“If you read what she wrote-”
“I read it,” Gentry cut in heavily. “What did you find out from Lally about those three threats?”
“Not much. One each day in a plain post-office envelope with the address typed. The first two envelopes were destroyed, but she thinks the one that came this morning may be in Miss Morton’s room.”
“No such luck,” said Gentry sourly. “The waste-basket was clean. Nothing at all turned up. Who does Lally think sent them?”
“How would she know?” With both hands shoved deep in the dungaree pockets, Shayne took three slow steps up and back again, then added, “Leo Gannet offered Miss Morton twenty-five grand to get out of town a few days ago.”
“Why?”
“I presume,” said Shayne, walking again, “she was tying his gambling activities in too closely with police graft and political corruption. That was her assignment, wasn’t it, Tim?”
“Something like that. A general expose of crooked operations during the winter season. Any investigation would bump into Gannet from several angles.”
Shayne stopped opposite Gentry. “Morton’s been needling him just for the hell of it, I guess. Dropping in during the evening at his Green Barn and Red House. Worried him enough so he closed down the upstairs rooms in both places. Until tonight,” he went on grimly. “I didn’t know she was dead, you see, when Beatrice and I stopped in looking for Miss Morton; but Leo was definitely not pleased when I asked him how come he’d reopened tonight.”
Gentry frowned distastefully at the soggy cigar butt in his hand. “When Gannet couldn’t buy her off and couldn’t frighten her off-?”
“I don’t actually believe he’s dumb enough to send threats like that,” Shayne broke in. “But he’s got some dumb bunnies working for him. Any one of them might have thought it a smart idea.”
“Why do you figure she didn’t call the police about the threats?” demanded Gentry.
“You’d have to ask her that. Beatrice says the first two didn’t seem to bother her, but when the third came she asked her to look up my phone number.”
“Sara Morton hated the police and distrusted all of them,” Timothy Rourke said. “She’s spent her life reporting criminal conditions in the big cities around the country and I guess that’d disillusion almost anyone.”
“All right,” said Gentry harshly. “So she sits in her room all day behind a locked door trying to reach Shayne. But at six-thirty she gives up trying. She’s convinced the threats mean business and she’s slated to die tonight. So what does she do then?” He pounded his fist on his heavy thigh and the veins in his red face were purple. “Failing to reach Shayne, does she condescend to call in the police? No! She sits down at her typewriter and writes Mr. Shayne a letter, begging him to catch her murderer after he bumps her off. Nuts! No sane person would sit there and wait for death.”
There was a stillness in the room when Gentry finished his reasonable deduction and threw his slightly smoked and half-chewed cigar toward a wastebasket beside Shayne’s desk.
“Sounds like she might’ve got herself into something she couldn’t quite face,” Rourke offered lightly.
Gentry grunted sourly, and Shayne said, “Maybe she wasn’t sane. I never met her. But you have the evidence right there in your hand. She did exactly that, whether you like it or not.”
“Where’s that secretary?” Gentry demanded again.
“Probably passed out by this time, the way she was pouring stuff down when I left her. You have to admit that Sara Morton’s letter clears her.”
“I don’t admit anything,” Gentry rumbled. “I want to talk to her. Now.”
Shayne’s gray eyes glittered angrily. “What’s the matter with you tonight, Will? You’ve got proof enough-”
“There’s no proof Morton actually wrote the letter at six-thirty,” Gentry broke in stubbornly. “Perhaps her watch was wrong. By God! It was wrong,” he roared, pounding his thick thigh with a fleshy fist. “Almost an hour slow. It was still ticking when we found her. If she timed the note by her watch-” He paused to consider the difference this would make.
“An hour slow,” Shayne said mockingly, watching the triumph die out of the chief’s beefy face. “So if she went by her watch, it was actually seven-thirty when she wrote the note.”
“Suppose the murderer pushed the hands back an hour,” Rourke suggested. “Maybe he tried to stop it at a certain hour to give the impression it stopped when she fell-to set the time of death in our minds, but it failed to stop.”
“Either way you’re going to have a difficult time proving she wasn’t alive at least as late as six-thirty,” Shayne pointed out with growing impatience and anger. “And that definitely lets Miss Lally out.”
“It could have been written earlier,” Gentry maintained, but there was no certainty in his tone now, then added weakly, “Maybe her watch is no good at all.”
“Hell of a watch,” growled Shayne, “for an up-on-her-toes newspaper woman.”
“She’d have hurled it on the floor and ground it to bits, diamonds and all, if it hadn’t kept perfect time,” Rourke said with a wicked chuckle.
Shayne poured a small drink in his glass and downed it, turned to Gentry and said in a determinedly controlled voice, “Look, Will. Why don’t you settle this thing once and for all by calling the post office? That letter is stamped at the main post office at seven forty-two. Ask them what pick-up from the Tidehaven would fit that time.”
Gentry nodded sourly, heaved his solid bulk up from the couch, and went stolidly to the telephone on Shayne’s desk, while Rourke added a slug of cognac to his stale drink and Shayne poured himself another. When Gentry cradled the phone he conceded, “The letter must have been dropped in the mail chute between six-ten and seven-fourteen. The seven-fourteen pick-up fits.” He rubbed a pudgy palm wearily over his eyes and forehead, then his heavy lids rolled slowly up, like miniature Venetian blinds, and his vein-streaked eyes were hard as granite when he said, “I want Miss Lally’s story. Tonight.”
“You’re not going to get it,” said Shayne calmly.
“What are you pulling, Mike?”
“It’s my case,” Shayne told him stubbornly. “I don’t want you and your dumb clucks in homicide horning in. But I’ll give you something you can work on,” he went on, using another of his well-worn tactics. “Find Ralph Morton, Sara’s no-good husband whom she supports. He called Miss Lally this morning and said he’d just reached town and wanted an appointment with his wife. She hung up on him, but thinks she heard his voice in the next room this afternoon when she was typing.”
Gentry eyed him suspiciously, asked, “Why would her husband want to stick a pair of shears in her throat?”
“She’s divorcing him. That’ll probably end the five hundred a month she’s been paying him to stay out of her hair.”
“So he kills her to stop her from paying him half a grand a month,” said Gentry with heavy sarcasm.
Shayne was unbuckling the belt of his dungarees. “Maybe he’s legally entitled to half her estate or something. Here’s one more thing, if you’re interested. She was divorcing her husband to marry a punk several years younger than she. Name of Edwin Paisly.” Shayne described him with relish. “Just a bit swishy and with all the earmarks of being more interested in her money than in her. Ask him where he was between six-thirty and seven, and don’t blame me if you get your wrist slapped.” He had the dungarees unbuttoned and he held them up with both hands as he started toward the bathroom again.
“Hold it, Mike.” Gentry’s voice was peremptory. “What else did you get from Miss Lally?”
“Very little.” Shayne continued into the bathroom without turning his head.
Gentry followed him to the open door. “No matter how little-I want it. And I want to question her.”
Shayne shook his red head stubbornly. “You can question her tomorrow.”
“Why not tonight, Mike? What the devil are you covering up?”
“Nothing. But if I told you my real reason for keeping her away from you tonight, you’d have to horn in. Leave me alone and I’ll solve your damned case for you.”