Shayne said, “Where is Brett?”
“At some hospital, I think,” Miss Gardiner told him. “Ed called in a few minutes ago from the Berkshire Hotel. You’re to call him there at room three-oh-five.”
Shayne said, “Thanks. I’ll be at this number another half hour or so if anything comes up.” He looked down at Recker’s number on the dial of the phone and gave it to her, then replaced the receiver and hurriedly looked up the Berkshire number. He dialed it and asked for 305, and a gruff voice answered.
He asked for Radin and waited a moment until Ed’s voice came over. He said, “Mike Shayne, Ed. I just talked to Miss Gardiner.”
“They think Brett will recover,” Radin told him. “He’s unconscious and they rushed him to the Lenox Hill hospital for X-rays. May be concussion. He was supposed to be dead,” the crime writer went on angrily, “in this room right down the corridor from his suite. He was evidently slugged unconscious and then dragged down here and left bound and gagged with strips torn from a sheet. He evidently came to his senses enough to roll off the bed and knock the telephone off the bed table. The operator noticed it and sent a boy up. There was a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, but they opened up and found Brett unconscious on the floor.
“What else have you got?” Shayne asked evenly when Radin paused for breath.
“Too damned little. This room was rented at six-thirty this morning by a man who registered as Alan Dexter from Waco, Texas. He explained to the clerk that he’d just arrived by plane and his baggage had been held up. He paid cash for the room and requested one on the third floor with some vague sort of explanation about a phobia he had. It’s a slack time and there were several vacancies, so he managed to get three-oh-five near Brett. That’s all of it.”
“Description?”
“Hell, it’s like it always is. No one paid particular attention. He was well-dressed and medium all over. Desk clerk thinks he could identify him but isn’t at all sure.”
“I think we’ll be able to give him a chance to do that within an hour or so,” Shayne said crisply. “I’m here at Lew Recker’s apartment waiting for a visitor who should be able to clean things up for us. Where’ll you be?”
“Up to the hospital to check on Brett first. What has Lew to do with it, Mike?”
Shayne heard a clink of glasses behind him and turned his head to see his unwilling host re-enter the room with a tray of drinkables. He said loudly into the phone:
“Recker has enough to do with it that I’m going to beat his goddamned brains out if Brett doesn’t come out of it all right. He’s Ralph, Ed. And I’ve got Doris here, too.”
“Ralph and Doris?” Ed Radin’s voice was excited now. “You’re moving fast. Shall I call you from the hospital?”
“Please. The moment you know anything.” Shayne hung up and turned with a scowl to the couple who were standing side by side at the rear of the room, looking at him with frightened speculation.
“You heard me, Recker,” Shayne said grimly, moving toward them. “On account of the lie you told the police three months ago, Elsie Murray is dead and my best friend may be at any moment. Think that over while we’re waiting for Jenson to show up.”
He went deliberately to the low table where Recker had placed the tray containing an ice bucket, whiskey and glasses. He put three cubes of ice in a tall glass, filled it two-thirds full of whiskey and swirled the cubes slowly while Recker demanded in a shocked voice:
“Brett Halliday? He’s hurt?”
“Badly.” Shayne took a drink of whiskey, glaring over the top of his glass at Recker.
“What did you mean by saying I’m Ralph?” Recker asked weakly.
“And that someone named Doris was here?” put in Estelle. “I told you my name is Estelle Stevens.”
“It’s an idiosyncrasy of mine,” Shayne told them. “I get cryptic as all hell when I’m working on a case. I refer to my suspects by names I feel they should have instead of their real names.”
“Suspects?” Recker sounded half-shocked and half-amused. “Estelle and myself?”
“Someone murdered Elsie Murray last night. And someone tried to murder Brett Halliday early this morning because he knew too much.” Michael Shayne took a deep draught of the iced liquor. “I’m narrowing it down,” he went on quietly, “and neither of you, by God, is in the clear. Have a drink, you two,” he went on conversationally, “while I make another phone call.”
He turned toward the telephone, hesitated and asked Estelle, “What’s the name of the bar where I met you?”
“The Durbin.” She spelled it out for him while Lew Recker, his face tight and expressionless, carefully began mixing highballs for the two of them.
