close to midnight for a scotch and soda after Charles had come in, but he never saw him drunk. Miss Mary always had a double martini before dinner when it was served in their suite, and very rarely a drink later. Then, only one. She tipped well, but not excessively, and according to him it was a pleasure to take care of twelve-ten in comparison to some of the other people he had on his floor.
As he was leaving, a girl came in the ofi&ce with two sheets of paper that had typing on them.
Gerdon studied them in frowning silence for a time. They were day-by-day notations of out-going calls from twelve-ten, kept by the hotel for billing purposes, and they disclosed little of real interest to Shayne except the recurrence of calls to a certain number in Miami which he recognized at once as the Hibiscus Hotel.
The first day or so after registration there had been a spate of local calls to various numbers, and two long-distance to New York. Then the calls lessened to two or three or four each day. Generally before noon, and only a few in the evenings.
Shayne studied the list as Gerdon passed it to him, found the first listing of the Hibiscus number almost a week after they arrived. Then it appeared irregularly every day or so afterward. The last time that number had been called was 4:30 p.m. of that day.
There was also a scribbled notation from the desk to the effect that both Mr. and Miss Barnes were now out, and it was believed both of them had been away most of the evening.
And that was all Shayne was able to get from the Roney Plaza about Charles and Mary Barnes.
Gerdon politely asked if he cared to go over the suite, but Shayne declined the offer. He did suggest that a definite watch be kept for the return of either of the Barneses, immediate notification of the Miami police and quiet surveillance in that event.
He also asked for a tap on the telephone in the suite to trace all incoming calls and to gather as much information about the callers as possible.
Then he thanked Gerdon for his co-operation and hurried back to Miami.
EIGHTEEN: 11:35 PM.
Chief Gentry was seated at his desk listening intently to the telephone when Shayne burst into his office in long strides. The chief looked up with a frown, shaking his head to indicate he didn't want to be interrupted when Shayne appeared on the point of breaking in.
The detective dropped into a chair and lit a cigarette morosely while Gentry continued to listen, interjecting an occasional, "I see," and, "Yes, go on."
There was a smugly satisfied look on Gentry's florid face when he finally said, "Thank you very much. I'll let you know if there's anything else," and put the phone down.
"That was New York," he told Shayne. "They checked the Barnes address and found it's a penthouse apartment on 63rd. Charles Barnes lives there with his younger sister, Mary. They closed the place a couple of weeks ago and took off for a month's vacation in Miami. How do you like that?"
"Just fine," Shayne said unhappily, squinting at him through blue cigarette smoke.
"And the forwarding address they left for mail is the Roney Plaza Hotel on the Beach," Gentry went on impressively. "All we need now is to check with the Roney to see if Barnes has a scar on his cheek—and we'll begin to know where we stand."
He reached for the phone, but Shayne stopped him with a gesture. "I just came from the Roney. Charles Barnes has no scar. His description fits the dead man to a T."
"I'll be— You just came from the Roney? How come?"
"I thought it was an angle that might be worth checking," Shayne said wearily. "Remember, the girl told me she and her brother were staying at the Roney?"
"The Paulson girl? But we know she had room three-sixteen at the Hibiscus."
"If it was the Paulson girl. If it wasn't Mary Barnes all the time."
"Wait a minute. You told me—"
Shayne got up and began to pace the floor, his rugged features twisted in a mask of concentration.
"I told you that he said her name was Nellie Paulson. The man with the scar. She didn't give any name to me. I hadn't got around to that when he came busting in and she locked herself in the kitchen. Naturally, I believed him," groaned Shayne. "His story about chasing her down the back stairs of the Hibiscus coincided precisely with her story, so I accepted the name he gave her."
"But we know from the Jacksonville description of Paulson that he was lying about being Nellie Paulson's brother," barked Gentry. "Who the devil is he if he isn't Barnes?"
"He isn't Barnes," said Shayne flatly. "At least he isn't the man registered at the Roney as Barnes." He dropped into a chair and stretched his long legs out wearily.
