Shayne wasted no time inquiring for Mr. Rexforth downstairs in the Atlantic Arms Hotel when he reached it. He crossed the old-fashioned lobby in long strides and stepped into an elevator that was waiting to go up. He glanced down at one of the telephone slips in his hand and saw the extension 718. He told the operator, “Seven,” when he closed the doors, got out on the seventh floor and found the room number.
He knocked loudly and waited. It was a solid oak door without a transom and he could hear no movement inside the room. He knocked again, impatiently, and the door finally opened a few inches with the rattle of an inside chain that was still in place.
A sleepy and irritable voice said, “Yes? What is it?”
“Michael Shayne. Open up.”
Something like a gasp sounded through the crack. Then the door closed enough so the chain could be loosened, and swung open again.
Shayne pushed in and confronted the scrawny figure of a man wearing rumpled pajamas and with grayish hair standing wildly on end. He was bare-footed and thin-faced, and he retreated hastily toward the bed as though in acute embarrassment, blinking his eyes nearsightedly and swallowing a prominent Adam’s Apple while he quavered, “I was sleeping very soundly. I’ll get a robe and… and my glasses.”
He snatched up a bathrobe that hung over the foot of the bed and thrust his arms into the sleeves, then padded nervously to the head of the bed where he picked up a pair of rimless glasses from the table and settled them firmly on his nose.
Thus properly attired, he lost his embarrassment and seated himself on the edge of the bed and said severely, “I’ve been expecting you to telephone me, Mr. Shayne. I sat up very late waiting for you to return my calls.”
Shayne said, “I just now returned to my hotel and found them.”
“Indeed? And may I inquire where and how you spent the night? And please, Mr. Shayne, don’t expect me to believe the implausible story your secretary gave me yesterday that you had flown unexpectedly to the West Coast.”
Shayne stood flat-footed on the floor in front of the man and glared down at him with his hands knotted into fists. “Where is she, Rexforth? Where is Lucy Hamilton? If she’s come to any harm…”
“Your secretary, Mr. Shayne? I’m sure I have no idea. I saw her only once, briefly, yesterday morning. If you’ve mislaid the young lady, it is scarcely my affair.”
Shayne stood looking down at him for a long moment while he battled with the irrational anger that had possession of him. This man knew something… but what? He was altogether too calm, too sure of himself. The important thing was to find out what he knew about the whole affair as fast as he could get it out of him.
He moved back to sit in a chair, and began by asking, “What makes you so sure I haven’t been to the Coast?”
Rexforth’s brown eyes glittered behind their glasses and his tight lips smiled thinly. “Because I have been certain that Julius O’Keefe would make a bee-line for Miami and you as soon as he was released from prison. And, Mr. Shayne, because I know he did visit you in your office yesterday afternoon… and remained closeted with you for a good period of time.”
“What do you know about O’Keefe?” Shayne demanded.
“What do I know about him?” Rexforth permitted himself a little, cackling laugh. “Everything, I assure you. I don’t think we understand each other, Mr. Shayne. Perhaps your secretary misunderstood me or neglected to inform you. I represent the North American Bonding Company. Manager of our branch office in Jacksonville, to be exact. Does that answer your question?”
Shayne said, “No.”
Rexforth sighed and placed the tips of five fingers precisely against the tips of his other five. “Perhaps it doesn’t,” he conceded. “I tend to forget that you entered the affair only recently and may not be fully cognizant of its past history. My company had bonded O’Keefe, of course, when he embezzled the hundred thousand dollars. We paid the loss. The full amount. I consider that case one of my failures, Mr. Shayne. One of my few failures. Now do you understand?”
Shayne said again, “No.”
“Oh, come now. Let’s not spar with each other. I am wholly and completely convinced in my own mind that Robert Long confided the entire story to you… or at least the salient points of it… when he died some four months ago.”
“Robert Long?” Shayne repeated the name slowly. It came as a complete surprise to him and he actually had to force himself to think over the past months to bring the incident into focus in his mind.
Of course! Long was the gambler who was reputed to have welshed on some large bets and incurred the anger of the Syndicate. Their enforcers had gone after the man and gunned him down in his automobile on a remote section of the Tamiami Trail, and by the merest chance Shayne had been present at the time of his death. He’d had no interest in Long himself, hadn’t known the man or even met him before that night.
