Michael Shayne hesitated a long moment, holding the heavy brass-bound book in his hands without unfastening the clasp. “Do you think this would be safer in the hands of the C.I.A.? Eddie Byron, wasn’t it? Than in my hands? Is that what you think, Molly?” His voice was curiously gentle.
“I don’t know,” she confessed miserably. “I don’t know what to think.”
“Make up your mind.” He put the book down on the table in front of her. “You can’t have it both ways. Either I handle this affair my way or I don’t handle it at all.”
“I… you still haven’t kissed me, Mike.”
He turned toward her slowly and his telephone rang. He picked it up and barked, “Yes?”
Dick’s voice answered from the desk downstairs. “Chief Gentry’s on his way up, Mr. Shayne. He’s just getting in the elevator now. I thought maybe you’d like…”
Shayne said, “Thanks, Dick,” and slammed the receiver down. He told Molly, “Gentry’s on his way up. Stay here and turn this book over to him, or else get out the back way fast.”
“What will you do if I go?”
“Read it for myself first and then decide what’s best. Either you trust me all the way or you don’t trust me at all, Molly Morgan.”
She looked deep into his eyes for an instant and then reached for her handbag. “Which way is out?”
“Through the kitchen. Back door and fire escape. Key’s on a nail beside the door.” Shayne grabbed up her two glasses and thrust them at her. “Close the door to the kitchen and put these in the sink. Where you staying?”
“The Park Plaza Hotel.”
“I’ll call you as soon as I can.” Shayne heard the elevator stop down the hall and he gave her a little shove toward the kitchen. She went out of the room fast and closed the door behind her. Shayne whirled back to the table and opened the center drawer and swept the captain’s book and the two clippings inside. He stood frowning down at the table while a knock sounded on his door. Everything looked okay. Only one glass of water and his own wine-glass with cognac in the bottom. None of the cigarette butts in the ashtray showed any lipstick.
He went to the door as another knock sounded, opened it and looked surprised at the sight of the chief of police on the threshold with the white-haired attorney directly behind him. He said, “It’s a hell of a time to come visiting, but come on in.”
He stepped aside and Will Gentry moved slowly and steadily past him, glancing suspiciously about the room. “Where’s the Morgan woman, Mike?”
“At her hotel, I suppose.” Shayne raised his eyebrows and grinned as Gentry stopped at the table to look at the pair of glasses sitting there, one with ice water and one with cognac, then went on purposefully toward the closed door leading into the detective’s bedroom. “You don’t think I’ve got her stashed out here, do you?”
“I’m going to find out,” Gentry said placidly. He opened the bedroom and looked inside, turned back and glanced inside the open bathroom, then went to the kitchen door and opened it and turned on the light.
Shayne pretended to disregard him and turned to the attorney who had entered behind Gentry and was looking ill-at-ease. He held out his hand and said, “Your name is Boyd, isn’t it? Will forgot to introduce us, but I think I’ve seen you around town.”
Boyd shook his hand laxly and said, “You probably have, Shayne. I know you, of course, by reputation.”
“All right, Mike. So she isn’t here.” Will Gentry came out of the kitchen looking stolid and purposeful. “So, where is she?”
“I told you…”
“She isn’t at her hotel,” Gentry informed him. “Hasn’t been in her room all evening.”
“How did you know where to look?”
“I called Tim Rourke. She’s staying at the Park Plaza but isn’t in.”
Shayne shrugged and said, “You know how these New York dames are. Why come here looking for her?”
“Because I do know how New York dames are… and how you are.”
“Why do you want to find Miss Morgan? It was the merest chance that we stopped by there tonight and found the old sea captain murdered.”
“So you said. It sounds like a pretty thin story, Mike. Mr. Boyd suggests you know more about the affair than you admit.”
“The hell he does.” Shayne looked at the attorney bleakly. “What gives him that idea?”
“As I mentioned a moment ago,” said the attorney thinly, “I know your reputation in Miami, Mr. Shayne. I suggest you are seeking a way to profit by Captain Ruffer’s death.”
Shayne looked at him incredulously. “A poor old man like that? Good God, he looked to me as though he hadn’t had a square meal for weeks.”
“It is true he’s been in financial straits for some time,” Boyd conceded. “On the other hand, when he asked me to come and see him tonight he intimated that he was on the verge of coming into a large sum of money.”
“And he was obviously tortured before he died, Mike,” Gentry put in, watching the detective keenly. “Torture generally indicates extortion… the effort to extract a secret.”
“Are you accusing me of torturing him?” fumed Shayne.
“Look,” said Gentry patiently. “I’ve told Boyd that I take your word for it that you arrived on the scene only a few minutes before we did. On the other hand, I doubt the young lady’s glib explanation for your being there. Sure, he lost his boat at sea five or six years ago and has been in retirement since then, but why should that interest a writer of nationally syndicated articles who is in Miami on an assignment to study the Cuban situation? It sounded like a spur-of-the-moment explanation to me… made to cover up the real reason you and Miss Morgan were there.”
“There is also abundant evidence,” said Boyd severely, “that his house was burgled tonight and presumably his private papers were taken.”
“You’re accusing me of that?” demanded Shayne angrily.
“Wait a minute, Mike. The bed had been pulled away from the wall in the bedroom in some sort of struggle, and a hiding place in the wall was exposed. Personally, I think the struggle was with his murderer, not you, but the hiding place went unnoticed by him.”
“What was in this so-called hiding place?” Shayne asked bitingly.
“That’s one of the inexplicable things about the whole affair,” admitted Gentry. “There was nothing there except a new and almost unused set of skin-diving equipment. It hardly seems the sort of thing a man would secrete so carefully.”
“Which leads us to suspect that you removed the captain’s private papers to study them at your leisure,” put in Boyd waspishly.
“What’s your interest in all this?” demanded Shayne.
“As Captain Ruffer’s attorney, and now his executor,” snapped Boyd, “my interest is quite proper.”
Shayne put his hands on his hips and studied the attorney for a long moment with his upper lip curling angrily. “You’re also Roy Enders’ attorney, aren’t you? Are you his executor, also?”
“I appeal to you, Chief,” said John Mason Boyd. “What on earth does this man mean by his allegations? I am attorney of record for Roy Enders… as well as for many other clients. What has that to do with this affair?”
“Well, Mike? What has it?”
Shayne shrugged. “Boyd knows more about that than I do. Ask him, Will. Look, all of this seems to me to be a lot of crap,” he went on angrily. “You’re here because you both seem to think something was stolen from a secret hiding place in the captain’s bedroom and you’re accusing me of getting it. I wasn’t even in his goddamned bedroom, Will. I told you. I walked in the front door, and I found him dead.”