This Is It, Michael Shayne ms-19

by Brett Halliday

  “Which I didn’t,” he broke in caustically. “It’s preposterous. But I–I think I can tell you who was sending her such letters.”

  “Who?”

  “Ralph Morton-her husband. He came to my office several days ago and asked me what hotel his wife was stopping at. I knew nothing about the strained relationship between them, so I told him. Then he became abusive and wanted to know exactly how long she had been in Miami. I looked up the date for him. He began to rave, and told me of her intention to divorce him.”

  Carl Garvin grew more and more excited as he continued to relate the incident. He took off his glasses and gesticulated with them. “Morton mentioned the fact that a few more days would complete the legal residence requirements, and had the effrontery to offer me money if I could devise some subterfuge to induce the syndicate to send her to some other state immediately-before her Florida residence was established. I told him, of course, that such a thing was entirely beyond my power to arrange, and finally got rid of him.”

  Shayne considered this briefly, remembering also that Garvin showed no surprise upon hearing of the threatening notes. He said, “So Ralph Morton and Gannet were both offering you money to get Sara Morton out of town. What was Morton’s offer?”

  “I didn’t encourage him to mention any sum,” said Garvin with dignity. “You can see that it must have been Ralph Morton who sent the threatening letters you mentioned.”

  “Maybe. Where is Morton staying?”

  After a barely perceptible pause Garvin replied, “I don’t know,” too emphatically.

  “He must have given you an address. How were you to get in touch with him?”

  “I wasn’t going to get in touch with him,” said Garvin, growing sullen again.

  “Look-he comes in and makes you a proposition,” Shayne said patiently. “Even though you turned him down as you claim, he must have hoped you might change your mind-and he wouldn’t have left without telling you where to contact him.”

  “If he did, I don’t remember.”

  “But you made a note of it,” Shayne said flatly. “It’s in your office some place.”

  Again there was a faint hesitation before he said, “It may be,” in an overly indifferent tone. “I don’t see-”

  “The hell you don’t,” Shayne burst out savagely. “You know the police are looking for him. Why are you holding out his address? Do you hope he’ll get away?”

  Garvin’s apathy was shattered abruptly. “I hadn’t thought-I didn’t realize the importance-you’re right,” he stammered, coming to his feet and drawing his slender frame erect. “I should have thought of it at once. I’ll go to my office and see if I can find it.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Shayne grated. “But before we go there’s one more thing I need, Harsh. That blackmail note you received from Sara Morton.”

  “It’s right here.” All three men were standing, and Harsh went to a secretary and drew a square white envelope from a pigeonhole. He handed it to Shayne.

  The paper was of the same heavy consistency as the special delivery he had received. The address was typed, and the envelope bore no return address. He took the single sheet of notepaper out and saw Sara Morton’s printed blue signature at the top. The final paragraph read:

  I don’t wish to discuss this matter with you further, and suggest you mail this sum to me immediately with a signed note stating that I am to consider it full payment for services rendered.

  Sincerely,

  The signature was in blue ink and as nearly like the printed name as signatures usually run.

  After reading it, Shayne glanced at Garvin and asked, “Have you seen this?”

  “Of course. Mr. Harsh called me over to see it last evening.”

  “Can you identify the signature as Miss Morton’s?”

  “Why-I presumed it must be. It certainly looks the same as the printed name at the top of all her note-paper.”

  “Which would make it a simple matter for anyone to forge a duplicate at the bottom.”

  “What are you getting at?” Harsh broke in sternly. “Who else could or would wish to write a letter like that and forge her signature?”

  “I don’t know,” Shayne admitted absently. He folded the note, replaced it in the envelope, and thrust it into his pocket. “Is the carbon of Morton’s story on you here?” he asked.

  “I have it locked in a private safety deposit box.”

  “Okay.” Shayne turned to Garvin and said, “Let’s go.”

  Outside, the black clouds to the east were cut through with long streaks of lightning at frequent intervals, followed by distant rolls of thunder. They pushed against the sudden gusts of wind to Garvin’s shabby sedan, and Shayne said, “Get in and I’ll ride with you to the entrance.”

