“Nonsense. You’ve got to snap out of it. You didn’t know the girl very well. Just a casual correspondence. Names slip everybody’s mind occasionally. You must have her letters around somewhere.”
“They’re at the office,” he said tonelessly. He sprang up from the chair. The sudden move sent a throbbing pain to his temple and his body swayed.
Thompson leaped up and caught him. “This settles it,” he said firmly. “You’re going home with me. You need a strong sedative and some sleep. We’ll get together on a story tomorrow.”
Devlin struggled out of Thompson’s grasp, glared at him, and said, “You don’t believe a single word I’ve told you. Go on home, Tommy. I don’t blame you one bit and you’ve been a brick, but this is no good. You can help me most by staying out of jail yourself.”
“Now — wait—”
“No!” Devlin’s voice was shrill. “Get out. I had no right to drag you into this. Get out of here as fast as you can and forget you’ve seen me tonight.” He turned away from the hurt look on Thompson’s face and kept his back turned until he heard the outer door of the apartment close behind Thompson.
Devlin went back to the desk and picked up the telephone directory, thumbed down a column until he found Michael Shayne’s name, lifted the receiver, and gave the number to the man at the switchboard. When a voice answered at the other end, he said, “I want to speak to Mr. Shayne, please.”
“Is it important? Mr. Shayne doesn’t like to be disturbed at night when he’s—”
“I wouldn’t be calling him if it weren’t important,” Devlin cut in curtly.
“Yeh, I know,” said the voice. “That’s what everybody says when they call for Mr. Shayne. But he sort of leaves it up to me to find out what a man wants and whether it’s important enough to bother him with.”
“It isn’t only important,” Devlin told him, “it’s extremely urgent.”
“If you’ll tell me what it’s about maybe—”
“I’m telling you to ring Shayne’s apartment,” Devlin grated.
There was a little silence, then Devlin listened while a phone rang three times and stopped. The voice broke in and said, “Sorry. He doesn’t answer,” and the connection was broken.
Devlin stared at the instrument as he slowly cradled it, his eyes holding the expression of a doomed man. That Shayne was out at this time of night meant he was working on a case and would probably not be available. Devlin knew the redheaded detective’s reputation. He had, in fact, met him once during an insurance investigation involving one of the companies he represented. He needed a man like Shayne, and felt certain that if he could talk to him personally he could persuade him to listen. The truth would not shock a man like Michael Shayne whose business was murder. In fact, Devlin thought, the circumstances surrounding his own predicament would probably appear mild to him.
Right now, he could only wait. He got up and went into the bathroom and gathered up every article of clothing he had taken off in there and carried them into the bedroom. He picked up the coat and pants from the floor where he had let them fall, spread the lot of them out on his clean bed, and began methodically going over each garment. There was no sign of a laundry or dry-cleaner’s mark.
His patience was rewarded when he discovered a small slip of paper folded into a precise small square in the inside change pocket of the checkered coat.
Hope trembled through him as he carefully unfolded it. Across the top was printed Argonne House with a Northwest Second Avenue address in Miami beneath it. There was an inked notation below: $18.00 #209 6/18 to 6/24 Pd. M.N.
That was all. Devlin studied it with narrowed eyes. It would appear that he had paid the rent on Room 209, since the receipt was in his pocket, and that, therefore, he had spent the days of his blackout at the Argonne House.
He sat brooding over the slip of paper. He had four facts to go on: The address on Palmleaf Avenue, the receipt from The Argonne, that he had been known as Joey, and that Janet was aboard the Belle of the Caribbean and had become well acquainted with someone known as Arthur Devlin. He dared not return to the rooming-house on Palmleaf Avenue; it would be hours before he could call his office and find out what Janet’s last name was and it would then be too late to send the radiogram. He couldn’t begin inquiring about Joey when he had no idea what his last name was.
So, The Argonne seemed the logical place to start. A shudder swept over him. He had never had occasion to question his bravery, but he knew now that he was afraid. Did he dare go there and try to find a clue that would shed some light on this horrible nightmare? Mightn’t it be better, as Tommy suggested, to leave the black veil drawn? Did he want to know the sort of person he had become during those black, blank days?
His mind whirled as he dressed in his own immaculate clothes, formulating ideas and rejecting them. By the time he was fully attired in a tan sports suit with a delicate pin stripe the thought came to him that it was his duty to find out everything he possibly could before calling Michael Shayne later on in the day. It was urgent that he discover the reason for the rent receipt in the pocket of the dirty coat. At the Argonne he might even learn something about the woman named Marge. With even a few scraps of tangible information he might persuade Shayne to tackle his case.
Devlin went to the full-length mirror of his bedroom door. The reflection showed a nattily dressed young man, but his face was still pallid, his lips and eyes slightly swollen, and the knot on his head stood out like an elaborately swathed sore thumb. He looked around for the felt hat he had worn from the rooming-house. He frowned deeply, then remembered he had taken it off when he opened the living-room windows. He found it on the floor behind a chair near the first one he had opened, picked it up, and went back to the bedroom mirror. Easing it over the knot, he tugged the brim down over his forehead and thought, fleetingly, that perhaps he should start wearing hats again.
As was his custom, he felt his pockets with his palms to be sure he had everything before leaving home. The pocket where he carried his wallet was flat. Unhesitatingly, and with a determined look in his eyes, he went to the bed, got out the roll of bills from underneath the pillow, selected a clean one, and stuck it in his outer coat pocket. He rerolled them and secured them with the rubber band and went out to the telephone.
When the night clerk answered he said, “Jack, I need a taxi. Could you arrange it?”
“Sure, Mr. Devlin,” he answered eagerly. “In about five minutes. Okay?”
“Fine. And Jack, do you have change for a hundred-dollar bill?”
“Sure.”
“Count out ninety-eight for me. The other two will take care of the taxi fare. I’ll leave you a hundred for it when I pick it up.”
He hung up and stared around the familiar and carefully planned masculine appointments and wondered if he would ever see it again. His temple still throbbed against the band of the loose-fitting hat, and he felt like a man walking in a daze. A man embarking on a long and perilous voyage from which it was very likely he would never return. Nothing was real. Nothing would ever be the same again. Nothing could ever be the same after a man had committed a murder.
He closed the door softly when he went out, as though not to disturb the Arthur Devlin he had left behind — an Arthur Devlin who would waken at his usual hour of seven in the morning and leisurely prepare breakfast in the shining kitchenette and leisurely dress in ample time to reach his insurance office at nine in the morning.
Jack had the ninety-eight dollars ready for him when he walked slowly toward the desk. The young clerk’s eyes were alert, curious, sympathetic. He said, “You needn’t have bothered about the money, Mr. Devlin. You know your credit’s good here any time.”