Shayne said soberly, “I don’t. But you can try.”
“I am trying.”
“Keep on working on it,” Shayne urged. “It’ll come easier after a while. Once you make up your mind that I’m telling the truth, you’ll be on the right track.”
“But you can’t prove a damned thing you say, Mike.”
“And you can’t disprove anything I say.”
“I’ve got the statements of Mrs. Carrol and Bates,” Gentry reminded him, “and they’re in direct contradiction to yours.”
“Okay. Let’s analyze those statements. Take Bates’s story. He claims I replied to his first letter by demanding five hundred dollars in cash before taking the case. You know damned well that’s not the way I run my business. If I were going to accept the job, I’d do it and bill the client later.
“Wait a minute!” Shayne held up a big hand to ward off Gentry’s protest. “That’s not all. Bates claims he suggested I get a key to Carrol’s room for his wife’s use in ending a divorce action. No matter what you believe about anything else I’ve told you, you know goddamned well I’d have turned an assignment like that down flat. I don’t fool around with that sort of thing at any price, not even when it’s offered in advance.”
Gentry’s broad, ruddy face was impassive. He shifted his weight wearily in the straight chair. “But for a promise of ten thousand—” he began.
“And if I were going to take a job like that,” Shayne cut in, as though completely absorbed in his own thoughts and unaware of the chief’s words, “I sure as hell wouldn’t spot the guy in my own hotel to do the job.”
“It would make it easier for you to pull,” Gentry pointed out with a weary sigh, “as Bates explained to me over the phone.”
“I’d be a hell of a detective if I couldn’t get a duplicate key from any hotel in town,” Shayne growled.
“Then who in hell furnished Mrs. Carrol with a key to your room last night?” Gentry exploded.
“That’s what we’ve got to find out.” His head wound throbbed in a dull, steady pain, and his voice was suddenly weary. “We need to know a lot more about Ralph Carrol and his wife, and Bates, before we can even begin to guess the inside workings of the deal.”
“I’m getting a full dossier on all of them,” the chief told him in a gentle rumble. “From my preliminary investigation he appears to have been a well-known young businessman. And I told you the Wilmington police gave Bates a clean slate. Damn it, Mike, are you trying to build up a hypothesis that someone impersonated you in this whole affair?”
“Either that,” said Shayne slowly and thoughtfully, “or Bates, at least, is lying from the word go. Frankly, I see the latter as much more feasible. I don’t see how anyone could impersonate me. There’s a possibility that it might be carried through, of course, after the first contact was made. But we don’t yet know what mail address or telephone number was furnished Bates for contacting a man who might have called himself Michael Shayne for some reason of his own.
“But Bates claims he wrote directly to me in the beginning. Lucy would have a record of any such letter if it had reached me here.” He paused briefly, glancing aside at Lucy, noting Timothy Rourke’s slaty eyes burning excitedly in their cavernous sockets, then turned back to Gentry’s blank stare. “If Bates’s correspondence reached this office, there is only one thing you can believe, and will have to accept, Will, and that is that Lucy double-crossed me and decided to play detective on her own. Knowing I wouldn’t touch a divorce case, she answered the letter, gave my name and her own apartment address. But I don’t think Lucy is that hard up for five hundred bucks.”
“Michael! You can’t believe that for a moment!”
“Of course not,” he assured her. “And if you had pulled such a stunt, I’m sure you wouldn’t have given a dame a key to my apartment after midnight. So you see, Will, there just isn’t any physical explanation for the stunt being pulled. Looks to me like an apparently reputable attorney in Wilmington is lying in his teeth.”
“That may be,” said Gentry after a brief silence.
The telephone on Shayne’s desk rang. As he reached for it, Gentry pushed forward in his chair. “That may be for me,” he said. “I’m expecting an important call and left word at my office to transfer it here.”
Shayne had the receiver to his ear and his palm over the mouthpiece as Gentry spoke. He motioned for silence, removed his palm, and said, “Yes?” After listening for a moment he said, “That’s quite correct. Give it to me slowly while I make a note of it.”
Lucy was out of her chair, pushing a pad and pencil within reach of his right hand. She stood beside the desk watching and listening and frowning at the notes he made on the pad.
He said, “Yes, I have all that. Thanks very much for your co-operation. If there’s anything further I’ll contact you.” He hung up and shoved the pad toward his secretary. “On the Mitchell case, Lucy. That was a Mr. Levine, general manager of the Argus Trucking Company. His records show that Mitchell did take a truck out without authorization at ten o’clock yesterday morning.” Lucy dutifully took shorthand notes of every word her employer said on the pad beneath his own scribblings, but her expression was one of complete bewilderment. Her back was turned to Gentry, but she looked up to meet the burning curiosity in Timothy Rourke’s eyes. There was a knowing grin on his thin lips.
“That cleans up the Mitchell thing,” Shayne said briskly. “Suppose you let me know as soon as you get more detailed information from Wilmington, Will. I still think Bates should come down here so we can question him about those letters and phone calls he claims to have had from me.”
Gentry’s rumpled lids were half lowered, his eyes inscrutable. He said, “Yeh,” wearily, and stood up. “I’ll send the doc over to look at your head and have my boys check your car. If the external evidence checks with your story we’ll have a little more to go on.”
“Sure. My car is in the parking-lot around the corner. You might try for fingerprints, but I doubt if you’ll find any. After putting me out like a light, he had plenty of time to wipe everything clean.” Shayne pushed his chair back and got up to accompany the chief to the outer office.
Gentry said to Rourke, “Coming along, Tim?”
The reporter shook his head lazily. “I’d like more of a fill-in from Mike. I’ll be around for a statement before we go to press, Chief.”
Gentry moved with his usual solid tread. Shayne strode past him and opened the door to the outer office. As the chief went out, he said, “This is a cockeyed case, Will. I’ll keep in touch with you.”
“Vice versa,” Gentry supplied in a clipped voice. “Don’t worry, I will, until you come clean with me, Mike.” He caught the doorknob and slammed it shut.
Shayne stood for a moment listening to his footsteps going toward the elevator, his thumb and forefinger massaging his left ear lobe. Then he turned and strode back to his office.
Rourke paced the floor, his thin nostrils flaring, and his slaty eyes burning in their deep sockets. He stopped, faced the redhead, and asked, “What is the Mitchell case, Mike?”
“Oh, that!” Shayne sat down at the desk, glanced at Lucy who looked up from the note pad in her hand with round, questioning eyes. He drew in a deep breath and said, “I may as well give it to you, both of you. I’m going to need all the help I can get from now on.”
“Did I give myself away when you told me to take notes? I’d never heard of any Mitchell case, but I tried to be calm.”
“You were perfect, angel,” he assured her. “That call was actually for Gentry, from some clerk at the airport who’d been checking flights to Wilmington for Will. He had been given this number to call, and mistook me for Gentry when I answered.” He poured himself a short drink of cognac and drank it. “Their records show that Michael Shayne bought a round-trip ticket to Wilmington on the four-twenty plane this morning and returned on a flight arriving here at nine-ten. There is going to be hell to pay when Will finds out about this.”