“Well, we just got to talking and she told me she was Mrs. Harris from New York… I noticed her wedding ring set with diamonds just the way it was described in the paper… and she mentioned, kind of sadly, I thought, but spunky about it, that it was her husband’s idea for her to come down alone and have fun… and, by golly, she was determined to do just that.
“Well, I couldn’t help but remark that if I were married to a looker like her I’d keep her locked up at home… not that Mrs. Benjamin isn’t a fine-looking woman,” he broke in to explain, “but a different type, you might say.
“Anyhow, she confided in me that she had met this man in the cocktail lounge at her hotel that evening and he seemed like a gentleman and she’d come to the Gray Gull with him, but she guessed it was a mistake because he seemed to think that… well, you know… that it was all right for him to be forward with her because she had let him pick her up in a bar. And she asked me real nicely if I’d help her get rid of him and I told her I’d be delighted to help, so the next time he came to the roulette table to speak to her she hardly looked at him, but pretended to snuggle up to me and talked in a low voice that sounded intimate, I guess, and he got the idea and, after a little, we saw him leaving with another woman. And she giggled and said, well, that had taken care of him, all right, and that she was tired of playing roulette and why didn’t we go on somewhere else?”
“What did the man look like?” Shayne asked when Benjamin paused in his recital.
“Like just the sort of self-assured young man who would try to take advantage of a lady. You could spot him for a gigolo right away. That’s an old-fashioned word, I guess, but I’ll bet he makes a living preying on lonely women, who just want to have a little innocent fun. He was tall and tanned, and had brown hair, I think.”
Shayne nodded. “Did you and Mrs. Harris leave then?”
“Very soon afterward. We cashed in our chips… she had about forty dollars left out of the fifty she said she’d started with, which was a little better than I had done, because I dropped thirty-two dollars. Not that I was worried about that,” he added hastily. “I could afford it all right. Well, she said she had her own car and I don’t have a car with me down here, so we went downstairs and they brought it around… a cream-colored Pontiac convertible with the top down. She asked the attendant to put the top up because it was getting a little cool, and she drove.
“Since she didn’t know the Beach, I suggested a little hotel near mine for dinner where they have a small, quiet dining room and serve really excellent food until midnight. The Mirabel.”
He paused nervously and Shayne nodded. “I’ve eaten there. The Pompano Amandine is terrific.”
“Yes… well… I don’t wish to attempt to completely exculpate myself, Mr. Shayne. I want to be thoroughly honest, and, perhaps, what did happen was partially my fault. But she had been so friendly up to then, and appeared to like me very much, and I had had several drinks with a very early and very light dinner… and I sat close to her while she drove and put my arm about her shoulders, and she laughed quite charmingly and encouraged me, turning to smile in my face and pat my cheek once, when she stopped for a traffic light. And she said, very sweetly, that I wasn’t like the other man and she felt perfectly safe with me. Which I assure you she was, Mr. Shayne,” he added earnestly.
“I really had no thought of anything more than a pleasant late dinner with a charming companion. But she… perhaps she misinterpreted things. I still don’t really understand. It came as a complete surprise and shock.” He stopped, shaking his head in puzzlement.
“What did?” Shayne asked.
“When we reached the canopy in front of the Mirabel. There was a doorman there, and a parking attendant to take the car. I got out and the attendant was on her side and started to open the door for her. He just had his hand on the handle when she whooshed away leaving me standing there dumfounded. There’s a turn-around that the taxis use, and she just sailed around it and disappeared. I felt an awful fool, of course, with the doorman and attendant standing there looking at me and you could tell they were feeling sorry for me.
“Well, I passed it off as best I could. I summoned up a rueful laugh and said, ‘Women!’ And the doorman was sympathetic and asked me if I was going in or wanted a cab, and I told him I guessed I’d just walk on to my own hotel… which is only three blocks… and I did.”
“And that was the end of it?” Shayne demanded. “The last you saw of Mrs. Harris?”
“That was the end of it,” the man from Detroit declared firmly. “She just vanished out of my sight into the night. Naturally I told my wife nothing about what had occurred. But since yesterday afternoon, when I saw her picture in the paper and learned she was missing, I knew I should eventually have to go to the authorities with my story.”
Shayne nodded slowly, “Yes, they’ll have to be told.” He sat for a time, pondering what Benjamin had told him. Here again was the same inexplicable pattern of behavior repeating itself. What hidden impulse had driven Ellen Harris to act as she did last Monday? She had apparently invited passes from every man whom she encountered, and then backed out of the situation as soon as it began to develop. It was almost as though she had been asking to have her pretty face beaten to a pulp by some sexually frustrated male.
He shook his head and turned his attention to the problem presented by Mr. Benjamin and his wife. At the moment he felt thoroughly sorry for the man. If his story was true… and Shayne believed it was… he was a perfectly innocent guy who had taken one very small step aside from the straight and narrow path and was likely to be pilloried for it.
“Do I have to go in and tell them, Mr. Shayne?” he asked unhappily. “It will be quite an ordeal. I’ve never had any experience with the police.”
Shayne said, “It would be better for you to go in than wait for them to pick you up. You see, they got your description at the Gray Gull last night, and right now you’re probably the most hunted man in Miami.”
“Oh, God.” His face went ashen. “You mean I’ll be arrested and held in jail?”
“At least until your story is thoroughly checked.” Shayne hesitated, tugging at his earlobe and thinking out loud, “If I were positive in my own mind that you’re telling the truth, I can’t see that it would help the murder investigation any for them to know your name. If we could place her at the Mirabel that night, and if the police were convinced she had ditched her escort from the Gray Gull at that point, they’d lose interest in you.”
“Could you manage that? I can’t begin to tell you how everlastingly grateful I’d be.”
“Do you think the Mirabel doorman would remember the incident?”
“I feel certain he would, Mr. Shayne. And the parking attendant, too. It was so very obvious that she was getting rid of me and that I was taken completely by surprise. They were too polite to laugh at me openly, but I’m sure they snickered about it after I left.”
Shayne nodded and muttered, “I think that’s Mandel.” He looked up the number of the Mirabel Hotel and called it, and asked for Pete Mandel.
In a moment a voice said, “Mandel speaking.”
“Mike Shayne, Pete. How’re things with you?”
“Quiet, Mike. No luscious blondes getting themselves murdered in our parking lot.” He sounded very smug about it.
“Yeh? I congratulate you. Can you quick get me the names of the man on the door and the parking lot attendant who were on last Monday evening… and how to get hold of them if possible?”
“Couple of minutes. Will you hold on?”
Shayne said, “Sure,” and lit a cigarette while he waited.
Mandel’s voice sounded worried when he came back on the wire. “Tom Thurston was parking cars. He’s on right now. Ned Brown was on the door. I can get you his home address… listen, Mike. Monday evening? This hasn’t anything to do with a dead blonde, has it?”