“I trust you.”
“Then tell Painter the truth as you told it to me just now. But leave out the girl, Hilda. Just don’t mention her being in Algonquin, or seeing her here. Tell Painter that you came to me for help in locating your husband, and all the rest of it. But leave Muriel Graham and Jane Smith out of it for the time being.”
“Why should I do that? I know that she is behind it all.”
“Probably. And if she is responsible for your husband’s death I promise you that she’ll pay for it. But you can help by not mentioning her to Painter.”
She said, “I will do what you say.”
Shayne went out and she followed him, turning off the light and locking the door. Downstairs, they got in Shayne’s car and he drove to Flagler where he found an empty cab and put her in it. He pressed her hand tightly and said, “I’ll see you later, Hilda. Right now I’ve got a lot of things to do.”
He stood and watched the cab pull away, and felt sorry as hell for the self-contained woman whose ten years of married happiness had ended so tragically. Then he drove to his hotel, where he had promised to meet Timothy Rourke.
14
The gangling reporter had had a key to Shayne’s second-floor suite for many years, and Shayne found him there when he arrived, comfortably ensconced in a deep chair with the dregs of a highball in his right hand.
“Any further developments?” Shayne asked as he strode in.
“Nothing new. I filed my story with only a passing mention of the stepdaughter in New York. I’m waiting for the low-down on her.”
Shayne passed him to pour a couple of ounces of cognac into a glass. Without bothering to get a chaser, he returned to his own chair and sank into it with a sigh. “I’ll be glad to spill it, Tim. Maybe talking out loud will clarify things in my own mind. Your Jane Smith of the newspaper ad was Muriel Graham, of course. She told me so that night when she explained why she was offering fifty grand to get him bumped off.”
“And why was she?” Rourke’s deep-set eyes were bright with eager curiosity.
Shayne told him. Starting from the beginning, he repeated the girl’s hysterical story in her own words as well as he could remember them.
He was striding up and down the room, running knobby fingers through his coarse red hair when he finished. “That’s why I refused to tell you the full truth that night, Tim. Damn it, I was sorry as hell for the kid, yet for Christ’s sake, I couldn’t help her with her crazy plan.”
“That brings us to when you shoved me down the stairs. Was your late visitor Jane Smith as you hoped?”
“No. Another woman entirely. Remember me describing the other two women in the Crystal Room who I thought might be Jane? One of them wore Harlequin glasses and had a faintly foreign accent and came to my table just as Jane came in.”
“Harlequin glasses?” Rourke did a fast double-take. “Tinted blue?”
Shayne dropped back into his chair and nodded. “The woman who arrived late at Henderson’s party yesterday afternoon, and whom I cornered briefly. Hilda Gleason is her name. She had a story of her own to tell.”
He briefly repeated the story Hilda had told him that first evening. “So you can see why I wasn’t too surprised to see her pop up at Henderson’s, but didn’t understand how she had got there. There was that past connection between the man’s stepdaughter and her husband.”
“What past connection?” asked Rourke, puzzled.
“I just told you. About the phone call from Denton, Illinois. And Hilda going down to the saloon to watch her husband meet the girl and go off for a conference with her. That girl who met Gleason in Illinois was Muriel Graham… who called herself Jane Smith in the advertisement.”
“Yeh. I got that angle straight now. So, how did this Hilda Gleason manage to pop up at Henderson’s cocktail party?”
“By going to Henderson’s office the preceding day under an assumed name, and representing herself to be a lone widow who needed advice on her investments. She’s attractive enough so it wasn’t difficult for her to wangle an invitation from him. I just left her a few minutes ago,” he went on wearily. “And this time she told me the truth.” He filled the reporter in briefly on Hilda’s amended story. “So I just put her in a cab headed for the Beach morgue to see if the dead man is Harry Gleason.”
Timothy Rourke was sitting upright, scribbling notes furiously, his lean features avidly intent. “Will she be there yet?”
Shayne glanced at his watch. “Better give her another ten minutes.”
Rourke stopped scribbling and settled back with a frown. “This is one hell of a mixed-up mess. How did Muriel Graham and Gleason manage to make contact in Illinois a month ago? Here you’ve got two people who evidently hate the same man for different reasons, but how did they get to know each other?”
“Muriel is the only one who can tell us that now. Do you happen to know whether Henderson succeeded in contacting her?”
“Yeh,” Rourke said absently. “Our man phoned in from the Beach just before I left the office. Muriel Graham is due in on a jet flight at seven-ten this morning.”
“Good. I’ll damned well be at the airport to meet her.”
“Along with Painter and his boys.”
Shayne said, “I’m not so sure of that. Petey is more likely to be catching up on his beauty sleep. After all, he doesn’t know any of this background stuff on her.”
“He will if Mrs. Gleason identifies her husband and tells her story.”
“She promised me she’d keep Muriel out of it until I had a chance to check further.”
“What bothers hell out of me,” muttered Rourke, “is why Muriel was still trying to hire somebody to do the job on Henderson just a few days ago, if she had already hired Gleason a month ago.”
“We don’t know for sure that she did.”
“Then why did he pop up at Henderson’s house early this morning with a gun in his pocket?”
“Maybe he turned down her proposition that night in Algonquin, but kept on brooding about Henderson and finally decided to take a crack at the guy on his own.”
“Wouldn’t he have informed Muriel of his intention so he could collect the pay-off when he succeeded?” objected Rourke.
“She’s the only one who can answer any of these questions.” Shayne looked at his watch again. “You got a leg-man at Beach Headquarters?”
“Yeh, Jimmy Powell. Think he’ll have the identification by this time?”
“Try him.”
Shayne poured himself another very short drink of cognac while Rourke got the News reporter on the Beach covering the police beat.
“Jimmy? Tim Rourke. I got a tip the Henderson corpse might be identified.”
“We just got it. A bartender named Harry Gleason from some town in Illinois. His wife positively identified him and Painter is getting a statement from her right now. I’ll phone it in for the first edition.”
Rourke said, “Do that, Jimmy,” and hung up. He nodded to Shayne. “She identified him all right, and she’s giving her story to Painter.”
Shayne muttered, “Let’s hope she’ll keep it the way I told her to.”
“You can’t hold out much longer,” Rourke warned him.
“I know. But damn it, Tim! If there’s any way in the world to do so I want to avoid tossing Muriel to Painter and you boys. A story like that will hang over her head the rest of her life. Even her fiance who seems a nice enough kid, probably won’t be able to stomach the whole truth.”
“If she is responsible for Gleason’s death, you won’t be able to keep it hidden.”
“I know that as well as you do.” Shayne tossed off his drink savagely. “That’s why I’ve got a lot of things to do before her plane lands at seven.”
“Such as what?”
“Such as: Who is Saul Henderson? According to Mrs. Gleason, that isn’t his name. What’s the connection between Gleason and him, going back to the period before she and Gleason were married. Get your paper to work on Henderson’s background, Tim. Contact the News Services in New York and have them start some discreet digging. Get us some ammunition before seven o’clock.”