This Is It, Michael Shayne

by Brett Halliday

  “Do you think it’s important?” She sounded tired and disappointed.

  “Why do we need her, Mike?” Gentry demurred.

  “I want her to listen carefully to his voice, for one thing, and see if she can recognize it as the voice that lured her to Ralph Morton’s hotel room.”

  “But I’ve heard his voice often,” she argued. “The man on the telephone didn’t sound a bit like him.”

  Shayne looked across at Timothy Rourke, who had gradually slumped in the straight chair until his vertebrae rested on the seat. His chin rested on his chest and his eyes were closed.

  “Tim—wake up,” Shayne yelled,

  Rourke’s eyes popped open. “I’m not asleep,” he said crossly. “And don’t yell at me.”

  “Look, Tim, you told me Paisly used to be an actor. You know what kind? Was he an impressionist?”

  “My guess would be the female chorus,” Rourke grated. “Back row. I told you she didn’t say.”

  “Look, Beatrice,” he said. “If Paisly has studied acting he could probably imitate my voice. He heard me talking at the Golden Cock. When you listen to him this time, try to recall the telephone conversation and see if you hear any of the same inflections.” He stood up and stretched and added casually to Gentry, “Mind if I use your phone?”

  “Who you calling this time of morning?” the chief asked suspiciously.

  “Lucy. I promised I’d call her. She’ll be sitting on the edge of the bed waiting to hear from me.” He sauntered over to the chief’s desk and lifted one of the phones just as the man who had been sent to pick up Paisly opened the door and announced:

  “We’ve got Paisly outside, Chief. And the dame who lives in the house. They think it’s a morals charge,” he added with a grin.

  “Bring both of them in,” Gentry ordered.

  Lucy answered just as Gentry spoke. Shayne shifted his position to watch Beatrice’s strained face as she waited for Edwin Paisly to be brought in.

  He spoke softly into the mouthpiece. “Did I wake you, angel?”

  “I’ve been waiting for you to call, Michael. Is Miss Lally all right?”

  “She’s okay,” he assured her. “We’re in Will Gentry’s office right now and I’m going to take her home in a few minutes and tuck her in bed.”

  “Then will you stop by here, Michael? I can’t possibly go to sleep until you tell me what happened.”

  “Better take a pill,” he muttered. “I may be a long time with her. I’ve got to get hold of Sara Morton’s story on Harsh so I can destroy it before this thing blows up in my face and I lose half my fee.”

  He looked around with the receiver to his ear as the door opened again and Edwin Paisly was ushered in. Behind him was a long-limbed blonde wearing sandals and a zippered housecoat. She glared at the occupants of the room with tight lips and contemptuous eyes.

  Shayne spoke just above a whisper into the mouthpiece, “Hold it a minute, angel,” while he watched Paisly gesticulate in vehement protest at the outrage as the officer pushed him along. He was fully clothed, but disheveled, his hair twisted in little tufts across the front where it was longer, as if feminine fingers had playfully tried to curl it, and there was lipstick smeared around his mouth. He stopped suddenly and his features tightened with loathing and anger when he saw Miss Lally seated primly across the desk from Will Gentry.

  “I knew you must be at the bottom of this,” he shrieked vindictively. “I hope you’re satisfied with all your snooping and spying.”

  Lucy’s voice was protesting in Shayne’s ear, wanting to know what was going on, declaring she’d wait up hours for him to tell her—that she’d never go to sleep now.

  “It’s no use, angel. Beatrice and I may even end up at my place—and you know she’s already got her toothbrush with her.” He grinned as he listened a moment, said, “Good night,” softly, and hung up.

  “… and I was glad to tell the police where they could find you if that’s what you mean,” Beatrice was saying. “Staying with that woman while you pretended to make love to Miss Morton.”

  “Who’s this dame, Eddie?” Paisly’s companion regarded Miss Lally haughtily with her hands on her skinny hips. “What kinda bum rap—?”

  “I’ll ask the questions,” Gentry growled. “Where were you before seven o’clock last night, Paisly?”

