“It’s the perfect solution,” she agreed. “And no one could ever prove otherwise if I hadn’t made the telephone call to Mr. Torn.”
“About which no one can give evidence except Ralph Barnes.” Dirk strode to her side and took her arm firmly in his grasp. “If I know anything at all about Ralph, you should have no real difficulty persuading him to remain quiet about that. He needn’t actually lie when the police question him. He need only tell the truth about bringing you home from Bart’s and dropping you here. If he doesn’t mention the telephone call, the police will never know you didn’t come directly upstairs to spend the next few hours with me.”
“Wait a minute,” she faltered. “When you speak of persuading Ralph… you know what he will expect in payment?”
Dirk nodded gravely, his eyes holding hers. “I can easily guess. But, remember your danger, Aline. And the position I’m in myself.” His voice was deep-throated and strong. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret later, but think it over very carefully before you decide either way.”
Aline nodded and drew in a deep breath. “Don’t forget about Doris,” she warned him. “She knows I was out on the street at four o’clock without my purse and with no key to my apartment.”
“I think Doris will play along. She isn’t the sort who’d want to make trouble for you. She doesn’t know about the phone call, of course, and has no reason to suspect you were with Torn. You might even tell her that you and I were together, but ask her not to tell Ralph.
“And, of course, Ralph mustn’t know we’re going to tell the police we were together. He knows we weren’t. And he mustn’t know he’s providing me with an alibi at the same time, or he’d probably balk. But if he thinks he’s simply doing you a favor by keeping you out of a nasty mess, I hardly think he’ll refuse.”
“I don’t think he will, either,” agreed Aline breathlessly. “It is the right thing, isn’t it? Since I do know I’m completely innocent but have no way of proving it.”
“Innocent persons have been convicted before this,” Dirk reminded her gravely. “I think I’d better run along now and try to pacify Ina. You’d better have a talk with Ralph right away.”
“I will,” Aline promised, moving with him to the door. “You’ll never understand how much good it’s done me just to be able to talk with you, Dirk.”
“I think I do know.” He smiled wearily. “Remember, I’m in the same boat. Call me about Ralph?”
Aline told him she would. As he hesitated in the doorway, she rose impulsively on her toes and touched her lips lightly to his.
Then he was gone and she was alone in the apartment. She felt almost light-hearted now. It was going to be all right. If she could persuade Ralph not to tell the police about her midnight phone call, no one could possibly prove she hadn’t been with Dirk during the time Vincent Torn was being murdered.
10
That was the end of Elsie Murray’s manuscript. I laid it aside with an empty feeling of regret. If she had only gone on a little further!
But here was enough, it seemed to me, to provide a definite motive for her own murder. If the events in her story had happened (as she assured me they had) substantially as related by her, it seemed to me that at least one of her characters had a perfect reason for wanting the manuscript suppressed.
Poor silly Elsie! From the way she wrote about Dirk, it appeared that she was wholly unaware how cleverly he had used her in setting up an alibi for himself while pretending to provide her with one.
It is one of the classic gimmicks in detective fiction, of course, and I recognized it instantly.
But who was the man she called Dirk in her script? That was the burning question. She had told me that she had carefully changed all names and physical descriptions of the people involved, but it shouldn’t be too difficult, I thought, to identify him once one learned more about the girl herself and her associates.
The important thing was to get a duplicate copy made before the police came and impounded the one I had.
I looked at the slip of paper on which Ed Radin had written the address of the duplicating firm. It was a low number on West 45th Street. My watch said it was five o’clock. I slid Elsie’s manuscript back into its manila envelope, put on my hat and a light topcoat. With the envelope inside my coat and held through the cloth with my right hand in my coat pocket, no one would notice that I was carrying anything as I left the hotel.
I didn’t try to get out without being seen. I went down in the elevator, stepped out into the lobby briskly and nodded to the clerk at the desk just as though it was my regular custom to take a five A.M. constitutional. I went out onto 52nd Street and turned left to Madison Avenue, took off my eyepatch as I left the hotel and put it in my pocket.
