Michael Shayne dropped Timothy Rourke at the News Tower on his way back from the morgue to police headquarters. The reporter was anxious to get out a preliminary story on the "Body in the Bay" as he was already calling it in headlines, and he promised Shayne to withhold most of the other stuff the detective had given him, merely mentioning the curious incident that had happened at a local hotel earlier, without naming the Hibiscus and without using the Paulson name in connection with the dead man.
Back in Will Gentry's office at headquarters, Shayne found the chief about to interrogate a quiet-faced bronzed man who was clad only in skin-tight swimming trunks and whom Gentry introduced as Norman Raine.
"Mr. Raine brought the body in from the bay," he told Shayne. "I've got wires out to New York and to Jacksonville. Let's hear what Mr. Raine has to tell us."
"It isn't much and I'm afraid it won't be very helpful," Raine said in a resonant baritone. "I've a boat anchored in the yacht basin and I sleep aboard-alone. Only tonight I couldn't sleep." He showed even, white teeth in a smile and nodded thankfully as he leaned forward to accept a cigarette from the redhead, averting his eyes from the black cigar Gentry puffed on.
He drew in smoke and expelled it, leaned back comfortably and went on, "That's what brought me ashore in my skiff. I was out of cigarettes, and about ten-thirty I got to the point where I just had to have a smoke. So I started rowing in."
"You're anchored off Tenth Street?" asked Gentry.
"Just about opposite the end of Tenth. The tide was running out, but there was a nice breeze behind me and I was pulling along steadily, about half-way to shore I guess, when suddenly my bow struck something in the water.
"It gave me quite a start. It was a funny, solid, dead sort of thud. You know, I was rowing along thinking about nothing at all except about a cigarette and how good the first puff was going to taste, and then-pow! Like that.
"Well, the poor devil was floating face down in the water. I saw he must be a goner right away. Face down and all. I had a little trouble getting him aboard, and then went on in as fast as I could. I tied up and ran to the nearest place I saw a light, and telephoned the police. That's absolutely all I know about it"
"How far out are you anchored?" Shayne asked him.
"About-oh-a half mile. It's the Marjie J. You can check it easily enough. She's a forty-foot single-master."
"Then you'd say you were about a quarter mile off-shore when you struck the body?"
"Something like that. It's purely a guess, of course, but the best I can do under the circumstances."
Will Gentry removed his cigar from between his teeth and nodded. "Anything else occur to you, Mike?"
Shayne shook his head. "I don't see how Mr. Raine can help us any more than that. You didn't search the body?" he added.
"Naturally not." Raine was quite properly indignant. "I could see it was murder right away and I didn't touch him."
Gentry got up to shake his hand. "Thanks for being so co-operative, Mr. Raine. You're not pulling out right away?"
"Not for ten days at least."
"A man outside will drive you back to the pier," Gen try told him. "Have him stop some place for you to buy cigarettes." He shrugged when the door closed behind the man. "Without getting technical with tide and current tables, I'd say it matches up with the Hibiscus pretty well."
"I know." Shayne scowled angrily. "But you can't get away from the gal who tried to force a hundred and forty bucks on me at ten o'clock to pick the guy up at the Silver Glade."
"I'm not trying to get away from her. Maybe she was mistaken. Maybe she just thought he was there at that time. Maybe she was lying like heU."
"Why?"
"I don't know why. Why does any woman lie?"
"If I'd taken the assignment, I was bound to find out at once that he wasn't there," Shayne pointed out.
"But you didn't take it. I wish to God you had. Then we wouldn't have all these other unanswered questions."
"Any report from your boys at the Hibiscus yet?"
"I'm waiting for it." Gentry drummed fingertips on his desk irritably. "There's a telephone listed for Barnes at that New York address. It didn't answer. I phoned the police to get anything they could on Barnes. And I've got a detective driving down from Jax with a picture of Bert and Nellie Paulson. Nothing to do but mark time, I guess."
Shayne squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. He wished, now, that he had told Gentry in the beginning about sending the girl to Lucy's apartment. He wasn't quite sure why he had held that fact out. With a vague feeling of protecting her, he supposed glumly. In a sense, he looked on her as a client, and until he knew more about the case he had instinctively withheld the information that would have automatically brought her in for police interrogation.
