“Gee, I wisht I had.” The bartender sounded truly sorry that he hadn’t been more curious. “I just didn’t look.”
“What did the man look like?”
“Like a bum,” he said promptly. “Wearing a ragged coat and needing a haircut. Thin and hungry looking. Hell, I didn’t pay no heed. Twenty-five or maybe thirty. Just a medium-looking bum.”
“You never saw him in here before?”
“Sure didn’t. I get a pretty good class of customers in here.” The bartender glanced proudly down the bar to the trio on stools near the other end. “It’s thinned out now, but half an hour ago I was pretty crowded.”
“But you’d know the bum if he ever comes in again?” persisted Shayne.
The bartender screwed up his blue eyes. “I… reckon I might.”
“If he does show his face there’ll be ten bills like that in it for you if you call the police and hold him till they get here.”
“Well, sure,” said the man uncomfortably. “If the law wants him…”
Shayne said emphatically, “They do,” and finished his drink.
As they got back into his car, Timothy Rourke said worriedly, “I guess that didn’t help much.”
“Not a damned bit. Whoever sent the note covered his tracks perfectly. Some hobo off a park bench who was delighted to earn the rest of a ten-dollar bill by having a drink in a bar and calling Western Union.”
“The notes,” Rourke reminded him emphatically as he swung around the corner and headed east on Fourth. “Who was the other one to?”
Shayne shrugged. “For you, maybe. If anyone knew you were with me tonight and it was you who did the actual grave-robbing.”
“No one knew that. I swear no one saw me there.”
“Lucy knew you were going with me,” Shayne reminded him, and neither one of them said any more until Shayne unlocked Lucy’s first-floor apartment, east of Biscayne Boulevard with a key that Lucy had given him many years before and which he had never used until tonight.
The outer door opened directly into a long pleasant sitting room with double windows overlooking the street. There was a softly cushioned divan beneath the windows, with a low coffee table in front of it. Shayne switched on an overhead light as they entered, and the two men stood close together without speaking, their eyes searching the room for any sign of disorder, any indication that Lucy had been taken away forcibly or had attempted to leave a clue as to her whereabouts behind her.
There was nothing. The room looked exactly as Shayne had seen it so many evenings in the past when he had stopped by with Lucy after a dinner together, or dropped in late to enjoy a nightcap before going on to his own bachelor quarters.
In a completely calm and exceedingly quiet voice which revealed to his old friend the intensity of the emotion he felt, Shayne said, “You stay back, Tim. I want to go through the place alone. There may be something out of place… something I’ll recognize…”
Awkwardly, Timothy Rourke said, “Sure, Mike. You go right ahead.” He leaned against the doorframe, digging out a cigarette and lighting it while he watched Shayne’s tall frame move slowly away from him with shoulders squared and chin thrust out.
The detective noted three cigarette butts in the glass ashtray on the coffee table near the end where Lucy generally sat when they were in the apartment together. That meant a couple hours of occupancy to Shayne, indicating she had come in after a leisurely dinner and relaxed for a couple of hours before going out again. There was a single dried ring on the glass table beside the ashtray. Lucy’s ingrained tidiness would never have left that ring undisturbed had she finished her drink and gone off to bed without interruption.
He moved on past the divan into the small kitchen, found everything in perfect order except for a tall glass standing on the drainboard of the sink with a small amber residue in the bottom. Again, Lucy would not have neglected to rinse out the glass and turn it upside down if she had not left hastily. He reached up a long arm and opened a cupboard across from the sink, lifted down a bottle of cognac that his secretary always kept there for him to drink from, together with a four-ounce wineglass. He emptied the warm remnants of her drink into the sink, got two ice cubes from the refrigerator and put them in the tall glass. He splashed brandy on top of them, added a modicum of tap water, and filled the wineglass nearly to the brim.
Rourke was still standing beside the door when he reentered the sitting room. Shayne held out the tall glass and said pleasantly, “Want to gargle on this while I look at the bedroom?”
Rourke said, “Sure,” and came toward him. “What do you make of it?”
“Not much this far. Lucy was here… alone… for a couple of hours after dinner. Had one drink and left in a hurry.”
“Under duress?” Rourke took the drink from him, studying his face keenly.
Shayne shrugged. “I should guess not. There’d be an overturned glass… something to signal me. She’d know I’d be around…” His voice trailed off and he took a sip of cognac, then moved to the telephone and stared down moodily at the clean white pad beside it. No telephone numbers jotted, not even a doodle. But Lucy was not the doodling kind, he reminded himself.
He went into the neat bedroom in which the only sign of disarray or hurried departure was a pair of furry mules lying on their sides near the foot of the bed. With his intimate knowledge of Lucy’s habits, Shayne knew she had changed to them immediately after coming in, had hurriedly kicked them off and put on her shoes before going out again. It was another sign of hurried departure, but not necessarily of coercion.
He went to her closet and opened it and surveyed the neat contents with bleak eyes. The array of dresses and outer wraps on hangers told him nothing, but he did note the small overnight case on the shelf above, and knew she hadn’t packed for a protracted stay.
The bathroom was immaculate, as Lucy always kept it, and told him nothing more. Rourke was lounging in a deep chair when he came out, and his deep-set eyes regarded the detective with feverish brightness. “What does the mastermind make of it?”
Shayne sighed and crossed to the divan where he sank down and took a long sip of cognac. “She came in alone and relaxed for an hour or so… then ducked out hurriedly. I don’t think she had any idea what she was getting into, Tim. She’d have managed to do something… leave some sort of sign for me…”
Lucy Hamilton’s telephone rang.
Shayne’s hand jerked and some of his cognac spilled on the carpet. He crossed to the instrument in two strides and said, “Hello,” into the mouthpiece.
The voice that answered him was deep and strong, but undoubtedly feminine. “Is that you, Mr. Shayne?”
“Yes.”
“Your hotel gave me this number. Henrietta Rogell.”
Again, Shayne said, “Yes?”
“I must see you at once. At the Waldorf Towers. It’s a matter I cannot discuss over the telephone.”
Her voice was inflexibly determined, and Shayne wasted no time in what he realized would be useless argument. He said, “In a few minutes, Miss Rogell,” dropped the receiver and strode toward Rourke who was already on his feet draining his glass.
Without pausing on his way to the door, he said, “The Waldorf Towers, Tim. Drop me there and I’ll pick up my car at the dock later.”
9
Henrietta met him at the door of her suite wearing a faded gray bathrobe, cut along mannish lines, tightly belted about her lean waist, and with comfortable-looking carpet slippers on her bare feet. Her grayish hair was released from its tight bun, tied behind her head with a black ribbon in a sort of pony-tail and fluffed out loosely about her face to soften the hardness of her features somewhat.
Shayne entered a pleasantly-decorated and nicely furnished sitting room, and she closed the door behind him and strode past with bathrobe flapping about bare, stringy ankles to a glass coffee table in front of a sofa. “I’m drinking rye,” she announced, “with a smidgen of water to cut the bite. If you want some fancy mixed drink, I can call Room Service I guess.”