“He came back to his drink, and gave me these two envelopes, see? And three ones. Said he was in a hurry and would I give the letters and the money to the messenger when he came. I said sure, and that’s all there was to it.”
Shayne said hoarsely, “Two envelopes?”
“Yeh. There was two. Just alike. Addressed with a pencil.”
“Addressed to whom?” Shayne’s voice was unnecessarily harsh, and the bartender looked at him with a touch of belligerence. “How do I know, Mister? None of my business and I didn’t pry. I just laid them on the cash register with the three bills, and gave ’em to the messenger when he came. Anything wrong in that?”
Shayne slowly exhaled a long-held breath. He said, “No. Nothing wrong with that. You’re sure you didn’t see either of the names? It would be worth twice that bill to me.”
“Gee, I wisht I had.” The bartender sounded truly sorry that he hadn’t been more curious. “I just didn’t look.”
“What did the man look like?”
“Like a bum,” he said promptly. “Wearing a ragged coat and needing a haircut. Thin and hungry looking. Hell, I didn’t pay no heed. Twenty-five or maybe thirty. Just a medium-looking bum.”
“You never saw him in here before?”
“Sure didn’t. I get a pretty good class of customers in here.” The bartender glanced proudly down the bar to the trio on stools near the other end. “It’s thinned out now, but half an hour ago I was pretty crowded.”
“But you’d know the bum if he ever comes in again?” persisted Shayne.
The bartender screwed up his blue eyes. “I… reckon I might.”
“If he does show his face there’ll be ten bills like that in it for you if you call the police and hold him till they get here.”
“Well, sure,” said the man uncomfortably. “If the law wants him…”
Shayne said emphatically, “They do,” and finished his drink.
As they got back into his car, Timothy Rourke said worriedly, “I guess that didn’t help much.”
“Not a damned bit. Whoever sent the note covered his tracks perfectly. Some hobo off a park bench who was delighted to earn the rest of a ten-dollar bill by having a drink in a bar and calling Western Union.”
“The notes,” Rourke reminded him emphatically as he swung around the corner and headed east on Fourth. “Who was the other one to?”
Shayne shrugged. “For you, maybe. If anyone knew you were with me tonight and it was you who did the actual grave-robbing.”
“No one knew that. I swear no one saw me there.”
“Lucy knew you were going with me,” Shayne reminded him, and neither one of them said any more until Shayne unlocked Lucy’s first-floor apartment, east of Biscayne Boulevard with a key that Lucy had given him many years before and which he had never used until tonight.
The outer door opened directly into a long pleasant sitting room with double windows overlooking the street. There was a softly cushioned divan beneath the windows, with a low coffee table in front of it. Shayne switched on an overhead light as they entered, and the two men stood close together without speaking, their eyes searching the room for any sign of disorder, any indication that Lucy had been taken away forcibly or had attempted to leave a clue as to her whereabouts behind her.
There was nothing. The room looked exactly as Shayne had seen it so many evenings in the past when he had stopped by with Lucy after a dinner together, or dropped in late to enjoy a nightcap before going on to his own bachelor quarters.
In a completely calm and exceedingly quiet voice which revealed to his old friend the intensity of the emotion he felt, Shayne said, “You stay back, Tim. I want to go through the place alone. There may be something out of place… something I’ll recognize…”
Awkwardly, Timothy Rourke said, “Sure, Mike. You go right ahead.” He leaned against the doorframe, digging out a cigarette and lighting it while he watched Shayne’s tall frame move slowly away from him with shoulders squared and chin thrust out.
The detective noted three cigarette butts in the glass ashtray on the coffee table near the end where Lucy generally sat when they were in the apartment together. That meant a couple hours of occupancy to Shayne, indicating she had come in after a leisurely dinner and relaxed for a couple of hours before going out again. There was a single dried ring on the glass table beside the ashtray. Lucy’s ingrained tidiness would never have left that ring undisturbed had she finished her drink and gone off to bed without interruption.
He moved on past the divan into the small kitchen, found everything in perfect order except for a tall glass standing on the drainboard of the sink with a small amber residue in the bottom. Again, Lucy would not have neglected to rinse out the glass and turn it upside down if she had not left hastily. He reached up a long arm and opened a cupboard across from the sink, lifted down a bottle of cognac that his secretary always kept there for him to drink from, together with a four-ounce wineglass. He emptied the warm remnants of her drink into the sink, got two ice cubes from the refrigerator and put them in the tall glass. He splashed brandy on top of them, added a modicum of tap water, and filled the wineglass nearly to the brim.
Rourke was still standing beside the door when he reentered the sitting room. Shayne held out the tall glass and said pleasantly, “Want to gargle on this while I look at the bedroom?”
Rourke said, “Sure,” and came toward him. “What do you make of it?”
“Not much this far. Lucy was here… alone… for a couple of hours after dinner. Had one drink and left in a hurry.”
“Under duress?” Rourke took the drink from him, studying his face keenly.
Shayne shrugged. “I should guess not. There’d be an overturned glass… something to signal me. She’d know I’d be around…” His voice trailed off and he took a sip of cognac, then moved to the telephone and stared down moodily at the clean white pad beside it. No telephone numbers jotted, not even a doodle. But Lucy was not the doodling kind, he reminded himself.
