Wednesday night
My very own sweet,
I simply have to talk to you tonight, darling. The office was a hell of loneliness today. It seems months instead of days since you left.
The new girl is competent, but I miss you so terribly. Today I was dictating and she sat across from me in your chair, and I must have been dreaming, for in the middle of a letter I said, “You have the most beautiful eyes in the world, Love,” and she looked up and snickered and said, “Does that go in the letter?” I laughed it off, but-you know you have, dearest.
I must see you!!! I will call you from the office tomorrow. You know I dare not call from here with the extension upstairs.
Something will work out. There must be some way to get rid of her so we can be together-forever.
All my love, Vicky
Shayne sighed and laid the note aside, sat for a moment with a deep frown between his eyes, then read the next one.
Monday morning, 4 a.m.
My sweetest love,
I cannot sleep. I cannot think. I am sitting here alone in my room with the connecting door locked so my wife can’t disturb me. She was asleep when I came in half an hour ago. I’m sure she doesn’t suspect I was with you.
I cannot give you up. You must know that. Not after tonight. I keep thinking of the plan you suggested. I see no other way. But we must be very careful. For your dear sake, there must be no breath of scandal.
It can’t be wrong to love as we love one another. It can’t be wrong to take whatever steps are necessary to fulfill our love.
I won’t write any more tonight-though I won’t sleep. I shall go to bed and in the darkness you will come to me. Your soft white body-
I love you with all my heart,
Vicky
Shayne wriggled in his chair, cleared his throat, and sat up straight. The damned letters made his throat dry, and he wished to God he had a drink.
No wonder Christine was prepared to go to any lengths to keep the letters from her husband. No man in his right mind could laugh off this sort of evidence. What sort of man was Victor Morrison that he could write a series of notes like this and plant them on a girl who had not been his sweetheart? If Christine was telling the truth, it was the most fantastic plot he had ever bumped into.
Right now, he wasn’t at all sure Christine was telling the truth. He had been lied to by other women in other cases, but never before had he listened to and read evidence so extraordinary as this.
He unfolded the third photostat with a distinct feeling of nausea.
Thursday evening
Dear heart,
It was beautiful to hear your sweet voice over the telephone today but I didn’t dare speak what was in my heart.
You mustn’t go on with it, darling. I implore you to be patient a little longer. Just a little longer. I promise you I will go through with the plan we discussed. I am already arranging the details. If you do anything hasty now it will be the end of everything for us.
I beg you to trust me. I live only until I can be with you again-and soon nothing will keep us apart.
Your own Vicky
The fourth and last letter appeared to have been written previous to any of the three Shayne had read.
Friday afternoon
My dearest love,
I am sitting here in my office and sunlight is slanting through the Venetian blinds across the empty chair at the corner of my desk.
I feel desolated and utterly lonely. I suppose you were right when you made the decision to go. Things could not possibly continue as they were any longer, and you were right, as you will always be. My wife was becoming suspicious, and now that you are gone she will stop nagging me about my secretary.
But oh, my dear, there is a terrible emptiness in my heart. This cannot be the end. I must see you soon. I realize you cannot go on being satisfied with the crumbs of my love, and I swear I will somehow arrange to make it possible for you to have all of me.
I will call you tomorrow from my club.
Your desperate and adoring
Vicky
Shayne laid the last photostat atop the other three and sat for a moment brooding into space. He slouched deep into the chair and gently massaged his left ear lobe between his right thumb and forefinger. Then he began running his fingers through his red and unruly hair, got up and paced back and forth across the room.
For once he was completely baffled. He wanted to believe Christine. But how could he? The evidence in the letters was damnably clear. Bernard Holloway said they had been written by Victor Morrison, and there were four witnesses to testify they had been found hidden away in Christine’s room.
But, how did the maid enter into the picture if Christine was lying about the letters? Why had she been murdered unless she had planted them in the vanity drawer?
Of course, he realized it was possible that there was no connection whatever between Natalie Briggs’s murder and the letters. It could be a coincidence. There were too many coincidences piled on top of each other.
First, there was Angus Browne, private detective who specialized in marital cases. He was undoubtedly spying on Floyd Hudson and Natalie at the Play-Mor Club. He knew from Mrs. Morgan’s description of the shabby little man who claimed to be an officer that it was Browne who initialed A. B. on the letters. Another of the trio was Timothy Rourke.
Rourke had undoubtedly said something to Natalie in the game room that frightened her and sent her running away in panic. There was certainly a tie-up between the maid and two of the men who had discovered the letters.
Shayne sat down and clasped his hands behind his head and gave his thoughts over to pure speculation. Assuming for the moment that Christine was telling the truth, who had planted the letters and for what purpose? Blackmail? Or had Morrison engineered the plot because he was madly in love with Christine and determined to wreck her marriage?
Again he went over every detail of the case thus far, but none of it made sense. He ground his teeth together angrily, got up and went to the phone and asked the clerk to send up the early edition of the Miami News.
When a boy brought the paper he skimmed over the front page story of Natalie Briggs’s death. There was a photograph of her body being pulled out of the Bay, and another full-face shot of the girl. Neither the Floyd Hudson nor the Play-Mor angle was mentioned. Painter hadn’t given the paper much of a story, though he had allowed them to mention the probability that she had been killed at the back door of the Hudson home and her body consigned to the Bay at that point.
He dropped the paper and called Timothy Rourke’s apartment on the Beach. Since recovering from his bullet wounds, Rourke hadn’t returned to his job on the paper, but was doing a few free-lance things at space rates for the local papers while he worked on his novel.
When Rourke didn’t answer his phone, Shayne looked up the Angus Browne detective agency and called the number. Again, there was no answer. He then called Information and asked if Victor Morrison had a telephone.
He was given a number and he called it. A maid answered and told him that Mr. Morrison had gone fishing that morning and wasn’t expected back until about 1:30. Shayne asked for the Morrisons’ address, and the girl gave it to him. He thanked her, hung up, and went out to lunch before calling on Victor Morrison.
Chapter Eight: A DISTURBING VISITOR
The Morrison house was on the west shore of Biscayne Bay between the County and Venetian causeways. The house faced south, and as Shayne went up the walk toward the wide wooden veranda he saw that the expanse of lawn leading to the bay shore was dotted with deck chairs beneath gaily striped beach umbrellas.