Shayne looked up the Durbin in the book and dialed the number. When a voice answered, he said, “I’d like to speak to Officer Grady, please.”
“Grady?” The voice sounded doubtful.
“The cop from the beat. If he happens to be around.”
“Oh, him? Hold it a minute.”
Shayne held it until Grady’s voice came over the wire, “Yeah? Who’s calling?”
“Mike Shayne. Keeping an eye on our friend all right?”
“You bet.” The bluecoat lowered his voice. “Nothing happened yet. It’s the lunch hour rush and he’s stepping lively pouring drinks.”
Shayne said, “I want him over here.” He gave Recker’s address and apartment number. “Can you handle it or should I call Headquarters to send a detective around?”
“I can handle it okay.” Grady hesitated, then went on doubtfully, “If it’s not a pinch, how’d it be if I wait fifteen or twenty minutes? Things’re beginning to slack off now, and he’s due to be off duty shortly. That way’ll be easier, if there’s no big rush.”
“No rush at all,” Shayne told him. “I’ll trust you to bring him along as soon as he’s free.” He hung up and moved back to the tray to pick up his drink with a preoccupied look on his face.
Recker and Estelle had been conferring together in low voices while he was telephoning, and Recker now demanded defiantly:
“Isn’t it about time you quit being so mysterious and told us what’s on your mind? You bust in here without any explanation at all, make all sorts of vague accusations with nothing to back them up. Haven’t we any rights at all?”
“You’ll both get exactly what’s coming to you,” Shayne promised him. He began pacing up and down the room, taking short sips of his drink, his brow furrowed in thought.
“How soon will your friend be here?”
“Dave Jenson? Any time now. If he took a subway down.”
Shayne nodded, pausing to study the room with narrowed eyes. “I’m going to assume that you’re as interested as I am in getting the goods on Elsie’s killer.”
“Naturally I am.” Lew Recker spoke strongly. “I simply can’t see Dave in that connection. My God, he’s…”
Shayne made a swift gesture with his open hand. “No matter what sort of person Dave Jenson is, I strongly suspect he’s a double murderer. Keep that in mind while I go on.
“His first reaction when he arrives is going to be very important. I want him to do some talking before he realizes there’s anyone else here. Even Estelle. I want you to lead him on, Recker. It shouldn’t be too difficult. Act scared as you did over the phone and tell him the police have been here questioning you about the Elbert Green murder. Remind him of the way you helped cover up for Elsie on the telephone call, and…”
“But I didn’t,” protested Recker between clenched teeth. “I’ve told you again and again I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“And I still say you’re a liar. You play this my way or else.” Shayne strode through the side door off the living room and found himself in a hallway leading directly into a small kitchenette, with a bedroom opening off on the left.
He turned back and beckoned to Estelle, saying, “You and I will step in here when Jenson comes. We’ll leave the door ajar so we can hear everything, and I’ll be watching you, Recker. Put your door on the latch right now, so you can stand back here in my sight while you call for him to come in. Stay there in my sight while you talk to him. If you make one gesture to warn him I’m here it’ll be too damned bad for you.”
“I won’t do anything like that,” protested Recker weakly. “Why in the name of God should I? If Dave has done anything, I certainly have no reason to protect him.”
He went forward as he spoke, opened his front door and pressed the button that took it off the night-latch. He closed it again, and Estelle came over submissively to stand next to Michael Shayne at the side door. She was trembling and her voice shook a trifle as she asked him, “Couldn’t I just go now? I’ve told you everything I know. I don’t see why I have to stay.”
“Because I don’t know yet how much you’ve told me is truth and how much isn’t.” Shayne put his hand on her arm and stiffened as the soft thud of footsteps sounded in the carpeted hallway outside. “That may be Jenson now. Do your stuff, Recker.”
He drew her back through the doorway, holding her arm in a firm grip. Leaving the door partially ajar, he stood where he could watch his host through the opening.
There was a knock on the door, and Recker glanced aside nervously to be sure Shayne and Estelle were invisible to anyone entering the room, then called out loudly, “Come in.”
Shayne heard the outer door open, and a pleasing baritone voice exclaimed, “Lew! What’s this about Elsie and the police?”
Recker stood where he was. “You heard what happened to her last night?”
