“Slick and on the make. And he hates and fears Beatrice Lally,” Shayne said reflectively. “I don’t know why, but she can tell us. Could you check with the hospital and see if it’s all right to question her?”
“Right away.” Gentry was turning away when Lieutenant Hastings came out of 309.
“I’m through here,” he told the chief. “There isn’t much. The bullet was fired a few inches from his temple, entering the brain and killing him instantly. Somewhere around twelve-thirty, with a half hour leeway in either direction. Those words pasted on the three pieces of paper were definitely clipped from the pages Riley showed you, but we found no scissors or paste in the room. No definite fingerprints except the dead man’s. The twenty-five automatic has been fired once and was fully loaded to begin with. A woman’s gun,” he added. “Few men ever bother with a toy like that. You got any females on tap for this?”
“Only one,” Gentry admitted, “but I hardly see how Miss Lally fits. Bring Garvin down to headquarters—and send a couple of men to the Beach to pick up Burton Harsh for questioning. What’s the address, Mike?”
Shayne gave him instructions for reaching Harsh’s place by the most direct route, then asked Hastings, “What’s your personal opinion, Lieutenant? Could it be suicide?”
“Could be. But I’d say no. He’d been drinking some, and I never knew a drunken suicide who didn’t leave some sort of a sob note. It isn’t a contact wound, although fired close enough for him to have held the gun. Take my word for it, Mike. It’s murder.”
Shayne nodded and said, “I’m glad to hear it. Suicide wouldn’t fit what I have in mind.”
“Such as what?” demanded Gentry.
“I’d rather not say yet, Will. Not until we have a talk with Beatrice Lally to check against the statements we get from Harsh and Garvin and Paisly. You picked up Paisly yet?”
“The boys’ll pick him up—if they haven’t already,” said Gentry confidently.
They went to the elevator, where the Negro boy waited with one hand on the door and the other on the lever, ready to give instant service. He rolled his big eyes up at Shayne and asked fearfully, “When they gonna bring out the daid man?”
“Pretty soon now,” Shayne told him.
The boy hunched his thin shoulders forward and drew them together and his body shook.
“He’s harmless now,” Shayne assured him as the elevator stopped four inches too soon and they stepped down into the lobby.
Gentry went to a telephone booth and called the hospital, inquired about Miss Lally’s condition, hung up and called headquarters, then rejoined Shayne.
“She’s okay,” he said. “I’m having her brought to my office.”
“There’s something I want to check on with the clerk,” Shayne said, and they went together to the desk where the old man sat tensely erect and wide awake.
He described Miss Lally and asked whether she had come to the hotel around twelve-thirty.
“Didn’t happen to notice a woman like that go up. She might of, though, without me seein’ her. I don’t bother much about who goes in and out if they don’t stop for a key.”
“Who runs the night switchboard?” Shayne asked.
“I tend to it—after midnight.”
“Any outgoing calls from three-oh-nine after twelve?”
“Nope. One come in for Morton, though. Right after I took over.”
“Did he answer it?”
“Right away. Like he might’ve been expectin’ a call.”
“You didn’t just happen to listen in on what they said?” Shayne pressed him.
“I got other things to do besides listen to private telephone-calls,” he answered with dignity.
“Would you recognize the voice if you heard it again?”
“How could I now? Somebody says three-oh-nine and that’s all. I couldn’t say if it was a man or woman, much less remember the voice to recognize it.”
Shayne turned away with angry reluctance and said to Gentry, “That knocks one theory into a cocked hat. If it wasn’t Ralph Morton who called Beatrice Lally to come here, who in hell was it?”
“The murderer,” said Gentry.
“But why? So he’d have a witness to the killing?” he asked ironically.
Gentry shrugged his heavy shoulders wearily. “Because she knew something that made her dangerous to him, maybe. We’re going to need answers to a lot of things from Miss Lally,” he growled. “One thing I want you to remember, Mike. If you hadn’t played smart and held that girl out on me in the beginning we’d probably know all the answers by this time.”