I waited at the deserted corner only a matter of minutes before a cruising cab pulled in to the curb. I told the driver to drop me at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 45th, and he looked puzzled but didn’t ask any questions.
When he dropped me there, I walked west along 45th, taking the envelope from under my coat as I did so.
The address was a small hotel such as that particular district is dotted with. A clerk was dozing at the desk, and he yawned when I asked for the Overnight Duplicating Service, motioned to a corridor leading to the left off the rear of the lobby and said, “I think there’s someone working now. If they don’t answer the door I can call them.”
I went along the corridor to a door with a sign on it, and the word ENTER beneath.
Inside was a tiny reception hall with a waist-high shelf separating it from two rooms. One door was closed, but the other was open and the room was lighted. I could hear movement inside but couldn’t see anyone, and I called, “Anybody home?”
A man’s voice answered, “Be right with you.”
He came out in a moment, shirt-sleeved and weary-faced. I put the manuscript on the shelf and told him, “I’m a friend of Ed Radin, and he asked me to bring this by for him. A particular rush job. Can you knock out one copy fast for him?”
“For Ed Radin, I can and will. Let me look at it and try one sheet and I’ll tell you exactly how long it’ll take.” He opened the envelope and took out a sheet, looked at it with a nod of approval and said, “Ought to go through all right. Just a moment.” He stepped inside the lighted room and went to the rear out of my sight, and was back within a minute with the original sheet and a duplicate of it on good heavy paper in blue ink.
I glanced at it and saw it was perfectly legible, and said, “My God, that is fast.”
He nodded absently and riffled through the sheets, glancing at the final page number. “Only fifty-six pages,” he muttered. “You want to wait?”
“How long?”
He shrugged. “Fifteen or twenty minutes.”
I said, “I’d like a cup of coffee. Any place open around?”
“There’s a Childs’ on Sixth Avenue a little way up.”
I thanked him and went out and over to Sixth Avenue, putting my eyepatch on again. I found the restaurant almost deserted, ordered scrambled eggs with crisp bacon and coffee, and when the order came I made a fuss about the bacon not being crisp enough, and sent it back for more cooking. That, with my eyepatch and the earliness of the hour would impress my presence on the waitress, I thought, if the police did question me about my early morning stroll from the hotel. I left her a fifty-cent tip to further catch her attention, went back to the place on 45th, removing my patch again before entering.,
The duplicate was ready when I got there. I asked him how much and he told me two-eighty and I paid him, taking the original script and telling him, “Ed Radin will be in to pick up the duplicate copy later. Will you hold it here for him?”
He said he’d be glad to, and I went out, walked up Fifth Avenue to 52nd and east to the Berkshire, replacing my eyepatch and slipping the large envelope inside my coat again.
It wasn’t quite six o’clock when I reentered my suite. I laid the manila envelope on the coffee table, dro
pped my hat on top of it. Then I poured out a big slug of cognac and carried it in to the bedroom where I stretched out without undressing. I drank it straight down and left the light on while I smoked one cigarette and reviewed my situation as dispassionately as I could.
I wasn’t frightened or particularly worried. I simply couldn’t believe I was really a murder suspect. True, I was the last person known to have seen Elsie Murray before her death, and I had absolutely no proof that she had been alive when I left her apartment. There would be plenty of tough questioning I knew, and plenty of official suspicion. But all I had to do was tell the simple truth and stick with it. They couldn’t prove I was lying, because I wouldn’t lie. Except about the telephone calls to Radin and Shayne, and my trip to the duplicating place. And even if they did dig out the truth about those, they weren’t particularly damning. They were exactly what an innocent man would have done (what an innocent man had done, I corrected myself).
No. I wasn’t squirming or frightened. I found myself looking forward with interest toward the police interrogation that was to come, speculating on the questions that would be asked and mentally framing the answers I would make.