  Garvin backed around and drove slowly, stopped before the entrance. Shayne leaped out, said, “Hold on a minute,” and ducked under the chain. He hurried to his car, made a U-turn and drove back past the high gateposts, got out and unhooked the chain. “Go ahead,” he yelled. “I’ll follow you.”

  Back in his car, he slipped the idling motor into gear, fell in behind the sedan, and followed it a few blocks north, then across the bay on the 79th Street Causeway to the mainland. Here Garvin turned and drove past the Little River section, then south on Miami Avenue, and stopped in front of a dark and dilapidated four-story building on 46th.

  Shayne pulled in behind him, parked, and got out to join Garvin, who waited with a key ring in his hand. “We’ll have to walk up two flights,” Garvin said nervously. “The elevator stops at ten o’clock.”

  The building was in complete darkness. Garvin unlocked and opened the front door, switched on a dim light that showed a hall leading past a single elevator to a stairway in the rear. Shayne followed him two flights to another door. This he unlocked and reached in to turn on the light.

  They entered a small, messy office with a teletype machine in one corner, a large desk littered with clipped news stories and pages of typed script that appeared to have no orderly sequence, and as he walked across the room his big feet stepped on or kicked aside wadded copy paper. He hoped earnestly that Garvin wouldn’t have to hunt through the scrambled papers on his desk for Morton’s address.

  But Garvin went confidently to the swivel chair and sat down, began pulling out drawers and pawing through them with a frown of concentration rimming the bulge higher up on his forehead, and muttering to himself as he searched.

  The frown went away when he took a scratch pad from the bottom drawer and held it out to Shayne. “Here it is. I remember now. I tossed it in here after Morton left. The bottom drawer was open and I hit my shin on it when I got up.”

  Shayne wasn’t listening. The Ricardo Hotel was scribbled on the pad. He asked, “Where is the Ricardo?”

  “On Eleventh Street between First and Second Avenues. He didn’t give me the room number.”

  “Let’s get out of here.” Shayne’s eyes were very bright. The address was within a block of the corner where Beatrice Lally had dismissed the cab. He whirled and started to the door, kicking balled paper aside, and reached it before realizing he heard no sound behind him.

  He turned and saw Garvin settled back in his swivel chair lighting a cigarette. “I said let’s go,” he growled.

  “Go on, if you want to. It’s not my business to chase murderers. Particularly one as unpleasant as Ralph Morton.” Garvin’s tone was cold, almost insolent.

  Shayne strode back to the desk and leaned over it. A muscle quivered in his lean jaw. “You’re coming with me,” he grated, and his arm shot out toward Garvin’s face, palm open.

  Garvin skidded the swivel chair back and took off his glasses a second before Shayne’s hand hit his face. He leaped to his feet and protested angrily:

  “See here-you can’t use your high-handed-”

  “I haven’t got time to argue.” Shayne started around the desk.

  Garvin shrank back before the bleak and driving urgency in Shayne’s gau
nt face. He began sidling away toward the door. Shayne backtracked and caught his thin arm in a hard grip and shoved him out the door, waited while he closed and locked it, then impelled him down the stairs and across the sidewalk to his car. “We’ll leave that crate of yours here,” Shayne said flatly. He jerked the door of his own car open just as a gust of wind caught Garvin’s hat and sent it sailing through the air.

  “My hat,” panted Garvin. “Have you gone crazy? You can’t-”

  Shayne held the door of his car open and leaned against it, half-lifted the slender man, and shoved him into the front seat. The door whipped shut with a bang when he took his weight from it. He hurried around to get under the wheel, gunned the motor savagely, lurched away from the curb, and was doing thirty in second gear before Garvin recovered sufficiently to drag himself erect.

  “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such treatment,” he whimpered. “I’m willing to co-operate, but I certainly don’t intend-”

  “Shut up,” Shayne snapped. He was in high gear now and the needle flickered past sixty-five as they roared south on the deserted avenue.