Chapter Fourteen
Just One Question
BEATRICE LALLY’S FACE looked freshly scrubbed and powdered; her lips were rouged, and her blond hair was fluffed around her face to hide more than half of the small bandage in front of her ear. Her round, sooty eyes held an expression of wonderment as she sat across the desk from Chief Will Gentry at police headquarters. She puckered them and squinted at Shayne, who sat on her right, as though to make certain he was still there. Timothy Rourke sat on her left, his slaty eyes feverish with anticipation.
Chief Gentry consulted a sheet of paper containing penciled notes. “I think you can give us information on a lot of important points, Miss Lally. First, there’s Edwin Paisly. We haven’t been able to locate him yet. Do you know where we can find him?”
She turned to Shayne. “Have you told Chief Gentry about us meeting him at the Golden Cock, waiting for Miss Morton to keep a dinner date?”
“I’ve told the chief everything I know,” he said gravely, “and I advise you to do the same.”
“Of course,” she said quietly. “I think I know where you can find Edwin Paisly. I’ve been having him followed by a private detective for the past week. There’s a woman in Coral Gables whom he visited a great deal when he wasn’t with Miss Morton.”
She gave him the woman’s name and address. Gentry wrote it down, pressed a button, and an officer entered immediately.
“Pick up Edwin Paisly if he’s at this address,” Gentry said, passing him the slip of paper. “And bring in whoever is with him. Keep them separated and try to find out how long Paisly has been there tonight, and specifically whether he was there before seven o’clock.”
“Right away, Chief,” the officer said, and went out.
“Now then, Miss Lally,” he resumed, “you say you’ve had a private detective watching Paisly. Was that Miss Morton’s idea?”
“Oh, no. It was entirely my own idea. She was hypnotized by that man,” she said vehemently, “and refused to listen to a word against him.”
“You disliked him?”
“I saw him for what he was.” She tried to suppress her anger, but hatred for Paisly was more convincing in her low, tight tones than in an angry shout. “Marriage to him would ruin her career. He would wring her dry of money—to spend on other women.”
“And you would lose your job?” Gentry probed.
“Probably. He was afraid of me because I had her complete confidence. I was prepared to give up my position if she married him.”
Gentry was rumbling, “We’ll go into that further after we’ve talked to Paisly. Now, Miss Lally, I want you to tell us about the quarrel you had with your employer early yesterday morning.”
She turned to Shayne again and asked in a low, tight-lipped voice, “You mentioned Mr. Harsh to me over the phone. Do I have to—tell Chief Gentry all about—that?”
“He already knows about that old story Sara Morton dug up about him and the letter he received from her demanding twenty-five thousand for suppressing it,” he told her. “Tell us about his visit to her hotel room night before last.”
“One thing at a time,” Gentry growled, with a hard glance at Shayne.
“It’s all right,” said Miss Lally. “They’re sort of mixed up together, anyway.” Color had washed into her face and neck. She folded her hands in her lap and turned back to the chief.
Gentry picked
up a pencil and began doodling on the bottom of his notation sheet.
“I had hoped—I still hope,” she resumed, drawing a deep breath and puckering her eyes at Gentry, “that her character needn’t be publicly smirched. Of course, if Mr. Harsh killed her I suppose there’s no way it can be kept quiet. But I—it’s still so difficult for me to believe. I’ve been so close to her for years and never suspected she would do a thing like that.” She paused and nervously touched the small bandage before her ear.
“Get on to your quarrel,” Gentry said.
“It’s—after this,” she faltered in a hurt voice. “It was after midnight when Mr. Harsh came. I was asleep in fourteen-twenty, and wakened gradually at the sound of angry voices through the bathroom. My door was closed, but hers was open, so I didn’t hear much. Just enough to realize the horrible accusation he was making. Then she knocked on my bathroom door and called me. I got up, but by the time I put on my robe and got in there he had gone.”
“Did you hear him make an actual threat against her life?” Shayne asked.