"If the dead man is Barnes—and I'm beginning to think he is—then it looks as though the girl who talked to me must be his sister Mary. Don't you see how it hangs together? She said her brother had gotten tangled up with some broad while on this vacation. That he called her from the Hibiscus tonight to come and get him out of a jam. The records show several calls from the Barnes suite in the Roney to the Hibiscus in the past week. So what kind of jam does it look as though he might have been in?
"The old badger game, of course. With Miss Nellie Paulson of room three-sixteen in the Hibiscus. But some-
thing happens before Mary gets there to help him out. A knife in his throat, no less. And Mary walks in before they have time to get rid of the body. She takes one look at her brother, and runs to use the phone in three-sixty. By the time she gets back, his body has gone out the window. Then scar-face jumps her and she runs to me. And then runs away from me when he follows her there."
"To Lucy's apartment," said Gentry sharply. "With a note from you telling Lucy to look after her."
Shayne stared at him queerly and reached for the phone. "I'll be damned if I know," he muttered, "whether Lucy mentioned her by name to me or not. If it was Mary Barnes instead of Nellie Paulson—"
He gave Lucy's number and waited. Again, the telephone rang several times before Lucy answered. And again her voice sounded queerly strained when she said, "Yes? What do you want?"
"Mike, angel. Listen carefully and think before you reply. Did the girl who brought the note from me tell you what her name was?"
"Why—you told me, Michael. When you called me on the phone before she got here. Don't you remember? You said Nellie Paulson would be along—"
"I know I did," he interrupted harshly. "But now I'm asking you if she corroborated that."
"I—wait a minute. I'm trying to think. N-No. Not directly, I think. I just assumed from what you said that— She did have a note from you."
"I know," said Shayne wearily. " 'Bye." He hung up and told Gentry, "She didn't say anything to Lucy that proves it either way. I'll be damned if I don't believe she was Mary Barnes all along. I've had a feeling about her— that she didn't fit into the badger game technique—"
"Then why did the scar-faced man positively identify her as Nellie Paulson?"
"Don't forget that we now know he isn't Paulson,"
Shayne objected. "God knows who he is, but he doesn't fit the Jax police description. So maybe he didn't even know Nellie by sight. Maybe that's why he thought the girl who ran out of three-sixteen was Nellie. If he knew Nellie had that room—went up there looking for her and saw a blonde girl running out, he'd naturally assume she was Nellie. Now we're beginning to get somewhere."
"Where?" demanded Gentry sardonically.
"I don't know for sure." Shayne's grin was wryly abashed. "But the girl's story all falls into place if you accept her as Mary Barnes instead of Paulson. Damn it, I had a feeling from the beginning she was telling methe truth and wasn't half as crazy as Nellie Paulson is supposed to be."
"So now everything's just perfect—since you decided your judgment of her wasn't at fault."
"Everything's perfectly wrong," snapped Shayne. "I wasn't half as worried when I thought scar-face was hunting Nellie Paulson with a gun. Girls who pull stunts like her badger game pretty damn well deserve whatever they get. But if it's Mary Barnes he's after? Why the devil don't your
men pick him up. Will? They've had his description for a couple of hours now."
"They will. Eventually. If he tries to move around. While you're blaming the Force, Mike, don't forget it was you who failed to make sure she'd stay put at Lucy's when you had the chance. Chew on that while you think about what may happen if she meets up with that forty-five."
NINETEEN: 11:34 PM.
Patrolman Cassiday had been a full-fledged member of the Miami Police Force less than a month. He was a well-set-up young man who filled out his new uniform snugly. A veteran of the Korean War who had rebelled against the humdrum of a garage mechanic's job after coming back, he was pleased with his new job and extremely proud to wear the uniform and to wield the authority that went with it.
Cassiday's beat was Miami's Bayfront Park. He walked the winding, palm-shaded paths in steady strides, chin up and eyes alert for any sort of mischief a policeman should put a stop to.
