Shayne shook his head. “That won’t be good unless you want to be picked up for questioning. There’ll be police staked out all around there tonight.”
“I don’t know what else I can do,” she said forlornly, tears creeping from her eyes again. “Why did it have to happen tonight? What’ll he think? What’ll he do when he can’t find me?”
“Under the circumstances, I should think he’d wait until tomorrow morning when it won’t look suspicious to be seen hanging around there—and expect you to do the same. Things will look better in the morning after you’ve had a good night’s sleep.”
“But I’m broke like I told your. I don’t know where—”
Shayne said easily, “I’ll stake you to a room for the night.”
“I couldn’t—not after all this.” She gestured toward the empty platter and glasses.
“Don’t be silly.” He made his voice sound fatherly and quite indulgent. “You can repay me after you’ve found your Pete. No strings attached,” he went on briskly, glancing at the check and laying bills atop it. “If my wife were wandering around a strange city, I’d hope some man would do the same for her.”
She looked at him with shining eyes. “I do believe you mean it. I thought every man—”
“Not every man,” he assured her. He got up and took her arm firmly to lead her out to his car. He got in and suggested, “Without any luggage, a tourist court is your best bet to avoid embarrassment. There are nice ones right on the edge of town.”
“Whatever you say.” She sighed and relaxed with her shoulder just touching his. “I was so frightened back there. I guess I just about went crazy. I couldn’t think what to do. All I could think of was—was—”
“Pete,” supplied Shayne without looking at her.
“Was Pete worrying about where I was,” she accepted quickly. “Me without a penny and not knowing where I’d ever find him again.”
Shayne drove east to Biscayne Boulevard and turned north in quest of a tourist cabin where he could install the self-styled Mrs. Peter Smith for the night. He didn’t know where or how she fitted into the picture—or whether she actually fitted in at all, but he had a strong hunch she did somehow. The wounded and missing Jack Bristow was from New Orleans according to Lucy, and this girl had just arrived from that city. It had been prearranged that she should meet her husband in front of the house where a murder had occurred, and from which spot Jack (with a bullet wound in his belly) had been picked up by a taxi about the time she had expected to meet him.
Strictly speaking, he knew he should turn the girl over to the police for questioning at once. But he was pretty much on the spot on that score. If, as he suspected, it was Jack Bristow whom she had planned to meet, the whole matter of Lucy’s hiding Jack in her bedroom, and of his unwittingly allowing the wounded man to escape by refusing the police entrance to Lucy’s apartment would certainly have to come out in the open if he gave her to the police now.
And he wasn’t ready, yet, for that to come out. Not until he was satisfied in his own mind that Jack Bristow was a murderer. In that case, it would have to, of course. From what Jack had told Lucy, it was quite evident that he was in some sort of trouble and wished to avoid contact with the police. That tied in with this girl’s words and actions. Although she had denied that her “Pete” had reason to fear the police, Shayne didn’t believe her for an instant. Just being a stranger in town and meeting by prearrangement at an address where a murder happened to occur didn’t put one under police suspicion.
Mostly, he believed she had told the truth. The few lies she had told had been rather transparent falsehoods. It couldn’t do any real harm, he reasoned, to put her on ice for a few hours while he investigated a little more. One thing he was certain about was that she had no money. No one could have watched her clean up her plate and swig down two glasses of milk and doubt that fact. So she would certainly stay put wherever he left her for at least the night, and by the next morning he would know better what to do with her.
He turned his car in at the first nice-looking motel that had a lighted Vacancy sign out, pulled up in front of the Office sign, and honked lightly. A man hurried out and came around to his side, saying cheerfully, “A cabin? Yes, sir. Got just one left. You want to pull ahead to number six, you and the missus can take a look.”
Shayne drove slowly to number six with the man walking beside him. Neither he nor the girl said anything as the man turned on the light and they got out. He let her precede him into a large, clean room with a double bed and shower bath, and he stopped in the doorway and asked, “Look all right to you?”
She turned slowly, biting her underlip and with a desolated expression on her pinched face, said, “I—guess so.”