He went into the neat bedroom in which the only sign of disarray or hurried departure was a pair of furry mules lying on their sides near the foot of the bed. With his intimate knowledge of Lucy’s habits, Shayne knew she had changed to them immediately after coming in, had hurriedly kicked them off and put on her shoes before going out again. It was another sign of hurried departure, but not necessarily of coercion.
He went to her closet and opened it and surveyed the neat contents with bleak eyes. The array of dresses and outer wraps on hangers told him nothing, but he did note the small overnight case on the shelf above, and knew she hadn’t packed for a protracted stay.
The bathroom was immaculate, as Lucy always kept it, and told him nothing more. Rourke was lounging in a deep chair when he came out, and his deep-set eyes regarded the detective with feverish brightness. “What does the mastermind make of it?”
Shayne sighed and crossed to the divan where he sank down and took a long sip of cognac. “She came in alone and relaxed for an hour or so… then ducked out hurriedly. I don’t think she had any idea what she was getting into, Tim. She’d have managed to do something… leave some sort of sign for me…”
Lucy Hamilton’s telephone rang.
Shayne’s hand jerked and some of his cognac spilled on the carpet. He crossed to the instrument in two strides and said, “Hello,” into the mouthpiece.
The voice that answered him was deep and strong, but undoubtedly feminine. “Is that you, Mr. Shayne?”
“Yes.”
“Your hotel gave me this number. Henrietta Rogell.”
Again, Shayne said, “Yes?”
“I must see you at once. At the Waldorf Towers. It’s a matter I cannot discuss over the telephone.”
Her voice was inflexibly determined, and Shayne wasted no time in what he realized would be useless argument. He said, “In a few minutes, Miss Rogell,” dropped the receiver and strode toward Rourke who was already on his feet draining his glass.
Without pausing on his way to the door, he said, “The Waldorf Towers, Tim. Drop me there and I’ll pick up my car at the dock later.”
9
Henrietta met him at the door of her suite wearing a faded gray bathrobe, cut along mannish lines, tightly belted about her lean waist, and with comfortable-looking carpet slippers on her bare feet. Her grayish hair was released from its tight bun, tied behind her head with a black ribbon in a sort of pony-tail and fluffed out loosely about her face to soften the hardness of her features somewhat.
Shayne entered a pleasantly-decorated and nicely furnished sitting room, and she closed the door behind him and strode past with bathrobe flapping about bare, stringy ankles to a glass coffee table in front of a sofa. “I’m drinking rye,” she announced, “with a smidgen of water to cut the bite. If you want some fancy mixed drink, I can call Room Service I guess.”
There was a bottle of bonded rye on the coffee table beside a hotel bucket of ice cubes, a water carafe, and one highball glass. Shayne said, “Rye and water will be fine,” and she went through a door at the end of the sitting room and returned with a clean glass. She handed it to him, saying, “Pour your own and I’ll do the same.”
The bottle was about a quarter full. Shayne poured an inch in the bottom of his glass, fished two cubes of ice out of the bucket with his fingers and dropped them in, poured water up to the halfway mark, and watched with interest while Henrietta put double that amount of whiskey in her glass, added one ice cube and about a tablespoonful of water.
She then took a folded sheet of yellow paper from a pocket of her bathrobe and handed it to him. “This was delivered at the desk half an hour ago. By a Western Union messenger, they said.”
Shayne read the same penciled writing as his own message:
“The dog is already dead but Lucy Hamilton ain’t—yet. Tell Shayne we mean business.”
Henrietta sat on one end of the sofa and watched the redhead’s face while he read it. “What does it mean?” she demanded. “Isn’t Lucy Hamilton that nice secretary in your office?”
Shayne nodded. He got out his message and handed it to her. “Both these were given to a downtown bartender about an hour ago by a bum for delivery to us.”
She read his note. “Then you did get hold of the dog?” There was a glitter of pleasure in her eyes. “As soon as you find she died from eating my poisoned creamed chicken, you can get an order delaying the funeral until they can do an autopsy on John, can’t you?”
Shayne said, “If the dog was poisoned. If I go on and have her stomach contents analyzed.”
“If you do,” she said sharply. “Isn’t that what I hired you for?”
Shayne sat down in a deep chair in front of her and crossed his long legs. He took a sip of his drink and said, “You’ve read those two notes. I was in Lucy Hamilton’s apartment when you phoned, and she’s missing. I think I’m going to step out of this case, Miss Rogell.”
“You can’t. I paid you an exorbitant fee for a day’s work and I have some rights in the matter. This silly note.” She waved it contemptuously. “It’s just a bluff to frighten you. I didn’t think you were that sort.”
Shayne said, “My hands are tied as long as they’ve got Lucy.”
“Nonsense! I won’t have it. I demand possession of that dog’s body. I paid for it.”
Shayne shook his head. “I’ll return your check tomorrow.”
“I’ll refuse to accept it. I’ll sue you. Now you listen to me, young man…”
“You listen to me.” He didn’t raise his voice but there was a finality about his tone that checked her protest. “Your brother is dead. Lucy Hamilton is alive. I want her to stay alive. It’s that simple.”