“No. Not in so many words. But she told me he had. I was so confused—so horrified and ashamed for her that I’m afraid I spoke out very strongly. I couldn’t understand it. She had told me a couple of days previously that she had decided not to use the story because it would blacken a man’s character unnecessarily and possibly bring financial ruin to him and his associates. I had been proud of her for making that decision. Then to learn that she was still holding the threat of publication over his head to extort money from him—” Miss Lally’s mouth primped up like a hurt child’s and her voice broke, and tears ran down her cheeks.
“Would Carl Garvin have known of her decision to kill the story—at the time she told you about it?” Shayne asked.
She looked at him with wet and wondering eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Did Miss Morton clear her stories through his office?”
“Not—actually. She generally liked to have a local man check her stuff for accuracy.”
“Then it’s possible she had informed Garvin of her decision?” Shayne asked.
“I suppose it’s possible,” Miss Lally agreed. “But hardly likely since she still hoped to extract money from Mr. Harsh. She knew Mr. Garvin was engaged to Viola Harsh, and that he’d naturally tell the good news to Mr. Harsh as soon as he learned it.”
“She’s right, Mike,” said Gentry impatiently, laying his pencil aside and folding his arms across the desk. “To tell Garvin would be the same as telling Harsh. Is that what you quarreled with Sara Morton about?” he asked Miss Lally.
“Yes. I forgot myself—and I guess I stormed at her for doing such a despicable thing. She laughed at me in that hard, cynical way she had. She got terribly angry at me, and I guess we made a disturbance, because the manager phoned up about it. That made her furious. She blamed it all on me and had the manager prepare another room for me—and made me move out at two o’clock in the morning.”
She wasn’t crying now, but a tear stood in each eye and her straight black lashes were wet. She pressed a moist, balled-up handkerchief against them, and resumed wearily:
“Neither of us mentioned it the next morning. We both tried to pretend nothing had happened. We always passed off little spats that way. I tried to forget what she was going to do, and tried to tell myself it just proved she was human, after all. I blamed it a lot on Edwin Paisly,” she said, suddenly vicious at the mention of his name. “He had an unwholesome influence on her. She’s been so different these last few months.”
Shayne took the blackmail letter Harsh had given him from his pocket and handed it to Gentry. “Here, Will, take a look at this and compare the signature with the one she wrote me just before she died.”
Gentry spread the two notes on his desk and examined the signatures closely. Shayne got up and leaned across to compare them. After a long moment Gentry said:
“I’m not a handwriting expert, but they look the same to me.”
“And to me,” Shayne agreed morosely. He picked up both notes, folded them, and thrust them in his pocket. He sat down again, and Gentry asked:
“Anything else significant occur yesterday?”
“There were two things,” Beatrice said diffidently. “Ralph Morton called me in the morning and said he wanted to see his wife. I hung up on him.” Her lips rolled out in a sour grimace.
“Did he tell you where he was staying?” Gentry asked sharply.
“No. I got the impression he had just arrived in town.”
“What was the second thing?”
“She had a visitor late in the afternoon. I thought it was Ralph. But as I told Mr. Shayne, I didn’t go in to see. Both bathroom doors were closed and I couldn’t hear anything but a muttering of voices.”
Gentry dropped a soggy cigar butt in the trash basket beside his chair, took out a fresh one and turned it around to examine the wrapper. He bit off the end deliberately, took his time about lighting it, then squeaked his swivel chair back.
“Now we come to the telephone call,” he rumbled, “and your hurried trip to the Ricardo Hotel at twelve-thirty. Are you positive you didn’t see anything in that room before the light went out and you were knocked unconscious?”
“Not a thing. It all happened so fast—”
“And you don’t even know who the occupant of that room is?” he broke in casually.
“No. I went there to meet Mr. Shayne. I thought it was his room. Isn’t it?” Her round eyes held a moist question when she puckered them at Shayne.
“I have an apartment on the river,” he told her.
She was widening her eyes in surprised wonderment when Gentry hunched forward and asked abruptly:
“Have you ever seen this before?” His tone was a harsh growl.