Shayne, on another case entirely, had been on the trail of one of the trigger-men who went after Long, and it was quite by accident that he had come upon Long’s wrecked car that night and found the gun-shot, dying man inside the wreckage. Robert Long had continued to live for at least twenty minutes while Shayne remained alone with him by the roadside, but during that period he had been delirious and babbled only senseless nothings.
The newspapers hadn’t got or printed the full story, of course. There had been intimations that he had been Shayne’s client and the detective had tried to save his life from the gunman, which Shayne hadn’t bothered to deny publicly.
“What has Robert Long got to do with this matter?” he asked slowly.
Rexforth snorted sarcastically. “You were alone with him for half an hour when the man knew he was dying, Shayne. He had a burden of guilt on his conscience, and inside him was the bitter knowledge that all of it had been for naught. That all his careful plans and the subsequent wreckage of his business had been for nothing and now the money would never be recovered. Because even if Long’s wife knew the secret… and I am convinced she did… he knew O’Keefe would never in this world be willing to share it with her.
“How fortuitous it must have appeared to Robert Long that you were there to hear his dying confession and listen to his secret. Not the police. Not some crook who would try to take it all. But Mike Shayne. A tough private detective with a reputation for flouting the law when it served his own ends, yet with a certain reputation as a square-shooter withal. Of course he made an arrangement with you to approach O’Keefe in prison and induce him to cooperate with you, on your promise, I assume, that it was strictly a private matter between the two of you and that O’Keefe’s former wife would not share a cent.
“Without flattering myself unduly, Mr. Shayne,” Rexforth went on complacently, “as soon as I read the newspaper story about Long’s death, some such possibility of an arrangement flashed through my mind. It was so obvious… if one has dealt with thieves and crooks as long as I and know how their minds work. And so I waited, continuing the same careful surveillance over O’Keefe in prison that I have maintained ever since he was sentenced. And when I was informed of your first visit to him shortly after Long’s death, I knew my deductions were correct. I knew I had only to wait for you to conclude your careful arrangements to recover the money, and be ready to claim it for my company.”
He stopped talking abruptly, took off his glasses and polished them carefully with a corner of the sheet from the bed.
“It seems to me,” Shayne protested mildly, “that you’re making a lot of wild assumptions based on very few facts… or no facts at all. I’m not admitting anything at this point, you understand? Since I don’t know any of the background on the case, I simply don’t see how you arrived at any of these conclusions.”
Rexforth replaced his glasses firmly on his nose and smiled boastfully. “The embezzlement stunk to me from the beginning,” he announced. “When you’ve been in this business as long as I have, you get a feeling about such things. There was Julius O’Keefe, a six-thousand a year bookkeeper completely bonded by our company, and there was Robert Long, owner of the brokerage firm and consequently not bonded at all. O’Keefe did not impress me as the type of mentality to work out the details of a theft on such a grand scale. He was a little man, driven to distraction by a young, avaricious and very beautiful wife, who might pilfer a few hundreds or a few thousands from his employer, but would never think beyond that.
“So I looked for a master-mind who had planned and guided the operation, and there was only Robert Long who could possibly fit into the picture. He was in the perfect position to have conspired with O’Keefe, and I was convinced almost from the first that he had done so.”
“But you say he was owner of the business,” Shayne protested. “How could he profit by stealing from it?”
“It is not at all new in my experience,” said Rexforth didactically, as though delivering a lecture on economics in a classroom. “Consider first: He had absolutely nothing to lose. O’Keefe was fully bonded and North American would make good every penny of the loss if O’Keefe were convicted. He had only to confess and accept full blame, and we had no alternative. We did pay that loss, Mr. Shayne. The full hundred thousand. Not a penny of it was ever recovered. O’Keefe’s story was that he had spent it all over a period of time… on gambling and women. It was a manifest absurdity when you explored the man’s past life, but there was no proof. It is almost impossible to prove a negative.”
Shayne said slowly, “I see. So you think they split the proceeds and O’Keefe went to jail while Long remained a free man. Why would he do a crazy thing like that?”
“It wasn’t so crazy. It would have been planned that way from the beginning. He had to assume full responsibility if North American were to refund the loss. Why did he do it? Look at it from O’Keefe’s viewpoint. Here’s a man earning six thousand a year with very little prospect of advancement. He has an extravagant young wife, tries to keep up with the Joneses, lives in a heavily mortgaged house and never has a penny he can call his own.
