Shayne asked, “Is Mr. Blake in?”
“Not at the moment,” she replied. “May I take a message for him?”
Shayne said awkwardly, “Well, I… this is an old friend of Gene’s from out of town. I’ve been out of touch for a long time. Is this… Mrs. Blake?”
The faint suggestion of a chuckle came over the wire. “This is the Professional Answering Service. If you wish to leave a message for Mr. Blake, I will be glad to take it.”
Shayne said, “Don’t bother,” and hung up. He sat there for a moment looking at the wall, and then went back to the telephone booth and verified Eugene Blake’s street address. He went out and got into his car and headed south toward 12th Street.
Blake’s street address brought him to a square, two-storied stucco apartment building in the cheaper section of the Beach. Shayne parked outside and went in to a foyer with sixteen mailboxes on each side of it. He found “Blake, E.” on number twelve, and pushed open a door and went down the left-hand corridor where the apartments were numbered 9, 10, etc. He stopped in front of 12, and knocked.
He expected no answer, and received none. He took a well-filled key-ring from his pocket while he studied the lock, and the first key he tried went into the lock and turned it part way, but stopped there. He withdrew the key and studied it, selected another one which unlocked Blake’s apartment smoothly.
Shayne stepped inside and drew the door shut behind him. He stood in a small entryway, with an open door on his left leading into a kitchen, and an archway in front of him. A faintly damp, unventilated smell came from the interior of the apartment.
Shayne went through the archway into a small and littered living room. The windows were tightly closed, and the smell of stale cigarette smoke lingered in the air. There was a shabby sofa along one wall, and beyond it a matching overstuffed chair with a newspaper lying on the floor beside it. On a coffee table, in front of the sofa, there were two glasses and a half bottle of cheap bourbon. One was an empty highball glass, and the other a cocktail glass with a tiny portion of faintly milky residue in the bottom. Shayne leaned over to sniff it, but he wasn’t expert enough to determine whether it had contained a daiquiri or not. An ashtray beside the two glasses overflowed with cigarette butts, at least half of them carrying lipstick stains. Shayne studied them and wondered what shade of lipstick a blonde like Ellen Harris normally wore.
He moved on to the chair beyond the sofa, and checked the date of the paper lying on the floor beside it. It was dated the preceding Tuesday.
Shayne went on into the rear bedroom and found an unmade double bed with a bedside ashtray containing also an almost equal number of lipsticked and unlipsticked cigarette butts. There was the same smell of stale air in the bedroom that indicated it had been unused for several days.
Shayne turned back and glanced into the bathroom without seeing anything of interest, retraced his steps through the living room and paused in the door of the kitchen without entering it.
Two empty ashtrays stood on the drainboard beside the sink, and tiny gnats buzzed over the carcasses of two squeezed lemons in the sink.
He went out of the apartment and closed the door tightly behind him, went back to his car parked outside and drove to the first sign he saw indicating a public telephone.
There, he turned to the yellow pages and looked up the address of the Professional Answering Service, which proved to be less than four blocks away. He went back to his car and drove there, and went in.
10
The office of the Professional Answering Service was located on the ground floor of a building on 14th Street. The anteroom was presided over by a pleasant-faced, elderly lady, and there were no switchboards or telephone operators in evidence so Shayne concluded that the actual work was done elsewhere.
When she turned from her desk to ask what she could do for him, Shayne put on his most disarming smile and told her, “It’s probably against all your rules, but I’m a detective trying to locate a woman who has been missing for several days from one of the hotels here. I think one of your customers can give me information about her, and it’s imperative that I contact him at once. The woman may be in great danger,” he added gravely.
“Does his telephone number not answer?”
“Your service answered when I tried to call him a short time ago. I know that he hasn’t been home for several days, and I assume you have been transferring calls to some other number.”
“Not necessarily. Mostly, we simply take any messages that are left for a subscriber, and give them to him the next time he calls in.”
“You mean you wouldn’t know how to reach him in the interim?” Shayne showed his disappointment clearly.
“Normally not.” She hesitated. “Of course, if he knew he was going to be away from his own telephone for several days, and could be reached at some other number, he might inform us in advance, so that calls could be transferred at once and he wouldn’t have to be continually calling in to check. That’s one of our regular services.”
“In that case, would you give the caller his new number, or simply take the message and then call him?”
“Whichever way he preferred it handled.”
“Would you have a record of it here if this subscriber had made such an arrangement?” Shayne persisted.
Her eyes twinkled faintly. She said, “Yes. But I could not possibly give the information out unless I were authorized to do so.”
Shayne said ingratiatingly. “But you could check, couldn’t you, and see if my hunch is right. This may very well be a matter of life and death,” he urged her. “Just knowing that he had arranged to be reached at another phone would be of great importance.”
She said, “I don’t see… that that would be a violation of privacy.”
“His name is Gene Blake,” Shayne told her quickly, and added the telephone number of Blake’s apartment.
She turned to a large alphabetical card-file on the left side of her desk and efficiently took out a card. Shayne moved slightly and unobtrusively so he could look over her shoulder at the card carrying the name: BLAKE, Gene. There were several notations on the card behind penciled dates on the left side, and Shayne concentrated on the last one. He couldn’t interpret the cryptic notation, but it ended with a local telephone number followed by #410.
He memorized the number and looked down guilelessly into her eyes as she replaced the card and turned to tell him, “Mr. Blake did ask us to transfer any calls to another telephone number last Tuesday until further notice. He asked that the new number not be given to anyone, and it would be a breach of confidence for me to give it to you.” She spoke with firm severity and Shayne didn’t know whether she realized he’d read the number over her shoulder or not. He rather suspected she did, and he thanked her gravely. “You’ve been a great help, and I certainly wouldn’t want to urge you to give away your client’s secrets.”
He hurried out to the nearest telephone before he forgot the hastily memorized number, and dialled it. A dulcet voice said, “Good afternoon. Seaspray Hotel. May I help you?”
Shayne said, “You have, honey,” and hung up.
The Seaspray was one of the huge, rambling hotels that had been built during the first boom of the Twenties. There was some sort of convention in progress, and the lobby was athrong with milling delegates and lines of guests who were checking in and out.
Shayne made his way through them to the elevator and squeezed in. It let him out on the 4th floor, and he found #410 and knocked on the door. It opened after about thirty seconds and Shayne faced a man wearing slippers and slacks and undershirt and holding a towel in his hands. His brown hair was damp and uncombed, muscular arms and shoulders were deeply tanned. He fitted Tiny’s description of Gene Blake perfectly.