Jerking himself erect, he went over all the facets of the situation now confronting him, trying to put first things first. He made up his mind suddenly, stepped on the accelerator, then slowed to turn off onto a side street to drive a couple of blocks and stop in front of a two-story apartment house.
He got out and went into the small foyer, pressed a button, and three long, steady rings brought the desired click of the latch. He pulled the door open and wearily climbed one flight of stairs.
Lucy Hamilton stood in the doorway of her apartment, wearing a silk robe over cotton flowered pajamas. Her dark hair was disarrayed, and her brown eyes were anxious and heavy with sleep.
“Michael!” She put both hands on his shoulders and looked up into his lined face. “What is it? You look-awful.”
“Nothing that a drink won’t fix,” he told her cheerfully, pulling her hands gently from his shoulders and drawing her into the pleasant living-room where he released her, chucked his hat on a chair, and sank down on the couch.
His secretary closed the door and stood with her back against it, studying him with a solicitude that was almost maternal. Yet there was a hint of the cool reserve she had shown the afternoon before when she entered his apartment to find Betty Jackson in his arms.
“Chief Gentry phoned me last night. What was it all about, Michael? He wouldn’t tell me. He asked about clients and wanted to know what valuable papers we had in the office.”
“Yeh. He called me at the same time. The night elevator operator in our building was murdered and our office ransacked. Somebody looking for something. Will didn’t believe me when I told him we didn’t have a client-or anything worth murdering for.”
“And you’ve been up ever since then?” she cried, moving toward him, her brown eyes glowing softly.
“Worse than that.”
“I’m sorry I was-well, upset when I walked in your apartment and saw you holding that woman in your arms. I don’t know why.” She perched on the wide arm of the couch, catching her lower lip between her teeth and looking down at his bowed red head.
Shayne took his chin from his chest and looked up at her. “It’s all right, angel. I didn’t blame you.”
“But I blame myself. Why can’t I ever learn? I had no right, Michael. Even if we were married, I wouldn’t feel I had the right.” Her voice was shaky, stricken, and stormy and tender, all at the same time. “If that damned door hadn’t been unlocked-if I hadn’t walked in on you without warning-”
“No one else had a better right,” he said gently. “If I ever do persuade you to marry me-”
“I won’t be a jealous wife, Michael.” Her eyes were wide and bright and starry. “I know how you are with women, and how they are about you-And I know it’s all-well-impersonal. Something that doesn’t touch me. But I never actually saw you with a woman in your arms before.”
Shayne’s long arms grabbed her and pulled her from the arm of the couch. He kissed her gently, then held her hard against him for a long moment. When he released her he said, “I’m going to tell you this once more, then you forget it. It wasn’t what you thought with Betty Jackson. She was worried about her husband, and-in love with Tim Rourke, I guess,” he ended slowly.
“In love with Tim?” Lucy pulled away from him and resumed her seat on the arm of the couch. “What an odd way of demonstrating it.”
Shayne sighed and raked his bristly hair with his finger tips. “If I could have that drink, maybe I could make a better job of explaining that Bert Jackson got himself murdered last night and I’m afraid Tim is mixed up in it.”
Lucy said, “Tim?” She stood up slowly. “Bert Jackson? Was he that woman’s husband?”
Shayne nodded. “Suppose we have that drink.”
“Wouldn’t you like coffee?”
“Cognac first. Then coffee with cognac laced in,” he agreed, grinning up at her anxious face, then lounging to his feet. “Is there any around?”
“It’s right where you left it the last time you were here,” she told him, going toward the kitchen.
Shayne caught up with her, lifted her slim body clear of the floor with his right arm, released her, and they were both laughing when they went through the open archway into the tiny kitchen. Lucy began measuring water and coffee into the pot while Shayne took a bottle of cognac from the cupboard. It was two-thirds full. He poured a couple of inches into a glass and sipped it slowly, leaning against the drainboard end of the sink.
“I’m terribly sorry about Tim being mixed up in this, Michael,” she said gravely, going to the stove and turning the front gas jet for the dripolator. “How is he involved in it?”
“I don’t know, angel. The police are going to believe he killed Jackson as soon as they add a couple more things up.”
Lucy turned the gas low and said, “Let’s go in and get comfortable, and you can tell me all about it.”
She sat beside him on the couch, and in a flat monotone Shayne related every incident, beginning with his meeting with Bert Jackson in the bar after they closed the office, carefully including the fact that he had consulted his watch several times near the end of Betty Jackson’s visit to his apartment, and ending with his final talk with Doctor Meeker.
“A lot depends on what sort of story-”
“Just a minute, Michael,” said Lucy, springing up and hurrying into the kitchen. “The coffee’s gurgling.” She returned with a tray bearing two cups of coffee and the cognac bottle. Shayne laced brandy in his cup, tasted it, settled back with the cup in his hand, and continued.
“The story Betty Jackson will tell when she wakes up is going to be very important. If Grandma Peabody is right and Bert did go straight home from Marie Leonard’s apartment-”
“Either Betty lied to Tim, or Tim lied to you,” Lucy supplied excitedly.
“Wait a minute,” said Shayne. “Maybe Betty wasn’t there and didn’t know her husband had come back. Maybe she’d slipped out the back way to meet Tim and they were together. Hell! I don’t know, Lucy.” He made a savage gesture with his left hand and set his cup on the coffee table.
“Why not ask Tim?” she suggested.
“I’m afraid to,” he acknowledged. “I’m afraid of what he’ll tell me. As long as I don’t ask him-as long as he stays out of sight-”
“Then you think it’s the man Bert Jackson was trying to blackmail-the unknown Mr. Big.”
“I hope to God it is,” Shayne said fervently.
“But how are you going to find out, Michael? With Bert dead-”
“Don’t forget that Bert told him I had all his dope,” Shayne broke in. “We know that much from Marie Leonard. And Bert must have made it pretty convincing,” he added wryly, “because my apartment as well as my office was ransacked last night.”
“No!” Lucy exclaimed. “You didn’t tell me that.”
Shayne thought for a moment, then grinned. “I was so intent on keeping the fact from Will Gentry I must have buried it in my mind. Tim took me home from the office, and we found my apartment door jimmied and everything ripped apart,” he said. “Since they didn’t find anything in either place, it’s a cinch they’ll have to come after me. Whoever committed the murders is desperate to get his hands on that Bert Jackson story.”
“Oh, Michael,” Lucy cried out, “why didn’t you tell Chief Gentry the truth when he threatened to arrest you? If you hadn’t told him Bert Jackson wanted divorce evidence-”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he told her. “If I hadn’t told him something good I’d be in jail right now. Besides, it was bound to come out.”
“But you’d be safe in jail,” Lucy said in a small, frightened voice, “with no murderers coming after you for something you haven’t got.”
“But that’s the only chance to smoke them out,” he reasoned patiently, taking her small, cold hand in his. “They have to come to me-if Betty can be kept quiet a few hours so Gentry can’t get onto it and mess things up. And that’s where you come in, angel. Ever had a yen to be a nurse?”