“Come in,” she said.
Her voice was small but determined. The gun was a little. 25 automatic. She held it firmly. Michael Shayne came into the room and she kicked the door shut behind him. She was wearing a tightly-belted blue dressing gown. Her blonde hair was brushed out loosely and fell almost to her shoulders. There were lines and shadows on her face that hadn’t been there when Shayne last saw her, but she was still, at thirty, beautiful, intelligent, self-possessed. Her eyes were gray and steady.
“Don’t you know who I am?” he said.
“Stay where you are. Don’t move.”
She backed across the room, feeling for the phone. Her fingers touched the edge of the bedside table and she knocked over a small bottle of sleeping pills. She lifted the phone.
Then she said suddenly, “Michael Shayne?”
She looked at him in horror. An instant later she dropped the little gun as though it had bitten her. “Michael! I almost-” She laughed hysterically and put her face in both hands.
He reached her in two strides and caught her in his arms. She pressed her face fiercely against his chest. “Michael. Michael. What are you doing here?” Then she pulled away from him, the look of horror still in her eyes, and said faintly, “Did you come after Paul?”
“Take it easy,” Shayne said in his gentlest tone. He put the phone back in its place. “It’s going to work out. Come over here and sit down.”
He led her to the bed and arranged the pillows. After she was settled he sat down beside her, holding her hands. They were cold and trembling.
“I just made some cocoa,” she said abstractedly, looking toward the little bedside table, which was badly marked with cigarette burns. “We aren’t supposed to cook, but I have an electric plate. No, I remember,” she said, seeming hardly aware of what she was saying, “you’d like some cognac. I’m sorry I can’t-”
He stopped her. “We don’t have too much time. When I knocked at the door, who did you think it was?”
She burst into tears. “Michael, we’ve got ourselves into such a mess! What on earth am I going to do?”
“We’ll think of something.”
He grinned at her encouragingly and looked around. The bureau had a caster missing, and tipped drunkenly. The rug was threadbare. It was worse than he expected, and he hated to see Martha living like this. He moved a box of Kleenex where she could reach it.
“I’m-I’m sorry, Michael. It’s just-seeing you like this, after so many years-”
Taking her by the shoulders, he gave her a quick shake. “Stop it. I won’t tell you how glad I am to see you, because we don’t have time. I know it’s serious. You and Paul are in trouble, and if you want me to help you you’ve got to tell me a few things. What about the gun?”
She blew her nose and said faintly, “I don’t know how to begin. I’ve been expecting something to happen for months. I thought-”
She couldn’t go on, and Shayne said, “You thought it had something to do with the smuggling?”
Her eyes widened. “Of course. You heard he’d been arrested, and you didn’t like the idea of an old friend of yours being married to a criminal. I don’t like it either. But he’s stopped, Michael! You don’t have to worry about us. He won’t do anything like that again.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” he said. “I heard about it from the customs agent-in-charge in Miami, Jack Malloy. Do you remember him?”
“Of course,” she said quietly. “Another old friend who thinks-”
Her eyes filled, and Shayne said quickly, “Keep talking about it, Martha. It may not seem so bad when it’s out where we can look at it.”
“Michael, don’t you see?” she said desperately. “I knew about it. I’m as much to blame as Paul. Oh, I argued against it, but he could tell I didn’t mean it. He just laughed at me. and went right ahead. I didn’t refuse to take the money he made by it, you notice! Certainly not. That might have convinced him I was serious. I finally laid down the law, gave him a clear-cut set of alternatives, but not until after he’d been caught! I’m so ashamed.”
“How long has it gone on?”
“Oh, Michael, for months and months. A man came to Paul and offered to sell him some cheap perfume for export. He-”
“Was his name Alvarez?”
She drew in her breath in surprise. “Luis Alvarez. Yes. Do you mean Jack Malloy knows about that?”
“Not yet. Go on.”
“Well, Alvarez explained it. What he wanted our firm to handle was bottled as toilet water. Actually it was the concentrated essence of some famous French perfume, worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars an ounce. Paul didn’t tell me about it till it was all over. It was simplicity itself. He consigned the shipment to a dummy company, picked it up and forwarded it to a big perfume company up north. For this trifling service, he was paid fifteen hundred dollars! I was horrified, but apparently not quite horrified enough. Actually, I used to feel irritated by the price my friends paid for imported perfume, and I suppose that smuggling it past the customs didn’t seem like such a terrible crime. Paul put the money in the business, and it just disappeared. Although I’ve suddenly begun to wonder if he could have spent it on-but never mind. Alvarez had another proposition soon afterward. There was never any trouble, and Paul paid less and less attention when I tried to get him to think about what he was doing. Then all of a sudden he was arrested, and it did something horrible to him, Michael. I’ve never seen a man so reduced. And all for a silly little handful of watch movements!”