  “I was—at Ellie’s place,” he said sullenly, his breath coming in snorting anger. “She’ll tell you I was there.”

  “What time did he come back to your place after failing to meet Miss Morton for his dinner date?” Shayne put in quickly to the girl.

  She turned her head and looked him up and down coldly. “About ten o’clock. He’s been there ever since, and whaddaya want to make of it?”

  “How many phone calls did he make after ten o’clock?”

  “I didn’t make any,” Paisly said violently. “We were together all the time and Ellie can swear I didn’t.”

  “And her testimony is worth about a dime a barrel,” grunted Gentry sourly. “This is no good, Mike. He has had hours to prime her to tell whatever story he wanted.”

  Shayne nodded agreement and turned to look searchingly at Miss Lally, who was leaning forward intently. Her eyes were half closed and her head was turned sideways in a listening attitude.

  He sauntered over to her. She motioned him to bend down, putting a finger to her lips to indicate she wanted to whisper something. “I just don’t know,” she told him. “I think it might be. But it’s so important I wouldn’t want to swear to it without—you know—”

  “I see,” he whispered, then straightened up and raised his voice to Gentry. “She’d be much better able to tell by listening over the telephone, Will. Why not have her call you here after a while and you can try it out then.”

  Paisly was twisting his head rapidly to look from one face to the other with complete bafflement. He appeared relieved when Gentry ordered, “Take these two out and keep them separated. I’ll have Harsh first, and then Garvin—and then I’ll be ready for Paisly.”

  “May I go to my hotel now, Chief Gentry?” Miss Lally asked once more.

  “But stay there,” the chief admonished. “I’ll want you again later.” He looked at Shayne, and again he nodded in agreement. When Shayne started toward the door with the girl, Gentry called out, “Don’t you want to sit in on questioning these birds, Mike?”

  “I’ll be back,” Shayne answered blithely. “Beatrice and I have a date—remember? Don’t forget she’s going to call you to listen to Paisly’s voice on the phone. After that, if you don’t know who your murderer is, I’ll tell you. I’d tell you now,” he added with an infuriating grin, “except there’s something I need to pick up at the Tidehaven Hotel first.”

  They went out and closed the door. Shayne hustled Beatrice down the corridor to a side exit and out to his car, got in and pulled away fast.

  “Did you mean that, Mr. Shayne,” she asked anxiously, “or were you just fooling the chief?”

  “I think I know,” he told her, “but I wanted to get away and go to your hotel room with you to pick up that story Miss Morton wrote about Harsh before the police get it. It’s worth money to me.”

  “I don’t know about the carbon copy,” she said nervously. “Miss Morton kept it for some reason when she told me to file the original away.”

  “The carbon is safe enough,” Shayne assured her.

  Miss Lally shivered and sighed. She sat primly erect, as though too tired to relax, and they drove in silence to the Tidehaven Hotel.

  The lobby was dimly lit and empty except for one clerk. They went to the elevator and up to the 14th floor without speaking. She led the way down the hall and unlocked the door of her bedroom, and Shayne stood back to let her precede him inside.

  She went directly to the bureau and fumbled in the top drawer, sighed with relief as she lifted out a spectacle case and opened it.

  With a duplicate pair of glasses on, Miss Lally became once more the epitome of a pr
imly efficient and sexless secretary. She stooped to open the bottom drawer of the bureau and drew out a bulging cardboard folder, riffled through the papers inside, and handed Shayne a dozen typewritten sheets clipped together at the top.

  He glanced at the first page and tucked the manuscript under his arm with a satisfied nod. She was facing the mirror, and she leaned forward to study her disheveled reflection with a rueful grimace. “I look and feel as though I’d been put through a meat chopper,” she murmured. “I hope you don’t mind if I just flop into bed.”

  Shayne was standing very close to her. He reached his left hand around and covered the back of her hand gripping the edge of the bureau. “I have just one question, Beatrice.”

  “What is it?”