It was like walking a guard post in the army, and snatches from the General Orders often fled through his mind as he paced along:
"To walk my post in a military manner , . . always on the alert . . . that takes place within sight or hearing. ..."
Of course there was nothing much of a criminal nature taking place in the well-lighted park at night, and that's why a rookie cop always drew the beat. But you never knew, Cassiday kept telling himself sternly. Anything could happen in the park at any time.
Those two men with their heads close together on the bench around the turn—they might be desperate gunmen checking their final plans for holding up the First National Bank in the morning. That blowsy old woman who tottered in front of him, wheezing as she walked and leaving a thick smell of stale beer behind her—what if that were
a clever disguise to throw off suspicion while she carried out her cunning plan for kidnaping the mayor's young daughter whom she had lured into the park on some pretext?
In the meantime, until some of these hoped-for events happened, the young patrolman strode his post sternly and alertly, secretly amused to see the way young couples sprang apart at his approach, began talking loudly about inconsequentials, pretending not to notice his uniform as he passed, then melted back into one soHd lump in the shadowy darkness behind him as soon as he was ten paces away.
In the beginning, less than a month ago, Cassiday had paused often in his patrol to speak gruffly to such young couples, who hung their heads in abashed silence at his tone. Innocent love-making on a park bench was all right, and he had orders it was to be tolerated up to a point, but how was a young patrolman to know when that point was reached? It was safer by far, he had judged sternly, to nip such little affairs in the bud with a word of warning before they had a chance to go too far.
But that was weeks ago. Before he had met Ann Schwartz. Now he walked his beat as alertly as before, but with much more tolerance for the kisses and caresses under a Miami moon.
Ann Schwartz was a dark little Jewish girl, with elusive laughing eyes, lush breasts and a softly yielding body. He had first met her at a party at his brother-in-law's house two weeks before, and from that day onward his thoughts were all of Ann as he walked the park at night.
Sure she was Jewish, but so what? he argued happily with himself. She didn't really take her religion seriously. She wasn't kosher. She ate bacon with her eggs just the same as any good Catholic, and seemed to have a real yen for all kinds of shell fish.
That kind of Jewish didn't matter if a couple were in
love. And he and Ann were. They had decided that the second night he dated her. She wasn't any more wrapped up in her religion than he was in his. A man could go to Mass occasionally, he thought, and his wife could go to a synagogue. Why not? At home it wouldn't matter. Not after the lights were out at night and a man was in bed with Ann.
Tolerance, that's what the world needed more of, he told himself wisely, looking the other way as he saw a dark mass off on the grass beneath a coconut palm writhe in a peculiar fashion. Three weeks ago he would have halted and rapped out a stem warning that would have brought the shame-faced young couple to their feet and out of the park in a hurry, but tonight he looked the other way and even smiled foolishly as he thought how it would be to writhe in the grass beneath a palm tree with Ann.
Not that she was that sort of girl at all. Not with any fellow except the man she was going to marry. But how did he know that couple back there weren't engaged, too? So, why should he interfere?
He pushed his peaked cap back on his forehead as he strode on, looking upward at the faint moon and feeling a great warmth of youth and vitality in his loins. Tomorrow was his night off and he was going to her home in Coral Gables to meet her family. He wasn't worried about the meeting. He felt he knew them already from Ann's ready descriptions of them. He would wear his new double-breasted orlon suit, he decided, with a white shirt and maybe a black tie to give the right sort of impression of sober conventionality in front of her parents.
The rippling water of Biscayne Bay was silver in the faint moonlight on his left through gaps in the shrubbery. Farther out, he could dimly see the riding lights of a few yachts anchored in the bay.
He turned sharply away, threading between double rows of palms whose fronds met over his head, heading
westward now toward the end of his beat where there was a call-box for his hourly report.
He slowed his pace sharply as he followed the heavily shrouded path. He hadn't learned yet to curb his pace so he would come out on time at the call-box. The beat had been laid out for older muscles than his, and he always started out taking it slow and deliberate, but, when his thoughts turned to Ann, his stride quickened unconsciously and he was always getting ahead of himself like this.
