A voice was rasping through the receiver, and he uncovered the mouthpiece to say, “Perhaps you’d like to speak to Mrs. Carrol now.” He held the instrument out to her.
She seized it eagerly and exclaimed, “It’s Nora, Mr. Bates. I just don’t know anything. I didn’t even see Ralph before they told me he was dead. It’s all so horrible!” She paused, listened, nodded her head, and continued. “Yes. Everything was fixed for me to go to his room. The key was at the hotel just as it was arranged, and the detective phoned me twice. Only—” Her voice faltered on a convulsive sob. “Only there was some awful mistake. It was the wrong apartment. I got into the detective’s room instead of Ralph’s. Yes,” she accented shrilly. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He sent me the key to his own apartment here at the same hotel, and he was waiting for me — in bed. He pretended he was asleep when I slipped in, thinking it was Ralph. I don’t know, Mr. Bates. I think they’re all in it together. The Chief of Police is a crony of his, and you’d better come down here.”
The rangy redhead growled an angry expletive and snatched the instrument from Nora’s hand. “Michael Shayne speaking,” he rasped. “Mrs. Carrol is right. You’d better high-tail it down here fast. And bring all the evidence in your possession purporting to back up your story.”
“I will certainly do that, Mr. Shayne.” The lawyer’s voice was precise and icy. “If Mrs. Carrol is telling me the truth—”
“If she’s telling the truth,” Shayne broke in savagely, “then you’re lying your fool head off. I tell you—”
“I refuse to discuss the matter further over the phone with you, Shayne,” Bates cut in. “Please put your friend, the Chief of Police, on the wire again.”
Shayne snorted with disgust and handed the phone to Will Gentry who said curtly, “Gentry speaking.” He listened for a time, his face gradually turning the color of raw beef and his eyes narrowed to slits. Then he said, “That’s exactly what we want you to do, Bates. If you’re not in my office by one o’clock tomorrow — today, that is, I’ll have a warrant served on you in Wilmington.”
He slammed the receiver down and fixed his agate gaze on Shayne. “God help me if you’ve put me out on a limb this time, Mike. Mr. Bates is convinced that the Miami police force is in a dastardly plot with you to rape Mrs. Carrol and murder her husband. He’s flying down in the morning with documentary evidence and all the necessary legal writs to put us both in Raiford for life.”
Shayne managed a crooked grin. “That’s just fine, Will. There’s nothing I’d rather see right now than Lawyer Bates’s documentary evidence.”
Gentry picked up his glass and drank its watery content, grunted, and settled back in his chair. He took another cigar from his pocket, lit it, and puffed a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling.
Shayne turned to Nora Carrol and said, “There’s going to be a showdown. Whatever cute plan you and your shyster lawyer had, when you came down here, is going to blow up right in your faces. You’d better get out from under while you can, baby. If you didn’t kill your husband, you’d better spill the truth, so we can find out who did.”
“I? Kill Ralph?” She had been leaning back, her head resting comfortably against the chair, her eyes partly closed. She lifted her shoulders wearily and said tearfully, “I’m so tired and so confused! Can’t I go now, please?”
Will Gentry put his big hands on his chair arms and pushed his bulky body up from the deep chair. “I guess we’ve done about all we can here. There’s still the formal identification of your husband’s body. If you’ll come upstairs with me, Mrs. Carrol, we can get it over with.”
She shuddered, buried her face in Shayne’s big handkerchief, and said in a muffled, pleading voice, “Is it necessary, Chief Gentry? You said the — the body had been identified by people here in the hotel.”
“With all the impersonations floating around,” he told her gruffly, “we can’t be certain that the man registered here as Ralph Carrol is actually your husband. You’re the only one who can make a positive identification, and it might clarify a lot of things.”
Nora Carrol removed the handkerchief from her face and sprang to her feet. Her eyes brightened, and she said hopefully, “Then you think it might not be Ralph, after all?”
“That remains to be seen,” he told her. “Come along and we’ll find out.” He took her arm in his pudgy palm and propelled her toward the door, saying, “Stick around, Mike. We’ve got things to talk about.”
“Want me to come along?”
“No. I’ll be back in five minutes.”
The telephone rang when Gentry and Nora Carrol reached the door. Gentry stopped, turned, and listened when Shayne answered it. When a man’s high-pitched and excited voice came over the wire, the redhead pressed the receiver tight against his ear, hoping to keep the sound from Gentry’s range of hearing.
The man was saying, “Shayne? Am I glad to reach you! You’ve heard about Carrol, huh?”
Shayne arched his ragged brows at Gentry, groaned, and said into the mouthpiece, “For chrissake, honey, why don’t you go to bed and sleep it off? Do you know what time it is?”
Gentry hesitated briefly, then opened the door and went out with Nora, leaving it ajar. Shayne listened for the chief’s stolid footsteps in the corridor with one ear, and heard his caller’s plaintive words with the other.
The man said, “What’s the matter? Did I wake you up? This here is Ludlow talking. Don’t you know about Carrol?”
“What about him?” Shayne demanded cautiously as the footsteps outside died away.
“He’s dead. He was dead when I got there, Shayne. Look, I don’t know what this is all about or how much I’m on the spot, but I can’t afford any trouble. If there’s any chance of me being fingered in this, I want to get my story in first. I didn’t give my name when I reported to the cops. I don’t know how you figure in it, but I know your reputation, and I know you’ll give it to me straight. Can you keep me out of it? Or should I quick call headquarters again and say I was scared the first time and didn’t know what I was doing, and then give them all the dope?”
Shayne heard a wheezy, long-drawn breath over the wire, as though Ludlow had not taken time to breathe during his long, rapid recital. He asked sharply, “How did you get my phone number?”
“From Information. I didn’t think about it at first. I knew you wouldn’t be at your office. That’s why I didn’t call you before the police. But I got to worrying about them dragging you into it, and then you telling about me, and I’d be in a spot for not coming clean right away. How do we play now?”
Shayne was thinking fast. “Who did you say this is?” he asked in a low voice.
“Ludlow. You know.” There was a gasp, then a pause. “This ain’t Shayne,” he yelped. “The cops are already—” A sharp click stung his eardrum.
Shayne cradled the receiver slowly and sat tugging at his ear lobe, trying to remember someone named Ludlow, when the telephone rang again.
He picked up the receiver and heard the substitute operator on the lobby switchboard saying, “Here’s Mr. Shayne now.”
“I’ve been trying to get you,” a husky voice complained. It was furred with sleep or with too many drinks, “I’ve just heard the shocking news about Ralph Carrol over the radio. Nora’s name wasn’t mentioned. Do you think she is involved?”
“Who’s calling?” Shayne asked.
“You wouldn’t know my name, but it’s very important that I see you at once, Mr. Shayne. If the police don’t already know, we’ve got to keep Nora out of it. I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars to forget everything you know about tonight.”
Shayne said, “Ten grand is a nice round sum. Who’s offering it?”