  “Why did you kill Ralph Morton?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Crowning Touch

  HER BACK WAS TOWARD HIM, touching the front of his coat, his arm reaching around her side and his hand still covering hers. The top of her head was just under his chin. She didn’t move or breathe for a full minute.

  Then she turned and lifted her face, sliding the glasses off, and looking up at him with round, sooty eyes that held only defeat.

  “So—you know,” she breathed. She crumpled against him and pressed her face against his chest, sobbing like an exhausted child. “I’ve been so frightened—so alone—keeping it locked up inside me. I want to tell you, Mr. Shayne. It will be a relief. And you can tell me what to do.”

  He put his arms around her and she clung to him until she stopped crying. When she drew away she asked tremulously, “Can we go—some place where it’s quiet and maybe—we could have a drink?”

  “My place?” Shayne suggested.

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed. “I’d like that.”

  He said, “I know,” and withdrew the key from the lock.

  They went in silence to the elevator and down to the car. Miss Lally sat self-consciously close to the door while Shayne drove slowly to a garage half a block from his hotel, left the car there, and they walked back together.

  Neither of them spoke, but she put her hand in his as they neared the entrance. He squeezed it gently and held it as they went through the lobby and past the desk where he nodded casually to the clerk. In the elevator he spoke just as casually to the operator, asking, “Much going on tonight?”

  “Not much, Mr. Shayne.” The operator didn’t look at Miss Lally as they rose to the third floor. He opened the door and said, “Good night, Mr. Shayne,” before closing the door.

  Beatrice was gripping his hand. She said shakily, “They do this sort of thing very well at your hotel, Mr. Shayne. As though you often bring women to your room.”

  He stopped in front of his door and said angrily, “I’m not bringing you to my room. We’ll go in and have a drink and I’ll listen to your story. Then you can trot back to your own bedroom if you’ve convinced me I can conscientiously decide not to turn you over to the police.”

  He unlocked the door and strode inside, tossed his hat on a hook near the door, ruffled his red hair, and asked, “What do you want to drink?”

  She had closed the door quietly and was leaning against it. “Do you have rum?”

  “A daiquiri? Sit down and make yourself at home while I mix one.”

  He stopped at the wall liquor cabinet and took out a bottle of light rum and carried it to the kitchen. He used bottled lemon juice, and returned shortly with her drink and a glass of ice water.

  Beatrice was sitting on the couch. Her glasses lay on the serving-table, and she had removed the short jacket of her suit and fluffed her hair. She had turned out the top light, leaving only a shaded table lamp burning on a table against the wall.

  Softly lighted, she looked young, defenseless, and she leaned eagerly forward when he set her drink before her. He poured himself a drink from the bottle of cognac he had left on his desk and sat down beside her. She picked up the glass that was full to the rim with rum, lemon juice, and ice and drank half of it, quickly covering her mouth to hide a sour grimace at the strong taste of rum. “I needed that,” she said when she could speak, and turned her body slightly toward him. “Please understand this, Mr. Shayne. I’m willing to do what is right. If telling my story to the police will help them catch Miss Morton’s murderer, I’m willing—more than willing to do so. I want you to decide.”

  “I will,” he said shortly. “And I’m listening.”

  She puckered her eyes at him, unsure of herself before his bleak gaze and the deep trenches in his cheeks. “I was so terribly confused when I first came to in the hotel room and saw you and all those men. When I didn’t tell the truth then, I didn’t know what was best—later.” She appealed to him by timidly touching his arm with her hand. “You do believe me, don’t you? That I would have told the truth eventually if I became convinced it would help catch the murderer?”

  Shayne took a long drink of cognac and chased it with ice water. “I’m not believing anything until I hear the whole story,” he said harshly.

  She took her hand away. “Tell me—first—how did you guess?”

  “A number of small things that added up only one way. When you speak of catching Miss Morton’s murderer—does that mean you’re convinced Ralph Morton didn’t do it?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “I just don’t know. Did he?”

  Shayne settled back and warmed half a tumbler of cognac between his palms. “I’d like to hear from you first.”