“Why wouldn’t such an arrangement appeal to a man like that? Prison sentences for embezzlers are notoriously short. By pleading guilty and throwing himself on the mercy of the court, he can anticipate spending a few years in the penitentiary as a guest of the taxpayers, and emerge a free man… and with a bankroll of fifty thousand dollars. How else could a man like that hope to ever amass such a sum even as a result of a lifetime of hard, honest work? Of course he would jump at the opportunity if properly presented to him.”
“I can see it from O’Keefe’s viewpoint,” Shayne conceded. “But why should Long take a risk of that sort? You say he was owner of a brokerage firm large enough to sustain a loss of a hundred grand. He wasn’t living in middle-class poverty. And if I understand you rightly in discussing the recovery of the full hundred thousand, it must be your opinion that he didn’t even get his half at the time.”
“I’m positive he didn’t, Mr. Shayne. I’m certain in my own mind that the two men agreed beforehand to put the money in a safe place where neither of them could touch any of it until O’Keefe had paid his debt to the State and was free to enjoy his portion of it. Several things lead me to that conclusion,” he went on precisely.
“His brokerage firm went bankrupt within a year after the affair, indicating that it was not as firmly solvent as appeared on the surface, and certainly that he had not an extra fifty thousand to pour into it. From that point, he went downhill. I have kept very careful track of him, Mr. Shayne. The case has been almost a personal obsession with me. Long was connected with a couple of shady ventures, which were not successful, and he eventually ended up in Miami as a cheap gangster, who was murdered because he welshed on a bet.”
“That may all be true,” agreed Shayne. “But I still don’t see enough motive for a man to take such a chance in the first place.”
“There was another motive, Shayne, as I am sure you know already. In fact,” he went on fussily, “I’m sure you must be at least partially aware of everything I’ve told you here. The only reason I go over it is to convince you how perfect my case is… to show you beyond the shadow of a doubt that I can go into court and prove that the money is legally the property of my company.”
“You’re doing pretty well,” Shayne commented sourly. “But you still haven’t convinced me that Long had enough motive back in those days to take the risk you think he took.”
“You’re forgetting O’Keefe’s wife. A lovely young woman.” Rexforth’s eyes glinted behind the glasses, and he smacked his thin lips. “You know, of course, that she divorced O’Keefe a few months after he was jailed as a felon… and promptly remarried, taking Long as her second husband. That clinched the case in my own mind,” he went on solemnly. “They had kept their interest in each other completely hidden up to that point, and, like you, I had wondered about Long’s motive.
“But there it was, out in the open at last. He coveted his bookkeeper’s wife and he acquired her soon after O’Keefe was put away safely in prison. Indeed I have often wondered if he didn’t hope that O’Keefe had foolishly entrusted his secret to his wife in the beginning before he went to prison… give her, perhaps, whatever portion of documentary proof he held that would be required to recover the stolen money in collaboration with Long.
“If that was Long’s hope, I am certain it was in vain. O’Keefe was a fool, but evidently not enough of a fool to trust his wife to that extent.”
“Documentary proof?” Shayne frowned as though he did not understand. “What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, come now, Shayne. You’re not precisely a novice in these matters yourself. If you had been in O’Keefe’s position what precautions would you have taken to be certain the money would be intact when you completed your prison term?”
“I would have taken my half right then,” Shayne told him promptly, “and put it away in a safe place. And let Long have his half to do with as he wished.”
“You have a point,” Rexforth conceded. “Under certain circumstances that would be the easiest and most sensible procedure. But consider this: Let us assume that the original agreement between the two men was that Long would use his position and his influence… yes, and even some money in the right places… to obtain a parole for O’Keefe as soon as he was eligible. And if you didn’t trust your partner in crime implicitly, wouldn’t you plan to retain a hold over him that would make it advisable for him to carry out his part of the agreement? Give him a strong reason… to state it plainly… to do all he could to get you freed as soon as possible?
“You see?” Rexforth took off his glasses and practically beamed at the detective exactly like a schoolteacher who has just solved a difficult equation on the blackboard. “That’s why O’Keefe must have insisted that all of the money remain intact until he was free to enjoy his share. That’s why,” he added sharply, replacing his glasses, “I have no intention of compromising with you and accepting half the sum at this point. I am certain that you and O’Keefe have recovered… or are prepared to recover… the entire amount my company was defrauded of. I shall not settle for less,” he warned with thin-lipped sternness.
“You’re making a pretty strong demand without very much to back it up,” Shayne told him easily. “Since you’ve got everything else figured out meticulously, just where do you think the money is… and how was it placed in escrow until O’Keefe was in a position to get his share?”