“Of course. She got her foolish neck twisted just as she’s been begging to have done for years. What’s that to do with you and me?”
“I don’t know. The police seem to think her murder goes back somehow to that other thing three months ago. When a man named Green was murdered.”
For a moment there was no response from David Jenson. Shayne would have given a great deal to have been able to watch his face at the moment, but it was best, he thought, to remain concealed as long as possible.
“Green?” the newcomer finally said in an oddly altered voice. “I thought that was what you said over the telephone. But why, Lew? She was completely in the clear on that, as you know.”
“The cops don’t seem to think so.” Recker’s voice shook slightly. “They’re trying to tear down her alibi for that night… trying to prove, I guess, that she went to the hotel with him and did it.”
“But that’s impossible! You took her home that night, practically passed out, and… well damn it, maybe you never did know this, Lew. I don’t suppose the police told you at the time. No reason why they should. They were damned decent about not giving it to the papers, and Lucy never did find out. But I know she had nothing to do with Green because I was in her apartment with her all the time.”
“I didn’t know that.” Watching Lew Recker carefully through the half-open side door, Shayne was convinced the writer hadn’t known this fact. He made a hopeful gesture, now, and said, “All you have to do then is to remind the police of that and convince them they’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“But how did they get started on this line?” demanded Jensen’s voice in a tone of genuine puzzlement. “They’ve got your testimony and mine in the old records.”
“Don’t ask me why any cops thinks what he thinks or does what he does. There’s something,” went on Recker unwillingly, “about a telephone call Elsie is supposed to have made that night.”
“A telephone call?”
Recker nodded, tight-lipped. “I don’t know where the idea came from but they’re trying to prove she went to some barroom near her place that night and telephoned Elbert Green to come and pick her up outside the place.”
“But that’s impossible! She didn’t go out to any barroom while I was with her. And I don’t believe she had time to do it before I got there.”
“I don’t believe it either,” said Recker nervously. “I’m just telling you what the police are saying.”
“Where could they have got hold of that idea?” The smooth baritone voice was lower now, with an ominous note concealed beneath the outward suavity. The visitor was moving forward into the room.
“How do I know?” burst out Recker defensively. “It’s the first I ever heard of it.”
“Are you sure of that, Lew? Sure you didn’t hand them that bit of gratuitous information?”
“How could I when I didn’t even know about it? Damn it, Dave! Are you suggesting she did make such a call?”
“I’m suggesting nothing.” Jensen’s voice was soft again. It came from a position near Recker, just beyond Shayne’s line of vision. “It occurred to me it was the sort of thing you might have dreamed up to save your own skin. After all, we know that you and I both perjured ourselves to save Elsie’s skin that night. We both know she had no idea in the world where she was or what happened after she left the party.”
Lew Recker wet his lips and cast an anxious, sidelong glance at Shayne beyond the door.
“I don’t know any such thing. No matter what you did, I didn’t perjure myself.”
“Come off it, Lew. Just between us girls, I know all about her turning up at Estelle’s place at four o’clock after being passed out cold for several hours. You didn’t tell the cops that.”
“N-no,” Recker stammered. “I didn’t see any reason to. I felt sorry for her.”
“Yeh?” David Jenson jeered. His voice cold and thick with jealous hatred. “It also gave you a hold over her, didn’t it? You know damn well she despised you after the first time you took advantage of her when she was tight, and that hurt your lousy ego. So you made a deal with her. You’d help alibi her for Green’s death if she’d let you into her bed when you demanded entry.”
“No! It wasn’t like that.” Beads of sweat were appearing on Lew Recker’s forehead. Close beside him, Michael Shayne felt Estelle trembling violently. His fingers tightened warningly on her arm. He wanted nothing to interrupt the conversation that was taking place in the other room.
Unfortunately, an interruption did occur at that moment. Lew Recker’s telephone began ringing, and with an apologetic, sidelong glance toward the redheaded detective, the writer moved forward to answer it.
Shayne heard him lift the receiver and say, “Hello?” and after a brief moment his voice came more loudly, “Michael Shayne? Wait just a moment. I don’t know… “
With an exclamation of angry impatience, Shayne released his grip on Estelle’s arm and strode forward into the living room. David Jenson whirled about in the center of the rug to stare at him in utter consternation, and Shayne had a momentary glimpse of a big blond man with a smoothly boyish face and light blue eyes that were round and big and seemed to stand out from the flesh.
