Shamus eyed the labels and swore. Next he raised the bottle to his nose and sniffed. The odor, used though he was to prohibition beverages, crinkled his nostrils.
He turned to gaze questioningly at the figure on the bed. J. Wesley Beard in pajamas was a singularly unimposing personage. The most noticeable of his features was a wispy gray moustache. Maguire had seen him frequently about the hotel, but remembered him chiefly because of a pair of heavy spectacles that lay on the bedside table. These were the most notable, because Beard wore over them covers of gray celluloid to shield his eyes from light.
Beside the glasses lay a bill form which revealed that Beard had paid nothing on his account since his arrival three weeks ago. The bill had been rendered the day before. Stamped across its face in bold blue letters were the words “Past Due.”
In the midst of his scrutiny of the bill, Maguire became suddenly tense. But as he turned slowly to the door his thoughts were to all appearances concentrated on the paper in his hand. He took a few slow steps, stopped, scratched his head puzzledly and took two more steps.
Then, dropping all pretense, he sprang for the door and wrenched it open. A startled youth in the blue and brass of a hotel bellboy was just straightening from a posture that would have placed his eyes on a level with the keyhole.
“Well?” demanded Maguire.
“Well what?” said the youth brazenly.
“Well this,” returned Maguire. One of his beefy arms shot out and a hand clamped on the youth’s shoulder. A blue and gold streak shot into the room and the door slammed.
“Say,” said the bellhop a trifle shakily, “what’s the idea?”
“Sit down.” Maguire forced the protesting youth into a chair. His face shaped itself into a threatening glower.
“Still doin’ business, I see.”
“Whadya mean,” protested the bellhop hotly.
Shamus went across the room and took a whisky bottle from the table.
“You’re the only guy in town with enough crust to peddle that kind of firewater around a swell dump like this,” he stated. “Besides, I recognize the label. The same stuff you were sellin’ a couple of months ago.”
“Nuts,” said the youth defiantly.
“You were warned,” continued Maguire coldly, “that if it happened again you’d be fired.”
“You ain’t got no proof.”
“Proof!” Shamus laughed harshly. “I don’t need no proof. All I gotta do is say the word to the manager and you’ll find yourself huntin’ a job.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” said the bellhop in sudden alarm.
“Don’t bank on it, kid. Don’t bank on it. I might and I mightn’t.”
“What do you want me to do?” the youth inquired sullenly.
“I want you to come clean,” Shamus told him crisply. “Why the keyhole act, for instance?”
“Aw,” was the disgusted reply, “I hear downstairs that this egg has knocked himself off and I come up to make sure.”
“And why the sudden interest?”
“He owed me fifteen bucks.”
“Fifteen bucks!”
“The way it happened, I’ve been rustlin’ his grog for him for the past two weeks. Last night he phones down and asks me to get him five jugs of rye in a hurry. When I get it here he wants to put it on the cuff and talks me into bein’ simple. And now,” he finished bitterly, “I’m out fifteen bucks. Five bottles at three bucks per. A guy is a fool to give credit.”
“Five bottles,” wondered Maguire aloud. “Five bottles, you said?”
“Five,” said the boy sorrowfully. “I shoulda known better.”
“Listen, kid. The next time I catch you bootleggin’ around this hotel you get the works, understand? Now scram.”
When the door had slammed Shamus instituted a third and even more thorough search. Five bottles, the boy had said. But now there were only two. Shamus sought in the bathroom, the clothes closet, under the bed, in the drawers and through the dead man’s luggage. No trace of the other three bottles was to be found.
This circumstance might mean much and it might mean little, Shamus could not at the moment determine. He had a hunch, however, that it was to mean much.
III
Having come to this decision Maguire awoke to the fact that though another half hour had passed the doctor had not arrived. He strode irately to the phone and called downstairs for the third time. An apologetic clerk reported that after a great deal of trouble it had just been discovered that the doctor was away from his office on a professional visit.
He had been called to the same floor upon which Shamus now waited so impatiently and the clerk would without delay get him on the phone and instruct him to attend to Maguire’s business.
“Never mind,” said Maguire shortly. “I’ll call him myself. What room is he in?”
“Eleven-twenty.”
Maguire hung up the reciver and started for the door. Eleven-twenty was just down the corridor and he could go there as quickly as he could phone.
The door to eleven-twenty opened abruptly to the detective’s sharp knock. As he recognized his caller a look of annoyance faded from the doctor’s face, but he held a finger to his lips warningly.
“Come in,” he whispered, moving aside on his tip toes.
Shamus entered and closed the door softly. A dishevelled looking man lay asleep on the bed, breathing heavily.
“What is it?” the doctor asked. Shamus explained why he had come and the other nodded.
“I’ll be right with you,” he said. “Nothing much wrong with this fellow outside of too much bad booze. I’ve given him a quarter grain of morphine. He should be off to sleep by now.”
He tip-toed to the bedside and regarded the man there expertly.
“He’ll do,” he said then.
As the doctor packed and closed his bag Maguire looked curiously about the room. It was a wreck. Clothes were strewn untidily about the floor. A table had been knocked over and in a corner was a broken glass and an empty whisky bottle. On the floor by the bed stood another whisky bottle. The labels on both were identical with those of the bottles in the room of the suicide.
Upon returning to the other room a scant three minutes was all that was required to complete the examination of the suicide.
“Strangled,” the doctor said turning to Shamus. “Roughly speaking I’d say he’s been dead twelve hours.”
“That’d make it about ten last night.” Maguire glanced at his watch.
The doctor nodded.
“Have you phoned the police?”
“I thought you’d better have a look at him first. The front office can put in the call. I’m goin’ home to bed.”
The pair left the room and went downstairs together.
“How about that lush in eleven-twenty?” Shamus inquired carelessly as they descended in the elevator. “Is he liable to raise any hell when he comes out of his stupor?”
“Not unless he absorbs some more bootleg. Anyway, the shot in the arm should keep him quiet for five or six hours.”
Though he had told the doctor he was going home, Shamus did not leave the hotel. First of all he collared the bellhop whom he had interviewed so stormily an hour before.
“How much booze did you sell eleven-twenty last night?” he demanded.
“Eleven-twenty? Not a drop.”
“Do you want me to go to the manager?”
“On the level. I never sold him a thing. Last night or any other time. What would be the use of me lyin’ about it?”
“Okay.”
Next Maguire went into the office and demanded to see the registration card of Mr. J. Wesley Beard. When it was handed to him he placed it on a desk alongside the suicide’s parting message to the world.