Miss Lally jerked her head around and saw a pearl-handled .25 automatic in Gentry’s square palm and not more than two feet from her naked, near-sighted eyes. She squinted at it worriedly, a perpendicular frown in her smooth white forehead. She leaned closer to examine it.
“Why—it looks like—I think—it’s one Miss Morton used to have,” she faltered. “I can’t be sure, of course, unless I check the serial number with her permit. But it’s the same kind hers is—was.”
“One she had, Miss Lally?” Gentry probed.
“Yes. Up until about a year ago. It was stolen. She always thought Ralph took it. He always took anything of hers he wanted and could get hold of. Where—where did you get it? I understood Miss Morton was stabbed.”
“She was. But a bullet from this gun killed Ralph Morton in room three-oh-nine at the Ricardo Hotel around twelve-thirty tonight.”
“Ralph Morton—dead? At the Ricardo where I—I—went tonight?” She drew away as far as the back of the straight chair permitted, staring at the pistol with hypnotic fascination.
“He is. And if his body hadn’t been discovered in that room by Shayne when it was,” he said grimly, “it is more than likely you would be dead, too. Suffocated in that closet.”
She gasped, looking slowly from Gentry to Shayne, her white skin suddenly suffused with a yellowish pallor. “Then you—found me?” she murmured.
“And lucky for you. Now you know why I asked if the voice over the phone sounded like Ralph Morton’s,” Shayne said.
“How horrible!” she burst out “Was he—murdered—too?”
“We think he was,” said Gentry flatly. He chewed the cigar, dead since the first puffs, across to the other side of his mouth, then resumed:
“It appears he hadn’t just arrived in Miami, but has been at the Ricardo several days and is the one who sent Miss Morton the threatening letters trying to force her to leave Miami before she completed her residence requirements for a divorce.”
“Ralph—sent those letters? Then he’s the one who killed her. But—” she included Timothy Rourke in her round of questioning glances now—“but who killed him? And who phoned me to go to that room? I don’t believe it was Ralph.”
&nbs
p; “We’re fairly certain Ralph Morton didn’t phone you,” Gentry told her. “But it had to be someone who knew Morton’s room number—and who also knew Shayne had left you with Miss Hamilton. When we find that man—”
He was interrupted by a knock on the door and Riley opened it to report:
“We’ve got Mr. Harsh out here, Chief. He wants to phone a lawyer.”
“He can have all the lawyers he wants after we charge him with something,” rumbled Gentry. “I’ll be ready for him in a few minutes. Keep him away from Garvin.”
The door closed and Gentry asked, “Anything you want to ask Miss Lally, Mike?”
“There’s one thing I want very much to ask her. About Miss Morton’s watch, Miss Lally—was it any good?”
“Why, yes. It was a very expensive watch.”
“But did it keep time? Did she have it repaired often?”
“It always kept perfect time,” she declared. The puzzled expression in her eyes cleared, and she said, “Oh—you mean about it being an hour slow, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“That was one of her idiosyncrasies. She refused to ever change to daylight-saving time. She kept it on Standard the year ’round.”
“Didn’t that cause certain difficulties?”
“Oh, no. She was so used to it she always made a mental correction when she was where daylight saving was in effect.”
“As it is here right now,” Shayne muttered. “I guess that tears it, Will. Even if her watch did say seven-thirty when she wrote me the note she would have typed the correct time.” His bushy brows met over a scowl and he rubbed his lean jaw reflectively.
“Then none of the men involved has an alibi,” Gentry said heavily. “You’ve been most helpful and cooperative,” he told Miss Lally. “I may need more from you later, but right now I can’t think of anything else.”
“Then may I go back to the hotel? My eyes are terribly strained from going so long without my glasses. I have an emergency pair at the hotel.”
“Wait a minute,” said Shayne. “They should be bringing Paisly in soon, and I’d like to ask him a couple of questions in your presence.”
This Is It, Michael Shayne Page 14