  “It’s still like a horrible nightmare. I was so dumbfounded when I opened the door and saw Ralph Morton in that room instead of you. He was awfully drunk, Michael.” She spoke his first name tentatively and a little gasp of surprise or apology followed.

  “Go back a little,” he ordered gruffly. “You went up to three-oh-nine, as you told Gentry, still thinking I had called you?”

  “Of course. I had no reason to think otherwise. I knocked and a man’s voice said come in. The door wasn’t locked, and I opened it. He was sprawled out on the bed and I thought he looked surprised when he saw me. As though he expected someone else. I asked Ralph if you had got there yet and he didn’t even answer. He just leered at me. He got up and grabbed me and blew his foul whisky breath in my face and said insulting things. He was slimy and revolting, and I fought him as hard as I could. He tripped once and nearly fell. I started to run, but he caught my ankle and dragged me down to the floor and started cursing me. That’s when he struck me with his fist.” Her mouth primped up and she put her finger tips to the bandage. Tears covered her eyes, but she tightened her lips and the tears didn’t overflow.

  “That’s when I was first really afraid. It was one of those things that just don’t happen to people. But it was happening to me. That’s when I saw the gun on the bedside table beside a bottle of whisky. He was puffing and out of breath and staggering, and I snatched the gun. I heard the whisky bottle fall to the floor, then everything turned sort of blurry and red.” She covered her face with her hands and shuddered. Shayne took a sip of cognac and waited. When she took her hands from her face she looked at him with imploring eyes. “I didn’t hear the gun go off. I wasn’t conscious of it, but suddenly I was standing over him and there was—a hole—in his head—and blood.” She fell against Shayne and sobbed uncontrollably.

  Shayne held her until she was calm. “Finish your daiquiri,” he said gruffly, “then tell me how you came to lock yourself in the closet where you almost suffocated.”

  The ice had melted, weakening the drink, and she finished it with a few swallows. “That’s too horrible to think of. And nerve-wracking. I hardly had time to realize what had happened when there was a knock on the door. I knew it was still unlocked, and that whoever it was could just turn the knob and catch me in there with him—dead.

  “I was too frantic to think. I guess I acted automatically. The gun had dropped on the bed close to his hand. I grabbed it and wiped it clean and put it in his hand and curled his fingers around it. I was terrified for fear it
would go off again.” She shuddered and sank weakly against the couch, her hands clenched tightly in her lap.

  “The closet door was open,” she resumed after a moment. “The person at the door knocked again, impatiently. I stepped in the closet and shut the door quietly. I didn’t realize for several minutes that the door had latched and locked me in. There wasn’t even a doorknob inside. I hardly dared to breathe. I thought I could hear sounds in the room and kept expecting someone to open the door any minute. That’s when I made up the story I would tell whoever found me. The same story I told you and Chief Gentry. It was all I could think of.

  “After a while everything was quiet. It was a strange silence—like my ears were all stopped up. Then I started hurting in my chest. I couldn’t get a good breath. I was sweating all over, and I knew I had to get out of there.

  “That’s when I discovered there wasn’t a doorknob inside. The door was so tight I couldn’t even see a crack of light from outside. I went all to pieces and flung myself against the door time and time again, but it didn’t budge. I tried to scream, but not a sound came out. I kicked and pounded on the door until I was too weak to stand up. Then I fell to the floor and crawled around like a trapped animal looking for a place to get out. And that’s all I remember,” she ended, and expelled a breath in a series of jerky sighs.

  Shayne took a long drink of cognac and an ice-water chaser. “It was a brutal experience,” he said quietly, “and you tell it very well. Now, let’s have the truth.”

  She stiffened and squinted at his set features. “I’ve told you everything—just as it happened,” she said.

  “You’ve told it the way you hope I’ll think it happened,” he corrected her harshly.

  “Please, Mi-Michael,” she stammered. “I’m so tired. I can’t fence with you tonight.” She moved slowly as if to stand up, then whirled about and threw herself into his arms, clasping her arms around his neck and pressing against him.

  He stiffened his neck when she tried to pull his head down. Her lips were parted and her sooty eyes were wide open and misty.