“I don’t intend to sacrifice Lucy’s life in an effort to prove your brother was murdered.” Shayne met her fiercely questioning gaze without blinking.
“Haven’t you any guts at all? Or any decency. What about professional ethics? Do you have the moral right to let a murderer go free?”
Shayne sighed. “In the first place, I don’t know that a murder has been committed.”
“Isn’t this proof enough?” She waved the yellow sheet of paper at him. “They know the dog was poisoned just as I claimed all along, and they know that an autopsy on John will prove he was murdered. Why else would they resort to kidnapping to stop you?”
Shayne admitted, “It’s pretty conclusive, but… so long as we don’t know the dog was poisoned I have no moral obligation to go on and put Lucy’s life in danger.”
“That’s quibbling,” she snorted. “I thought better of you than that, Mike Shayne. How can you go on living with yourself if you weasel out this way?”
Shayne said stubbornly, “The moment Lucy is safe, I’ll start moving.”
“How much?” she demanded suddenly.
“How much what?”
“How much do you intend to hold me up for? I know a lot about you, Mike Shayne, and I don’t believe for a minute that any woman means more to you than money. You’re not married to the girl. She’s just your secretary. Secretaries are expendable.” The old spinster’s face and voice were grim. “How much, Mike Shayne? I’m not a wealthy woman, but I do believe I can buy you. How much for immediate delivery of Daffy’s body to me? Then your conscience will be clear. You can wash your hands of the whole affair and devote your entire time to getting your snivelling secretary back safe into your arms and your bed.”
Shayne got up. He took a step forward and leaned down to set his half-emptied glass on the coffee table in front of Henrietta Rogell. He caught the slip of yellow paper from her fingers and carefully folded it together with the note she had given him. In a remote voice, he said:
“I’ll keep both of these. And I’ll also keep Daffy. Good night.”
He stalked out of the hotel suite and shut the door firmly behind him.
In the lobby he looked for Harold Peabody in the telephone book and found his home address in the northeast section of the city. He made a note of it and went out to a waiting cab and told the driver to take him to the fishing dock where he had left his car parked earlier that day.
10
Peabody’s address was a glittering, modern, six-story apartment building on Northeast 60th Street. Shayne parked directly in front of wide, chromium-framed glass doors flush with the sidewalk, and entered a large, softly-carpeted and softly-lighted lobby. He strode forward with assurance to a smartly uniformed elevator operator standing at attention outside an open cage that was also carpeted and fitted with an antique loveseat.
Shayne said, “Mr. Peabody,” as he stepped inside, and the operator nodded blandly and closed the door as if it were the most natural thing in the world for Peabody to have visitors well past midnight.
They glided upward smoothly and with almost no sensation of motion, and stopped on the fourth floor. Shayne asked, “Which apartment is it?” as the door slid open, and the man nodded to a door directly across a wide hall and said, “Four A, sir.”
He kept the door open and waited while Shayne stepped across to 4-A and pressed the bell. He remained waiting in the open elevator until the door opened and a plump blonde girl wearing a low-cut evening gown confronted the detective. From the soundproofed apartment behind her came the sound of laughter and voices and modulated music from a hi-fi system. The girl’s careful coiffure was disarranged and her lipstick was smeared. She held a champagne glass in her left hand and her blue eyes were slightly glazed as she tilted her head on one side to look up at him with approval. “Hi there, rangy, rugged and redheaded.” The words were a bit slurred but had an enthusiastic lilt to them. “Where you been hiding all my life?”
Shayne said, “Just looking for you, honey,” with a wide smile, and heard the elevator door close discreetly behind him.
He moved forward and she swayed against him, tilting her head farther back and closing her eyes. Shayne put his arm about her soft waist and kissed her lightly on pursed lips.
She said, “Yummy,” and then giggled and linked an arm in his and led him across the small, parqueted entrance hall to an archway opening onto a large living room where a gay party was in progress.
Near a fireplace at the far side of the room, a couple were locked in a tight embrace, swaying gently to the music with their mouths glued together. Another couple were amorously entwined on a sofa at the left, and two men and a woman were seated across the room in a cluster of chairs about a table with two champagne bottles in ice buckets and trays of small sandwiches. Two of the men wore white evening jackets with cummerbunds, a third wore a conventional tuxedo, and one of the seated men was attired in white trousers and a scarlet smoking jacket. All of the girls wore evening dresses, and all of the people in the room were in varying degrees of intoxication.
The trio stopped talking and looked at them curiously as the blonde stopped Shayne in the archway and waved her champagne glass exuberantly. “See what I found, by golly. Just opened the door, believe it or not, and there he stood. Big as life and twice as ugly.” She turned her head to smile at Shayne fondly. “I’m Polly, and don’t you forget I saw you first.”
The man in the smoking jacket got to his feet and approached them. He was in his late thirties, slender, and with a hawklike face and piercing black eyes. His expression was a curious mixture of irritation, amused affability and frank curiosity as he stopped in front of them and said to Shayne, “I don’t recall… I don’t know you, do I?”
“Who cares whether you know him or not, Harold?” said Polly gaily. “Important thing is, I know him. Make with the hospitality and champagne so’s he can catch up a little teensy bit.”
Shayne said, “You’re Peabody?”
“That’s right.” The broker’s eyes narrowed. His voice became cool and very thin. “I don’t recall inviting you to this party.”
Of all the people in the room, Peabody appeared to be the most sober. Indeed, Shayne’s first, swift impression of the man was that he was a type to carefully gauge his intake of liquor on every occasion and never allow alcohol to cloud his coldly calculating mind. It was a type Shayne disliked and distrusted, and he said in a flat voice, “I didn’t know you were having a party and I’m sorry to interrupt. But there’s something I’d like to discuss briefly.”
“Oh, come on.” Polly tugged at his arm. “You can’t discuss anything without a drink. It isn’t decent.”
Both men disregarded her. Harold Peabody teetered forward slightly on the balls of his feet. “I can’t think of anything that needs discussion at this hour. I think you’d better go.”
The detective said, “My name is Shayne, Mr. Peabody. Michael Shayne.”
There was not a flicker of expression on the thinly arrogant features in front of him to indicate that the name meant anything to Peabody. But he said decisively, “I can think of nothing I wish to discuss with a private detective. Certainly, not here and at this hour. If you wish to call my secretary in the morning for an appointment…”
Shayne shook his red head slowly. “I want some answers now. If we could step into another room…?”
“Gee, golly, gosh!” exclaimed Polly loudly, so everyone in the room turned to listen. “A real, live private eye. Mike Shayne, no less. Anybody know where the body’s hid?”
Peabody lifted one slender, well-manicured hand in a gesture of annoyance. He said stiffly, “Control yourself, Polly. If you insist, Mr. Shayne…” He turned to a hallway leading to the left, and Shayne smiled down at Polly and disengaged her hand from his arm. “Sorry, darling, but duty calls. You have that drink. Have two of them,” he added generously as he followed his reluctant host down the hall and into a small study.