He went through them into a wide, empty hallway that separated the bar from the big dining room on the right where he could hear voices and the clatter of silverware. No one showed up to stop him as he climbed the wide stairway to the gaming room on the second floor and stopped in front of an unmarked door.
He heard voices inside the room, and turned the knob and the door swung open. The air conditioner was going, and two men in their shirtsleeves were bent over a desk littered with papers. The man seated behind the desk was Willy Arentz, slender and dapper, with a small, blond mustache and very cold, blue eyes. He had a reputation around town for being a square shooter-insofar as a man in his business can be and remain successful, and Shayne’s previous dealings with him had given the detective no reason to think otherwise. Leaning over his shoulder and making penciled notations on a sheet of paper covered with figures was a young man wearing glasses and a green eyeshade.
Arentz looked up with an expression of annoyance when he heard the door open, which changed to one of pleasant though restrained welcome when he recognized the redhead. He said, “Mike Shayne,” with practically no inflection. “Just a minute, huh, while I check this?”
Shayne said, “Sure,” and wandered past the desk to stand in front of a window looking down on the ocean and light a cigarette.
There was the low murmur of voices behind him, and finally the creak of Arentz’s chair, and his voice saying, “All right, Henry. We’ll do it that way if you’re sure it’s okay.” Shayne turned from the window to see the young man gather up some papers and go through a side door which he closed behind him. Arentz swung around and said affably, “Take the load off your feet, Mike.” He gestured toward a chair at the end of the desk. “Trade that cigarette in for a cigar? Stand a drink?”
“Neither, thanks.” Shayne settled his rangy body in the chair and crossed his long legs. “I’m looking for some information, Willy.”
“If I’ve got it, it’s yours.”
“First off… have you ever seen this woman in your place?” Shayne took Ellen Harris’ picture from his pocket and put it in front of the gambler. Arentz studied it appreciatively, pursing his lips and touching the tip of his left forefinger to his mustache. “Can’t say that I have, right off. But she’ll be welcome any time she wants to come. A real looker.”
“One you’d be likely to remember if she had been in?” Shayne prompted him.
“You know how it is… there’s hundreds in and out every night. Not in her class, I’ll agree, but it’s hard to say. Actually, Mike, I have a feeling she does ring a bell. But that’s as far as I can go. Can you place her any better?”
“Maybe. Do you have a shill working here named Gene?”
“We don’t have any shills working here, Mike. I like to feel people come to my place because they want to gamble and know they’ll get a fair run for their money… not lambs being led to the slaughter like some other places I could name. On the other hand,” he went on, and a faint twinkle warmed his eyes, “we do have a sort of percentage arrangement with a few people who sometimes steer a customer here instead of some other joint where they’ll really get rooked. Would that be Gene Blake you’re asking about?”
“I don’t know his last name. About thirty, with brown hair and a lean, well-tanned face. Dresses quietly and well. Has a way with women.” Shayne frowned as he repeated Tiny’s description of the man last seen with Ellen Harris.
“That fits Blake to a T.” Arentz leaned back and made a tent of his fingers, his eyes hooded and speculative. “Has Gene stepped out of line?”
“I don’t know. What sort of character reference does he get from you?”
“I couldn’t say personally. Everything I’ve heard about him is okay… for a guy that makes his living that way. Let’s just say I don’t know anything bad about him, but you already know that, Mike. He wouldn’t be coming here if I did.”
Shayne tapped the picture in front of Arentz and told him, “Gene walked out of the Beachhaven bar with this woman last Monday evening after picking her up there, and the bartender heard some mention of gambling as they went out. She didn’t return to the hotel that night… hasn’t been seen since. Did he bring her here, Willy?”
The gambler lifted the picture again and studied it more carefully. He frowned, half-closing his eyes.
“Monday night? It wasn’t very fast… Mondays never are. I was out on the floor from about ten o’clock on. Gene Blake? H-m-m.” He touched his mustache reflectively. “Would she have been a plunger, Mike?”
“I don’t know how much cash she was carrying. Her husband is a New York stockbroker… fairly up in the chips I’d guess, though probably not really loaded.”
“Reason I ask… if she dropped a wad, Gene would have been around to collect his cut. I just can’t remember Mike. I’ve got a feeling Gene was in about then… a few nights ago, anyhow… I don’t remember seeing him around since. Later in the evening, I can show that picture around and maybe get a real make for you. If she was in, one of the boys will surely place her.”
“In the meantime, can you check and see if Gene did collect a percentage for someone Monday night?”
“Sure, I can do that.” He pressed a button on his desk. “It’s all kind of guesswork, you know. Anything under five hundred doesn’t count…”
He broke off as the door opened and the spectacled young man asked deferentially, “You want me, Chief?”
“Take a look and see if we paid out anything to Gene Blake this week.”
Henry nodded and disappeared into the inner office. Arentz studied Shayne shrewdly and asked, “You think this dame has been shacked up with Gene since Monday night?”
Shayne spread out his hands. “For her husband’s sake, I hope not. On the other hand… hell!” he ended explosively, “I don’t know what I think about it, or what I want to think.”
Henry reappeared in the doorway and said, “There is no record of any payment to Gene Blake for the past two weeks.”
Arentz nodded and dismissed him. “There you are,” he told Shayne. “That doesn’t mean he didn’t steer her here Monday night. It just means she didn’t drop as much as five hundred… or that Gene has been so busy since then that he hasn’t been around to collect.”
“You know where I could find him?”
“We wouldn’t have any record of that, Mike. Like I said, he isn’t on the payroll or like that. I can ask around tonight and probably get a line for you.”
Shayne said, “Thanks, Willy,” and got up. He hesitated, and then said, “This is the only copy I’ve got at the moment,” and pocketed Ellen’s picture. “Let it ride, if you don’t hear from me, Willy.” He went to the door and opened it, then turned back, “The cops are liable to be around asking the same questions. Right now Painter is trying to pretend nothing has happened, but there’s going to be a front-page story in tonight’s News that will make him get off his ass and start asking questions.”
“The Gray Gull won’t be mentioned by name in that newspaper story?”
Shayne shook his red head. “Not in this one, Willy. The faster we clear it up the better chance we can keep you out of it.”
Arentz said reproachfully, “You know if I had anything…?”
Shayne said, “Sure,” and went out of the gambler’s office.
Arentz sat very quietly and stared after him, then lifted a telephone and began dialling a number.
In the wide hallway downstairs a colored man was indolently moving a vacuum cleaner over the rug. Shayne headed for the open front door in long strides, then slowed suddenly and stopped beside a public telephone booth. There were Miami and Miami Beach telephone directories on a shelf beside the booth. He tried the Beach directory first, and found one Eugene Blake listed with an address on 12th Street. He left the book open at that page, and checked the Miami directory. There were a number of Blakes, but no Genes or Eugenes.
He went into the booth and closed the door tightly to shut out the whir of the vacuum cleaner, and dialled the number listed in the Beach book. He listened to the telephone ring four times, and then there was a click and a brisk feminine voice repeated the number he had dialled.