He hung up and smiled when he saw the perplexed expression on Phyllis’s face. “Don’t ask me any questions, angel. I’ve got to move fast to stay ahead of Mr. Hoover’s lads.”
“But I don’t understand any of it,” she wailed.
“Neither do I-yet.” The grin faded from Shayne’s face. He reached in his pocket for the irregularly shaped piece of cardboard he had removed from Jim Lacy’s stiffening fingers. “This least of all,” he muttered, laying it on the desk. “Take a gander at it and see what you see.”
It was little more than an inch square, with ragged edges showing it had been torn on both sides and the bottom.
At the top of the strip, in printed letters, was part of a word without beginning or end: NSYLVA, and directly below was a W and YOR. Below that were rubber-stamped single letters and fragments of words which seemed completely meaningless. At the very bottom, just above where it had been torn, were two large figures, block-printed in red ink, an 8, and a 2.
“It looks like-” Phyllis began, but broke off, shaking her head. “It looks like part of something, but I don’t know what. If there were only a little more of it I have a feeling I’d know.”
Shayne nodded. “Exactly. It strikes some chord in my memory but doesn’t come clear. The other side isn’t any more helpful,” he added, turning the torn scrap over.
He read fragments of printed words aloud:… ice to pa… o avoid pay… ge it shoul… tely on arr… all ord… He stopped, shaking his head. “To hell with it. If it’s a code, I still wouldn’t know. Maybe Lacy just collected such small items as a hobby, treasured them even in death. All we can do right now is to treasure this one as though we intended to start a screwy collection of our own.”
He hesitated with the scrap of cardboard in his hand, frowning in deep concentration. “Wait a minute. I know what this thing is. It’s a piece torn from the middle of a baggage receipt-a railway or express claim check. Both sides and the bottom have been torn off this fragment. But that still doesn’t tell us why Lacy was treasuring it unto death.” He leaned forward and tilted the typewriter up, lifted a corner of the sponge-rubber pad, and deposited the bit of cardboard underneath.
He caught Phyllis’s arm and lifted her from her chair. “We’re stymied until I get a reply from Murphy. Let’s go up to the apartment and change to go out for dinner. And remind me to send this rug to the cleaners,” he ended as they went out. “That splotch of fresh blood might not make a favorable impression on new clients.”
CHAPTER FOUR
As soon as she entered the upstairs apartment Phyllis stopped and sniffed the air. She turned to Shayne, puckering her nose in distaste. “Heliotrope perfume. In the excitement, I forgot all about the female you were interviewing while Mr. Painter was proving me a liar. Was she pretty, Michael?”
“Ugly as a mud fence,” he assured her. “She had a dripping nose with a wart on the end of it. She tried to hide a bad case of B.O. with heliotrope perfume, but-”
“Stop being funny. I know when you’re trying to throw me off the scent. What did she want? Did she know anything about Jim Lacy?”
Shayne said, “U-m-m,” and strode past Phyllis toward the bedroom. She hurried after him, grabbed his arm. “No secrets, Michael. I’m already in it as an accessory before or after the fact or something.”
Shayne grinned down at his wife’s serious face. “You know I wouldn’t hold out on you. Oh, she was pretty enough, I guess. Big blue eyes and platinum hair and one of those figures that melt into a Lastex bathing-suit. But I girded up my loins and held her at arm’s length. Even if you aren’t very pretty, angel, you’re my wife. I’m stuck with you for better or worse, so I just told the gal-”
“Really, Michael, I’m serious. What did she want?” Phyllis went past him to a dressing-table where she fluffed out her hair, leaning forward to peer at herself in the oval mirror.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Shayne warned. He loosened his tie and tossed it aside, began unbuttoning his shirt. “She pleaded with me to murder her husband.”
“Murder her hus-” Phyllis whirled, open-mouthed with horror. Then she scoffed, “I see. She fell madly in love with you at first sight, I suppose.”
Shayne grinned, peeling off his shirt. “You ought to understand that, angel, the way you acted the first time you met me.”
“I certainly did not fall in love with you. I thought you were the most infuriating male I’d ever met.”
Shayne’s grin widened. “All right, angel. You asked me what the lady wanted and I told you. Do I get into the bathroom to shave or must I wait an hour or so while you soak the lovely body in bath salts?”
“Oh, go ahead and shave your ugly face.” Phyllis stamped her foot. “You make me so damn mad, Mike Shayne.”
“You should learn to curb that black Irish temper of yours,” Shayne reproved. He went into the bathroom whistling cheerily.
Phyllis made a face behind his back, then unzipped her linen frock and drew it over her head. As she put it on a hanger in the clothes closet she called plaintively, “All right, I’ll bite. Why did she want to murder her husband?”
“You haven’t been married long enough to understand,” he called back. “Wait a few years and you’ll know more about that angle.”
“I’m already beginning to get a good inkling,” she told him viciously, but Shayne began running water in the lavatory and it was difficult to carry on a satisfactory quarrel with a man who couldn’t hear her scathing remarks.
Phyllis stepped out of a white silk slip and hung it with her office frock, then caught up a chenille dressing-gown and carried it across to a low bench in front of the dressing-table. She performed a simple gyration which resulted in the unhooking of her brassiere, then rolled down a flexible girdle and sat on the bench to unsnap hose from girdle supporters. She kicked off her slippers and rolled down hose and girdle to the floor. She stood up and posed before the mirror nude, vibrantly young and vibrantly aware of the beauty of her body, then slipped the chenille robe over her shoulders and belted it around her waist.
She sat down sedately before the mirror and began removing her make-up, keeping one ear cocked toward the sound of running water in the bathroom. The instant Shayne shut it off she cajoled through the open doorway:
“Tell me more about the girl, Michael. Did she have something to do with your phone call to New York-the information about the convict and the divorce and all?”
Shayne showed a lathered face in the doorway. He waved his razor and mumbled, “Tell you all about it later. You’re getting hot, though.”
“But, Michael-”
He withdrew his lathered face and she gave up trying to get any more information from him. She finished cleansing her face, then idly ran a comb through her black curls while she waited for her reticent husband to finish shaving.
She got up after a time and wandered over to the bedside table, got a cigarette and match from a metal box that stood between a French telephone and a decanter of cognac.
With the burning cigarette between her lips and the robe trailing out behind her slim figure, she went to the closet and selected a dinner gown of sea-foam green which she had lifted from its hanger. When she turned away from the closet she was less than two feet from the doorway leading into the living-room.
A man stood in the doorway. He held a revolver carelessly leveled at her waist.
Her lips emitted a startled, “Oh,” while she dropped the dinner gown and snatched her robe together in front.
Shayne’s voice came from the bathroom, “Are you getting impatient out there? Give me a couple more minutes and you can parboil yourself at leisure.”