“He’ll probably come in this way,” mused Dagger. “Why not take this large table in the corner at your right. Will he recognize any of you?”
“We’re not sure,” Shayne told him truthfully. “You and Black sit on that side facing toward this entrance,” he suggested to Rourke. “Lucy and I will sit here facing the bar, and when Gibson comes down, he can take a chair in front of us.”
He shook hands with the manager again as they seated themselves, and promised him, “We’ll see that everything is kept just as quiet as possible.”
Dagger said he appreciated that, and not to hesitate to call on him for anything further. He moved away quietly then, to circulate among the six guests that were the only other occupants of the room — a very young couple with their heads together at a table on one side, three middle-aged men standing in a group at the bar drinking Scotch, and a woman seated alone at the other end of the bar. She was in her sixties and fat, was slovenly dressed, and was drinking beer and talking loudly to the bartender whenever he looked in her direction.
Shayne ordered sidecars from a waiter, and they sat quietly together in the corner nook waiting for their quarry to appear.
The elderly woman finished her beer and stalked out of the double doors opening directly onto Madison Avenue with a slurring remark over her shoulder to the bartender about his lack of true gentlemanly hospitality, headed doubtless, for 3rd Avenue where the surroundings would be more congenial.
Three brisk young men entered from Madison soon afterward, a little overdressed and chattering together a little too obviously for the benefit of listeners about a radio rehearsal just concluded at CBS across the street.
At 3:42 a silvery-haired gentleman entered from the hotel and took a chair at a table near the quartette. He ordered a rum old-fashioned and gave the waiter explicit directions for its preparation.
Three minutes later, Bemish entered the lounge from the hotel. He strode directly across the room to a stool at the end of the bar nearest the Madison exit without as much as a glance around.
He had scarcely seated himself when another man came in behind him, pausing just inside for a casual but thorough look about the room, his gaze sliding swiftly over the few occupants as he assured himself there was no lone female waiting.
He was bareheaded, with blond hair parted smoothly in the middle and brushed back in slight waves. He had an alert, lean face well-tanned by the Miami sun, and wore fawn-colored gabardine slacks, an open-throated sport shirt, and a suede jacket a few shades lighter than the slacks.
Henry Black and Timothy Rourke sat with their eyes fixed on him as he moved with athletic grace to the bar and seated himself on a stool.
A curious expression came over Lucy’s face as she watched him approach the bar. Incredulity mingled with dawning comprehension and with complete dismay. She whispered a startled “But Michael—” and he shook his head at her violently, gripping her wrist with one big hand to enforce silence.
Another neatly and inconspicuously well-dressed young man, much like Bemish, followed him in and sat at the table nearest the hotel exit.
Timothy Rourke leaned forward to speak in a low voice to Shayne. “It’s Godfrey, all right. I’d recognize him anywhere from those photographs.”
Shayne raised his eyebrows with a slight nod. “Godfrey or a twin brother,” he agreed. “But pictures are never conclusive. How about it, Hank?” he asked the other detective whose gaze hadn’t left their quarry for a single instant.
Without looking at him, Black said, “Give me one more minute. He’s ordering a drink. I sat and watched my man drink four cocktails at dinner night before last.”
Shayne’s hand remained tightly and warningly on Lucy’s wrist. They waited tensely while a drink was set before the man and he idly twirled it between his fingers for a moment before lifting it to his lips.
Then Henry Black nodded quietly, “That does it, Mike. I’m sorry as hell to throw a monkey wrench in anything, but that’s the same man I tailed in Miami. I’ll have to swear to that in any court.”
Instead of disappointment, a slow grin of satisfaction spread over Michael Shayne’s face. “But he still isn’t positively identified as Godfrey. Where in hell is Gibson?” he went on angrily. “That’s what we need him for. If this guy isn’t Hiram Godfrey in person—”
Lucy Hamilton interrupted him by starting violently. “There’s Mrs. Davis, Michael. Coming through the glass door.”
Shayne nodded with satisfaction at sight of the poised body and exquisite beauty of the woman who was entering alone from the Avenue. She wore a black velvet afternoon dress this time that fell in swirling folds to her ankles, but the same wide-brimmed black hat she had worn in his office and there was no possibility of mistaking her.
He said, “Shh,” gently to Lucy. “Of course, it’s Mrs. Davis. Weren’t you expecting her?”
Lucy didn’t reply. Her eyes were wide with startled amazement as the man at the bar looked up with a smile of pleasure and slid off his stool to hurry toward the woman who had just entered.
Her face lit up with happiness at sight of him, and she came into his arms gracefully and thankfully.
“Mrs. Davis, eh?” muttered Timothy Rourke, watching the tableau with slack-jawed amazement. “Your missing client, Mike? What gives? Mrs. Davis and Hiram Godfrey?”
“But it isn’t Godfrey, Tim,” Lucy exclaimed vehemently, unable to contain her excitement longer. “That’s Mr. Brewer. With the dye washed out of his hair and his glasses off and dressed entirely differently. But it is Mr. Brewer, isn’t it, Michael?”
Shayne’s eyes were twinkling as he nodded in response. “Lucy’s right, Tim. That’s one reason I brought her along — to verify a crazy hunch I had.”
“But if that’s Brewer,” said Tim helplessly, “who the devil is the corpse that’s been identified as Brewer?”
“That’s what we need Gibson for. He’s the only one who knows both Brewer and Godfrey. He promised to come down—”
While they were speaking, the couple under observation had drawn back from each other’s arms and were turning toward the bar.
Elliott Gibson’s voice, excited and loud from the entrance, halted them abruptly. “Hiram! And Mrs. Brewer. What a touching scene indeed.”
He moved toward the stricken couple arrogantly, nodding to the New York plain-clothes men. “You can arrest them both now, for the murder of this woman’s husband.”
“You’re out of your mind, Gibson.” Godfrey recovered himself swiftly and thrust the woman aside to confront the lawyer. “You can’t touch me for Brewer’s death. I have a perfect alibi.”
“I know you arranged to have one,” sneered Gibson, “but it didn’t work out that way. Take a look behind you over in that corner. There’s the detective who was supposed to alibi you. Let’s hear what he has to say.”
Hiram Godfrey turned slowly, and his face became pinched and hard as he saw the group from Miami. The two New York detectives had closed in quietly on either side of him and his body sagged suddenly as the strength and self-assurance went out of it.
Michael Shayne pushed back the table deliberately and got up. He moved slowly toward Gibson, asked him, “Can you swear this man is Hiram Godfrey?”
“Of course, I can,” said the lawyer impatiently.
“Then you’re not going to like this,” Shayne told him, “because Henry Black is ready to swear that this is the man he trailed from the West Flagler packing-plant and followed all night until he caught the New York plane next morning.”
It was Gibson’s turn to look incredulous and stricken. He opened and shut his mouth twice before asking Black lamely, “Is that correct?”