“But Miss Morgan was in his bedroom,” Boyd put in quickly. “I suggest that she found his private papers where he had hidden them, and that she stole them.”
Shayne balled his big hands into fists and glared at the attorney, and then told Will Gentry, “Why don’t you get hold of Miss Morgan and ask her these questions?”
“We’d like to,” Gentry told him quietly. “We just don’t know where to find her, Mike. That’s why we came here.”
“I think you’ve got her hidden away, Shayne. It is my conviction that you don’t dare let her be questioned by us,” said Boyd venomously. “We agree that you probably weren’t in the bedroom of Captain Ruffer’s house tonight… but all of us know that Miss Morgan was. We would like to hear her story under oath.”
Shayne moved toward the attorney slowly, his grey eyes glinting, big fists doubled at his sides, and lips drawn back from his teeth.
“You know what I’d like, Boyd?”
The attorney backed away from him fearfully. “No. I’m not sure…”
Shayne laughed hoarsely. “I’d like to know what you hope to get out of this. Why in hell are you throwing your weight around tonight? You could get your goddamned face beaten in without a great deal more effort on your part.”
“Lay off the guy, Mike,” groaned Gentry. “You got to admit he’s got a good case.”
Shayne swung around and faced Gentry angrily with his fists still doubled. “I don’t admit anything. Is a two-bit shyster running your department now?”
Boyd said in a trembling voice, “I resent that, Shayne.”
Shayne laughed harshly. “You resent it? What about you, Will?”
Gentry said in an even tone, “I’m still running the police department, Mike. But I don’t mind listening to advice. Are you willing to swear that you and Miss Morgan just dropped by the captain’s house by accident tonight and that neither one of you removed anything from the premises that might have a bearing on the reason for his death?”
Michael Shayne faced him squarely and said, “Put me on the witness-stand if I’m going to be cross-examined. If not, why don’t you and Lawyer Boyd get the hell out of here?”
Chief Will Gentry stood facing him, flat-footed, his eyes serious and questioning, for a long moment. He asked quietly, “Are you sure that’s the way you want it, Mike?”
Shayne said, “I’m sure.”
Gentry drew in a deep breath, then turned and stalked to the door. After a moment of bewildered hesitation, John Mason Boyd turned away and followed him out. Shayne stood where he was in the middle of the room for at least thirty seconds after the two men went out. Then he exhaled a deeply-held breath, went to the table and picked up the wine-glass and drained it in a single gulp.
He put it down empty and lit a cigarette, then went out to the kitchen and tried the back door leading out onto the fire escape.
The door was locked, and the key to it was missing from the nail inside where it always hung. Molly had evidently paused to lock the door behind her and taken the key away.
Shayne went back into the sitting room, obscurely pleased with the thought that Molly Morgan had the key to his back door in her purse.
He poured himself another very moderate drink of cognac, and then opened the table drawer and took out the captain’s brass-bound book.
He unfastened the catch and spread the book out on the table, seeing that it consisted of unlined white pages which were covered with clean meticulous script in black ink. The first entry on the first page was faded now, after forty years, but the handwriting was strong and clear. The page was headed, “June 3rd, 1925,” and beneath that was written: “Today I shipped out of New York on my first command berth, 3rd Mate of the Mark Savage, Capt. J. K. Kellog in command. We are bound for Valparaiso with a mixed cargo…”
Shayne flipped the pages rapidly, finding the book a continuation of the same as Molly had suspected. A terse, matter-of-fact, day-by-day seaman’s journal, covering forty years of sailing the seven seas in every sort of merchant vessel and in every position from Third Mate to Skipper, until, in 1955, Captain Samuel Ruffer had retired from commercial shipping after thirty years, and bought his own auxiliary sloop, Mermaid, whose home port was Miami.
Glancing at a few lines here and there every dozen or more pages, Shayne turned swiftly to read the details of the captain’s final voyage which had resulted in his shipwreck and rescue at sea, the sole survivor.
Shayne read the detailed account carefully and grimly, and when he reached the end and closed the book and refastened the catch he knew why Captain Samuel Ruffer had been murdered tonight, and why torture had preceded his death. There were still some unanswered questions, including the all-important “Who?”, but Shayne felt sure that a little checking of the records would produce all the evidence that was needed.
He replaced the journal carefully in the table drawer and closed it, his mind racing ahead to the steps that were now open to him.
He had made a sort of pact with Molly Morgan, he reminded himself. Without her, he would never have read the captain’s journal and been able to piece the truth together.
He sank into a chair and tossed off the short drink he had poured before becoming engrossed in the journal, then riffled though the telephone book and found the number of the Park Plaza Hotel.
He gave the number to Dick downstairs, who doubled on the switchboard at night, and when a pleasingly female voice inquired if she could help him, he said, “Miss Morgan, please. Molly Morgan,” and leaned back comfortably to wait for her voice while he phrased exactly what he would say to her.
He waited at least a full minute before the same female voice told him, “Miss Morgan’s room doesn’t answer. I checked with the desk, sir, and the clerk says she went out just a few minutes ago.”
“But I happen to know she just came in,” Shayne said disbelievingly. “May I speak to the desk?”
She said, “Certainly,” and a moment later a reedy masculine voice asked if he could help the detective.
“I’m calling Miss Morgan,” Shayne told him. “I know she returned to the hotel just a few minutes ago.”
“That’s quite correct,” the desk clerk agreed. “She stopped for her key not more than ten minutes ago and went up to her room, but came down again almost immediately with two gentlemen and went out with them.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I’m positive, sir. I saw them cross the lobby from the elevator to the front door.”
“Wait a minute,” said Shayne, thinking hard. “Did she go out with them willingly?”
“I… presume so,” the clerk said stiffly. “I certainly noticed nothing amiss. They were on each side of her and had her arms linked in theirs.”
“Can you describe them?”
“Not in detail. I can’t say that I noticed “
“Was one of them short and the other quite tall?”
“I think perhaps… yes. Dear me. Do you mean to intimate that something was, perhaps, wrong?”
Michael Shayne slammed up the receiver. He reached for the cognac bottle to pour out a drink, paused with the neck of it inches from his glass. He decided, quietly, that he didn’t need another drink at this point.
What was needed right now was some solid thinking and reasoning. There were certain facts that pointed toward certain conclusions.
The two men who had visited the pawnbroker and left him dead had been described by the widow as a tall man and a short man.
The two hoods whom he had glimpsed in the front seat of the car coming from the captain’s house without headlights were known as Bull and Dixie. Bull was short, heavy and bowlegged; Dixie, tall, slender and fair-haired. The timing was about right for them to have gone directly to Captain Ruffer’s house after leaving the pawn-shop… which they would almost certainly have done if they had succeeded in getting his address from Wilshinskis before the man died.