“Good girl,” Shayne said. “I hope you got all this down.”
“Every word of it,” she panted. “If I can read the pothooks I made in the dark. When you told me Miss Lally was coming here replete with toothbrush, I knew you wanted me to come here for some reason. But why did you insist on doing it this way, Michael? Couldn’t you have just told Chief Gentry.”
Shayne was getting the service table back on four legs. When he took the top away from Miss Lally’s body she fell on the couch and lay quiescent and exhausted, with the hot fires of hatred flickering in her naked eyes.
“I could have jumped the gun,” he said cheerfully, picking up the articles that had clattered to the floor from the upturned table. “But I wanted to get hold of this manuscript first.” He had just picked it up from the floor and handed it to Lucy. “Burton Harsh owes me a balance of five grand on it. And I might have been wrong,” he added, “if Beatrice could have talked herself out of it. Who knows but what having the toothbrush on tap might have come in handy after all?”