It was only a few minutes’ drive to his hotel. He stopped in front and went into the lobby carrying his briefcase. Fritz, the night man, was on duty behind the desk and Pete stood beside him, evidently just coming on duty.
They both looked up in surprise to see Shayne striding toward them, and Pete exclaimed, “Jeez, you made a fast trip out to Hollywood and back, Mr. Shayne. I was just telling Fritz…”
Shayne dropped his briefcase in front of the desk and demanded, “Why didn’t you tell Fritz last night when you went off duty, Pete? I understand the police were here looking for me and no one could tell them where I was.”
“They sure were,” Fritz said feelingly. “All over the place. Made me unlock your room like they thought you might be hiding up there.”
“I just didn’t mention it to Fritz when I went off,” Pete said unhappily. “I didn’t know there was any special reason to say anything.”
“There wasn’t,” Shayne relented. “I don’t blame you, Pete. But I’m surprised they didn’t roust you out at home to ask you questions.”
Pete had a shamefaced smile for that. “They tried to all right. Trouble was, I wasn’t home when they came around looking for me. I was out on a hell of a toot, and boy have I got a head this morning.”
“What was it all about somebody getting himself killed in your office, and them looking for Miss Hamilton, too, and not being able to find her either?” asked Fritz eagerly. “Gee, I hope she’s okay.”
Shayne said, “I do, too. No word from her since I left, huh?”
Both men shook their heads lugubriously. Both were long-time employees of the hotel where Shayne had maintained a suite for many years, both knew Lucy Hamilton personally and admired her extravagantly.
Then Fritz said, “But there is this man’s been trying to reach you ever since early last evening.” He turned to reach into a cubbyhole behind the desk and pulled out three telephone messages. He glanced at one of them and said, “Name of Rexforth. First one’s marked six-fifteen…”
Shayne reached out his hand for the three slips. The first one said merely, “Mr. Shayne. Call Mr. Rexforth at once,” and gave a local telephone number and an extension.
The second one was marked ten-thirty, and as Shayne looked at it, Fritz told him importantly, “I took that one myself. Switchboard operator goes off at ten, you know. He sounded mad and wanted to know why you hadn’t answered his other call, and made me look in your box to see if the message was still there, then said it was important you should call him the minute you got in.
“Then he called again at one o’clock and said you was to telephone him no matter how late you got in… three or four o’clock, or whatever.”
Shayne fingered the slips a moment and then said, “Call that number. It’s probably a hotel in town. Don’t ask for him or the extension,” he added harshly. “Just find out which hotel.” Pete, who was evidently now officially on duty at the desk, took one of the slips and turned to a telephone behind him.
He turned back in a moment and said, “It’s the Atlantic Arms, Mr. Shayne. On Fourth Street just off Biscayne.”
Shayne nodded and turned away from the desk leaving his briefcase sitting forgotten on the floor in front of it.
13
Shayne wasted no time inquiring for Mr. Rexforth downstairs in the Atlantic Arms Hotel when he reached it. He crossed the old-fashioned lobby in long strides and stepped into an elevator that was waiting to go up. He glanced down at one of the telephone slips in his hand and saw the extension 718. He told the operator, “Seven,” when he closed the doors, got out on the seventh floor and found the room number.
He knocked loudly and waited. It was a solid oak door without a transom and he could hear no movement inside the room. He knocked again, impatiently, and the door finally opened a few inches with the rattle of an inside chain that was still in place.
A sleepy and irritable voice said, “Yes? What is it?”
“Michael Shayne. Open up.”
Something like a gasp sounded through the crack. Then the door closed enough so the chain could be loosened, and swung open again.
Shayne pushed in and confronted the scrawny figure of a man wearing rumpled pajamas and with grayish hair standing wildly on end. He was bare-footed and thin-faced, and he retreated hastily toward the bed as though in acute embarrassment, blinking his eyes nearsightedly and swallowing a prominent Adam’s Apple while he quavered, “I was sleeping very soundly. I’ll get a robe and… and my glasses.”
He snatched up a bathrobe that hung over the foot of the bed and thrust his arms into the sleeves, then padded nervously to the head of the bed where he picked up a pair of rimless glasses from the table and settled them firmly on his nose.
Thus properly attired, he lost his embarrassment and seated himself on the edge of the bed and said severely, “I’ve been expecting you to telephone me, Mr. Shayne. I sat up very late waiting for you to return my calls.”
Shayne said, “I just now returned to my hotel and found them.”
“Indeed? And may I inquire where and how you spent the night? And please, Mr. Shayne, don’t expect me to believe the implausible story your secretary gave me yesterday that you had flown unexpectedly to the West Coast.”
Shayne stood flat-footed on the floor in front of the man and glared down at him with his hands knotted into fists. “Where is she, Rexforth? Where is Lucy Hamilton? If she’s come to any harm…”
“Your secretary, Mr. Shayne? I’m sure I have no idea. I saw her only once, briefly, yesterday morning. If you’ve mislaid the young lady, it is scarcely my affair.”
Shayne stood looking down at him for a long moment while he battled with the irrational anger that had possession of him. This man knew something… but what? He was altogether too calm, too sure of himself. The important thing was to find out what he knew about the whole affair as fast as he could get it out of him.
He moved back to sit in a chair, and began by asking, “What makes you so sure I haven’t been to the Coast?”
Rexforth’s brown eyes glittered behind their glasses and his tight lips smiled thinly. “Because I have been certain that Julius O’Keefe would make a bee-line for Miami and you as soon as he was released from prison. And, Mr. Shayne, because I know he did visit you in your office yesterday afternoon… and remained closeted with you for a good period of time.”
“What do you know about O’Keefe?” Shayne demanded.
“What do I know about him?” Rexforth permitted himself a little, cackling laugh. “Everything, I assure you. I don’t think we understand each other, Mr. Shayne. Perhaps your secretary misunderstood me or neglected to inform you. I represent the North American Bonding Company. Manager of our branch office in Jacksonville, to be exact. Does that answer your question?”
Shayne said, “No.”
Rexforth sighed and placed the tips of five fingers precisely against the tips of his other five. “Perhaps it doesn’t,” he conceded. “I tend to forget that you entered the affair only recently and may not be fully cognizant of its past history. My company had bonded O’Keefe, of course, when he embezzled the hundred thousand dollars. We paid the loss. The full amount. I consider that case one of my failures, Mr. Shayne. One of my few failures. Now do you understand?”
Shayne said again, “No.”
“Oh, come now. Let’s not spar with each other. I am wholly and completely convinced in my own mind that Robert Long confided the entire story to you… or at least the salient points of it… when he died some four months ago.”
“Robert Long?” Shayne repeated the name slowly. It came as a complete surprise to him and he actually had to force himself to think over the past months to bring the incident into focus in his mind.