She looked at him with shining eyes. “I do believe you mean it. I thought every man—”
“Not every man,” he assured her. He got up and took her arm firmly to lead her out to his car. He got in and suggested, “Without any luggage, a tourist court is your best bet to avoid embarrassment. There are nice ones right on the edge of town.”
“Whatever you say.” She sighed and relaxed with her shoulder just touching his. “I was so frightened back there. I guess I just about went crazy. I couldn’t think what to do. All I could think of was... was—”
“Pete,” supplied Shayne without looking at her.
“Was Pete worrying about where I was,” she accepted quickly. “Me without a penny and not knowing where I’d ever find him again.”
Shayne drove east to Biscayne Boulevard and turned north in quest of a tourist cabin where he could install the self-styled Mrs. Peter Smith for the night. He didn’t know where or how she fitted into the picture — or whether she actually fitted in at all, but he had a strong hunch she did somehow. The wounded and missing Jack Bristow was from New Orleans according to Lucy, and this girl had just arrived from that city. It had been prearranged that she should meet her husband in front of the house where a murder had occurred, and from which spot Jack (with a bullet wound in his belly) had been picked up by a taxi about the time she had expected to meet him.
Strictly speaking, he knew he should turn the girl over to the police for questioning at once. But he was pretty much on the spot on that score. If, as he suspected, it was Jack Bristow whom she had planned to meet, the whole matter of Lucy’s hiding Jack in her bedroom, and of his unwittingly allowing the wounded man to escape by refusing the police entrance to Lucy’s apartment would certainly have to come out in the open if he gave her to the police now.
And he wasn’t ready, yet, for that to come out. Not until he was satisfied in his own mind that Jack Bristow was a murderer. In that case, it would have to, of course. From what Jack had told Lucy, it was quite evident that he was in some sort of trouble and wished to avoid contact with the police. That tied in with this girl’s words and actions. Although she had denied that her “Pete” had reason to fear the police, Shayne didn’t believe her for an instant. Just being a stranger in town and meeting by prearrangement at an address where a murder happened to occur didn’t put one under police suspicion.
Mostly, he believed she had told the truth. The few lies she had told had been rather transparent falsehoods. It couldn’t do any real harm, he reasoned, to put her on ice for a few hours while he investigated a little more. One thing he was certain about was that she had no money. No one could have watched her clean up her plate and swig down two glasses of milk and doubt that fact. So she would certainly stay put wherever he left her for at least the night, and by the next morning he would know better what to do with her.
He turned his car in at the first nice-looking motel that had a lighted Vacancy sign out, pulled up in front of the Office sign, and honked lightly. A man hurried out and came around to his side, saying cheerfully, “A cabin? Yes, sir. Got just one left. You want to pull ahead to number six, you and the missus can take a look.”
Shayne drove slowly to number six with the man walking beside him. Neither he nor the girl said anything as the man turned on the light and they got out. He let her precede him into a large, clean room with a double bed and shower bath, and he stopped in the doorway and asked, “Look all right to you?”
She turned slowly, biting her underlip and with a desolated expression on her pinched face, said, “I... guess so.”
“Seven dollars for the two,” announced a brisk voice at Shayne’s elbow. “You wanta come over to the office and register?”
Shayne left his car in front and walked back to sign the register, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Smith, Homestead, Florida, and to write down the make and license number of his car. He paid seven dollars and received a key and the information that if they stayed past noon the next day they would be charged for another night.
He said good night and went back to enter the room where the girl from New Orleans sat on the edge of the bed with her face in her hands. He laid the key on the dressing table and told her flatly, “We’re registered as Mr. and Mrs. Peter Smith of Homestead, Florida. There’s the key. Lock the door behind me and get a good night’s sleep. I’ll drop around in the morning to buy you some breakfast and take you wherever you want to go.”
She dragged her hands away from her face and looked up at him with a dazed expression as though she hadn’t understood him.
“You — you’re not — staying?” she faltered. “When you went ahead and pretended we were married—”
Shayne laughed shortly and turned to the door. “Get it out of your young head that every man in the world wants to make you. I registered like that to save questions and embarrassment. See you in the morning.” He went out, pulling the door shut behind him with unnecessary force, got in his car, and drove back to Lucy’s place.
Chapter Five
Lucy Hamilton was blinking and rubbing sleep out of her eyes when she met Shayne at the door. She looked worried and nervous, and caught him by the arm to demand beseechingly, “Did you find out anything, Michael? Anything about Jack?”
“Not much.” He closed the door with a frown. “I didn’t want to make myself too conspicuous asking questions about him. All they actually seem to have is that a taxi picked him up outside with a gunshot wound just about the time the girl must have been strangled. I’ll get all the dope from Tim Rourke as soon as I can locate him. In the meantime, Lucy. Was Jack Bristow married?”
“I don’t think so. Not when I knew him, I’m sure. He wasn’t — the type you’d expect to marry very young. Why, Michael?”
He shrugged and went to the sofa to sit down. “Just a hunch.” He told her swiftly about the girl who had accosted him at the scene.
“So I’ve got her stashed there for the night,” he concluded. “Might be one of Jack’s girls, huh, if they’re not actually married?”
“He was the sort to have one in every port,” she conceded, sitting at the end of the sofa and curling her feet beneath her. “What do we do now?”
He was saved from having to answer by the ring of her buzzer from downstairs. Shayne motioned her back and hurried to the speaking tube to ask who it was.
He said, “Sure. Come up,” and pressed the button. He opened the door wide and turned to warn Lucy: “Chief Gentry and Tim Rourke. Let me do the talking until we find out what it’s all about.”
Will Gentry, chief of the Miami police force, was a big, stolid man with a beefy face and curiously rumpled eyelids which habitually drooped low over wearied and cynical eyes. He wheezed as he pulled himself up the last step to Lucy’s landing and nodded briefly to Shayne, who lounged in the doorway.
Shayne shrugged and moved aside to let Gentry enter. He raised bushy red eyebrows inquiringly at Timothy Rourke, his second oldest friend in Miami and long-time reporter on the Daily News. Rourke was lean and hard-muscled as a greyhound, and carried himself with the same springy ease. He shook his head and put a finger to his lips in response to Shayne’s unspoken question, indicating that he had tagged along on sufferance and his promise not to talk out of turn.
Shayne nodded his red head a quarter of an inch and wheeled to precede Rourke into the room.
Chief Will Gentry stood flat-footed in the center of the rug with an unlit black cigar in his blunt fingers. Moving in from the door, Shayne saw him put the cigar carefully in his mouth and then fumble inside his right vest pocket. Instead of producing a match, he drew out a small slip of paper, folded once, and held it out to Lucy.