Michael Shayne stepped to one side, away from her, caught her shoulder and swung her about toward the bedroom.
“Get some clothes on and we’ll catch that plane. After we get things straightened out in Miami…?”
She stood naked and tall in front of him, and said over her shoulder with a queer sort of dignity, “It will be too late then, Mike. Don’t throw this away.”
He turned aside and fumbled for a cigarette. “Get your clothes on. We haven’t got any time to waste.”
8
When Shayne got his cigarette going, she had gathered up the clothes he had thrown on the floor and was disappearing through the open door into the bedroom. He called after her, “In just five minutes I’m taking you downstairs to check out and catch a cab. Don’t get any cute ideas about stalling so we’ll miss the plane.” She kept on going into the bedroom without answering him or looking back.
He stared after her balefully, then glanced at the uncorked bottle of cognac and across the room at the broken pieces of his glass on the floor. Her glass stood empty on the table in front of the sofa. He stepped over to pick it up, and saw her handbag pushed partly down between the cushion and the end of the sofa. He reached down to pull it out, unsnapped the clasp and turned it upside down to spill the contents out on the table.
There was a cigarette case he had seen before, a compact and lipstick and small comb, a folded handkerchief which proved to have no monogram or initials on it when he shook it out, but did exude a strong whiff of her perfume. There was also a bulging coin purse which came out and dangled at the end of a silk cord attached to the inside of the bag.
He unsnapped the purse and found a wad of bills and some silver. There were two fifties and other, smaller bills, making up a total of about three hundred dollars. But there was no clue at all to the woman’s real identity.
Shayne put the money back in the purse and snapped it shut, then felt inside the bag and found a pocket in the lining that yielded a folded United Airlines ticket envelope. Inside the envelope was the return half of a round-trip ticket from Miami to Los Angeles. It had been issued in Miami two days previously to Elsa Cornell.
He dropped the handbag on the table and strode to the bedroom door carrying the ticket. She had quickly donned a serviceable dark gray dress (which he recognized as one of those he had found that bore a Miami label… part of the wardrobe which she had claimed belonged to a friend… and which fit her perfectly) and she was leaning over the bed packing the other things back into her suitcase with perfect self-possession.
“What sort of story have you got to explain this, Elsa?” He held the ticket up for her to see. “I found it tucked into a pocket in your handbag.”
She glanced at it and said coldly, “I don’t intend to explain anything more to you, Mike Shayne. From here on out, make your own smart deductions. I’m going back with you and you should be satisfied. Did you steal the money from my handbag, too?” she added scornfully.
“No. I’m going to leave you that to pay your hotel bill with.” He glanced at his watch and said, “We’re walking out of this room in exactly three minutes.”
“Then get out and let me finish packing.”
He raised his eyebrows at the gray dress she had changed into, and said, “Aren’t you lucky that your friend’s clothes fit you so well? Okay, Elsa. Make it snappy or we’ll miss our plane.”
He went back and snatched up her empty glass, poured a couple of fingers of cognac into it and recapped the bottle which was still half full. He opened his briefcase and dropped it inside to replace the one he had left with Pat Ryan at the Plaza Terrace, and was moodily sipping his drink when she came marching out of the bedroom with her head held high, and went to pick up her handbag and replace her meager belongings in it, saying over her shoulder, “If you want to bring my bags, I’m ready to get out of this joint.”
He grinned sourly and tossed the rest of the liquor down. In spite of himself, he had to admit she was quite a gal. Nothing seemed to faze her, by God. Under other circumstances, Elsa Cornell was decidedly the sort of female who appealed to Michael Shayne.
She was waiting composedly for him at the door with her handbag tucked under her arm when he came out of the bedroom with her bags. She opened the door and held it for him while he paused and awkwardly picked up his briefcase also, and she followed him out and walked down the corridor to the elevator beside him with all the aplomb of a married woman checking out of a hotel room with her husband to whom she has been married for twenty years.
Nor did her aplomb desert her in the lobby. She went directly to the cashier’s desk with her room key in her hand, said icily, “I have to leave town unexpectedly. May I have my bill? There was a room-service charge about half an hour ago,” she added.
Shayne handed the three bags over to a bellboy who hurried up to him, and said, “We need a cab to catch a plane.”
The boy told him, “I’ll have one waiting,” and took the bags out the front door. Shayne stood behind Elsa and sardonically watched her pay her bill with cash. He didn’t know what the exact amount was, but observed that she received a few ones and some silver back from a fifty and twenty which she pushed under the grille. Her suite at a hotel like the Perriepont would run between twenty-five and thirty dollars a day, Shayne guessed, which meant that she was paying for two days’ occupancy and must have checked in on her arrival from Miami the day before yesterday.
Just one more lie to chalk up against her, he thought with grim amusement, remembering the unpacked bags standing so revealingly inside the bedroom when they entered the suite earlier. She must have packed them and set them there that day when she started out to find Joe Pelter’s cab and write the note that was to be delivered to him at the Plaza Terrace and start him out following a will-of-the-wisp.
The whole caper had been planned thoroughly and carefully. There was no question about that. But why? And by whom?
Who was the dead man in his office?
And where was Lucy Hamilton?
Elsa rejoined him and they went out together and found the bellboy had a taxi waiting. He gave the boy a dollar and got in beside Elsa, and told the driver, “The airport. We’re catching a nine-forty plane.”
The driver said cheerfully, “Plenty of time… just about,” and Shayne sat back in his corner of the seat and lighted a cigarette.
Elsa sat stiffly, well-removed from him, without speaking for several blocks. Then she sighed audibly and opened her bag, took a cigarette from her case and put it between her lips. “Will you light it for me, please?”
Shayne said, “Sure,” and struck a match and held it for her and asked banteringly, “Don’t I get a tip this time… something like the torn half of a thousand-buck bill?” She leaned her head back against the seat, inhaled deeply and expelled smoke. “Tell me about the dead man in your office, Mike. Was he murdered?”
“Aside from the fact that I have a hunch you know a hell of a lot more about it than I do, I don’t mind telling you the damn little I know about it. Yeh. I told you back in the hotel that the police think my secretary did it.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re a bunch of incompetent damned fools,” he growled. “They can’t find Lucy and their first assumption is that she must have murdered the guy and taken it on the lam. He was stabbed in the heart with a filing spindle off her desk,” he added gruffly.
“Who is the man?”
“They haven’t identified him yet. Why don’t you tell me? You know the truth is bound to come out.”