“It doesn’t add up to anything,” Rourke insisted. “He had you where the hair was short with the girl’s body in your room. Yet he conveniently carries the body away, then changes his mind and gives the gal back to you. It’s crazy, Mike.”
“Sure it is.” Shayne picked up his cognac glass and looked longingly at its contents, set it down, and took a long drink of ice water instead. “Trouble is, we’ve got a wrong slant somewhere. We can’t see any motive behind any of it. Our unknown factor is why. We’ve got a string of seemingly senseless events that won’t add up until we know the value of X. A simple algebraic equation.”
Rourke yawned and rattled the ice cubes in his tilted glass. He reached out waveringly for the bottle of Scotch and tipped it up, let the liquid gurgle into his glass.
Shayne frowned at him and warned, “You’re taking on a heavy load, Tim.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” He shuddered complacently. “I’m just beginning to feel human again after dealing corpses off the bottom of the deck.” He squinted at Shayne over the top of his glass. “Let’s solve for X since it’s a simple equation. How many people knew Helen Stallings was coming here to give you some dope against Stallings?”
“That would be guesswork. Jim Marsh for one — That is, he sent a girl to see me after talking with her on the phone. He claims he didn’t know who she was at the time—” He broke off, staring past Rourke, his features tightening.
“Then Jim Marsh is one man we can leave out. He sent her to you. If she had some low-down on Stallings that would give him the election he’d be the last man in the world to shut her mouth before she gabbed.”
Shayne said, “I wonder.” He cocked his head as if listening for a sound which eluded his big ears. He drummed finger tips on the arm of his chair.
Rourke stared at him in blank amazement. “You’re determined to complicate things,” he complained. “Seems to me Marsh is the one man we can eliminate.”
“I told you how he acted tonight.”
“Sure. He’s got the willies about the election. Every amateur politician gets that way. I’ve seen plenty of them ready to give up the day before the votes were counted.”
“It was more than that, Tim. Damn it, Marsh acted like a man who wanted to lose — who was afraid to win.” Shayne gave himself a hunch which brought his torso upright and he sat staring queerly as he continued.
“I don’t even know he sent the girl to me. He called me and said she was on her way. We don’t know but what he tried to prevent her from coming — that she insisted—” His voice trailed off. There was a faraway, questing look in his eyes.
Rourke swore angrily. “God, Mike, if you start suspecting Marsh where will you stop? Here’s something that knocks that theory into a cocked hat. The threatening note to Stallings, warning him to withdraw from the election. I suppose Marsh killed the girl so Stallings would win, then sent the note to force him to withdraw.” His voice was heavy with sarcasm.
Shayne shook his head stubbornly. “Someone else could have sent the note,” he pointed out. “Someone who knew Helen Stallings was on her way to my apartment.”
“It had to be the killer,” Rourke argued. “The note was sent to Stallings to hang a frame on you — by someone who knew the gal was dead and couldn’t testify that you hadn’t kidnaped her.”
“That’s right, too.” Shayne mopped his seamed forehead, then meditatively emptied his cognac glass. “Here’s what happened. Someone followed her here and waited until I started to the station with Phyllis, then came in and choked her with her own stocking. There was a struggle and she made an outcry, overheard by someone who pounded on the door and then called Gentry. I had left the door unlocked, and the murderer locked it. He was trapped in here, with the door locked on the inside. He had to unlock it in order to throw full suspicion on me. He escaped by the fire escape and hung around watching. He knew the body was undiscovered when I came back. Afterward, one of Bugler’s men followed me away, and as soon as the coast is clear the body is snatched before you can get back and take it away. Oh, hell! It’s not a simple equation. It’s got a dozen unknowns.” He poured another glass of cognac.
“And Arch Bugler is one of them,” Rourke reminded him. “He keeps popping up. He’s had enough practice in murder.”
“But he wouldn’t have killed a society girl who was pulling him up out of the gutter,” Shayne protested. “According to those newspaper accounts you gave me, he and Helen Stallings were practically engaged. And she’s due to come into a wad of money soon, isn’t she?”
“On her twenty-first birthday, I think. A couple of weeks from now. I think the whole story was printed in the paper when she started the suit against her stepfather and then dropped it.”
Shayne reached in his pocket for the sheets of newsprint he had wadded together at the Wildcat earlier in the evening. He looked at them curiously. It seemed very strange that he had seen them for the first time only a few hours ago.
Spreading them out, he found the one he wanted and began reading the story. He nodded thoughtfully and said, “The bulk of the estate was left to the girl in trust until her twenty-first birthday, in the event she didn’t marry sooner. If she married or died before then, it reverted to her mother. After Stallings married the mother, he adopted the girl legally, thus gaining control of the trust fund.” Shayne sucked in his breath sharply. “Do you recall her name before it was changed to Stallings?”
“Nope.” Rourke’s eyes were bleary and he had difficulty focusing them on Shayne.
“Get this. It was Devalon. Helen Devalon.” The note of suppressed excitement in his voice brought Rourke up straight on the couch. He blinked and shook his head roughly from side to side.
“That ought to mean something — Damned if I know.”
“Another drink and you won’t know anything,” Shayne said sharply. “Lay off. Where’s Smith College located?” he jerked out.
“N’Ham’shire ’r some place.” Rourke stifled a yawn. “One of those swanky girls’ schools in New England.”
Shayne got up and went across the room to a bookcase, dropped to his knees, and pulled out a volume of an encyclopedic set and thumbed the pages. He came back grinning. “Smith College is in Northampton, Massachusetts. That, my befogged comrade, is the whistle stop played by Beany Baxter’s Band a couple of months ago.”
“Beany Baxter’s Band? That sax player! The wedding certificate!” Rourke’s legs moved feebly. He put his palms down on the couch as if to thrust himself to a standing position, then fell back into soft comfort.
“There’s the Whit Marlow tie-up,” Shayne said cheerfully. “He and Helen Devalon were married in April. No wonder he went barging around to ask Arch Bugler what-the-hell. Can’t blame a bridegroom for getting sore about the way she and Arch have been playing around.”
“But she was on the spot when she came down here,” Rourke said. “She had to keep the marriage a secret until she was twenty-one or lose her father’s estate. To avert suspicion, she acted unmarried.”
“In a big way,” Shayne agreed with a grimace.
There was a thoughtful silence between them; then Shayne said, “I ought to have taken that train for New York.”
Rourke chuckled evilly. “Give your wife a chance to kick up her heels — away from a lug like you. Serves you right.” With his head resting on the upholstered arm of the couch, he looked down his long lean body at his shoes. He wriggled one foot feebly.
Watching him, Shayne chuckled. “Let Phyl have her fling. She’ll appreciate me more when she comes back.”