“I was curious,” said Devlin slowly. “I wanted to see the letter Lily had written Janet before I passed judgment. From what Janet said I gathered her letter was vague and rambling. That wasn’t like Lily Masters at all,” he ended, his eyes puzzled and thoughtful.
“What I’m getting at is this,” said Shayne impatiently. He tapped the letter on his desk. “It’s quite evident that you — or someone posing as you — reassured her completely about her sister’s suicide. Could that man have been you — without your remembering it now?”
“Before God, Shayne, I don’t know. How can I know? And if it was not I — who was it?”
“Someone who knew enough about you and Lily Masters to convince the girl he was Arthur Devlin,” said Shayne promptly.
Devlin was aghast. “You mean it was done purposely? That someone slugged me the night of the party and went aboard to pose as me — just to reassure Janet and prevent a new investigation into her sister’s death?”
“That’s a possibility,” Shayne agreed. “Though not necessarily the motive. I do mean that the imposture could have been carried off successfully only by someone who knew you intimately — well enough to send Doctor Thompson the reassuring radiogram the next day. And probably by someone who knew Janet was aboard and had enough facts about Lily Masters to satisfy her.”
“Then you believe it was an impostor, Shayne. You don’t believe I was aboard the Belle — and left the cruise in Cuba without an explanation?”
“I don’t believe anything yet,” Shayne told him. “For a starting point, I’m willing to accept Doctor Thompson’s opinion that loss of memory could not be retroactive. So, if you’re telling the truth about all this, there must have been an impostor on board who convinced this Janet that he was Arthur Devlin.”
“Then prove it,” cried Devlin wildly.
“I’m willing to try. It’ll take some digging to find out exactly what happened after you passed out at the party.” Shayne opened a drawer, took out a pencil and a pad of paper. “Where was the party?”
“At Masters’s house on the Beach. It’s a big estate.”
“I know the place,” Shayne interrupted. “Who else was at the party?”
“Tommy. And Joe Engals. He’s a bookie, I guess. A great one for practical jokes. And Ryerson Thomas. Runs a night club on the Beach. Then there was Bill Pierson, a fellow insurance man, and Masters’s private secretary — Morgan is the only name I know for him.”
“All right. Now let’s go back to the girl who called you Joey on the telephone and asked if you had killed Skid. She told you her name was Marge?”
“That’s right. I didn’t tell Thompson about the phone call — about Marge — or the money,” he admitted. “Somehow they both seemed so horribly damning.”
“They are damning,” Shayne said flatly. “If you’re sure she recognized your voice correctly over the phone and that she has known you during the past several days as Joey.”
“Insofar as I know,” said Devlin, “that’s the way it is. You see, I went through that gray suit again after Tommy left and found a rent receipt wadded up in the change pocket.” He took the slip of paper from his pocket and handed it to Shayne with trembling hands.
Shayne spread it out and studied it. “And?”
“So I went there,” Devlin burst out. “To room two-oh-nine. She was there — waiting for me. Marge. She — it appears that I am married to her,” he ended weakly.
Shayne settled back with a grim smile twitching his wide mouth. “You must have worked fast while suffering from amnesia.”
“I don’t understand it at all,” Devlin confessed. “A girl like that.” He shuddered, clasping and unclasping his hands.
“Tell me all about her.”
Devlin tried, striving to recall every incident. He repeated the conversations as exactly as he could recall the words, including the fact that as Joey Jerome he had become a gin drinker. He described Marge and her emotions, her moods — told how he had felt drawn to her and yet repelled by her at the same time.
“I had to get away from there,” he ended wildly. “It’s perfectly clear that she exerted some uncanny power over me while I was blacked out, and that I went to meet that man with the intention of killing him. She’s no better than a murderess, and yet — yet—” He paused, covering his face with his hands.
“And yet you knew if you stayed there a few minutes more you’d bed down with her,” said Shayne harshly. “What of it? Sexual attraction hasn’t anything to do with moral character. In your normal state, even, you’re attracted by a woman like that, and disgusted with yourself for it, so it seems perfectly natural to me that she’s just the sort you might turn to in amnesia. She’ll be able to clear up one point,” he went on briskly. “When we learn exactly when you first met her we’ll probably know for sure whether you ever went aboard the boat.”
Devlin grew calmer under Shayne’s matter-of-fact acceptance of the situation. “I thought about that, but I didn’t know how to ask her. How do you go about asking your wife when you met her?” he ended with the semblance of a smile.
“You’re going on the theory that she doesn’t know you were in a state of amnesia when you met,” Shayne pointed out. “That may not be true at all. She may have been perfectly aware of it all the time and simply didn’t care. Several things she said indicate that: your lapses of memory and what she called ‘spells’ — the sickness that had caused you to sleep in different beds.”
“I hadn’t thought about it that way. Perhaps if I had had the courage to tell her the truth tonight — put her on the spot and make her tell me—”
Shayne shook his head emphatically. “It’s probably much better that you didn’t. I can see her today and find out more things without frightening her. Now: You mentioned a roll of money.”
“Ninety-nine one-hundred dollar bills.” Devlin took the roll from his pocket and handed it to the detective. “You can see the blood on the outside and realize how I felt when I found that in my pocket in the taxi — and not another dime. I took one of the bills and got the clerk at my apartment to change it.”
Shayne nodded, unrolling the bills and laying them out on the table. “And the shabby clothes you had on? You say you went through them carefully?”
“I went over every piece. There was absolutely nothing — no mark to identify a laundry or dry cleaner.”
“They’re still in your apartment?”
“Lying in a heap on the floor. All except this hat. I wore it to hide the lump on my head. I haven’t owned a hat for years.”
“I’ll have to get hold of those clothes,” said Shayne decisively. “They’ll have to be gone over by a police chemist.”
“The police?” asked Devlin anxiously.
Shayne nodded again. “Gentry has a lad who’s a modern miracle man. Let me have the key to your apartment.”
Devlin took it from his pocket and passed it to Shayne. “The clerk let me have the extra key. Mine was in the suit I was wearing that night.”
“Are there back stairs?” Shayne asked. “Any way that I can get up to your place without being seen by the clerk?”
“There’s a service entrance and stairs in the rear. And a fire escape at the rear door of each apartment.”
“Now let me have that rooming-house address again — the one where the dead man is.”
“Eight-nineteen Palmleaf Avenue,” Devlin told him. “The baldheaded man downstairs mentioned room three-oh-four, so I presume that’s the number.”