Michael Shayne lifted one sweaty hand and then the other from the steering-wheel and wiped them dry on his coat. He stared straight ahead down the almost deserted boulevard and his body jerked with craving for a drink.
The police announcement was Will Gentry’s answer to the scene in Mona Tabor’s apartment. A part of Shayne did not blame Gentry. He had a police job to do, and Shayne had made it tough on him.
But deep down inside a sick anger throbbed through Shayne’s body like the gnawing of a cancer. Will Gentry should have trusted him. Wasn’t there enough between them for that? He’d never let Gentry down in the past. Wasn’t that enough?
Evidently not. Sure, he had gone off his kazip and said some things he didn’t mean up there in the apartment. That shouldn’t have mattered either. A man says things he doesn’t mean Shayne felt wholly alone for the first time in his life. It wasn’t a good feeling. He had played a lone game in the past but there had always been that good inward feeling that he had one friend who was backing him to the limit and beyond. Well, he knew where Gentry stood now. That was something. Mike Shayne had never been one to sugar-coat distasteful facts. Part of his lone wolf tactics in the past had been the result of pride. There had been a savage thrill in playing fast and loose against every conventional morality and coming out on top against tremendous odds. That thrill was gone now. He was up against something different.
He wondered where in God’s name Phyllis was.
Despite the warmth of the Miami night he shivered. Wanting Phyllis was a physical pain that stabbed through the whole length of him. What had actually happened up in that apartment before the police came? He had lied about the time Renslow left the Tally-Ho. He didn’t know what time it was. He hadn’t looked at his watch. It had been an instinctive lie to gain a little time to think things out.
Had Renslow reached the apartment after murder was done? The pistol had been fired only once. He couldn’t be sure, of course, but it looked exactly like the automatic Dora had brought to his apartment to kill him with-the pistol that had disappeared from the desk drawer coincident with Phyllis’s departure.
Dora had fired one bullet from that pistol into the ceiling. Let them trace it to her If Phyl had gone to the apartment with Meldrum for his midnight interview and then been forced to resist an attack with the empty cognac bottle, why had she ducked out? That wasn’t like Phyllis.
Still, Shayne had seen too much killing to figure it that way. The reaction to violent death causes people to do all sorts of crazy, impulsive things.
Why in hell hadn’t he laid his cards on the table before Gentry? Those scraps of paper in his pocket were plenty to convict Buell Renslow of two murders. Was it because suppression of that evidence was worth a million dollars to Renslow? Was that the subconscious motivation that had prompted him to keep his mouth shut?
He didn’t know. Mike Shayne had always tried to be honest with himself. He tried now, but it was no go. He discovered that no man can honestly say what impulse motivates a certain action. Maybe he was willing to throw Phyllis over for a million dollars. Gentry thought so. Maybe Gentry knew him better than Shayne knew himself.
He was nearing the lights of downtown Miami and he slowed to get a grip on himself. He couldn’t go to his hotel. He hoped Phyllis would know she had been recognized and wouldn’t go there.
He turned off the boulevard at Third Street, and parked his roadster in an all-night parking-lot. On foot, he made his way to an obscure side-street hotel where he kept his hat pulled low over his eyes and signed the register as Horatio Ramsey. The sleepy-eyed clerk assured him it would be possible to get a bottle of cognac when Shayne shoved a five-dollar bill across the desk, and the detective went up to a second-floor room where he jerked windows open to let a night breeze drive out the musty air.
He then went to a wall telephone and called his apartment hotel. The switchboard operator was off duty after midnight and the night clerk took the call. Shayne got a funny gurgle over the wire when he said, “Mike Shayne talking.”
The clerk said nervously, “I see. Just a minute while I step inside and look that up for you.”
Shayne waited, frowning at the cracked and yellow plaster in front of him. After a couple of minutes the clerk’s voice came cautiously:
“Mr. Shayne, I was afraid to talk to you out there. The lobby-it’s full of cops and-”
“I know. They’re looking for me. What about Mrs. Shayne? Has she showed up or called?”
“Y-yes. That’s what I wanted to tell you. They just arrested her. They’ve been waiting all evening and they grabbed her when she came in. Some of them are staying in the hope that you’ll show up.”
Shayne said, “They’ll have a long wait. Thanks. Forget this call.” He hung up, scowling darkly.
There was a knock at his door and he opened it cautiously. A boy stood there with a package. Shayne took it, closed the door, and worried the cork of a cognac bottle with his teeth. He held it tipped to his mouth for a long time, then moved across to the bed and sat down heavily.
His mouth wasn’t dry any longer. At least he knew where Phyllis was. And, no matter what he had said to Gentry in anger, he knew the Miami police would make it as easy on her as they could.
He tilted the bottle again. He wasn’t cold any more. A fevered glow was spreading out from the pit of his stomach. His brain was beginning to work again. He wasn’t whipped yet-he still held a few trumps. Played right, he might start raking in a few tricks for a change.
Another drink would help him think things out. He took one, and it did.
Chapter Seventeen: A HELL OF A TIME FOR VISITING
Shayne ordered a pot of paste and the hotel clerk sent it up at once. Taking a sheet of stationery from a scarred writing-table in one corner of his room, Shayne spread the torn strips of Meldrum’s note out on the bed and went to work putting them together. It went much faster this time because he knew the words and letter combinations to look for. After laying every strip in its proper place, he carefully pasted them on the sheet of hotel stationery.
He took another drink and studied the result approvingly. Completed, the note clearly read:
I saw you murder Mrs. Thrip. I’m willing to talk it over at midnight if you will meet me at 306 Terrace Apts. Otherwise I am going to the police.
Carl Meldrum.
There it was. A definite invitation to murder. Meldrum was clearly a fool, or still doped up, to have sent such a note. Or else he had woefully underestimated the man he sought to blackmail. He should have known that a man who had killed once would kill again to save himself.
Shayne shook his head fretfully. He wouldn’t have guessed that Meldrum was foolhardy enough to invite attack upon himself.
Still, as Mike recollected the man’s early-morning condition, his mind might not have been clear, in spite of the fact that he had gone out with Phyllis and appeared to be normal. And there was enough money involved for him to feel confident that the murderer would come across with plenty to silence the witness. After all, Renslow had mentioned a million to Shayne tonight. And with Mona Tabor on Meldrum’s trail checking up for her share in what he might get from the Thrip girl or elsewhere-maybe Meldrum risked a lot to pay Mona off and be free.
The detective lay back on the bed and clasped big-knuckled hands behind his head, closed his eyes, and went back over the facts in the light of what he had learned today.
Meldrum’s curious actions, which had appeared to be motivated by guilt, might be explained as well by this evidence that he had witnessed the crime. He must have been with Dorothy in her room, Shayne theorized, and in leaving had been attracted by the sounds of a death struggle in Mrs. Thrip’s bedroom. Hating the victim, he would not be likely to interfere, but must have watched unseen from the doorway, then hurried downstairs with a secret which he knew was worth plenty of money to him if the murderer went otherwise unsuspected. He had been hurried to the Tally-Ho and arranged with Mona to fix him an alibi for the crime he had seen committed; then he had telephoned Dorothy and told her what to testify about his movements.