As a writer I couldn’t help appreciating the opportunity I was going to have to watch an actual homicide case develop from the inside. Not only would I see and hear the cops at work, but I would actually experience much of what I’d had to imagine in the past while writing about such cases.
I realized and admitted frankly to myself, that having Ed Radin and Michael Shayne on my side made a great big hell of a difference about the way I felt. Without those two to back me up, I might well have been frightened. But I had absolute faith in Shayne’s ability to solve any case presented to him. He had never failed in the past, and this time it was his best friend in trouble.
I didn’t know anything about Ed Radin’s abilities as a detective, but I did know he was almost universally liked and respected by the New York homicide men, and his vouching for my character and integrity would carry a lot of weight. At least, I wouldn’t get any undue pushing round such as might happen to another poor devil in my position and without my friends.
I put out my cigarette and turned out the light, closed my eyes and began mentally going back over Elsie’s script step by step. It seemed almost certain that she, herself, had been unaware that what she had written was a threat to anyone. Else she wouldn’t have dared write it in the first place with the thought of publication in mind. And if she had put it down on paper, she certainly would not have allowed the person whose safety was threatened to read it.
No. It seemed obvious that Elsie had no idea who the killer was in her story. That’s why she had given up writing it. She had said she had a fictional solution worked out, but no idea what the real truth was.
Yet, I was convinced the truth was hidden there in her typescript. One of the characters involved with Aline Ferris in the earlier affair had murdered the man she called Vincent Torn. And now he had murdered Elsie and stolen a copy of the script from her apartment to prevent her from showing it to me.
Dirk, of course, was the obvious suspect. In fact, he seemed to me the only real possibility among the four involved.
I tried to put Dirk out of my mind, pretending for the moment that this was wholly fictional and thus the most obvious suspect should be eliminated.
That left Bart, Ralph, Doris and Gerry. Well, Ina, too. Dirk’s wife. Though it was difficult to see what possible motive she could have for killing Vincent Torn. There was nothing to indicate she even knew the man. If the motive for Torn’s death had been jealousy, that certainly left Ina Dreer out.
And also Doris. Unless, by chance, Doris had secretly been in love with Torn. But she was alibied by Ralph. Just as he was alibied by her. Almost exactly the same sort of situation as existed between Aline and Dirk.
In that case… if it were a manufactured alibi… Ralph was a possibility. The presence of Aline’s bag in his car was highly suspicious. Of course, he had glibly explained how it came there, but was that explanation the true one?
Could Ralph have driven Aline to the Halcyon Hotel… followed by Torn? Could not Torn have discovered them together and been killed by Ralph in an ensuing fight?
No. We knew Ralph had left her on her doorstep as he claimed. The telephone call to Torn proved she had gone into the cocktail lounge and borrowed a dime from the bartender after Ralph dropped her.
It all began to get hazy and tenuous when I reached that point in my speculations. I kept coming back to Dirk, and the clever manner in which he had induced Aline to provide him with an alibi while leading her to believe he was doing her a favor by providing her with one.
Once we found out the true identity of the man whom Elsie called Dirk, I felt we’d be well on the way to the solution of two murders.
So I rolled over and went to sleep.
11
At eight-forty in the morning, a taxicab deposited a tall, rangy redheaded man at the door of the Berkshire hotel. He carried a small, zippered overnight bag and wore a light tan Palm Beach suit and a creamy Panama tilted back on his forehead. He strode in briskly, waving aside the doorman who reached for his bag, went to the desk and said, “Brett Halliday?” to the clerk.
The clerk looked at him speculatively and said, “Oh yes, Halliday.” He cleared his throat rather loudly, glanced beyond the redhead at a man wearing a gray business suit who was conversing in low tones with the Bell Captain. He said, “One moment,” and stepped behind a partition to the switchboard, and the man in the gray suit sauntered up beside the desk and said quietly, “Were you asking for Halliday?”