Now he probably had a positive identification of the dead man in the palm of his hand, but he hesitated to admit that fact to Will Gentry yet. The chief would be sore as a boil because Shayne hadn't told him earlier, and Shayne still felt there were a lot of things he'd like to know, about the case before seeking a showdown with her.
Of course, if she were just a cheap little accomplice in ' a badger racket in wliich her brother had gotten himself murdered, he had no sympathy for her at all. But he | couldn't help feeling there was something mixed-up in ¦ that diagnosis. Recalling her as he had first seen her waiting for him in his room, she simply didn't fit into the picture that way.
He was roused from his brief reverie by a tap on the door and the entrance of Sergeant Hopkins of the Identification Squad.
He was young and square-jawed and had a crew-cut, and was not in uniform. He nodded incuriously to Shayne, stood stiffly in front of the desk and reported, "I'm just back from the Hibiscus, sir. We gave three-sixteen the works."
"Well?" Gentry rumbled.
"We got nothing very definite, I'm afraid. Photographs of the bed with careful lighting indicates someone has lain heavily on it since it was made up. We found no bloodstains. One set of fingerprints pretty well all over, in places that indicate they must be from the occupant of the room-another set that we checked out as the hotel maid. Prints of an unidentified man on the door-frame and the back of a chair."
When he stopped, Shayne broke in, "What about the windows?"
The sergeant regarded him stolidly. "Only the occupant's prints there. One of the screens is very tightly latched and probably hasn't been opened for months. The other opens easily and there was no dust underneath or on the sill." He shrugged and added, "On the other hand, the maid says she quite likely opened it herself recently in cleaning up the room. She can't swear to that, so there's nothing conclusive either way. It certainly could have been opened tonight to allow a body to be shoved out, but there's no way of proving that happened."
Gentry took his saliva-soaked half cigar from his mouth and glared at it, fielded it expertly into the spittoon. "Get out to the morgue and fingerprint the Barnes stiff. See if they check with the extra set you found in the room and let me know."
He shrugged at Shayne as the young sergeant wheeled about and went out. "Wouldn't you know that's about what we'd get?" he demanded savagely.
Shayne let out a deep sigh. "I guess that puts it straight up to me."
"Puts what up to you?"
"You're not going to like it, Will."
"Holding out on me?" Gentry was instantly and suspiciously alert.
"Not very much, but- I guess we'd better see if we can get our corpse identified before we do any more guessing."
"It wouldn't be a bad idea at all," Gentry agreed in a very smooth voice. "You got an idea?"
Shayne grinned at him. "The girl who claims he's her brother."
Gentry's heavy black brows came down threateningly. "You told me she ran out on you. Down your fire escape and disappeared."
"She did. But I somehow forgot to mention that before she went into the kitchen I'd given her Lucy's address with a note to Lucy, and told her to go there."
"Goddamn it, Mike! Do you mean to say you've got reason to think she's at Lucy's now?"
Shayne kept his grin working and said lightly, "I can do better than that. I know she is. Remember when Lucy telephoned? That was to say she'd arrived safely."
Shayne reached for the telephone hastily as a rumble of anger spilled out from between Gentry's thick lips.
"You've got to admit we're lucky to have her on tap this way." He gave Lucy's number into the phone and settled back, not looking at Gentry who was cursing in low monosyllables.
He listened to her phone ring five times before she answered. Then her voice sounded curiously thick, and the words were fuzzy at the edges. "Hello. Who is this?"
"Mike. Have you been asleep?"
"Just dozed off, I guess."
"Well, get yourself waked up," he said impatiently. "Both of you. I'm on my way over."
"Both of us? What do you mean, Michael?"
"Miss Paulson. Is she in bed?"
"But she left, Michael."
"What? When? Goddamn it, Lucy, I sent her there for you to take care of her."
"You didn't tell me I was to lock her in, did you? How was I to keep her here if she decided not to stay?"
"When did she leave, Lucy? What did she say?"
"Fifteen or twenty minutes ago. She didn't say anything. Just thank you for the drink and I tank I go home now. And she went."
Shayne slammed the phone down to prevent himself from taking any more of his sickening anger out on Lucy. He looked up, bracing himself to meet Gentry's fierce gaze, and said unnecessarily:
"She's ducked out on us, Will. God knows where-on why."