"Was Nellie," Paulson insisted stubbornly. "I told you-"
"I know what you told me," Shayne cut him off fiercely. "If you'd come clean in the beginning and told me it wasn't her brother who'd been living with her in Jacksonville, a hell of a lot of things would be different right now. Including one dead girl who might well still be alive."
"Nellie?" Paulson cringed away from Shayne's hardhitting words. "You mean she's dead? My little sister?"
"Frankly," said Shayne, "I don't know who's dead at this point. But we're going to find out. Get on your feet and let's go to headquarters."
"Can't stand up," groaned Paulson, sinking back on his elbows. "Gotta-be sick."
"Then get the hell in the bathroom and be sick." Shayne stood back and swung a number twelve shoe. The toe of it crunched into Paulson's ribs.
He grunted with pain and rolled over and was sick on the floor.
Shayne stood back, gimlet-eyed and restless, until the retching subsided somewhat. Then he reached down and hauled Paulson up impatiently, half-marched him and half-supported him to the door. Little puddles of water and a pile of foul vomit lay on the floor behind them as they went out.
TWENTY-FOUR: 11:53 PM
Chief of Police Will Gentry was deep in conversation with a tall blond man when Shayne unceremoniously shoved the hulking bedraggled figure of Bert Paulson into his office at headquarters.
Gentry looked up disapprovingly, and then his eyes widened as he saw the scar on Paulson's cheek. He said, "So you found him, Mike? What the hell have my men been doing?"
Shayne said wearily, "I had the jump on them. It finally came to me that he mentioned he and his sister had always stayed at the Tropical Arms when they were in Miami." He jerked his thumb savagely toward Paulson who had subsided into a chair and sat there with a vacant expression on his face. "Meet Bert Paulson in the flesh. Will."
"You're wrong, Mike." Gentry shook his head and turned to the man seated beside him. "Meet Lieutenant Neils from Jacksonville. Mike Shayne. He brought down a picture of the girl and her brother." He gestured toward a blown-up eight-by-ten photograph lying on his desk. "Looks a lot more like the bird we pulled out of the bay than this guy."
Shayne leaned over his shoulder and studied the picture of a smiling girl and a young man in bathing suits with their arms intertwined about each other. The man whom he had dragged out of the Tropical Arms definitely did not resemble the one in the picture. He couldn't be so sure about the girl. The sun was in her face and she was squint ing as she smiled and her image was blurred a trifle.
Shayne said flatly, "I realize that's the guy you're after. Lieutenant, but you're mistaken thinking his name is Paulson. Bert will tell you the whole story," he went on impatiently to Gentry. "Right now, I want to know just one little thing. That girl in the park. What sort of purse did she have, Will?"
"Purse?"
"Handbag. You know."
"Hell, it was just a bag, I guess. The kind of bag any girl carries around with her."
"What color?" Shayne demanded savagely. "Red or black?"
Gentry pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I don't know. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I even saw her bag. They had all the stuff out of it looking for identification-"
As he paused uncertainly, Shayne reached past him and snatched up his telephone. He gave Lucy Hamilton's number, and this time she answered before it rang twice.
"Lucyl Think a minute before you answer this. What sort of handbag was the girl carrying when she came to your place?"
"Why-I don't know for sure, Michael. I-"
"I told you to stop and think it over," he exploded. "Was it red or black? Damn it, you ought to remember a simple thing like that. Start thinking about it while I'm on my way over."
"Don't you dare come here at this time of night, Michael. I won't let you in if you do. I'm going to get some sleep. As far as the bag goes, it was black suede. Good night."
Her voice rang in his ears for seconds after he heard the decisive slam of her receiver breaking the connection.
He replaced the phone slowly, shaking his head and glancing at his watch. It was still five minutes to midnight. What the hell had got into Lucy?
He straightened his shoulders and told Gentry absently. nodding toward Paulson, "He's all yours. Will. He'll explain all about the guy Lieutenant Neils has got staked out as Paulson." There was a curious look of concentration on his face as he turned to go out.
"Hold it, Mike. Where you going now?"
"I've got a date with Lucy," Shayne said over his shoulder without slacking pace. "Promised her I'd be back by midnight to have a night-cap with her."
He was out the door without bothering to close it, and he lengthened his stride almost to a run down the corridor and out the side door.
It was something like sixteen blocks from police headquarters to Lucy's apartment, and Shayne covered the distance in something like sixty seconds.
He cut his motor ofiE while swinging into the block that held her apartment building, cut off his lights and slid silently to a stop directly across the street.
The curtains were drawn at her front windows, but edges of light showed around them.
Shayne got out and closed the car door quietly, crossed the street to the foyer and went in.
He had a key on his ring that opened both the downstairs inner door and also her apartment. Lucy had given it to him more than two years before all tied up with a pink ribbon, making a laughing ceremony out of it and jesting about the depravity of a girl who gives her employer a private key to her apartment.
Shayne had been touched by the gift, and he had been very careful never to use it. He had a special signal he always rang on her bell from the foyer so she would know who was calling.
Tonight, he didn't ring her bell. He got out his keys and picked out the shiny new one that had never been used, and carefully inserted it in the lock.
It turned easily and he went in.
He climbed the one flight of stairs slowly and cautiously. testing each tread for squeaks before putting his weight on it.
At the top, he stopped in front of Lucy's door and drew in a deep breath. Sweat beaded his corrugated forehead and crept down the trenches in his cheeks.
He still held the shiny new key in his hand. He stooped in front of the door and put his left hand on the lock, with thumb and forefinger pressed loosely together in front of the opening to make a sheath of flesh through which he inserted the key without the slightest scraping sound.
When it was firmly bedded, he transferred his hand to the door-knob and pulled on it firmly while he turned the key. Thus, there was no sudden click to betray him when the catch was released.
He turned the knob, keeping pressure on it, and then went into the apartment in a violent lunge.
He caught one fleeting glimpse of Lucy seated in a chair beside the telephone as he went by, but his attention was centered on the other occupant of the room.
Female and blonde and deadly, she sprang from the sofa to meet his rush, and there was the reddish gleam of dried blood on the short-bladed knife in her hand.
Shayne went under the vicious arc of the knife and hit her brutally in the bosom with his shoulder and the full weight of his charging body.
The impact slammed her back against the wall with a crash and she sank to the floor in an unconscious heap.
TWENTY-FIVE: Midnight
Shayne wasted one brief look at her face to assure himself that it was the girl with the red patent-leather bag who had thrust Charles Barnes's picture in his pocket in the lobby of his hotel earlier, and that she wouldn't be using her knife again for some time to come.