The rangy man turned slowly to look at him. He saw a pleasant face with a strong jaw and alert blue eyes. He asked curtly, “What’s your interest?”
The man opened his wallet and displayed a badge. He said, “Detective Grayson from the Precinct. You a friend of Halliday?”
The redhead nodded, his gray eyes narrowing slightly. “From Miami, Florida. Michael Shayne.”
The clerk had returned to his position behind the desk, and he leaned forward eagerly as Shayne gave his name. “I thought I recognized you from your last trip, Mr. Shayne.” He said to the New York detective: “You know… this is Michael Shayne. The detective…”
Grayson nodded. He said flatly, “I know. Want to come along up, Shayne?”
“Sure. But what the hell is this?” protested the redhead. “Is Brett in some kind of trouble?”
“They’ll tell you all about it upstairs.” Grayson led the way to a waiting elevator and they went up. They got out and went down the corridor to the open door of a hotel suite. Three men were in the sitting room. They all turned to look as Grayson said from the doorway, “Here’s a friend of Halliday’s just got in from Miami. Name of Michael Shayne.”
All three of the men were dressed conservatively in dark suits. “Dick” was stamped unmistakably on the faces of two of them. The third was a solidly built man. A pleased smile lighted his face as he hurried forward with outstretched hand. “Mike Shayne! You couldn’t have turned up at a better time. You any idea where Brett is?”
Shayne said, “My plane landed less than an hour ago. Halliday was expecting me to join him here this morning. Why are the cops interested?”
“We’ll do the talking, Ed,” the larger and older of the two plainclothesmen interposed. He had a lined face that was weary from lack of sleep. He introduced himself to Shayne without offering his hand. “I’m Peters, of the Precinct Squad. I’m carrying the case. This is Lieutenant Hogan from Homicide.”
“And I’m Ed Radin,” the first speaker interposed. “An old friend of Halliday trying to help out. I remember him telling me a couple of days ago that you were flying up for the weekend, and he promised to fix it for me to meet you.”
Shayne caught the nuance of anxiety in his tone and was instantly alerted to play along with the falsehood Radin had just told. He said, “You write too, don’t you? True crime stuff?”
“
You and Ed can go into all that later on after you’ve answered a few questions,” said Peters impatiently. “Remember you’re sitting this one out on sufferance, Ed. Now, Shayne. Where’s Halliday hiding?” The three words came out like bullets.
Shayne looked astonished. “Hiding? What the hell from?”
“You claim you don’t know?”
“I don’t know one damned thing about any of this,” protested Shayne vehemently. “I flew up this morning to join Halliday for the weekend. He knew I was coming, and I expected him to be here waiting. That’s all I know. Now: What’s happened?”
“Not much,” said Peters pleasantly. “Looks as though he killed a dame last night and has taken it on the lam. You any ideas where he might try hiding?”
“Killed a dame?” echoed the redhead. “Brett Halliday? You must be crazy.”
“Maybe,” said Peters imperturbably. “We’ve got a dead woman and our only suspect is missing. You add it up.”
“I will,” said Shayne angrily. He turned to Ed Radin. “What’s the dope on all this?”
“It’s a long story,” Radin evaded. “Essentially, Brett’s the last person known to have seen the dead girl… and now he’s inexplicably missing when they come to question him. I’d like to give you the whole story,” he went on earnestly, “and see what you make of it. You must know him better than anyone else in the world, and we’re lucky you’re here to help out. Don’t you think so, Lieutenant?” he asked the tall officer from Homicide who hadn’t spoken yet.
“Oh, sure,” Hogan said sarcastically. “I’ve read some of those books about you, Shayne. Make one of your famous passes and give us Elsie Murray’s murderer, and we’ll all go home and get some sleep.”
A muscle twitched in Shayne’s jaw at the lieutenant’s sneering tone. He shrugged wide shoulders and deliberately walked across the room to a low table holding an almost empty bottle of cognac. “Anybody mind if I have a drink of Brett’s liquor?”
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