“So you’ll kow-tow to them? Let them get away with murder just because…”
“Just because I may save my secretary’s life by so doing.” Shayne’s voice was harsh. “Exactly. Now that you understand the situation, you can cooperate by telling me anything that might help get her back. Once she’s safe, I’m perfectly willing to go ahead… but not before.”
“But the funeral is at noon. John is to be cremated and then it will be too late to do anything.”
“All the more reason we should move fast to find Lucy,” grated Shayne. “Who do you think wrote those notes?”
“They sound like Charles.”
“That’s what I thought. But I’ve got reason to think Charles wasn’t physically capable of snatching Lucy. Who else among those you suspect?”
“Any one of them. Or all of them put together. If Charles didn’t write the notes, I’d guess it was someone else who tried to make them sound like Charles.”
“You mean Marvin, Anita, Mrs. Blair and the doctor.”
“And don’t forget Harold Peabody. Cold as a fish and sharp as a hound’s tooth. He’s got more brains in his little finger than all the others put together. Wouldn’t surprise me one little bit if he engineered the whole deal from the word go.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I say. That he put Anita up to it from the very beginning. Fixed it for John to meet her in the first place, hoping he’d fall for her like he did. She was working in his office, you know. I don’t trust that man half as far as I could throw a bull by the tail, and I’ve told John so hundreds of times. I think John was beginning to catch on and he was scared he was going to lose John’s business and that would involve a complete audit… and only Harold Peabody knows what an audit would show. I told John over and over that he was a fool to give Peabody a free hand with his investments and that I bet he was stealing him blind, but John trusted him. Until lately. But I think he was beginning to get suspicious and Peabody knew it. If John was pressing him for an outside audit he’d have a mighty strong motive for seeing John died when he did.”
“That motive doesn’t stand up,” Shayne pointed out. “With your brother’s death there will be an automatic audit of his accounts and appraisal of his estate… for tax purposes, if nothing else. This is the one thing Peabody would want to avoid if your suspicion is correct and there are any irregularities.”
“Oh, no. Give the devil his due. The way Harold Peabody has got things fixed, he’s named executor of the estate and will have his finger in whatever audit or appraisal there is. Don’t think that man hasn’t got every angle figured.”
“What are the terms of his will?”
“Just what you might expect an old fool to do,” she said acidly. “Fifty thousand to Mrs. Blair and a trust fund for me that I can only spend the interest on. The rest of it to his ‘dearly beloved wife, Anita,’ with no strings attached. And my trust fund also goes to her when I die.”
“How much income will you have from it?”
“Oh, forty or fifty thousand a year. All right,” she went on fiercely, noting the expression on his face. “Of course it’s as much money as I need or can spend in a year. But that’s not the point. It’s the principle of it. Half that money is rightfully mine. I slaved for it back in the old days, right alongside my brother in a mine shaft. By every law in the land, I should have half of it in my own name.”
“It was decided the other way when you sued for half.”
“That jury,” she snorted. “What could you expect? Don’t tell me there’s equal justice for women in this country. All they could see was that John very generously doled out whatever cash I needed.”
“When you brought the suit, did you anticipate something like this?”
“John was a man… and I know how men are. Some little slut comes along and lifts her skirt, and he goes panting after her. That’s exactly what happened when Harold Peabody fixed it for Anita to lift her skirt for my brother.”
“You really think,” said Shayne incredulously, “that a man with Peabody’s reputation deliberately planned to introduce Anita to your brother, hoping he would marry her so that she could then murder him and gain control of his fortune?”
“I don’t know anything about his reputation,” she said
tartly. “Do you know the man?”
“No.”
“There you are. I don’t say there was any definite murder plan in the beginning. I certainly do think he might have felt it would be handy to have someone like Anita married to John and exerting her influence to keep Peabody in his good graces. Then… if John did start getting suspicious as I think… well, it certainly did fix things up for Harold Peabody when John died when he did.”
“And you think he’s the type to pull something like this with Lucy?”
“I consider him utterly unscrupulous. If he found out you were digging the dog up to have it analyzed, I’m sure he’d stop at nothing to stop you. How did you find Daffy?”
Shayne said, “That’s a trade secret.”
“Now that you have got her body, you’re not just going to sit back and do nothing because of these threats.”
“I don’t intend to sacrifice Lucy’s life in an effort to prove your brother was murdered.” Shayne met her fiercely questioning gaze without blinking.
“Haven’t you any guts at all? Or any decency. What about professional ethics? Do you have the moral right to let a murderer go free?”
Shayne sighed. “In the first place, I don’t know that a murder has been committed.”
“Isn’t this proof enough?” She waved the yellow sheet of paper at him. “They know the dog was poisoned just as I claimed all along, and they know that an autopsy on John will prove he was murdered. Why else would they resort to kidnapping to stop you?”
Shayne admitted, “It’s pretty conclusive, but… so long as we don’t know the dog was poisoned I have no moral obligation to go on and put Lucy’s life in danger.”
Die Like a Dog Page 8