“You think that was all he had?”
She frowned. “I assumed-but they have some kind of X-ray machine, don’t they? I’ve always been told that once they’re suspicious of you, you can’t bring in as much as a carpet tack without their knowing about it.”
“Jack Malloy has a theory, but there’s probably nothing to it. You said you gave Paul some alternatives?”
“Yes, I told him that if he didn’t stop for good, I’d leave him. From now on they’ll take extra precautions when Paul comes in. I used to think I was a fairly honest person, but I’m learning some unpleasant truths about myself. Did I give him that ultimatum because what he was doing was wrong, or because he’d surely be caught if he tried again? I don’t know, Michael.”
“And he agreed to quit?” Shayne said thoughtfully.
“Finally. We had quite a knockdown, drag-out fight, and even after we’d made our peace and he swore a solemn oath, I think he was still a little tempted. Apparently Alvarez has made a new offer that was very hard to turn down. I don’t know much about that man, but I imagine he got rather ugly when Paul said he was through. I thought he’d sent someone for Paul, and that was who was knocking on my door. But thank heaven it’s after midnight. Paul’s beyond his reach, and I’m going to see to it that he doesn’t come back. As of twelve o’clock tonight, our firm is out of business. What’s more, nobody’s going to miss it but us.”
Shayne poured some cocoa from the little pot into the waiting cup. He had been feeling his way blindly, and he couldn’t do anything effective without knowing a few more facts. He had ten minutes, perhaps fifteen at the outside.
He handed Martha the cup. “Better drink this. I’m going to ask you some questions, and I have a few things to tell you. Then we’ll decide what to do.”
“Michael, before you start, I want to tell you how wonderful it is to see you. I’ve been so terribly tense and upset, and now all at once I begin to think that things may turn out all right. That’s what I remember about you-how reassuring you could be. Without saying anything, just by being there. I’ve kept up with your cases, and I’ve always been so proud of knowing you! I’m afraid I boasted about it a little sometimes. You-never married again, did you, Michael?”
Shayne shook his head. “No. When this is over, I’ll tell you about my secretary, Lucy Hamilton. You were married to a cop. I think you’d understand why I don’t want to let anyone in for-” He broke off abruptly. “But that’s neither here nor there. Why did Paul charter a plane tonight instead of waiting for a regular flight in the morning?”
“His mother’s doctor cabled him. She’s very sick and wants to see him. They’ve always been very close. If you want to know the truth, I don’t think she’s all that sick-she’s a bit of a hypochondriac. I shouldn’t be saying this, but I’ll bet any amount of money that she’ll still be around thirty years from now. But Alvarez had been threatening Paul, and it suddenly occurred to me that here was my chance to wipe the slate clean. I could use my mother-in-law’s sickness to get Paul away before anything happened. Needless to say, we can’t afford to charter a plane. But I insisted. I made all the arrangements and bundled him into a taxi, without giving him time to open his mouth to protest. And to show you how wealthy we’ve become, with all of Paul’s desperate smuggling, after scraping up enough to pay for the plane I was feeling too poor to pay for a taxi back from the airport. So I said goodbye to him here.”
“Did you actually see that cable?” Shayne asked.
“No,” she said, puzzled. “He read it to me on the phone. But why?”
“Well, brace yourself,” he said bluntly. “I may be all wrong, but here’s how it looks to me. I don’t think there was any cable. He needed an excuse to get off the island in a hurry, without waiting till morning. He set up a date with Alvarez for tonight. When Alvarez showed up, Paul slugged him with a monkey wrench and took the contraband without paying for it. This was risky, but he planned to be on a plane half an hour later, and he planned to let you persuade him not to come back.”
Martha set the cocoa back on the bedside table, being very careful to keep it from spilling. She said slowly, “I don’t believe it.”
“I was there with Alvarez,” Shayne said. “I didn’t see who did the slugging, but I do know he was slugged.”
“It wasn’t Paul!” she said, putting her hand impulsively on his arm. “I know him, Michael. He couldn’t have done it.”
Shayne, who had had some experience with husbands and wives, knew how little they often knew about each other. He said skeptically, “When did he leave?”
