumors of smart operators who claimed to be able to recognize a number by counting the clicks, but he had yet to meet such a man. He had, in fact, wasted several weeks when he was much younger, trying to train himself to do the trick, and had given up in disgust.

  No. Harsh could not have learned Lucy’s number that way. Then how else?

  Shayne opened his eyes wide as one remote possibility came to him. He had swung back the booth door to admit Harsh as soon as he finished dialing. Lucy answered the phone. But he had not spoken her name. What he had done was possibly as bad. He had addressed her as “angel” in Harsh’s hearing. It was barely conceivable that Harsh might know this casual term of intimacy applied to Lucy, or guessed it, or contacted someone who knew.

  On the other hand, what could Harsh gain by luring Beatrice away? He had already spilled his story back there in the car. Did Miss Lally know something he hadn’t told? Some positive bit of evidence Harsh couldn’t bring himself to tell that directly tied Sara Morton’s murder around his neck?

  It was a possibility. Harsh had wanted to be assured repeatedly that Miss Lally hadn’t talked. He had been doubtful throughout that he, Shayne, could prevent her from talking. If he convinced himself that she hadn’t yet spilled the really damning evidence, he would have worked fast to make sure she didn’t have another chance.

  Gentry broke into his bitter cogitations when he cradled the receiver and said:

  “Got it, Mike, but I don’t know how much help it is. Miss Lally had the driver take her to the corner of Northeast Second Avenue and Twelfth Street. She got out on the southeast corner and tipped the driver a quarter. He saw her start walking back the other way, but drove on without seeing where she went.”

  “Second and Twelfth,” Shayne muttered. “Whoever phoned her was smart enough to tell her to get off at the corner and walk to wherever she was to meet him. There are dozens of rooming-houses and small hotels within a few blocks. There’s the Edgemont Hotel on Eleventh—”

  “The Edgemont!” Will Gentry pounded his fist on the table resoundingly. “That’s what I’ve been trying to get hold of ever since I heard where she went. Miss Morton has made quite a number of calls to the Edgemont from her hotel,” he went on in response to Shayne’s quirked and inquiring eyebrows. “One of the things we turned up in our investigation. We don’t know, of course, who she called—what room number.”

  Shayne was already on his feet and yanking his hat brim down. “Get some men over there, Will. Fast. And spread others all over that neighborhood. It’s probably too late now, but make it quick,” he ended as he went out the door into the corridor.

  Three minutes later Shayne’s brakes screamed as he jammed them on at the curb in front of the Edgemont. He flung himself out, noticed the three taxicabs parked up above, and rushed into the large, ornate lobby. It was empty except for the clerk at the desk and two dozing porters.

  He strode to the desk and demanded, “Do you have a Ralph Morton registered here?”

  “Morton, sir?” The clerk blinked and shook his head nervously. “Indeed not. I heard over the radio that he—”

  “Paisly?” Shayne interrupted. “Edwin Paisly?” The moment he spoke the name he saw the answer in the clerk’s eyes. “What room number?”

  “Why—I believe he’s in four-nineteen. If you’re from the police—”

  “I am,” he cut in harshly, “and I’m on my way up to Paisly’s room. Send your house dick up after me, and any other cops that come in.”

  “But I’m quite sure Mr. Paisly’s not been in all evening,” the clerk called after him as he started for the elevator. “His key is here.”

  “How long have you been on the desk?” Shayne asked, turning back slowly.

  “Since midnight. I noticed a message in his box with the key.”

  “Let me have the message.” Shayne held out his hand.

  The clerk moistened his thin lips, hesitated, glanced up at Shayne’s eyes, and hurried to get the slip of paper from the pigeonhole.

  Shayne read: Received at 5:40. Call Miss Morton at once. He laid the message on the desk as a uniformed officer and a plainclothesman hurried into the lobby and over to the desk.

  “Do you boys know what you’re looking for?” Shayne asked.

  “Only to co-operate with you.”

  “A young lady got out of a cab at Twelfth and Second about twelve-thirty,” Shayne told them wearily. “She was probably meeting Sara Mo
rton’s murderer. Sara Morton’s fiancé is registered here, but apparently hasn’t been in the hotel since five-forty. Edwin Paisly in four-nineteen. The boys can take it from there. If you can locate Paisly—if anyone in the neighborhood saw him meet a woman on the street about twelve-thirty—” He ran his hand across his forehead, then clenched it into a tight fist. “The woman is Beatrice Lally, Sara Morton’s secretary,” he went on, his arm falling futilely to his side. “She’s wearing a gray two-piece suit with a blue blouse—blond hair, about five-five and plump. Might be wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses. If she’s still alive she probably knows who killed her employer.” He strode past them and went out to his car and pulled away.

  There was a radio patrol car at the next corner. He could hear two or three sirens converging on the spot as he drove on to the Boulevard and turned north. There was nothing more he could do there to help find Beatrice Lally. The local police were much better equipped than he to search the neighborhood and make inquiries, and to trace Edwin Paisly.

  His eyes were bleak as he turned east at 14th Street to cross Biscayne Bay for the second time that evening. Whatever had happened to the girl was essentially his fault, and he accepted the blame, but regrets were never any good. The thing now was to repair the damage that might have been done by her disappearance, to make sure the murderer did not profit by his cunning in luring her away from Lucy’s apartment before she could be questioned by the police.

  Both car windows were down, and the clean salt air blew some of the cobwebs from his mind as he drove across the County Causeway at a moderate speed. He relaxed at the wheel and mentally reviewed everything that had happened since he stepped inside his office at 8:30 and found the special-delivery letter from Sara Morton.

  There wasn’t much. Nothing he could really put his finger on. A lot of elusive things that melted away when he tried to put on the heat. Burton Harsh’s story. Damn it, the man didn’t act like a murderer. Yet, by his own confession he had murdered at least once. Or had been suspected so strongly that he had been indicted for the crime.