Shayne tramped past him without a second glance, to Lew Recker who held the telephone out to him wordlessly. Shayne took it and snapped, “Yes?” into the instrument, heard Ed Radin’s voice come over clearly:
“Mike! We’re at the hospital and Brett will pull through. X-rays show no fracture. He won’t be conscious for twelve hours or so, but is otherwise okay.”
“Swell. You want to come down here for the windup?”
“You mean that, Mike?” Radin’s voice was eager. “Lieutenant Hogan is with me. He’s been wondering what the devil you’re up to?”
“Just tell the Lieutenant,” said Shayne happily, “that I’m about to make one of my famous passes and give him Elsie Murray’s murderer. After that, he can go home and get some sleep.”
“Yeh?” Ed Radin sounded doubtful. “You mean it, Mike?”
“I mean it. Come on down to Lew Recker’s place. You know the address?”
“On Madison. Sure. In about ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes will be fine.” Shayne replaced the receiver and turned slowly to survey the room.
Estelle Stevens had come in behind him, and she and Recker stood close together near the side door, their arms tightly around each other’s waist.
In front of them, standing solid and spread-legged on the rug with an angry scowl on his face was David Jenson. The man whom Elsie had called “Dirk” in her script. He wore fawn-colored slacks and a light tan sport jacket and looked like a sophomore football tackle.
He whirled about to face Michael Shayne and demanded, “What kind of hocus-pocus is this? Who are you to be eavesdropping on a private conversation?”
“The name is Shayne. Michael Shayne. A friend of Brett Halliday from Miami, if that’s news to you.”
“And who the hell is Brett Halliday?” blustered Jenson.
“I thought you were a member of the mystery writers too.”
“Oh? That Halliday? I’ve heard his name though I don’t believe I ever met him.”
“Perhaps not socially,” said Shayne. “Weren’t you at the banquet last night?”
“No.” Jensen’s voice was harsher than seemed necessary. “I never attend those affairs.”
Shayne shrugged. “Who told you Elsie Murray was taking Halliday home with her?”
“No one.” Jensen’s attitude became wary. “Not that I would have cared.”
“No? Not even if you’d known she intended to show him the unfinished manuscript she was writing?”
“Not even if I’d known that,” gibed Jenson. “Why should I have minded?”
“Because,” said Shayne savagely, “once any intelligent person read her script and tied it into the Elbert Green murder case and started checking back, you were definitely left out on a limb without the trace of an alibi.”
“Nuts! What makes you think I needed an alibi?”
“Elsie’s script made me think so.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t think you do either.”
“He doesn’t, Dave,” put in Lew Recker eagerly. “He’s just a private Shamus from Miami who’s horning in here in a last-ditch attempt to save Brett Halliday’s neck. Only God knows what he thinks he means by referring to a manuscript of Elsie’s. Personally, I don’t believe there ever was such a thing.”
“Don’t you, Lew?” Shayne asked the question quietly.
“No. She never talked to me about it. And I’m sure that if she’d had an unfinished script she needed advice on she would have shown it to me first of all.”
“What about Jenson?”
Recker looked surprised. “What about him? He writes a little, but no one would go to him for advice I should think.” He didn’t add, “not if I were available” but his tone and demeanor did.
“Yet I think it quite likely Elsie did just that. She was murdered,” Shayne added deliberately, “to prevent her from showing the manuscript to Halliday. And an attempt was made to murder him when the killer discovered he had gotten to her too late… that she had already passed on one copy of the incriminating document to Halliday.”
“I simply don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the big blond man with an air of honest bewilderment.
“Don’t you? It mostly revolves around a telephone call.” Shayne paused as a loud and authoritative knock sounded on Recker’s door. “And I think the man is just outside who can clear up the entire matter for us.”
He strode past David Jenson to the door, jerked it open but found Ed Radin and Lieutenant Hogan standing outside instead of Grady and the bartender whom he had expected.
He said, “Oh. It’s you,” without trying to hide his disappointment. “Come on in.” He held the door wide. “We’re not quite a quorum yet, but I hope we will be very soon.”