He was passing the bench without noticing the figure huddled on it when the toe of his shoe struck something in the path. There was a tinkling sound in the gravel off to the side where his foot had kicked the object, and he stopped and thumbed his flash on to turn a circle of light downward.
The beam first picked out a gold lipstick and then a small hand mirror. Beyond them lay a lady's handbag, gaping open. He swung the light back swiftly and something gleamed wetly on the edge of the path beneath the bench.
The beam came up and he saw the girl lying there. TTie pallid face and sightless eyes, the gaping wound in her soft throat from which the red wetness beneath the bench had come.
He stood stricken and unable to move for at least twenty seconds. Time enough for the thought to flash through his mind that the dead girl was no older than Ann, and might well have been as pretty as she before the deadly knife had done its work.
Then awareness came to him, and he plunged headlong toward the call-box under the street light.
TWENTY: 11:38 PM.
The report reached Will Gentry in his office just as he concluded reminding Shayne that if anything happened to the girl he had sent to Lucy's, it would be the detective's fault because he hadn't mentioned her whereabouts in time.
The inter-com buzzed, and Gentry leaned forward to hear the voice issuing from it.
"Murdered girl in park near Second Street and Second Avenue. Reported by Cassiday on beat. Throat is cut."
Gentry jerked his head up to glare at Shayne. "So it wasn't a forty-five after all. Another knife job."
Shayne was already moving toward the door, and Gentry hurried after him. "You don't know it's the same girl," Shayne flung over his shoulder angrily.
"I'm betting," Gentry challenged him grimly. "You want to risk any dough on it?"
Shayne snorted loudly and went out the side door to his parked car.
He gunned it away fast, but by the time he reached the intersection an ambulance and two radio cars were already there. Spotlights made dazzling bright the cluster of men gathered about a park bench forty feet down the path.
Shayne pulled in behind the ambulance and got out. He stood for a moment beside his car as though nerving himself for the ordeal, then strode slowly down the path, his face set and exp
ressionless.
Three policemen standing in front of the bench looked
at him silently and drew back a little as he walked up. A white-coated ambulance attendant knelt beside the bench.
Shayne peered over his shoulder and saw the girl's face. He was steeled for the shock and there was only a faint grimace on his trenched face as he recognized her.
He stepped back and asked gruffly, "How long ago. Doc?"
The kneeling intern shrugged and answered without looking up. "An hour maybe."
"You got anything on it, Shayne?" one of the officers asked, but Shayne turned away without answering him as Gentry hurried up the path.
The police chief looked at him questioningly, and Shayne nodded and said stiffly, "I'm glad I didn't put up any money."
Gentry's eyes probed at his face for a moment, then he nodded and stepped past him to confer with the young patrolman who had discovered the body.
Shayne walked on a few feet and stopped to lean his right shoulder against the smooth round trunk of a palm. He got out a cigarette and lighted it, controlling the shaking of the match so it was hardly noticeable. He drew in a deep lungful of smoke and expelled it slowly, and his body seemed to slouch negligently against the palm as though he had no interest at all in the scene behind his back.
He stayed that way and didn't turn around until Gentry called to him sharply. "Shaynel Take a look at this."
He took a last drag of smoke and spun his cigarette away, turned to see the chief holding a sheet of paper in his hands.
"It is Nellie Paulson after all. Here's a receipted bill from the Hibiscus for last week's rent on room three-six-teen. And there's some other stuff in her handbag. It's Nellie all right."
Shayne strode back savagely. "It can't be. We had it
worked out that it had to be the Barnes girl."
"Take another look at her," invited Gentry. "You sure she's the one that—"
"Good Christl Of course I'm sure," burst out Shayne. "I don't need another look. So she's Nellie Paulson. And the same job has been done on her as on the one that came out of the bay. Barnes or Paulson. God knows. Where does this leave us?"
The blonde cried murder Page 11
