Then he turned to Lucy with a reassuring grin.
Her ankles and her right arm were bound tightly to the legs and arm of her chair with wide strips of cloth that had been torn from a sheet. Her other hand had been left free so she could lift the telephone receiver behind her. Her face was white with strain and her eyes had a glassy look, but she managed to twist her lips in a feeble smile and to ejaculate with spirit:
"It's about time you were coming to the party."
"Sorry I cut it so fine, angel." Shayne picked up the blood-stained knife from the floor and went to her to kneel and slash her bonds. "You all right?"
"Sure. Just perfect. Aside from my heart being permanently lodged where my adam's apple used to be and a few minor things like that. She's insane, Mikel She's already killed two people with that knife tonight. She boasted about it to me. And she was going to cut my throat, too, just as soon as she got the call she was waiting for. She told me just how she was going to do it-and she giggled while she told me."
Shayne rocked back on his heels and looked up at her sharply. "What call was she waiting for?"
"Some man she called Lanny. He's in cahoots with her and pretends to be her brother. She left word two places for him to call here the moment he came in. That's all she was waiting for. So she could arrange to meet him. And she let me keep on living so I could answer the phone if you or Will or anybody called in the meantime and tell you not to come here."
Shayne cut the last strip of cloth binding Lucy's wrist, and she stood up, wincing with pain as she rubbed circulation back into her arm.
He lifted the phone and dialed the number that was a direct line to Will Gentry's office, and when the chief's grufiE voice answered, he said wearily:
"Come around to Lucy's place to pick up your killer. Nellie Paulson. But do this first. Put a fast tap on Lucy's phone and stake this place out. Nellie's accomplice is supposed to call here any moment. When he does, Lucy will try to stall him long enough for you to trace it-or get him to come here, if she can. You got that?"
"Nellie Paulson?" said Will Gentry. "I thought-"
"Save it until you get that tap fixed and get up here. She spilled the whole story to Lucy."
He hung up and turned to look at Lucy who had limped across the room and was now seated at the end of the sofa in front of the low table holding the liquor tray. Nellie Paulson still lay in an unconscious heap against the wall beyond the sofa. She hadn't stirred since she crumpled to the floor there.
The cognac bottle still stood on the tray, and the glass of brandy Lucy had poured out for Shayne two hours previously was still standing full to the brim.
He looked at his watch and grinned wryly as he went to the chair beside the sofa. "Sorry I didn't quite make it by midnight for that drink, angel."
She shuddered, but kept her tone as light as his. "What made you come at all? I knew she'd cut my throat happily if I said one word over the telephone to indicate what was going on."
"I came because it still lacked five minutes of midnight when you told me I shouldn't dare come here at that hour — that you wouldn't let me in if I did. I knew you too well to believe you wouldn't give me that last minute to keep my promise in-and suddenly everything clicked into place. I knew the murderer was Nellie Paulson and that she hadn't left your place at all. And I still needed this drink," he ended simply, reaching for it and lifting it in the air in a silent toast to his secretary.
Her aplomb exploded suddenly in great racking sobs. "It was terrible, Mike. Just horrible. She told me every single ghoulish detail after she got started. About killing a man named Charlie Barnes in her hotel room after he balked about being shaken down in the badger game she was working with Lanny who has been living with her in Jacksonville as her brother."
"Was she in the room when Barnes's sister looked in and saw Charles dead on the bed?"
"Yes. She hid in the bathroom. She told me all about it, giggling as though it was a big joke. How she wound his coat about his throat so the blood wouldn't spill out, and pushed him out the window into the bay and then ran out and up two flights of stairs and down the elevator without anyone noticing her."
"One of the things I don't get is how she came to be in my hotel lobby waiting for me with a picture of Barnes when I got there."
"She told me all that, too. After she left the hotel, she walked up the street looking for a cab. She found one two or three blocks away and got in and told him to drive by the Hibiscus, just out of curiosity to see if anything was happening. And just then the man's sister, Mary Barnes, came running out of an alley beside the hotel and stopped the cab to get away from a man who was chasing her. And Nellie looked back and saw it was her own brother who lives in Detroit. So she just stayed in the cab and heard the driver recommend you as a detective who might help Mary, and watched her get out at your hotel. She had the driver drop her a few blocks away, and she walked back. She would have gone up to your room and killed Mary right then to get rid of the only witness to the other murder, but the clerk refused to give her your room number."
"So she waited until I got there and gave me that story about Barnes being in the Silver Glade, along with his picture."
"She was furious, she said, when you refused to take her money, and went on upstairs. But she thought anyhow she had sort of fixed up an alibi by making you think Barnes was still alive at the Silver Glade at ten o'clock."
Shayne nodded somberly and refilled his glass. He glanced beyond Lucy and lifted one eyebrow as Nellie stirred slightly on the floor.
"I guess I didn't break her back after all. Did she know her brother also followed me to my place?"
"Yes. She kept hanging around outside in the shadows, hoping Mary would come out and she'd get a chance at her. She saw her brother go in, and later he rushed out and jumped in his car and drove away. Then she left, and Mary came up behind her on the sidewalk and recognized her as the girl who'd been in the cab before. Then she lured Mary into the park and got her to sit on a bench and — and cut her throat, too. And Mary had told her about your note and how she was coming here, so she left her bag in the park and took Mary's and caught a cab here and gave me the note. Later, after I'd phoned you to say she'd arrived, she suddenly seemed to realize you might be coming here any moment to talk to Mary.
"That's when she took the knife out of her purse and showed me the blood on it and gloated about how sharp it wa's and how it just slid through the soft flesh of a throat like a knife through warm butter.
"And she wanted to try it on me, Michael. Honestly, she was just dying to. But she wanted to stay here while she tried to locate her Lanny-who had gone out of the Hibiscus room before she killed Charlie Barnes and didn't even know she'd done it-and she knew that if I weren't here to answer the phone when you called, you might get suspicious and come up anyway. So then she tore up a sheet and tied me to the chair and told me she'd love to cut my throat and watch my blood spurt out if I didn't say exactly what she told me to over the phone."
As though the word were a signal, Lucy's telephone shrilled at that exact moment.
She got up, looking questioningly at Shayne, and he nodded. "Answer it. If it's Lanny, stall him as long as you can. Tell him Nellie's in the bathroom. Get him to hang on if you can. Will should have a tap on it by this time."
Lucy picked up the phone and said, "Yes?"
She listened a moment, then nodded to Shayne who was waiting intently. "Yes, she is here and she's been trying to call you. If you could hold on a minute? Well-she's in the bathroom right now. Hold on and I'll get her. I know she's awfully anxious to talk to you."
She put down the telephone, looking at Shayne anxiously.
As he nodded his approval, a scrabbling sound behind him made him swing on his heel.