“Seven dollars for the two,” announced a brisk voice at Shayne’s elbow. “You wanta come over to the office and register?”
Shayne left his car in front and walked back to sign the register, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Smith, Homestead, Florida, and to write down the make and license number of his car. He paid seven dollars and received a key and the information that if they stayed past noon the next day they would be charged for another night.
He said good night and went back to enter the room where the girl from New Orleans sat on the edge of the bed with her face in her hands. He laid the key on the dressing table and told her flatly, “We’re registered as Mr. and Mrs. Peter Smith of Homestead, Florida. There’s the key. Lock the door behind me and get a good night’s sleep. I’ll drop around in the morning to buy you some breakfast and take you wherever you want to go.”
She dragged her hands away from her face and looked up at him with a dazed expression as though she hadn’t understood him.
“You—you’re not—staying?” she faltered. “When you went ahead and pretended we were married—”
Shayne laughed shortly and turned to the door. “Get it out of your young head that every man in the world wants to make you. I registered like that to save questions and embarrassment. See you in the morning.” He went out, pulling the door shut behind him with unnecessary force, got in his car, and drove back to Lucy’s place.
Chapter Five
Lucy Hamilton was blinking and rubbing sleep out of her eyes when she met Shayne at the door. She looked worried and nervous, and caught him by the arm to demand beseechingly, “Did you find out anything, Michael? Anything about Jack?”
“Not much.” He closed the door with a frown. “I didn’t want to make myself too conspicuous asking questions about him. All they actually seem to have is that a taxi picked him up outside with a gunshot wound just about the time the girl must have been strangled. I’ll get all the dope from Tim Rourke as soon as I can locate him. In the meantime, Lucy. Was Jack Bristow married?”
“I don’t think so. Not when I knew him, I’m sure. He wasn’t—the type you’d expect to marry very young. Why, Michael?”
He shrugged and went to the sofa to sit down. “Just a hunch.” He told her swiftly about the girl who had accosted him at the scene.
“So I’ve got her stashed there for the night,” he concluded. “Might be one of Jack’s girls, huh, if they’re not actually married?”
“He was the sort to have one in every port,” she conceded, sitting at the end of the sofa and curling her feet beneath her. “What do we do now?”
He was saved from having to answer by the ring of her buzzer from downstairs. Shayne motioned her back and hurried to the speaking tube to ask who it was.
He said, “Sure. Come up,” and pressed the button. He opened the door wide and turned to warn Lucy: “Chief Gentry and Tim Rourke. Let me do the talking until we find out what it’s all about.”
Will Gentry, chief of the Miami police force, was a big, stolid man with a beefy face and curiously rumpled eyelids which habitually drooped low over wearied and cynical eyes. He wheezed as he pulled himself up the last step to Lucy’s landing and nodded briefly to Shayne, who lounged in the doorway.
Shayne shrugged and mo
ved aside to let Gentry enter. He raised bushy red eyebrows inquiringly at Timothy Rourke, his second oldest friend in Miami and long-time reporter on the Daily News. Rourke was lean and hard-muscled as a greyhound, and carried himself with the same springy ease. He shook his head and put a finger to his lips in response to Shayne’s unspoken question, indicating that he had tagged along on sufferance and his promise not to talk out of turn.
Shayne nodded his red head a quarter of an inch and wheeled to precede Rourke into the room.
Chief Will Gentry stood flat-footed in the center of the rug with an unlit black cigar in his blunt fingers. Moving in from the door, Shayne saw him put the cigar carefully in his mouth and then fumble inside his right vest pocket. Instead of producing a match, he drew out a small slip of paper, folded once, and held it out to Lucy.
“Is that your handwriting?”
Lucy took the paper timidly, glancing up imploringly at Shayne but getting no response from him. Her fingers shook as she unfolded the paper and saw her name and street address written on it in ink. She shook her head and frowned in perplexity. “No. I didn’t write it.”
“Looks like a woman’s handwriting,” persisted Chief Gentry.
