“N-no,” Recker stammered. “I didn’t see any reason to. I felt sorry for her.”
“Yeh?” David Jenson jeered. His voice cold and thick with jealous hatred. “It also gave you a hold over her, didn’t it? You know damn well she despised you after the first time you took advantage of her when she was tight, and that hurt your lousy ego. So you made a deal with her. You’d help alibi her for Green’s death if she’d let you into her bed when you demanded entry.”
“No! It wasn’t like that.” Beads of sweat were appearing on Lew Recker’s forehead. Close beside him, Michael Shayne felt Estelle trembling violently. His fingers tightened warningly on her arm. He wanted nothing to interrupt the conversation that was taking place in the other room.
Unfortunately, an interruption did occur at that moment. Lew Recker’s telephone began ringing, and with an apologetic, sidelong glance toward the redheaded detective, the writer moved forward to answer it.
Shayne heard him lift the receiver and say, “Hello?” and after a brief moment his voice came more loudly, “Michael Shayne? Wait just a moment. I don’t know… “
With an exclamation of angry impatience, Shayne released his grip on Estelle’s arm and strode forward into the living room. David Jenson whirled about in the center of the rug to stare at him in utter consternation, and Shayne had a momentary glimpse of a big blond man with a smoothly boyish face and light blue eyes that were round and big and seemed to stand out from the flesh.
Shayne tramped past him without a second glance, to Lew Recker who held the telephone out to him wordlessly. Shayne took it and snapped, “Yes?” into the instrument, heard Ed Radin’s voice come over clearly:
“Mike! We’re at the hospital and Brett will pull through. X-rays show no fracture. He won’t be conscious for twelve hours or so, but is otherwise okay.”
“Swell. You want to come down here for the windup?”
“You mean that, Mike?” Radin’s voice was eager. “Lieutenant Hogan is with me. He’s been wondering what the devil you’re up to?”
“Just tell the Lieutenant,” said Shayne happily, “that I’m about to make one of my famous passes and give him Elsie Murray’s murderer. After that, he can go home and get some sleep.”
“Yeh?” Ed Radin sounded doubtful. “You mean it, Mike?”
“I mean it. Come on down to Lew Recker’s place. You know the address?”
“On Madison. Sure. In about ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes will be fine.” Shayne replaced the receiver and turned slowly to survey the room.
Estelle Stevens had come in behind him, and she and Recker stood close together near the side door, their arms tightly around each other’s waist.
In front of them, standing solid and spread-legged on the rug with an angry scowl on his face was David Jenson. The man whom Elsie had called “Dirk” in her script. He wore fawn-colored slacks and a light tan sport jacket and looked like a sophomore football tackle.
He whirled about to face Michael Shayne and demanded, “What kind of hocus-pocus is this? Who are you to be eavesdropping on a private conversation?”
“The name is Shayne. Michael Shayne. A friend of Brett Halliday from Miami, if that’s news to you.”
“And who the hell is Brett Halliday?” blustered Jenson.
“I thought you were a member of the mystery writers too.”
“Oh? That Halliday? I’ve heard his name though I don’t believe I ever met him.”
“Perhaps not socially,” said Shayne. “Weren’t you at the banquet last night?”
“No.” Jensen’s voice was harsher than seemed necessary. “I never attend those affairs.”
Shayne shrugged. “Who told you Elsie Murray was taking Halliday home with her?”
“No one.” Jensen’s attitude became wary. “Not that I would have cared.”
“No? Not even if you’d known she intended to show him the unfinished manuscript she was writing?”
“Not even if I’d known that,” gibed Jenson. “Why should I have minded?”
“Because,” said Shayne savagely, “once any intelligent person read her script and tied it into the Elbert Green murder case and started checking back, you were definitely left out on a limb without the trace of an alibi.”
“Nuts! What makes you think I needed an alibi?”
“Elsie’s script made me think so.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t think you do either.”
“He doesn’t, Dave,” put in Lew Recker eagerly. “He’s just a private Shamus from Miami who’s horning in here in a last-ditch attempt to save Brett Halliday’s neck. Only God knows what he thinks he means by referring to a manuscript of Elsie’s. Personally, I don’t believe there ever was such a thing.”
“Don’t you, Lew?” Shayne asked the question quietly.
“No. She never talked to me about it. And I’m sure that if she’d had an unfinished script she needed advice on she would have shown it to me first of all.”
“What about Jenson?”
Recker looked surprised. “What about him? He writes a little, but no one would go to him for advice I should think.” He didn’t add, “not if I were available” but his tone and demeanor did.
“Yet I think it quite likely Elsie did just that. She was murdered,” Shayne added deliberately, “to prevent her from showing the manuscript to Halliday. And an attempt was made to murder him when the killer discovered he had gotten to her too late… that she had already passed on one copy of the incriminating document to Halliday.”
“I simply don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the big blond man with an air of honest bewilderment.
“Don’t you? It mostly revolves around a telephone call.” Shayne paused as a loud and authoritative knock sounded on Recker’s door. “And I think the man is just outside who can clear up the entire matter for us.”
He strode past David Jenson to the door, jerked it open but found Ed Radin and Lieutenant Hogan standing outside instead of Grady and the bartender whom he had expected.
He said, “Oh. It’s you,” without trying to hide his disappointment. “Come on in.” He held the door wide. “We’re not quite a quorum yet, but I hope we will be very soon.”
19
Radin stood back to let the Homicide officer enter first, telling Shayne in a low voice, “Brett is absolutely okay. He’ll be conscious by five or six this afternoon and able to tell us what happened.”
Shayne nodded. “I almost know already.” He turned away from Radin, told Hogan, “I don’t know whether you’ve met any of these people or not. Detective Peters had a talk with Mr. Recker this morning, I think. Lew Recker,” he added sardonically with a wave of his hand. “An author, one of Elsie Murray’s lovers, and one of the persons who provided her with an alibi for the murder of a man named Elbert Green about three months ago.”
The Lieutenant nodded noncommittally. “We finally got onto that tieup and we’ve been checking all the testimony in that case.”
“Then,” said Shayne, “you’ll know all about Estelle Stevens and David Jenson.” He waved his hand again. “It was Jenson, you know, who backed up the alibi Recker gave Elsie.”
“I know,” said Hogan flatly. “According to Ed Radin, you’re trying to prove Miss Murray’s death last night sprang out of the Green murder.”
“I’m going to prove it,” said Shayne confidently. “In providing an alibi for her, one of the three parties involved also made an alibi for himself. Once I break hers down, his goes kaput too. That’s why Elsie was murdered.”
“Fair enough.” Lieutenant Hogan shrugged irritably. “Quit being cryptic about it and tell us something we don’t already know.”
“One thing you never found out while investigating the Green murder,” Shayne told him, “was that Elsie Murray reached her apartment house that midnight not only completely passed out, but also without her purse containing her keys and money. She couldn’t get in the front door, and she hadn’t even a dime with which to call a friend.”