“First, have you dug up anything on Marge Jerome — and her husband?”
“A little.” Gentry opened a folder on his desk and began looking through the papers it contained. Selecting one, he said. “They’ve been married six years and both have records. He’s doing a ten-year stretch at Raiford for armed burglary, and she took the cure six months ago at the State Hospital. Released on parole.”
“Dope?”
“U-m-m. She was a nurse and picked up the habit like some of them do. They have access to the stuff and think they know how to use it — then first thing you know it’s got ’em.”
“Any record of where she used to work?”
“I can get her entire past record without much trouble.”
“Find out if she ever worked for Doctor Thompson — or Doctor Myron Spencer on the Beach. Or any other doctor who ever attended Mrs. Bert Masters.”
Gentry’s rumpled lids rolled up slowly. “Still harping on Mrs. Masters, Mike? What’s the connection?”
“I don’t know,” Shayne admitted broodingly. “But there has to be a connection some place. I’m convinced it all leads back to her death.” His gray eyes were bleak when he met Gentry’s slightly protruding and questioning gaze.
“If you want my advice,” said Painter in a tone of injured dignity, “you’ll leave Bert Masters strictly out of this. He is an important man and was quite upset this morning when you forced yourself into his home with certain insinuations—”
“When I want your advice,” Shayne interrupted bluntly, “I’ll write you a letter. If the Jerome woman is on parole, Will, she must report to a probation officer and he will know about her present job.”
“That’s right. But I haven’t been able to contact him yet. As soon as he returns to his office I’ll get that information.”
“Get to her the minute you find out where she is,” Shayne broke in hastily. “She must know plenty about this whole thing. Anything else for me?”
“That bundle of clothes you gave me — and the money. I’ve got a preliminary laboratory report here.” He took another paper from the folder and glanced at it. “There’s one rather peculiar angle. All the blood in the room, on the blackjack, towel — everything — is type AB. Skid Munroe’s type.”
“Probably Devlin’s, also,” Shayne said, “since he must have bled some, and the towel must be the one he cleaned up with. What’s queer about two men being the same blood type?”
“That’s not the queer part. It seems almost positive that Devlin is AB, too, because analysis of sweat stains on the clothing he was wearing is AB. But the odd thing, Mike, is that tests on his hat bring out an O blood grouping. Different from Skid and Devlin. How do you like that?”
Shayne’s gloomy face spread in a wide grin as he digested the full meaning of Gentry’s statement. “I like it fine. By God, Will, that’s the first thing about this case I’ve liked. Now you’d better start thinking of some one-syllable words so Painter can understand what this is all about. I’ll be checking back with you at intervals.” He started toward the door.
“Where to?” Gentry called after him.
“Doctor Thompson’s office first. I want a list of his patients for the last couple of weeks, and I still haven’t got Miss Dort’s telephone number.” He turned his head and grinned in Gentry’s direction, then continued out the door.
The air was cooler outside now. Clouds hid the sun and the wind had risen, coming in from the bay. Shayne put his hat on the seat of the car, rolled the windows down, and let the cool air blow through his unruly red hair. A glance in the rear-view mirror showed the bruise on his face, but the swelling had gone. He stepped on the accelerator and again sped over the causeway.
It was more than an hour past the 2:00 p.m. office hours posted on Doctor Thompson’s front door, but Shayne rang the bell. When no one answered, he turned the knob and found the door unlocked. He walked into the waiting-room just as Miss Dort opened the door of the side office.
The rouge had worn off of her lips, leaving them colorless, and her dark eyes looked dull, as though she were weary or depressed. Her lips parted when she recognized him and she said, “Oh — it’s you.”
“You’re not beaming with joy,” Shayne complained and grinned widely.
“Should I be?”
“Why not?” Shayne moved toward her as she stood in the doorway facing him, one hand resting on each side of the frame. She looked at him quietly and seemingly without interest until he stopped directly in front of her with his face not more than a foot from hers.
When she didn’t move and didn’t speak, he said speculatively, “I might kiss you again. That sample I snatched this morning tasted all right.”
“I don’t think you’d better,” she murmured.
“Why? Is the doc in?”
“Doctor Thompson is never here after office hours.”
Shayne lowered his face to hers. She didn’t move. Her eyes remained wide open and expressionless.
She shuddered violently when Shayne’s lips touched hers. She took a sudden step backward and cried, “No! You mustn’t!” She was clenching and unclenching her hands, poised like a wild bird ready for flight.
“What the hell’s the matter with me?” Shayne asked curiously.
“I wish you’d go. Please go.”
“Not,” said Shayne cheerfully, “until I have either a kiss or a telephone number.”
“Here.” She backed away until she reached the desk, reached behind her for a pad and pencil. She scribbled a number on it, ripped it from the pad, and pressed it into his hand. “Now will you please go,” she breathed.
“I really came on official business,” Shayne told her. “I want to look at Doctor Thompson’s office records for the past two weeks.”
She moved around the table and dropped into her chair as one exhausted. “They aren’t here,” she told him. She passed a hand over her face and said again, “Please go. I’m — very tired.”
“Where are they?” Shayne demanded.
“Missing from the file.” She gestured vaguely toward the back room. “Why would a burglar want those?”
“Probably for the same reason I do. Let me see his appointment book then.”
“All the pages for the past two weeks are torn out of it, too.” She smiled up at him wanly, then came to her feet slowly. “If you don’t mind, I have some work to finish up in the hospital room.”
“One thing more. Is Roger Morgan one of Doctor Thompson’s patients?”
“Perhaps,” she answered evasively.
“Would you have a record of his blood type if he is?”
“Not here. If he has had an operation it would be in the hospital records. Do you want me to look?”
“Don’t bother.” Shayne turned on his heel and went out, scowling blackly as he sought to analyze the queer emotional reaction he appeared to have aroused in Miss Dort. Something had happened to her since he had seen her this morning. She was like a person who was slowly running down, whose vitality was being drained away and who had no reserve strength to call upon.
He got in his car as he pondered, gunned the engine, and turned south toward Bert Masters’s construction office.
Chapter seventeen
More murder in the making
The office was on a side street south of Fifth, the ground floor of a large warehouse beside a depot for construction and dirt-moving equipment. There was a spacious waiting-room in front with wooden benches around the walls, the bare pine floor decorated with brass ash stands and spittoons. Half a dozen men lounged on the benches and they looked at Shayne with furtive curiosity characteristic of men waiting their turn to see a busy executive, sizing him up speculatively as a competitor after an order, or as a social acquaintance who might breeze into Masters’s presence and waste his time while those before him continued to cool their heels in the waiting-room.