“He wanted to allow plenty of time for all the red-tape. About a quarter to eleven?” she said hopefully. “Maybe later. He called from the airport to say goodbye. That must have been around eleven-thirty. Wouldn’t that prove-”
“He could say he was at the airport and not be there.”
“Well, I don’t suppose I can convince you, Michael. But you just don’t know how impossible it is. If you could find the taxi driver, couldn’t he settle it? No, the simplest thing will be to cable Jack Malloy. Have him meet Paul’s plane, and find out if he’s smuggling anything.”
“Paul didn’t take off,” Shayne said.
The color drained slowly out of her face as she stared at him. “Alvarez thinks Paul hit him with a wrench and robbed him, and Paul is still on St. Albans?”
The redhead nodded somberly.
“But how did it happen?” she said. “Did something go wrong with the plane?”
Shayne shook his head. “Alvarez got him on the phone just before he took off. He told him he’s holding you as hostage, and warned him not to leave if he wanted to see you again.”
She breathed out in a kind of shudder. “And Paul stayed? Thank God.”
She went on quickly, “There’s something I haven’t told you, Michael. It’s mixed up with the rest in a queer way, I don’t know how. He’s been seeing another woman, apparently for some time. I only found out about it yesterday. Oh, things have been quite hectic around here for the last twenty-four hours. At the end he promised to give up both the smuggling and the girl, but I’m not sure I believed him. That’s the real reason I didn’t go to the airport. I was wrung dry. But Michael-if he knows that Alvarez suspects him of doing this crazy thing, he must know how dangerous it is to stay on the island.” She turned her head. “And if in spite of that he stayed-”
She sat erect and said briskly, “What are we going to do about it, Michael?”
“We’ll try to put him back on the plane. Alvarez told him to go to some place in the country. A cab from the airport could make it in half an hour. Does that mean anything to you?”
She moved her head, frowning. “I don’t understand. How do you know all this, Michael? And you said you were there when Alvarez was robbed. You haven’t got into trouble on my account, have you?”
Shayne grinned at her. “Nothing serious.”
Her breath caught, and her face was suddenly flooded with comprehension. “He’s waiting downstairs!”
She swung off the bed and went to the window, approaching it cautiously from one side. Drawing back the curtain a few inches, she peeped out.
“Two cars,” she said quietly, turning. “Yes, of course. Before Paul puts his head in the noose he’ll want to make sure that Alvarez isn’t bluffing.”
“That’s right. So here’s what we’ll do. I’ll tell Alvarez I talked you into coming with me, but something made you suspicious and you gave me the slip. Get out by the back door. Steal somebody’s bike and get as far as you can in five minutes. Then stay out of sight. Maybe Paul will have sense enough to keep clear. If he doesn’t, he’ll have an easier time holding up under the pressure if you aren’t around.”
“Michael, wait a minute. Did you say half an hour from the airport? It seems to me Paul once pointed out a driveway that went in to a wonderful modern house, and said something mysterious about the wages of sin. I’ll just bet-it must be!” she exclaimed, becoming excited. “Michael, he’ll wait downstairs, won’t he? Alvarez? If we could get a taxi, maybe we could get there ahead of him and warn Paul.”
Shayne snapped his fingers. “All right, we’ll try it. Get your clothes on.”
She ran to the closet and snatched a skirt and blouse off a hanger. She pulled open bureau drawers. Carrying the bundle of clothes, she hurried to the bathroom.
“Leave the door open,” Shayne called. “I’ve got some more questions to ask you. Did you or Paul know Albert Watts?”
“Who?” she said behind the partly closed door. “You mean the Englishman who was killed?”
“That’s the one. Did he have any connection with the smuggling?”
“I’m trying to think,” she answered after a brief pause. “I don’t see how. He had some kind of job with a tourist agency, didn’t he? A strange little man with a mustache, a very fat wife. I was maneuvered into dancing with him once-quite against his will. He suffered agonies because we hadn’t been properly introduced. I thought it was terribly sad. Such a conventional little man, and then to be killed in such a disreputable and unconventional way. I’m hurrying, Michael.”
Suddenly she appeared in the open doorway, looking at Shayne, aghast. She put on the skirt and had an arm in one sleeve of the blouse.
“Michael, you don’t think Paul had any connection with that!”
