The Silver Glade was a modest night-spot in the Southwest section not more than ten blocks from Michael Shayne's hotel. It had a floor show and a small dance floor, and it served honest drinks of liquor to natives or to tourists sober enough to notice what they were drinking.
Because it was close and because the bartender knew Shayne's preference in cognac, the detective was in the habit of dropping into the Silver Glade occasionally for a late drink. When he entered the door tonight the hat-check girl smiled at him brightly and said, "Long time no see, Mr. Shayne," as she took his Panama without bothering to give him a check for it.
She was a big-breasted girl wearing an evening gown that had been carefully cut to accentuate her bigness. Shayne leaned on the low counter in front of her and pleased her by leering at the deep valley beneath her chin and told her, "I can only stand the rot-gut you serve here every so often."
He took the four-by-six photograph from his pocket and pushed it in front of her. "For a well-stacked doll, I always figured you were pretty smart. Ever see this guy around?"
She giggled appreciatively and gave her body a little shake to pull the low-cut gown a little lower. "Always kiddin', aren't you?" She leaned forward so he could get a better look, and studied the picture doubtfully.
"Don't remember as I have. You know how it is. Half the time I don't even look at them when I hand out checks-unless they're big, ugly redheads, that is."
Shayne said, "Try hard. This evening is what I want. Last two or three hours."
"I swear I can't say. It sure doesn't ring any bell." Shayne nodded and turned, bringing his elbow up to brush against the distended fullness of her flesh so that she giggled again.
Holding the photograph in his hand, he went to the bar where there was an empty stool at one end. The bartender was middle-aged and bland-faced. When he saw the redhead coming to the bar, he turned and reached up to the top shelf to lift down a bottle of Martell that had an ordinary cork in it instead of the silvered pouring spout in most of the other bottles.
He set it on the bar in front of Shayne and uncorked it with a flourish, provided a four-ounce glass and a tumbler of ice water, and said reprovingly, "Don't see you around much, Mike."
Shayne laid the picture on the counter and poured cognac in the small glass. "You notice this bird in here this evening?"
The bartender looked down at it, then reached into his hip pocket for a pair of glasses in a leather case. He hooked them behind his ears and studied the man's face carefully.
"Can't say that I did, Mike, but that doesn't mean he wasn't in. You know how it is-if a man isn't a steady-"
Shayne said, sure, he knew how it was. He sipped his drink morosely, and a slim, dark man in elegant evening clothes came up behind him and clapped him lightly on the shoulder.
"Glad to see you, Shamus. So long as you're not pinching the joint. On the house, Henry," he told the bartender, nodding toward the bottle.
"Not as long as you put out Martell for free," Shayne told the proprietor pleasantly. He moved the picture back with his forefinger on it. "You had anybody in this evening that looked like this?"
Salvadore studied it critically, twisting his smooth black head slightly to one side.
"Sure. Dozens of them just about like that. He isn't one you'd pick out of a crowd."
"I know. That's the hell of it. This is really very important, Salvadore. Take it around to the waiters and bus-boys, huh? Make everyone take a long look. If any of them think they saw him in here tonight, let me talk to them."
"Sure, Mike." Salvadore Rotiselli took the picture daintily between thumb and forefinger and minced away. Henry had moved down the bar to serve another customer, and Shayne glowered down at his drink.
He hadn't much hope of success with the picture. As Salvadore said, the face was too thoroughly ordinary, too completely undistinguished to give anyone reason for remembering it.
But it was all Shayne had left now. If he could prove the dead man had actually been in the Silver Glade after nine-thirty, it would be a cinch he hadn't gone into Bis-cayne Bay from room 316 of the Hibiscus.
But what would that prove? Shayne asked himself angrily. Nothing, really. He still wouldn't know the actual identity of the man with the scarred face-nor of the dead man.
Bert Paulson? Charles Barnes? A dead girl in the park. Until he looked at her face and at the receipted bill from the Hibiscus, he had been so dead certain she wasn't Nellie Paulson.
The other identity fitted her so much better. Mary Barnes from the Roney. Mary Barnes, who had caught a fleeting glimpse of her murdered brother after being summoned by him to the Hibiscus. Mary Barnes who had fled in terror from the man with the scarred face-who had sought refuge in his hotel room and then run out into the night still in terror because she did not trust him to protect her from the man she feared.
All those facts fitted what little he knew about Mary and Charles Barnes. They didn't fit what he knew about Nellie Paulson.
He drank his cognac morosely, washing it down with tiny sips of water from the glass while the questions ran around and around and around in his mind.
There was something eluding him. Something important. Perhaps a key to the entire puzzle. Some tiny bit of information he had that he didn't know he had.
That wasn't exactly it. He knew it was there. Somewhere in the maze of conflicting stories and reports he had listened to this evening. Something that had seemed wholly irrevelant at the time, yet which might be supremely important.
He doggedly went over and over again in his mind every single thing that had happened since the telephone call had taken him from Lucy's side.
It was there. He knew it was. Hidden away in his subconscious. He had no idea what it was nor how to go about searching among the half-truths and irrelevancies to dig it out.
Yet it had to come. He had a feeling that time was running out. He glanced down at his watch, wondering absently why he felt that way. While the girl had been missing from Lucy's-before her body had been found in the park — it was natural that he had felt fiercely he must find her before something happened.
But that was over now. The pressure was off. She was dead and no power on earth could make that part of it right again. He had let her slip away from his apartment-had stood supinely by while a man with a. 45 walked out to look for her-had cleverly concealed her whereabouts from Will Gentry because he had felt capable of handling the thing himself.
For those reasons, she was dead. Why did he feel time was running out now?
His watch said 11:46.
And then he knew suddenly. Fourteen minutes to midnight. He had promised Lucy, that was it. That he'd be back by midnight for the drink she had poured out for him.
Salvadore came up beside him and laid the photograph down with a sigh. "No soap, Shamus. Not one of them will say positively yes or no."
Shayne looked down at the picture wonderingly. As though he had never seen it before. Because now it didn't matter. Because now he knew what had been nagging at him.
He slid ofiE the stool without even thanking Salvadore, went toward the door in long strides, his face bleak with anger at his own stupidity.
He didn't hear the check girl call out to him as he stormed past her. He broke into a trot as he went out the door, ran to his parked car and jerked the door open. A moment later it was roaring away from the curb.