“I imagine it is some place in Miami. Robert Long and Julius O’Keefe made a trip to Miami together from Jacksonville a few days before an audit of the company’s books disclosed the embezzlement. They knew the audit had been ordered and that disclosure was near, so it is reasonable to presume that they made their final arrangements at that time right here in Miami. Add the known fact that O’Keefe came directly here after his release yesterday, and I think that clinches it.
“As to the ‘how’… and I like your usage of the word ‘escrow’ in that connection… most appropriate… I am sure you know the ‘how’ of it much better than I. A safe deposit box is the first and most obvious answer, but there is the matter of identification and other legal difficulties involved in dealing with a bank. No, I think the most obvious answer would be an object placed in storage. An ordinary-looking trunk or suitcase, perhaps.” He leaned forward on the edge of the bed and peered at Shayne with glittering eyes as though he were solving a difficult problem at chess.
“Was that it? With a numbered storage receipt simply torn in half so that neither half would be acceptable without it’s matching counterpart. That would seem the simplest solution to such a problem.”
Shayne objected, “Couldn’t a man holding one of those halves go to the company and claim the suitcase by saying it had been torn in half accidentally?”
“Not with a reputable company. Not without identifying himself to their satisfaction, and not without describing the contents of the piece before it was opened in the presence of witnesses. Can you imagine a man claiming a suitcase, under those circumstances, making an affidavit that it contained a hundred thousand dollars in United States currency?”
Rexforth chuckled happily and shook his head. “No. I think that would have been just about the most foolproof procedure Long and O’Keefe could have devised under the circumstances… and I think that is what Long passed on to you before he died, Mr. Shayne,” he added, reverting to deadly calm. “His half of the receipt. Either that, or he told you the story, as he was dying, and instructed you to get his half from his wife before going to O’Keefe in prison. I am sure you were to tell O’Keefe that his faithless former wife knew nothing about your having it, and that you were to assure him she would receive no portion of Long’s half.
“Now, Mr. Shayne. Have I thoroughly convinced you that I know whereof I speak and that I hold all the trump cards? I’m sure you realize that I have merely to go to the police with my evidence and the entire sum will be promptly confiscated.”
“What evidence?” scoffed Shayne. “You’ve wasted ten minutes of my time spilling one of the wildest stories of conjecture and suppositions that I’ve heard since a certain blonde recently tried to sell me on the idea that she was Castro’s ex-mistress and had stolen a set of plans for the communists to occupy our naval base at Guantanamo.” He paused, studying Rexforth carefully to see if this brought forth any reaction.
It didn’t.
The little man in the rumpled pajamas merely moistened his lips and said, “There’s more, Shayne. Do you want to hear the rest of it, so you will thoroughly understand how impossible your position is?”
“Sure. Give me the rest of your crap. But make it fast, will you? We’re wasting one hell of a lot of time sitting here doing nothing.”
“I don’t consider it a waste of time, Mr. Shayne. Indeed, I consider it time well spent. I am certain you are now quite well convinced that you hold a losing hand. That I have, as I assured you, all the trumps on my side. I’ve explained to you in full and complete detail how I reached the conclusion that you planned to induce O’Keefe to share the stolen money with you as soon as his release from prison could be managed. I was positive of my facts as soon as I learned of your first visit with him soon after Long’s death.
“Soon after that I received information from reliable underworld connections that a movement was afoot to procure a full pardon for O’Keefe. That political pressure was being brought by persons who have influence with the parole board… and that this was being engineered by a certain attorney in Miami who has a reputation for getting results if he is properly reimbursed for his efforts.
“He is the sort of man, Shayne, to whom I realize you would turn if you were faced with a problem of this sort… the immediate release of a prisoner from the State Penitentiary.
“Then I knew, Shayne. I knew that each one of my various assumptions was correct… and I bided my time. I was informed of your second visit to O’Keefe less than a month ago, and of the subsequent action of the pardon board a few days ago. That is why I made an appointment with your secretary by long distance day before yesterday… to meet you in your office the day O’Keefe was released, but before he could possibly reach you… to ask… no, not to ask, Shayne… to demand your cooperation in the matter. To offer you our standard ten percent recovery fee in a matter of this sort. I felt that was fair. I wanted to be fair. Live and let live is my motto, Mr. Shayne. Indeed, I was prepared to be generous. I realize you must have expended a certain amount of cash, and a great deal of your time and energy on the matter already, and I expected to remunerate you for that expenditure in addition to our standard fee.