  Minutes later he screamed to a stop in front of the Ricardo Hotel on 11th Street. “Get out and come in with me,” he ordered Garvin as he unlatched his door and got out.

  He hurried into a small, shabby lobby and his heavy, rapid footsteps on the bare floor roused the drowsing clerk before he reached the desk.

  The old man sat up, yawned, and closed his mouth with a click when Shayne leaned across the desk and demanded, “What’s Ralph Morton’s room number?”

  “That’ll be-uh-three-oh-nine. Look here, mister-”

  Shayne turned away impatiently. Carl Garvin was entering the lobby with stiff dignity in ludicrous contrast to his disheveled appearance. His thin hair was twisted by the wind, his clothes rumpled. He had his glasses in one hand and was rubbing his right eye. He walked a trifle faster when he saw Shayne waiting near the elevator.

  “There’s something in my eye,” he complained dismally when he reached Shayne. “It pains me frightfully, and I’m afraid-”

  “You forced me to push you around,” Shayne said grimly, pushing Garvin into the elevator. “Three.” The door closed and he went on to Garvin: “If anything has happened to Miss Lally, I’m holding you directly responsible for it.”

  “Miss Lally? What has she-?” The elevator stopped. Garvin settled his glasses on his nose and stepped out in stiff, disapproving silence while Shayne said, “Hold the elevator here,” to the operator.

  He hurried after Garvin, noting the room numbers, reaching his side just as he stopped in front of 309.

  Shayne knocked loudly, then turned the knob and pushed the door open.

  The room was dark and silent.

  He felt inside for the wall switch and snapped on an overhead light.

  A dead man was slumped across the bed, and as Shayne’s gaze slowly circled the room he saw a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles lying on the floor to the left of the door. The massive frame was twisted and one of the thick lenses was shattered.

  Shayne knew before he stooped to examine them more closely that they were Beatrice Lally’s.

  Chapter Twelve

  “-Like Being in a Coffin.”

  There was utter silence in the room-and something else Shayne couldn’t quite define as he stared at the broken thing that could rob Beatrice Lally of her girlish prettiness in the brief instant required to slide the arms behind her ears. Then a gust of wind rattled the lone window in the room, and he realized that the stench of stale smoke, the fumes of alcohol, and the sweetish odor of blood were thick and stifling.

  He started to the window, remembered Garvin, and whirled around to see him still standing in the door. His face was ashen, and his gray-green eyes were glazed with terror.

  “Is-he-dead?” Garvin asked in a hoarse whisper.

  Shayne gave a snort of disgust. “Is it Morton?”

  Garvin nodded and continued to stare while Shayne went to the window. The sashes were locked. He turned the latch and yanked the window open. A blast of wind emptied an ash tray on the table in front of it before he could lower the sash again. He left it open an inch and went over to the bed.

  Ralph Morton was lying on his back and there was a neat round hole in his right temple. A splotch of blood on the counterpane showed where blood had soaked through onto the sheets and mattress. He was a large, heavy-featured man, and a stubble of black beard stood out against the death pallor of his face. A small pearl-handled automatic lay on the bed close to his right hand, and Shayne guessed it to be either a. 22 or. 25. There was an empty glass on the bedside table, and a whisky bottle was overturned on the floor beside it.

  Shayne picked up the telephone receiver and when the drowsy clerk answered gave police headquarters’ number. Gentry answered, and Shayne asked:

  “Picked up anything on Miss Lally yet?”

  “Nothing, Mike. I’ve got Paisly’s room staked out in the Edgemont, but he hasn’t showed yet. There’s no evidence she went there. My men worked the neighborhood, but no luck.”

  “Call them off, Will. Bring your homicide boys to the Ricardo Hotel on Eleventh. Room three-oh-nine.”

  “What’s up, Mike?” Gentry’s voice changed from a weary rumble to alert interest. “Is she there? Dead?”

  “She’s been here, all right,” Shayne said grimly. “But Ralph Morton is the stiff.” He hung up and turned to see Garvin hesitantly advancing across the threshold. He was staring down at the broken spectacles with the glazed terror still in his eyes.