Shayne lit a cigarette and spoke around it, his eyes squinting against the smoke. “Watts made a trip to Miami to find out how much the customs service pays informants. A little later Malloy got a cable from him, fingering Paul Slater. That’s how Paul happened to get arrested. When all Malloy’s boys could find were a few measly watch movements, they wrote Watts down as a nut, without much sense of proportion, and didn’t give Paul a real hard look. If it hadn’t been for those watch movements, Paul would have been followed around every second he was in the States. Then Watts was stabbed before he could collect his two-bit fee.”
Martha abruptly became aware of being only partially dressed, and disappeared. Her voice came through the opening. “And Jack thinks-”
“What else could he think? The cops here don’t know about the cable. Jack wanted to see what I could find out, if anything, before he turned it over. And as soon as he does, they’ll pull Paul in and hit him with it. This is pretty rough on you, but you might as well know it now.”
She opened the door again, buttoning her blouse. “But Michael,” she said beseechingly, “he was drunk, wasn’t he? The paper said they took a blood test. Everybody says he must have got into a fight in some bar. He belonged to that idiotic committee that’s so down on the natives, and he made some belligerent remark while he was drinking, and a native followed him out to the street and they fought.”
“All that is possible,” Shayne said, “but after the cops hear about the cable to Malloy, they won’t think it’s very likely. And there are two points about that five hundred dollar fine. If a pigeon like Watts can give away a small shipment, he can give away a big one. And Malloy has a wild idea that Paul was bringing in something big that they didn’t catch. The watch movements were a decoy.”
Martha tucked in her blouse, laughing shortly. “Wild idea is right. You can tell Jack from me that Paul is very definitely in the minor-leagues as a smuggler, or else it’s a well-kept secret. Seriously, Michael, this is something I really think I’d know. I know that keeping two women at one time can run into money, but goodness-I could show you his socks. I don’t mean to sound frivolous, but he doesn’t have a whole pair to his name. His shorts are ready for the ragbag. And as for murdering anybody-no.” She shook her head. “That is something you must stop thinking about. I said I was sure he couldn’t lie in wait for somebody and hit him from behind. If there was enough money at stake, and he thought he wouldn’t get caught, maybe he could talk himself into trying it. But something would go wrong. He’d swing an instant too soon or an instant too late, if he could do it at all. And I’m glad he’s that kind of person.”
“The killing was a week ago Wednesday,” Shayne said. “Sometime between six, when Watts left his office, and twelve-thirty the next morning. Do you know where Paul was during that time?”
She smiled. “Of course. Sometimes we go our separate ways in the daytime, but we always meet for dinner and spend the evening together. We have a dozen favorite picnic spots-picnics aren’t as expensive as eating in restaurants! Every now and then, once every two or three weeks, perhaps, one of us goes out on a buying or a scouting trip. But last week-”
She was putting on a pair of high-heeled shoes. She straightened suddenly, her face very still. “Well, one day last week-it wasn’t Wednesday. But I can look it up.”
She put on her second shoe and went to the little drop-leaf desk. There she rummaged about until she found an engagement calendar. Her back was turned to Shayne, but the redhead knew what she had found even before she swung around to face him.
“It was Wednesday,” she said. “I hired a car and drove across to a fishing village where we know some people who make wonderful glazed bowls. I’ve been in such a daze-I could have sworn it was earlier in the week. I wanted to save paying for a room, so I drove back that same night. I doubt if I got in before eleven. But that doesn’t mean anything, Michael. We just have to ask Paul what he was doing, and-”
She paused, and went on hopelessly, “No, he told me he packed a few sandwiches and went for a long bike ride. Unless he was lying, and he was with that girl? But Michael, it’s all beside the point! He didn’t do it, and that’s that. Why does it have to be Paul, just because it was his name in the cable? Why not Alvarez? Everything else about this was his doing. He could have found out about Watts. Of course he wouldn’t do it himself-he’d hire somebody. I think you’ll find that Luis Alvarez was in some extremely public place, with twenty people watching him every minute.”
She kicked off her high-heeled shoes, and went to the closet for a pair with low heels. She fumbled with the laces. She was trying to speak calmly, but Shayne could see the marks of tension.
“It’s beginning to sink in at last,” she said. “And I can remember when I actually had a sneaking feeling of admiration for Paul, when he made that huge fee taking in the perfume. It seemed almost romantic. But now! My God, Michael. Alvarez thinks Paul robbed him. Watts was killed for considerably less.”
She wasn’t far from hysteria. She pulled one of the laces too tight and it snapped.
“Let it go,” Shane said. “Alvarez is probably getting restless.”
“Michael, find out who did kill Watts! I’ll hire you. If you don’t, they’ll pin it on Paul. I can see it coming.”
