The big towel fell to the floor as he bent over to unfasten the leather straps and loosen the metal catches at each end of the bag and press the center lock to release the catch.
It didn’t release. Shayne frowned and pushed it back and forth, trying to pull the bag open, muttering, “It can’t be locked. I lost the key years ago.”
Rourke got up and came over to him. “Maybe it accidentally locked itself,” he offered. “Let me try one of my keys on it. Nearly all these locks are the same.” He squatted beside Shayne, took out a ring of keys, and carefully selected one.
Shayne shrugged and settled back on his haunches to watch. Suddenly he stiffened; his eyes widened with surprise. This was not his Gladstone. He was positive his had been unlocked. He saw, too, that this was a little newer than his. The same color and size, but not quite so battered. He was certain of it when he looked at the leather straps. One of his straps was badly worn in one place where it had been buckled for years. Neither of these straps was badly worn.
“There you are,” said Rourke triumphantly. He removed his key and pressed the knob. The bag came open a few inches, and Rourke lifted the top half which had a center layer of leather snapped in place to separate the contents of the two sides.
Shayne saw the contents at the same moment Rourke did. Neat bundles of bank notes spread across folded clothing in the bottom of the Gladstone. The top bill on each bundle was a hundred-dollar denomination, and a single glance told both men they were looking at a lot of thousands of dollars.
Shayne glanced at Peter Painter. He was still standing with his back turned on Shayne’s sinewy and lanky body, waiting for him to get some clothes on.
Timothy Rourke expelled the long breath he had been holding, gently and noiselessly. He let the Gladstone close itself. His eyes burned more feverishly than before as he turned them on the grimly set face of the detective.
Shayne moved his head negatively and his bleak gray eyes bored into Rourke’s. He pressed the Gladstone shut with a click and said, “Just to save Petey further embarrassment, I’ll go in the bedroom to dress.” He stood up with the Gladstone in his hand.
Rourke sat on the floor and watched him speculatively. He didn’t say anything, and Painter didn’t turn around until Shayne reached the bedroom door and opened it.
Shayne reached inside, turned on the light, and hesitated an almost imperceptible second before stepping in and pulling the door shut. He stood looking down with blank amazement at the bloody and battered face of a man he had never seen before.
Chapter Eight
The man lay on his back, half on and half off the bed. Both arms trailed on the floor, the stiff fingers of one hand just touching a heavy ornamental vase which had stood on a shelf just inside the front door of the apartment ever since Shayne could remember. The vase lay in a pool of blood.
The man’s features were a pulp. He wore yellow silk pajamas which were blood-spattered. His face and the front portion of his head had been smashed by several heavy blows, and death must have come slowly and with great agony.
“Slocum. He did come back to sleep in the apartment after all,” Shayne muttered to himself.
The muscles in his gaunt cheeks quivered involuntarily. He was probably responsible for the man’s murder. He recalled the lie he had told Irvin and Perry about the source of the hundred-dollar bills they were interested in. It had seemed an innocent enough lie when he was desperately fighting for time, the best he could evolve on the spur of the moment. He hadn’t expected them to come to the hotel before morning, especially since the clerk had said Slocum hadn’t yet moved in. Even then, he thought they would only question the man, not murder him.
Yet there was mute evidence all about the bedroom that it had been one of the senator’s crowd looking for more of the same kind of bank notes. There was an overturned Gladstone on the floor, and clothing and toilet articles were scattered all about the floor and on the bed. There was no doubt that it had been done by someone looking for the rest of the fifty grand mentioned by Bates over the telephone from the Fun Club.
And Shayne suddenly realized that the money the murderer had been looking for was almost surely in the Gladstone he still held in his hand-the one the porter had given him at the airport. More precisely, Dawson’s Gladstone, for Shayne was convinced that the porter had got the two suitcases mixed up, somehow, while he was supposed to be changing one for the other at the last moment before Flight Sixty-two took off.
Shayne turned, opened the door, and went out, carrying the closed suitcase. He set it down near the bathroom door. Rourke and Painter looked at his stony features and naked body with questioning interest.
Shayne said, “One of you had better call the police.”
“Police?” Painter bristled and strutted forward. “If you’ve anything to say to the police, you can talk to me.”
Shayne gestured wearily, as though to brush the little man aside, and said to Rourke, “This is a job for the local boys. Homicide. And see if you can catch Will Gentry at his office.”
Rourke whistled shrilly, studying Shayne’s face, then went obediently to the telephone to make the call.
Painter echoed, “Homicide?” planting himself solidly on his small feet and thrusting out his chin.
Shayne nodded. “There’s a dead man in the bedroom.” He went over to pour himself a stiff slug of cognac.
Rourke was speaking rapidly into the telephone. Painter’s narrowed black eyes followed Shayne’s naked body to the center of the room, then he swung around to the closed bedroom door. He went toward it slowly, as though afraid of being hoaxed; as though he strove to convince himself this was another sample of Shayne’s morbid sense of, humor but he couldn’t quite succeed in doing so.
Rourke hung up and walked swiftly to Shayne just as Painter hesitantly opened the bedroom door and went inside.
“What goes?” whispered Rourke. “I saw that dough in the bag.”
Shayne held his glass to his lips, glancing over his shoulder at Painter’s stiff back just inside the bedroom.
“The stuff’s still there,” Shayne told him in a monotone that didn’t carry more than four feet, then added in a louder voice, “Damned if I know who the stiff is, Tim. The man who rented this apartment out from under me, for a guess.”
Rourke said, “That’s one way to get an apartment, Mike.” His voice was steady and he laughed at his own wit, but his hand trembled as he took the glass away from Shayne and put it to his own mouth.
Painter whirled and came back to stand accusingly in front of Shayne. “Do you intend to sit around here naked all day? And I thought you said that the man who had rented your apartment hadn’t moved in yet.”
“That’s what the clerk told me. It may be someone else entirely,” Shayne went on with a shrug of his naked wide shoulders. “Why don’t you have Henry come up to identify him?”
“I will.” Painter thumbnailed his little black mustache and his eyes were full of suspicion. “How long had you been in this room before we arrived? It’s my guess that man hasn’t been dead more than fifteen minutes.”
“For my sake, I hope the M.E. makes that at least thirty.” Shayne picked up the suitcase and went into the bathroom while Painter went officiously to the telephone and curtly ordered the desk clerk to come up to the apartment.
Shayne closed the bathroom door and quickly opened the Gladstone. He picked up one of the bundles of hundred-dollar bills and riffled through them, scowling deeply. They looked like ordinary bills, not new and not too old. Just like the two Dawson had given him at the airport. He couldn’t see anything wrong with them.
He judged there were about a hundred bills in each flat packet. There were five such bundles in the suitcase. That added up to the amount Bates had mentioned over the telephone to ex-Senator Irvin.