She nodded hesitant agreement. “But it’s not at all like mine.” She held the paper out to Shayne for confirmation. “Is it, Michael?”
He glanced at the slip and shook his head at once. “Of course not. What is this hocus-pocus, Will?”
“Do you have any idea who might have written it, Lucy?” persisted the chief.
“If you mean do I recognize the writing—no. Any one of lots of people might have written down my name and address, I suppose.”
Will Gentry shrugged burly shoulders and looked around for a comfortable chair. He lowered himself into one carefully and began to search his pockets for a match. Timothy Rourke moved past Shayne toward a seat on the divan beside Lucy, tilting a hand toward his mouth expressively and lifting black eyebrows.
Shayne nodded and started toward the kitchenette, asking Gentry, “Want a drink while you’re being mysterious, Will?”
“Beer,” sighed Gentry, “if Lucy has any on ice.” He had found a kitchen match, and now struck it on the sole of his shoe, put flame to end of his cigar.
He was placidly emitting clouds of noxious black smoke when Shayne returned with an uncapped bottle for him, bourbon and water for Rourke. The reporter was sitting upright beside Lucy, his gaze fixed on the trailing end of the loose telephone cord behind the chief’s back. His black eyes glittered with interest and with some amusement up at the redhead when Shayne handed him the drink. “Been trying to date some gal right here in front of Lucy?”
Shayne glared at him for silence and disregarded the question. He sat at his end of the divan and asked, “Ready to tell us what it’s all about, Will?”
Gentry approvingly drank half his bottle of beer. “That slip of paper with Lucy’s name and address on it was found on the floor beside a Miami telephone book open at the H’s. As though someone had looked up her number.”
“I had her change to an unlisted phone six months ago,” explained Shayne. “Too many cranks know she works for me. So you found this on the floor. Where?”
“In a rooming-house on Eighteenth Street.” Chief Gentry flicked ashes on his paunch and drank more beer from the bottle.
“That’s very interesting,” said Shayne in exasperation. “Certainly explains everything. Look, Mr. Bones, what was particular about the paper that you came into it and brought it here?”
“The most interesting thing of all,” said Gentry placidly, “was that the body of a dead girl lay on the floor, too. She’d been strangled.”
Sound was wrenched from Lucy’s throat. She started forward, her face worked convulsively, but Shayne put in sharply, “Some friend of Lucy’s? Is that it?”
“I don’t think so.” Gentry’s veiled eyes hadn’t missed Lucy’s involuntary start, but he disregarded it and answered Shayne matter-of-factly. “We don’t know too much about the dead girl yet, but offhand I wouldn’t pick Trixie for anyone Lucy’d give her address to. Handwriting doesn’t jibe, either, with samples we found in her room. What I am guessing is that the man who killed her had the address in his pocket and dropped it accidentally.”
“That sounds like a reasonable deduction,” said Shayne scornfully. “You don’t suspect Lucy of being intimate with a murder victim, but with the murderer. Any particular reason for thinking that?”
“Why, yes,” said Gentry comfortably. “It does seem reasonable when we know from a taxi driver that a young fellow flagged him half a block from the Eighteenth Street address soon after we figure the girl was killed, and had him drive to this building. He acted nervous and funny in the cab,” Gentry went on slowly, “and after he got out the driver noticed a blood smear where he’d been sitting.”
“I get it.” Shayne sat back and nodded. “The man Sergeant Loftus was looking for. Did he find him?”
“Not here. The trail was maybe an hour cold. He searched every apartment in the building,” Gentry went on heavily, “except this one. Claims you objected so he laid off.”
“Did he tell you why I objected?” Shayne demanded hotly. “When your damned storm troopers learn some manners they’ll get along better in police work.”
“Loftus told me about it,” grunted Gentry. “Don’t blame you much, Mike, but things would look a hell of a lot better if you hadn’t interfered. Too bad Loftus didn’t know about this name and address when he was here.”
“If he had,” said Shayne, “I’d have invited him in to look for himself. As it was—” He spread out his big hands with the palms upward.
“Sure. But it’s going to look bad if the papers get hold of it.”