  “They look-like-Miss Lally’s,” he stammered. His pointing finger trembled. He looked from the glasses to the body on the bed and exclaimed, “Good Lord, Shayne! Do you think she did it?”

  “Right now I’m not trying to think,” Shayne told him. “Stand where you are and don’t touch anything until Gentry’s boys get here.” He went across to the open bathroom door and glanced inside, came back, took Garvin firmly by the arm and led him out into the hall.

  “When were you up here to see Morton last?” he asked casually.

  Garvin trembled violently. “I haven’t been here at all. I told you-”

  “Keep your voice down,” Shayne admonished. “We don’t want to wake up the whole floor. You told me a lot of things,” he went on wearily. “Now I want the truth.”

  “But I’d even forgotten this address,” Garvin whispered hoarsely. “Even having that memorandum at the office had slipped my mind until you reminded me of it.”

  “That was all hocus-pocus. You also told me you didn’t know Morton’s room number, but you walked straight to this door from the elevator and stopped.”

  “I-heard the desk clerk give you the number,” he whispered desperately.

  “No, you didn’t. You were outside the lobby door when he told me. And I’m guessing now that you knocked your hat off in the wind purposely when I insisted that you come with me. You hung back outside until I was ready to come up so you could rush past the clerk with your glasses off and rubbing your eye in the hope he wouldn’t recognize you. Quit stalling, Garvin. With a hat on your head and your glasses on, you know he’ll recognize you.”

  “I did come up to see him yesterday,” Garvin quavered. “But he was drunk and abusive, and-”

  The elevator stopped on the third floor and the first contingent of police filed out. Shayne nodded to them and jerked his head toward the open door of 309.

  When the men came up, Shayne stopped a tall thin man and said, “Lend me your hat a minute, Riley.”

  The man glanced at Shayne’s bushy red head and started to grin, but when he saw Shayne’s grim face he looked puzzled. He slowly lifted a snapbrim brown felt from his head and handed it over, stood by while Shayne passed it to Garvin and demanded, “Put it on.”

  Garvin set the hat on top of his head. It was half a size too small, and he made no attempt to pull it down until Shayne said grimly, “Don’t stall, Garvin. Put it on and pull the brim down the w
ay you wear yours.”

  Both men could hear Garvin’s teeth grinding together as he yanked the hat to a tight fit and pulled the brim low. Shayne said, “Thanks, Riley. I’ll bring it back in a minute.”

  Riley went into 309 and Shayne led Garvin to the elevator, where the boy was leaning out and staring with goggle-eyed wonderment toward the death room.

  “Have you ever seen this gentleman before?” Shayne asked the boy pleasantly.

  “See here, Shayne.” Garvin’s voice cracked on an absurdly high note. He started to remove his glasses, but Shayne ordered sternly, “Keep them on.”

  “I-reckon-” the Negro boy stammered, rolling his eyes fearfully from Shayne to Garvin.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Shayne said soothingly. “Just tell the truth and you’ll be all right.”

  “I reckon he’s rightly the one what was heah not more’n a hour ago askin’ fo’ three-oh-nine,” he blurted out rapidly. “Didn’t stay but jes’ a li’l while.”

  “I was a fool to think I could get away with it,” Garvin said miserably. “But when I looked in that room and saw him lying there, blood trickling out and gunpowder smelling in the room, I–I didn’t know what to do. I realized he’d killed himself,” he broke off hysterically.

  The elevator buzzer was sounding frantically while the Negro boy’s eyes bulged with curiosity and fear, and his hands seemed paralyzed.

  “Take it down,” Shayne ordered, and heard the door close as he walked toward the death room with Garvin. “Are you going to claim Morton was dead before you got here?”

  “He was. I tell you he was lying there just like you saw him. The light was on, and when he didn’t answer my knock I tried the door. It was unlocked, so I opened it and looked in. I know I should have reported it, but I didn’t think of anything but getting out as fast as I could. I was frightened.”

  “Why?” Shayne insisted.

  “Because-Good Lord, Shayne. I didn’t want to be caught here with a man who’d just shot himself.”