“Tell me one thing. In spite of this babe of his and all the rest of it, do you still want to keep the marriage going?”
As she stood up, she gave him one of the direct, candid looks he remembered. “I don’t know,” she said simply. “It was a real kick in the teeth for me, finding out about this girl. Things can’t be exactly the same again, no matter what happens. He promised me today that he would break with Alvarez. If I find out that he lied to me about that-Michael, I don’t know. I think-I’m still in love with him. I probably always will be. I don’t want anything bad to happen to him. But ask me if I want to stay married to him after I find out the real truth.”
Shayne rubbed out his cigarette. “When this is over, will you give me a complete statement of everything you know about the smuggling?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Yes, Michael. It will be a horrible thing to have to put down in black and white, and I hope you won’t have to use it. But I want to put an end to this nightmare, once and for all.”
She felt in her handbag and took out a pound note.
“What’s that for?” Shayne asked.
“If anybody asks you if you have a client, don’t you want to be able to say you’ve been given a retainer?”
Shayne grinned, taking the note and putting it in his pocket. “That doesn’t mean they’ll believe me. No, leave the light on,” he said as she reached automatically for the light switch. “No point in letting them know we’re leaving.”
He approached the window carefully, keeping well back from the lighted rectangle, and drew the curtain aside. The Hillman was where he had left it, and a slightly larger car had pulled up behind it. He could make out two figures in the shadows. One of these, in a dark suit, was probably Alvarez. There was a third man at the wheel of the second car.
Martha was nervously putting on lipstick. She blotted her lips on a Kleenex and said, “We can go out through the laundry room in the basement. There’s a big hotel farther along the shore. I think we can get a taxi there.” She waited with her hand on the doorknob. “You’ve brought me some bad news tonight, Michael. Paying you that silly retainer doesn’t change anything, but it makes me feel better. I’m not exactly unbiased on the subject of Michael Shayne. If anybody can make sense out of this, you can.”
He grinned at her and they went out. The fact that Shayne now had a client would give him a slight tactical advantage when he came to talk to the cops, but in another sense it was unimportant. Sooner or later in most of his cases, a moment came when he no longer cared whether he would end up with a fee or not, even whether he would come through with a whole skin. He had lived with danger so long it no longer meant anything to him. He was like a structural steel worker who spends his working day high in the air on a strip of steel a few inches wide. That was simply the way he made his living. There was only one thing he cared about, and that was to get to the bottom of the problem that faced him.
He had arrived at this point now. He wouldn’t have come this far if Martha hadn’t been an old friend, but that, too, no longer mattered. Someone had killed an obscure Englishman, Albert Watts. Watts meant nothing to Shayne, but his killer meant a great deal. From now on there was an almost emotional bond between Shayne and the killer. It would be broken only when Shayne had trapped him and made him admit his guilt.
On the third floor, Martha rang for the elevator. They could hear the sound of the buzzer beneath them in the shaft. They went quietly to the next landing and waited to hear the clanking as the elevator started up. When there was still no sound, Martha went back to the third floor and gave the desk clerk another long, urgent summons. They listened again. She whispered to Shayne, “He must be asleep.”
They went down the last flight to the lobby. She looked cautiously around the corner. Then, looking back at Shayne, she drew a little diagram in the air, showing him which way to go. He followed her into the lobby. He caught a swift glimpse of the clerk, an old colored man, tipped back precariously on his stool, his eyes closed and his mouth wide open. Martha opened the door to the basement stairs and motioned him ahead of her.
When the door closed they were in utter darkness. He felt her hand on his shoulder. His fingers closed on a railing. He groped ahead with his other hand and went down slowly, feeling his way a step at a time.
At the bottom he whispered, “I’m going to light a match. We don’t want to kick anything over.”
As the match flared they started forward, hand in hand. The way was fairly clear. After the match flickered out he went by memory for a few more steps before stopping to light another. This one took them to the door of the laundry room. Clawing a cobweb out of his eyes, he went on. The third match was still burning when they reached the outside door. He shook it out.
He felt her hands on his arms. She was very close. Her lips brushed his cheek.
“Thank you, Michael,” she said. “For everything.”
She opened the door. For a moment he saw her slight figure against the stars.
He followed her out, and a blinding light struck him in the eyes. A voice said, “Hold it, Shayne,” and something jabbed him hard beneath the left arm.
It was a bad place for Shayne to be hit. A wave of pain rose around him and nearly pulled him under.