Shayne grinned and glanced aside at Rourke. “So you brought a reporter along with you?”
“To give me the chance to cover up for you—as usual,” said Rourke. He yawned and unwound his lean body from the couch, strolled casually toward the open bedroom door that sagged inward on loose hinges behind Gentry.
Lucy started involuntarily and put her knuckles to her mouth, but Shayne’s eyes followed the reporter with only casual interest and he called out, “Men’s room is on the right.”
Light footsteps came running up the stairs at that instant, and a trim young officer paused in the open outer doorway panting excitedly.
“Thought you’d want to hear this, chief. Just got a flash over the radio from headquarters. An anonymous telephone call about half an hour ago identifies the Eighteenth Street killer as Jack Bristow from New Orleans. With a description and a report that he is shot in the stomach, confirming the taxi driver about his coming here.”
“Shot in the stomach, eh?” muttered Gentry. “There wasn’t any gun or blood in the room.” He was turned in his chair to listen to the man in the doorway, and didn’t see Lucy stiffen and turn fear-drenched eyes on Shayne, or note Shayne form the words with his lips: “Recognize the name, but take it slow.”
Gentry said, “Thanks,” dismissing his driver with a nod. When he turned back, Lucy was leaning forward nervously, lacing her fingers together while she frowned in apparent deep thought.
“I know that name, Chief Gentry,” she began faintly. “New Orleans made me think of it. Arlene Bristow’s brother. She worked with me before I met Michael. I met Jack once. Years ago.”
Chief Gentry was all attention. “That must explain it. Does she know your present address?”
“Arlene? Oh, yes. We correspond every few months. I suppose she might have given it to Jack if he was coming to Miami.”
“But he hasn’t been in touch with you recently?”
“She’s telling you,” said Shayne angrily. “My God, Will. If Lucy has any important dope on a murderer she won’t hold out.”
“Describe him,” ordered Gentry, getting out a pad and pencil.
Hesitantly, Lucy described Jack Bristow, and at Gentry’s insistence gave him Arlene Bristow’s New Orleans addre
ss.
Rourke came lounging in from the bedroom with his hands thrust deep in his pockets and a peculiar glitter in his deep-set eyes, just as Gentry finished getting all the information he could from Lucy, and got to his feet, saying, “The man must have come here hoping you’d hide him out and help him on account of his sister. You being here must have scared him away, Mike. Too bad you couldn’t have been a little later and walked in on him. I’ll phone this in to headquarters and have them check with Miss Bristow in New Orleans.” He turned toward the telephone with pad and pencil in his hands, but Timothy Rourke forestalled him swiftly by leaping forward and grabbing the useless handset, putting one foot on the trailing cord to hide it from Gentry’s eyes, and beginning to dial feverishly.
“I need this phone, Will. You’ve got a two-way radio at the curb that’ll do your job faster. Have a heart,” the reporter urged as the chief hesitated between anger at his impudence and a willingness to co-operate. “I’ll hold off on this other stuff. Just a flash to hit the Bulldog with his name. From an anonymous informant.”
He said, “Gimme rewrite,” into the dead phone, and Gentry nodded sourly and lumbered to the door. “Anything to get you out of my hair, Tim. But you’ll have to bum your own ride back. Anything else happens, let me know, Lucy.”
He went out, and Shayne got up carefully to cross the room and close the door on the night-latch.
Rourke dropped the phone on its prongs and wiped sweat from his face. “That was a close one. Pour me another drink, Mike, and then you children settle down and tell papa exactly the sort of games you’ve been playing with telephones and bedroom doors and such.”
Chapter Six
Michael Shayne grimaced sourly and growled, “All right, Bright-Eyes. That was fast thinking when you grabbed the phone in front of Will, though not really necessary. We’re not hiding anything. Not much, anyhow,” he amplified with a glance at Lucy.
She smiled back at him with an effort. “I’m afraid I’ve got you in an awful mess, Michael. Though I still swear I can’t make myself believe Jack Bristow can be guilty of anything like murder.”
Death Has Three Lives Page 4
