Lucy sat huddled miserably on the divan while he was gone. His set face told her nothing when he returned, but he sat down and took a sip of cognac and told her matter-of-factly, “It’s pretty bad. There’s a city-wide alarm out for him, and your description may help. A girl,” he went on moodily, “strangled in a rooming-house on Eighteenth Street. A taxi driver picked the fool up a block from the girl, and brought him directly to this address. He remembered him and how oddly he acted, and when he heard about the girl later over the radio, he told the police. There was nothing about any shooting,” he added, “no gun found on the girl nor any blood around.”
“I know there’s some mistake, Michael. I just know he wouldn’t strangle a girl.”
“Nuts! No one ever knows,” Shayne shook his red head angrily. “It isn’t that easy, Lucy. And now, just between the two of us, why in the name of God did you hold out on me? I can maybe understand you’re not calling a doctor after the story he told you. But why not me? I’d have listened to him. If he was in trouble and innocent, I might even have helped him.”
“I know, Michael.” Lucy’s head was hanging down and she was staring with absorption at the tips of her mules. “It all happened so suddenly. I don’t know how to explain it. I warned him I’d tell you as soon as you came, and now I suppose that’s why he went out the window and down the fire escape. Because he’ was afraid I would.”
She drew in a long breath and lifted round, luminous eyes to Shayne’s intent gaze. “I guess it doesn’t matter now,” she said simply, “but he threatened to tell you we were lovers if I brought you into it.”
“Do you think for a minute,” Shayne asked shortly, “that I care if you’ve had fifty lovers?”
“I guess not.” She looked away from him again. “I guess I was a fool to think you’d care one single goddamn.”
“Or would have believed a word of it,” stormed Shayne, getting up to stride back and forth in front of her, rumpling his hair violently with both hands.
“My God, Lucy! What sort of heel do you take me for? If you can’t trust me any further than that—”
“What?” she asked faintly.
“Then it’s time you started looking for another job.”
“I will,” she agreed. “Tomorrow morning.”
He stopped abruptly in his pacing to glare at her. “Not without giving me two weeks notice, you won’t. You listen to me, Lucy—”
“I’ll not listen to you,” she interrupted defiantly. “I think it is time I got another job, and you don’t need any notice. I meant to tell you about Jack. I didn’t know about any murder, and I still don’t believe he did it.”
She turned away from him despairingly, and Shayne slowly got to his feet. There were deep trenches in his cheeks as he looked down at her bowed head, and he made a motion to touch her hair, but checked himself. He waited a moment and then spoke flatly.
“We’re both saying things we don’t mean. I’m going out to check the Eighteenth Street killing and see what the Bristow situation actually is. You sit tight and stay out of the bedroom until I come back. That’s an order, and don’t forget you’re still working for me.”
He hesitated a further moment, but Lucy did not look up or reply. He turned and jammed his hat down on bristly red hair, stalked out of the room.
Chapter Four
Michael Shayne’s car was parked in front of Lucy’s apartment house, and he gunned it around in a U-Turn with wholly unnecessary violence to head toward the 18th Street address he had been given when he made the anonymous call to police headquarters. He was seething inwardly, and his big hands gripped the wheel hard as he sent the heavy car leaping crosstown. Inside, he was all mixed up and in a turmoil about his feelings toward Lucy.
Part of his anger, he tried to tell himself honestly, was probably jealousy. He just didn’t know. He’d never taken time out to objectively define his feelings toward his secretary. Until tonight, he hadn’t’ realized just how possessive they were. When this was over, he promised himself, he’d sit down quietly with a long drink and think things out. But right now he had inadvertently assisted her to help a suspected murderer escape, and the pressing thing was to rectify that as best he could.
The Northwest section where the murder had occurred was one of the older sections of the city, one of the better residential sections many years previously, consisting mostly of old two and three-story residences which had beep converted into rooming-houses to meet the servant problem and the high cost of upkeep.
The block that Shayne sought was quiet and tree-shaded, inadequately lighted with street lamps two blocks apart.
Half a dozen police cars and an ambulance were parked at the curb in front of a big house near the center of the block. Little groups of curious onlookers were gathered on the sidewalk, and two uniformed men were in the street impatiently waving traffic onward.
As Shayne slid past slowly, he noted Chief Will Gentry’s private car wedged between two radio cars. His features tightened, and he continued to the end of the block, pulling in unobtrusively to the curb in the deep shadow of two trees.
He got out and sauntered back, wondering how best to explain his own interest in the case without revealing the truth about Jack Bristow. A policeman stood at the head of the walk leaning in to the house, waving back those morbidly curious who were intent on getting closer, and he recognized the redhead with a grin when Shayne came up.
“Chief Gentry’s inside, Mr. Shayne. You mixed up in this?”
Shayne halted and shook his head. “Heard a radio broadcast and was just driving by.” He dropped his voice. “You know the name of the girl that got it?”
“Heard someone say they called her Trixie.” The policeman lowered his left eyelid lewdly. “One of your girl friends?”
Shayne grinned and managed to look slightly abashed and a good deal relieved. “Trixie, eh? No friend of mine, thank God. How did it happen?”
“Nobody knows much, I guess. Another girl found her dead about an hour ago. Is this here a cat-house like they say?”
Shayne grinned and shrugged. “As if I’d know anything about that.” He slapped the man on the shoulder as a squat figure in plain clothes stepped out the front door and lit a cigarette. He said, “There’s Bentley just come out. Mind if I ask him about it?”
“Go ahead. Stand back, the rest of you,” ordered the patrolman as Shayne sauntered up the walk. “Nobody goes in that hasn’t got business.”
Detective Bentley scowled as Shayne walked up. “What’s on your mind, shamus?”
“Used to know one of the girls who lived here,” Shayne told him mildly. “She was a good kid and I hoped nothing had happened to her.”
“This one is new, I guess. Only been here a few weeks. Name of Trixie.” The detective drew in a deep gulp of smoke and exhaled slowly. “Not more’n twenty, by God. Supposed to be occupying the room alone, but looks like she was keeping a man with her.”
“He do it?”
“Nobody knows from nothing. He’s missing. May be the one a taxi driver reported picking up in front of here who acted hurt and left blood in the cab when he got out. Chief’s in there now. You got any ideas?”
Michael Shayne shook his head slowly. “Just so her name wasn’t Adele. Think she shot the guy while he was choking her?”
“Nothing to show it,” grunted Bentley. “No one heard a shot and no evidence a gun was fired in the room. But hell,” he went on disgustedly, “no one hears a damn thing in a joint like this. Girl gets beat up by some drunken bum, nobody interferes.”