“And what happened, Mr. Shayne?” He shook his head sadly. “I found you acting in a shifty manner. Not only were you not in your office to keep a definite appointment with me at eleven-thirty, but your well-rehearsed secretary calmly informed me that you had been called out of town unexpectedly and were not expected back for a day or so at least.
“I did not believe her, of course. Knowing that O’Keefe was being released that morning, I was positive he would come directly to you… and with that amount of money at stake I could not well imagine Michael Shayne taking off into the wild blue yonder instead of waiting for O’Keefe’s arrival. I realized you were pulling what might well be characterized as one of your ‘fast ones’, but I was determined it would not work with me. Now, Mr. Shayne. Are you prepared to turn the money over to me intact… less your recovery fee, of course? Or do you intend to force me to go to the police with my information… in which event I assure you there will not even be one percent coming your way.”
Shayne hesitated a long moment before answering, glaring at Lucy’s “nasty little man” balefully. Finally, he said angrily:
“Go to the police if you like, Rexforth. You haven’t one single bit of proof for any one of your statements. Who is the lawyer who’s supposed to have been my go-between to the pardon board to get O’Keefe freed? You haven’t even named him.”
“I will, Shayne. Boal. Dirkson Boal. You can’t deny that you’ve dealt with him in the past. As soon as he came into the O’Keefe picture, masterfully arranging a pardon for the man, I knew you were behind it.”
Boal? Dirkson Boal? Sure, Shayne knew the man. Half the population of Miami knew him… by reputation, if not personally. He was a shyster, but an important shyster. He represented not only important personages from the underworld, but also had high-reaching connections into the state’s political hierarchy. If Boal had a hand in fixing O’Keefe’s pardon…?
Shayne laughed hollowly. “You call that proof, Rexforth? Sure, I’ve dealt with Boal. So has every other private dick in the city. You still haven’t placed O’Keefe in my office yesterday. Or me, either, for that matter. My secretary told you the truth yesterday morning. I had flown to California. I did not get back until six o’clock this morning, and I came direct to your hotel as soon as I received your messages. What does that do to all your assumptions about collusion between O’Keefe and me?”
“If your statements were true, they would knock my assumptions into a cocked hat,” conceded Rexforth coldly. “I happen to know they aren’t true, Shayne. I can prove they’re not. If you force me to do so, I will… to the police.”
“What can you prove?” Shayne goaded him.
“That you weren’t in California yesterday, but were waiting in your office for Julius O’Keefe’s anticipated arrival a little after four o’clock… when he did arrive.”
“How do you propose to prove a thing like that?”
“Mr. Shayne,” Rexforth protested. “I am not a complete fool. I have had a great deal of experience with affairs of this nature, and I leave very little to chance. Even though I was positive in my own mind that you had made the sort of arrangement with O’Keefe that I have outlined and that he would come straight here from prison to join forces with you to get the stolen money, I did not take anything for granted. Naturally, knowing the time of O’Keefe’s scheduled release, I had him shadowed by a trusted man from the moment he left the gates of the prison.”
Shayne muttered, “Good for you,” recalling that Will Gentry was trying to get exactly that information, and realizing that Will would be willing to give a good deal for what the bonding company man could tell him.
“Then you know where O’Keefe stopped on his way to Miami… whom he contacted?”
“I do.” Rexforth lifted his glasses from his nose and smiled a wintry smile. “No one. Not one single person. He was a single-minded person, Shayne. He didn’t attempt to cover his tracks or mislead anyone. I suppose that both you and he assumed he was completely anonymous after this long period in prison… that no one could possibly be interested in him or his movements after all these years.”
He replaced his glasses and his voice became happily venomous. “Neither of you reckoned on me. I never forget a case. I’ve told you this one had become a personal issue with me. Neither of you realized that, of course. You felt perfectly safe from observation after all these years. So my man hadn’t the slightest difficulty tailing O’Keefe all the way from the prison directly to the door of your office… and he will so testify in court, if necessary… swearing that O’Keefe did not stop on the way or carry on a conversation with anyone.”
Shayne said, through his teeth, “What else is your man ready to testify to in court?”
“Why… that you and your secretary left your office together about five o’clock and proceeded to a rendezvous in a motel room, Mr. Shayne. If you really want that fact testified to in court.”