“I guess you’re right.” Griggs looked unhappy and chewed on the knuckle of his left thumb. “That gives us those four… counting the houseboy… and that New York lawyer, too. The way I remember their statements, any one of the five could have had an opportunity to slip in here between the time Larson left and when he came back. Sutter was up here, supposed to be in his room alone with the door shut. Mrs. Ames was up here doing something unspecified. Conroy came up to his room for a time before deciding to go out. Mark Ames claims he was downstairs all the time, but he was alone in the living room after Mrs. Ames and Conroy went out, and he could have slipped up here. So far as we know, Alfred didn’t come upstairs, but I suppose there’s a servant stairway up the back, so he’s not out. Damn it, the thing is wide open, Mike. And I don’t know whether you caught any of that by-play between Mark Ames and the widow or not, but neither one of them is doing much grieving. You remember what Tim Rourke said about the two of them, and rumors around town they were having an affair.”
Shayne nodded, tugging at his ear lobe. “If I were you, Sergeant, I think I’d try to find out why Mark Ames had come out tonight for the first time in months to talk to his brother.”
“Yeh, and I also want a line on Mr. Sutter, the attorney from New York, and why he was here to see Ames. It didn’t matter before when I thought it was a cut-and-dried shooting, but now it does matter. Now I’ll have to hold him in town… Goddamn it, Mike!” Griggs broke out explosively. “Why did you have to get so smart? You and your damned post mortem! I never will get any sleep tonight.”
Shayne grinned and said, “You’re a cop. You get paid by the city for not sleeping. Me, I don’t.” He pretended to yawn widely. “It’s all yours, Sarge.”
“Goddamn it, Mike! You tear this thing wide open with your lousy post mortem… are you just going to walk away and leave it that way?”
“I’m leaving it in your very efficient hands, Sergeant Griggs. I’m headed for some well-earned shut-eye. Hell, you’ve got it narrowed down to five suspects and about half an hour of time,” he said indulgently. “What more do you want in a murder case?”
“Yeh,” said Griggs unhappily. “Five suspects that hated the dead man, and not a clean-cut alibi for a single one of them. Okay. Get out of my hair,” he said with finality. “Go get your shut-eye or whatever private dicks do on their nights off while honest cops are working for a living. Just don’t come back messing up this case with any more of your smart ideas. If you get any more like that, keep ’em to yourself, hear?”
Shayne drew himself to attention and saluted smartly. “Very well, Sergeant. I shall away.” He turned and strode stiffly out of the room and down the stairs where Mark Ames and Helena were still huddled together rather intimately on the sofa, and where Victor Conroy intercepted him on his way to the door with a worried look on his face.
“Why is that policeman so interested in Wesley’s paperknife, Mr. Shayne? He was shot to death, wasn’t he? Suppose the knife is missing? There might be a dozen reasonable explanations for that?”
Shayne shrugged and countered, “You never can tell what sort of crazy tangent a homicide dick will go off on. It’s an occupational disease.”
“But what did he mean by ordering that no one should leave the house?” demanded Conroy, following Shayne to the door. “Does he have a right to issue orders like that?”
Shayne told him, “A cop in charge of a murder investigation has pretty much blanket authority. I wouldn’t argue with Griggs if I were you. He’s only doing his job.” He went out into the flood-lighted area and down to his car with the sergeant’s official car parked closely behind it. The uniformed driver got out from under the wheel as Shayne opened his door, and he hurried forward to ask anxiously, “Do you know if I’m supposed to wait out here, Mr. Shayne, or does the sergeant need me inside?”
Shayne said, “I think he’s going to be taking some more statements and will be wanting your shorthand pad. Wish him luck from me,” he added with a wide grin, backing up against the front bumper of the police car and cramping his wheels to make a left turn back down the driveway.
When he reached his hotel this time, Shayne put his car into its assigned slot in the hotel garage, and walked around to the front entrance to the lobby.
The desk clerk watched him with interest as he crossed the lobby toward the elevator, and called out, “There’s a phone message for you, Mr. Shayne.” Shayne broke his stride to go to the desk, and the clerk got a slip of paper from a cubbyhole and handed it to him. Shayne unfolded it and read: “Call me at once.” There was a telephone number and a room extension, and it was signed “Sutter.” Shayne went on to the elevator and up one floor and to his suite where there was still ice water and a bottle of cognac waiting for him on the center table. He poured a drink and sipped from the glass contemplatively, spreading the telephone message out on the table and scowling at it. It had been received almost an hour previously, very shortly after Sutter had walked out of this room.
He sat down and lit a cigarette and called the number Sutter had given, and when a happy female voice answered, “Hotel Costain. May I help you?” he gave her the extension, and the attorney’s voice came over the wire. “Yes?”
“Mike Shayne. Is that Sutter?”
“Yes. Thank goodness you called, Mr. Shayne. I’ve been worried…”
“I just got back from the Ames’ house,” Shayne cut him off. “I told you I’d be in touch as soon as I had anything to report.”
“I know you did. What have you to report, Mr. Shayne?”
“Nothing good,” the detective told him bluntly. “I went through the man’s private files without finding anything on your client. Yet, I’m sure I had the real dirt… the stuff he had no intention of printing.”
“I’m not surprised,” Sutter told him. “You see, I received a call in my room immediately after I got back from talking to you. A man who refused to identify himself told me that he had the information in his possession… the documents concerning my client which I had come down here to buy. He quoted a paragraph from one of them which convinced me he was telling the truth, Mr. Shayne.”
“And?”
“He is willing to turn them over to me for payment of twenty thousand dollars. He is apparently aware that Ames’ price was twenty-five, but as an inducement for me to deal with him at once… he stressed it must be tonight… he will accept twenty… intimating that I could pocket the extra five and no one would be the wiser.”
Shayne asked, “Why are you calling me?”
“Because I don’t trust the man whoever he is. I am not accustomed to dealing with violence, Mr. Shayne. He set up a midnight rendezvous to which I agreed reluctantly. What assurance have I that he will not meet me and forcibly take my payment without delivering the documents?”
Shayne said, “It has been done. How is the pay-off set up?”
“He gave me definite instructions. At midnight exactly I am to walk out the front entrance of my hotel and hail a cab… the first one waiting in line at the cab-stand or the first one that cruises by if none is waiting. He warned me that I would be under observation from the moment I stepped out the door and got into the taxi, and that if it were followed by another car the deal would be off. He gave rather elaborate instructions to prevent the possibility of my being followed unknown to him, and I confess I cannot see how you can circumvent them. But I suppose private detectives have a great deal of experience in such matters and I hope you may arrange to be on hand when I turn the money over to him.”
Shayne said, “Go on. What were his instructions?”
“To proceed north from my hotel at a moderate speed to Sixty-seventh Street. Left on Sixty-seventh for five blocks, and I am to instruct the driver to slow down in the middle of the fifth block and pull into the curb on the right and stop there for at least a full minute. I am then to tell the driver I have changed my mind about getting out there, and for him to drive on to the next corner where he is to turn south and drive slowly in that direction until we are hailed by a car and directed to pull over and stop. He will be in that car with the documents.”