"That's one of several things," said Shayne wearily, "that I want to ask her the next time she and I have a tete-a-tete."
He slowed his car as he approached a building with stone steps leading up from the sidewalk, twin lights burning at the top.
Will Gentry's official car wasn't in sight as they went up the steps to the morgue entrance.
The night attendant was a wizened man with a wide gap in his front teeth that showed when he grinned at the de tective and reporter from behind a scarred desk with a bright light overhead. Doctor Martin, the police surgeon, stood beside the desk as they entered, and he frowned, looking past them.
"Where's Will? I understood he was in on this personally."
Shayne said, "He'll be along. You looked over the stiflE they pulled out of the bay. Doc?", Martin nodded. "Not much to look at."
"Throat cut?"
"Like a stuck pig." The doctor made a slashing motion with the side of his hand from left to right
"Any identification?"
"Plenty. Bill-fold in his hip pocket with cards and stuflE. No money."
The doctor looked past Shayne as another car stopped in front. A door slammed and solid footsteps sounded on the stone steps. Will Gentry came in heavily, nodding to the police doctor and attendant. "Been over him. Doc?"
"Superficially. Throat cut all the way across with a very sharp knife or razor. One to two hours ago. I'd say he went in the water quite soon after death."
"Lots of blood?" asked Gentry matter-of-factly.
"Lots."
"What Will wonders," said Shayne, "is whether the job could have been done in a hotel room, say, without leaving any traces of blood behind if he were shoved out a window fast."
Martin's eyes were bright with speculation. "It would have spurted," he said doubtfully. "If a pillow or blanket had been held ready and shoved over the wound fast, it might have soaked up the blood without leaving any around. That what you mean?"
"Or a man's coat?" Shayne asked sharply.
"Yes. A man's coat." Martin shrugged. "He's wearing no coat, by the way. In his shirt-sleeves."
"Identification?" asked Gentry.
The attendant opened a desk drawer and drew out a manilla envelope. He handed it to the chief who tore it open and withdrew an obviously expensive sealskin billfold that was still heavy with water. There were two credit identification cards from well-known hotels in New York, an accident insurance identification card.
All gave the name of Charles Barnes, and the insurance card gave an address on East 63rd Street, New York City.
"That's everything we found on him," said Martin. "Not even a buck in the wallet. He's young. Twenty to twenty-five. Healthy. No distinguishing marks. Five-ten or eleven, at a guess. Around a hundred and fifty before the blood drained out of him. You want anything else from me tonight, Will?"
"What's that?" said Gentry absently. "Five-ten and a hundred-fifty, huh? I guess not, Doc. Unless something comes up. That remind you of anything, Mike?"
"Nothing except the description we had from the Jacksonville police tonight on Bert Paulson." Shayne's gray eyes were very bright. "Let's go down for a look."
The attendant got up hastily and preceded the three men to a heavy door in the rear opening onto a flight of stairs leading down into the concrete-lined coldroom. A dank chillness came up the stairs to meet them as they started down. Though air-conditioned, the square room seemed to hold an indefinable odor of all the corpses that had been stored there for varying lengths of time over the years.
There were two white enamel tables under a glaring light in the center of the room, a bank of white, over-sized filing cabinets along one wall. Each cabinet had three drawers about six feet long and three feet square.
The attendant went to the lower drawer at one end, and pulled It out Its full length on ball-bearing rollers. He flipped back a white sheet to show the naked body lying on its back in the drawer.
The face was chalk-white, paler by far than any dead person Shayne had ever seen before. The eyes were closed, mouth sagging open in a macabre sort of grin. The features were even, and had probably been handsome when the young man was alive. There was a wide, gaping wound in his throat, edges of the flesh cut cleanly as though at one stroke, shriveled now by exposure to bay water.
The three men stood together, silently looking down at the corpse. Gentry said heavily, "Charles Barnes from New York? I wonder."
"Yeh," said Rourke quickly. "Why not Bert Paulson from Jacksonville? Description fits. It all adds up to the girl's story. If scar-face slit his throat and switched wallets — there's your complete explanation, Mike. So she did see her brother lying there murdered. Didn't you say she told you his coat was folded up under his head? It could have been used to staunch the blood as you suggested upstairs."
Shayne didn't reply. His eyes were narrowed and very bright behind slitted lids as he stared down at the dead man. His left hand went up absently to tug at the lobe of his ear.
He had a disquieting sense of recognition as he stood there. It had hit him hard but fleetingly at first glance. It went away when he strove to pin it down in his mind, but the feeling remained, elusive and tantalizing.
Without taking his gaze from the white face, he muttered, "I've seen him some place. Recently. I swear it." He closed his eyes tightly and his rugged features hardened in a mask of concentration.
Gentry and Rourke waited without speaking. He shook his head slowly, still not opening his eyes. He muttered, "It runs away from me. Like quicksilver. I know I've seen him. Probably just once and briefly. It isn't real familiarity. But it's there. Just beyond'my goddamned conscious grasp of it."
He opened his eyes suddenly for another long look at the pallid face. He shook his head disgustedly and turned away. "I have to put it out of my mind. It'll pop up unexpectedly. I know I should recognize him, and I know it's important. 'Way down deep beyond reason, something tells me it's damned important. That we'll know some answers when it comes back to me."
The others turned away behind him and the attendant closed the drawer with a soft thud.
Shayne had reached the stairway and started up when he whirled about abruptly, his face lighting with satisfaction. "Got iti And it messes up our nice little theory all to hell. That guy couldn't possibly have been murdered in the Hibiscus Hotel at nine-thirty tonight. At ten o'clock he was alive in the Silver Glade."
He was fumbling in the side pocket of his jacket, and he pulled out the photo the girl had thrust into it in the lobby of his hotel while she was importuning him to accept a retainer from her.
He thrust the photograph at Will Gentry. "Take it back and compare the two. You'll see it's the same man."
FOURTEEN: 11:12 PM
Michael Shayne dropped Timothy Rourke at the News Tower on his way back from the morgue to police headquarters. The reporter was anxious to get out a preliminary story on the "Body in the Bay" as he was already calling it in headlines, and he promised Shayne to withhold most of the other stuff the detective had given him, merely mentioning the curious incident that had happened at a local hotel earlier, without naming the Hibiscus and without using the Paulson name in connection with the dead man.
Back in Will Gentry's office at headquarters, Shayne found the chief about to interrogate a quiet-faced bronzed man who was clad only in skin-tight swimming trunks and whom Gentry introduced as Norman Raine.
"Mr. Raine brought the body in from the bay," he told Shayne. "I've got wires out to New York and to Jacksonville. Let's hear what Mr. Raine has to tell us."
"It isn't much and I'm afraid it won't be very helpful," Raine said in a resonant baritone. "I've a boat anchored in the yacht basin and I sleep aboard-alone. Only tonight I couldn't sleep." He showed even, white teeth in a smile and nodded thankfully as he leaned forward to accept a cigarette from the redhead, averting his eyes from the black cigar Gentry puffed on.