“I’ve only got about fifteen minutes to make my deadline for the first edition,” Rourke complained, studying his notes. “I’ve got just about everything except your side of it, Lucy. And just how you figured the whole thing out, Mike. They even found the money, you know? In a suitcase, in storage. Boal had the torn halves of the receipt in his pocket. Rexforth insists you can’t legally claim a recovery fee on it, Mike, but Will Gentry is going to bat for you on that. It’s his contention that you actually broke the case when you discovered that Lucy had been held a prisoner in that motel room. That was the turning point, says Will. So, how’d you know, Mike? That’s an important part of my story. The man and woman who had her there swear she had no chance of leaving a message for you or anything. They say she was tied up and still groggy from the knockout drops they fed her at lunch when they went there from the office and got her. Why were you so sure Lucy had been in that room?”
Shayne’s fingers squeezed Lucy’s tightly and he turned his head to smile into her eyes. He said lightly, “Let’s just say it this way, Tim. Lucy and I have been working very closely together for years, and we’ve established a very special sort of rapport. Why don’t you just say in your story that I get a lovely sort of tingle down my spine if I walk into a room where Lucy has been within the last twenty-four hours?”
“Michael!” Lucy reproved him in a shocked voice, while her bruised lips tried to smile but couldn’t.
“Well,” he asked her calmly, “what do you want me to say… for publication?”
“I guess,” she agreed in a small voice, “that’s as good as anything.”
“What else, Tim?” asked Shayne blandly, taking an appreciative sip of cognac. “Don’t forget your deadline. As soon as you get out of here, Lucy has something to explain to me!”
“Well, there’s this, Lucy. I don’t understand why in hell you didn’t get suspicious when this fellow brought your tray from the lunchroom made up to impersonate Mike. I understand there was a pretty strong likeness.”
Lucy Hamilton closed her eyes for a moment and leaned her head back against the sofa. A deep, gurgling chuckle came from her throat.
“It was the funniest thing,” she confessed, “when he walked in the door carrying my luncheon tray. I stared at him and for one crazy moment I thought it was Michael. But then I realized he was much younger and…”
“Better looking,” Shayne supplied swiftly, recalling the motel manager’s words.
“Not that, Michael.” She squeezed his fingers tightly. “But I did say to him, ‘My, but you look a whole lot like my boss,’ and he was prepared for that, of course, because he laughed and said the others in the lunchroom had been kidding him about how much he resembled Michael Shayne, and that was why they had sent him up with my lunch instead of the regular delivery boy. So I laughed about it, too, and he went out… and I ate it and suddenly began to feel drowsy and couldn’t keep my eyes open.” She sat erect and smiled wanly. “How did they get me out of the office without anyone noticing, Tim?”
“Took you down the stairway… while you were groggy but still able to navigate. Hustled you out to that motel and left you while they went back to wait for O’Keefe to come to them.”
“What went wrong?” Shayne asked curiously. “Why did they have to kill him?”
“No one seems to know, exactly. I guess no one ever will know, now. According to their confession, he suddenly jumped up and declared he didn’t believe the man sitting behind your desk was actually Michael Shayne. And he started out of the office. The pseudo Mike Shayne shouted out to the gal at Lucy’s desk, ‘Stop him. Don’t let him get away.’ And so she… stopped him. They disagree about which one actually stuck the spindle in his heart,” Rourke went on, “but I guess it doesn’t matter too much. All four of them are going to draw good long prison terms.”
He patted the notes in his hand and thrust the wad of paper in his pocket. “God bless you, my children. I must be off to compose some headlines.” He smiled benignly and hurried out.
Lucy sat very still beside her employer while he cheerfully savored the contents of his glass. Then she said in a small voice, “Michael?”
“What is it, Angel?”
“You did… find them, didn’t you?”
“Why, sure.” He set his glass down, reached in his pocket and withdrew a small handful of blue nylon which he shook out in front of her eyes.
“I couldn’t think what else to do,” she explained swiftly and frantically. “They were excited and frightened when they came there, and I gathered something dreadful had happened. They said they were going to take me away and all I could think of was how I could leave something behind as a signal to you that I’d been there. I was still groggy from the drug at lunch, but somehow I knew you’d trace me that far… and wonder.
“So I told them I had to go to the bathroom before we left, and when I got in there with the door closed I had only a moment to think what I could do. And… well… what else can a girl leave behind that no one can see is missing? I mean…” Her cheeks flamed scarlet under his amused gaze.
“You’ve got to come out wearing all your outer clothes. Shoes, stockings, dress, or they’d notice.”
Shayne squeezed her hand and said, “It was a terrific inspiration, Angel. You knew I’d recognize them at first glance. But there’s one thing I don’t get. By what miracle of coincidence did you have that particular pair on yesterday? When I bought them for you on Valentine’s Day, you were half-way sore and swore you’d never wear them. What on earth possessed you to wear them yesterday?”
She hung her head and sighed, and confessed, “Now you’ve caught me.”
“How have I caught you?”
“After you gave them to me, I loved them and thought they were the cutest things I’d ever seen. I went down to the same store the next day and bought six more pairs… exactly the same. I’ve been wearing them ever since.” Shayne began laughing, and he couldn’t stop. After a time Lucy joined him.