He made a quick survey of the apartment in frowning perplexity and when no playful hiding-place revealed her presence he came back to the living-room and opened the liquor cabinet.
The note from Phyllis was balanced on top of a half-full cognac bottle. He poured himself a drink while he read her hurried scrawclass="underline"
Darling-after seeing that girl I just couldn’t sit here and do nothing. I won’t tell you where I’ve gone because you’d disapprove, though I’m really quite capable of looking after myself. If I’m lucky I’ll come back with some good news.
Your own Angel.
He read the note for the fifth time, then crumpled it up viciously. He didn’t say anything out loud, but his eyes were harried slits. Then for the first time his gaze slid down from the signature, Your own Angel, and saw Dora’s address scribbled in a postscript.
Hastily he opened the table drawer and scrambled in it, hunting for Dora’s pistol. The. 25 automatic was gone.
His blunt, bony fingers drummed against the desk-top for a moment, then he got up and carried the bottle and glass to the center table and set them down, went aimlessly into the kitchen as though his legs were carrying him from force of habit rather than by conscious motivation.
He put ice cubes in a tall goblet and filled it from the faucet, stalked back into the living-room and placed it beside the cognac bottle.
He paced around the room briefly, lit a cigarette, sat down at the table, filled his glass and sat staring at it. With an angry gesture he tossed it off. He said aloud, very gently, “You shouldn’t have done that, Phyl.”
He refilled his glass, splashing some of the liquor on the back of his hand. He set it down, untouched, and got up.
In the bedroom he called the Palace Hotel and asked for Carl Meldrum. He stood on widely spread legs, jaws clamped, listening to the phone ring echo hollowly over the wire, then asked the hotel switchboard to connect him with the room clerk on duty.
The room clerk reported that Mr. Meldrum was not in, that a young lady had called for him not long ago and they had gone out together. Upon close questioning, the clerk described Phyllis in flattering detail. Shayne thanked him and hung up.
With his left ear lobe clutched between thumb and forefinger he stared moodily around the room, then went back to the living-room.
At the desk he found a long envelope and a sheet of heavy note paper. He wrapped the sheaf of fifty twenty-dollar bills which he had secured from the bank in the note paper, placed them carefully in the long envelope, went outside and dropped them in the mail chute after addressing the envelope to Mrs. Dora Darnell at the address on Phyllis’s note.
Then he came back and took up his vigil with the bottle of cognac and glass of ice water.
Chapter Ten: DANGER-SULKING TIGRESS
It was shortly past noon of a morning that had seemed endless when the telephone rang in the bedroom of the Shayne apartment. The sound rasped spitefully through the stillness, buzzing in his ears like a hornet, penetrating the fog hugging his senses as he slumped in his chair before the center table in the living-room.
He lurched upright and steadied himself with one hand on the table. His eyes were bloodshot, his face bleak and expressionless. An empty cognac bottle lay on its side on the floor. Another, holding two-thirds of its original contents, sat on the table. The ice-water goblet was empty except for the remains of two ice cubes in the bottom. For the past half hour he hadn’t been bothering with chasers.
The telephone kept on ringing. Shayne walked into the bedroom with flat-footed carefulness, swaying a trifle but otherwise apparently sober. He lifted the phone and said, “Shayne,” into the mouthpiece.
Will Gentry’s voice answered him: “I’ve located the Tabor woman, Mike. She has an apartment in Little River.” He gave the address.
Shayne said, “Check, Will.”
“She works as a hostess in that classy Tally-Ho dump north of Little River,” the detective chief went on. “It’s beyond the city limits and we don’t pay much attention to what goes on there but none of it is very good. And here’s something you may want: Your Carl Meldrum hangs out at the Tally-Ho a lot.”
Shayne asked, “What else have you turned up on Meldrum?”
“Damn little. He pays his hotel bill and sleeps there once in a while. He’s got half a dozen dames on the string, including the Thrip girl. From rumors, he may be on the junk or maybe he just feeds it to his women to loosen them up. No dope on Renslow. I’ve wired Colorado and I’m still trying to get touch with the Renslow estate lawyers.”
Shayne said, “Thanks, Will. Keep on trying.” He paused, then asked throatily with a hint of anxiety telling in his voice, “You haven’t got a tail on Meldrum, have you?”
“No. I sent a man over after you left but Meldrum had gone out with some frail. Not one of his regulars, according to the hotel help, but the way she was hanging onto him they guessed she would be before the day was over.”
Shayne said, “Thanks,” again and hung up. His hand stayed on the telephone while he looked broodingly down at the unmade bed. The covers were thrown back from Phyllis’s side and her pillow still held the dent her head had made. The red pajamas were tossed over the foot of the bed. Shayne took two long steps forward and stooped to touch the pajamas with the tips of his fingers. He shook his head and laughed for his own benefit. The laugh was directed at one Michael Shayne, hard-boiled private dick who refused to let life touch him. The laugh ended in a deep gurgle in his throat.
After a while he went out of the bedroom and closed the door behind him. He got his hat and coat and slid the bottle of cognac into his pocket, then went down in the elevator, stalked through the lobby, and got in his car to drive north to Little River.
At the suburban section at Seventy-Ninth Street and Northeast Second Avenue he turned north on the avenue and drove slowly past two blocks of business buildings. Mona Tabor’s apartment house was on a side street half a block from the avenue, a neat three-story stucco building with an impregnable atmosphere of respectability, set back in the middle of a lawn. Gaily striped garden chairs in palm-shaded spots about the lawn were occupied by lounging groups of young and middle-aged women in slacks or shorts who were keeping negligent eyes on their sun-suited youngsters playing on the grass in the bright sunlight.
Shayne parked just beyond a wide concrete walk and got out stiffly. He dragged the brim of his hat down against the sun’s glare and went up the walk toward the entrance. The chattering of the women on the grounds stopped and he knew they were watching him, sizing him up with the universal interest of bored matrons.
He walked on into the coolness of a large, comfortable lobby green with potted palms, straight past the desk to an elevator in the rear. A Negro operator wearing a red pillbox hat slid the door shut behind Shayne and looked at him questioningly with black pupils swimming in white orbs.
Shayne said, “Miss Mona Tabor,” and curiosity flickered in the lad’s comical eyes, went away when Shayne stared at him with hard blankness. The boy manipulated the lever and the elevator rose smoothly to the third floor. He opened the door and gestured down a wide hall to the right. “Down yonduh, suh, at th’ee-o-six, but I don’ reckon Miss Mona done got up yit.”
Shayne got out without replying and went to the end of the hall, where he stopped in front of 306. The elevator door did not close until he knocked, but he did not look back to see the curious black and white eyes watching him. He waited for the silence in upper hall and room to be broken by footsteps coming toward the door.
The silence continued. He tried the knob and it wouldn’t turn under his hand. He knocked louder and more authoritatively and waited again. He took a drink from the cognac bottle and his eyes became brighter.