Helen started to speak, but he shut her up with an angry, “You got me into this mess. Keep your mouth shut while I think my way out.”
She bit her lip and subsided into silence. Shayne sat without moving for a long time, then sighed and took Murphy’s second telegram from his pocket. He smoothed it out and read it again, seeking some new significance in the light of the story he had just heard from Pearson.
Pearson hadn’t mentioned that Jim Lacy was the victim in the holdup that had sent Mace Morgan to prison. Perhaps he didn’t know-or thought it an unimportant detail.
But it seemed terrifically important to Shayne. If Lacy and Morgan had worked together stealing a government secret only a couple of days before the robbery-why had Morgan turned on his partner immediately afterward?
To Shayne, a more plausible explanation was that Morgan had not turned on Lacy-that the holdup had been another partnership deal between the two men. It wasn’t a new wrinkle in the annals of crime. There were plenty cases of collusion between a crooked messenger carrying a large sum of money and a confederate who pretended to hold him up. In fact, when the sum of money was particularly large as in this case, there had to be a tip-off somewhere along the line.
But this holdup had backfired. Instead of getting away with the swag, Morgan had been caught and sentenced. Shayne wondered whether Lacy had testified at the trial-whether he had identified Morgan on the witness stand. The answer to that might be the answer to a lot of things.
The telephone called him into the bedroom while he was still musing over a lot of diverse possibilities.
The desk clerk reported the arrival of a telegram. Shayne told him to send it up. He went to the door and tipped the boy who brought it. This was another message from the energetic Murphy in New York:
Charles Worthing reputed wealthy. Divorce case pending New York. Adultery with girl named Helen Brinstead named corespondent. Worthing and Brinstead being seen together openly. For picture of both and full details see page fourteen last Sunday MIRROR photo taken at Stork Club Saturday night.
Shayne folded this telegram with the other one and put them both into his pocket. As he sauntered back to his chair, Helen stamped her foot and demanded:
“Isn’t it time you started telling me something about what’s going on?”
He looked at her with a show of mild surprise. “Why should I?”
“Do you think I’m not half crazy with curiosity? Do you think I’m made of wood? You haven’t told me anything.”
“I didn’t think you were interested in anything-except getting Mace Morgan bumped off. You got that. What the hell more do you want?”
“I want to know what all this mystery is about. Who were those men that came while I was hiding in the closet? Who’s he?” She indicated Rourke lying on the floor. “What did you two mean when you talked about the law wanting me? What were you looking for when you searched my clothing?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I don’t know anything.” She stamped her foot again. “You sit here like a bump on a log acting as if you thought I was deaf and dumb.”
“Didn’t you hear what was said out here while you were in the closet?”
“Only a mumble-jumble that I couldn’t understand. What was in that letter you got from the messenger? Why did your friend go haywire after reading it, and what did he mean by Lacy’s piece of the claim check? What claim check? What’s all this mysterious stuff about the war and spies and stuff?”
Shayne leaned back and crossed his legs in a more comfortable position. “You’re putting on a pretty good act. Are you sure you didn’t do some dramatic bits when you were in the Scandals? You couldn’t get that good just by showing your legs in the chorus.”
“What do you mean by an act?”
“The whole thing,” Shayne growled. “The story you handed me this afternoon.”
Helen’s jaw sagged. The luster went out of her eyes. “You mean about-Charles Worthing?”
“And Helen Brinstead.” Shayne nodded. “That was a gag you and Lacy figured out together over in his hotel room-to provide a logical reason for coming here and persuading me to gun Morgan.”
“What makes you think it was a gag?”
“Your name isn’t Helen Brinstead,” Shayne told her in a reasonable tone. “It was Dalhart before you married Morgan. Why should you want to change it to Brinstead?”
“Oh, that.” She sucked in her lower lip and contrived to look quite innocent and girlish. “I admit it isn’t my real name. I didn’t want to go back to my maiden name after I separated from Mace, so I just, well-tagged on Brinstead for want of something better.
“You’re a fast-on-your-feet, rough-and-tumble liar,” Shayne said. “But you’ll have to really think fast to talk yourself out of this one. How did Helen Brinstead and Charles Worthing get their picture taken at the Stork Club in New York last Saturday night while you were in Miami?”
“How do you know they did?” she asked weakly.
He patted his coat pocket. “The telegram I just got. The picture is printed in Sunday’s Mirror — page fourteen-a two-column spread with all the dirt about Worthing’s divorce and his plan to marry the corespondent. That’s the piece clipped out of the paper lying on Lacy’s bed,” he reminded her. “It’s what gave you the idea for the sob story you thought might work on me.”
Helen Morgan sat with her eyes downcast, pulling and twisting a handkerchief in her lap.
“All right,” she began breathlessly. “It was a lie. But I was frantic, Mr. Shayne. You’ve got to understand that. My life was in danger every minute Mace stayed alive. You’ve got to believe me.” Tears sprang from her lowered lids and ran down her cheeks. She made no effort to check or hide them.
“So you and Lacy thought up that story together-after happening to see the picture and the item in the Mirror?”
“Yes. It-oh, I admit it was a terrible thing to do. But I was desperate. I didn’t know what to do. Jim Lacy was afraid to go up against Mace. If you only knew the agony I’ve been through-” She was sobbing openly now, and she lifted her head to let him see her distorted face.
“And you tried to sucker me into killing Morgan for you. Then, when I was cagey, you figured another out. You came up here and undressed, so when Morgan came I’d be in a jam and either be forced to kill him myself or keep you in the clear if you did it. And it worked out just the way you figured it.”
“No! I swear I didn’t know Mace was coming. That’s a terrible thing to accuse me of.” She shuddered. “As though I’d planned it.”
“Yeh. They call it premeditated murder in front of a jury.”
“I didn’t do that. No matter what you think of me, I didn’t. But when Mace came and caught us-”
Shayne made a savage gesture to shut off her protestations. “That’s beside the point now. It worked out that way whether you planned it or not. Why don’t you turn off the waterworks and tell me the truth about a couple of things for a change?”
She sniffed loudly, trying to dry her tears with a wispy handkerchief. Shayne handed her a big linen handkerchief. He settled back and lit a cigarette, waiting for her to stop crying. When she blew her nose and gulped back a final sob, he asked matter-of-factly:
“Why did you think Mace would kill you if you didn’t get him first?”
“He threatened to. He had a terrible temper.”
“You were going to tell me the truth,” Shayne reminded her. “You were double-crossing him. You and Lacy. He found out about it and crashed out of stir to follow you here. You were afraid to turn him in as an escaped convict because you knew he’d turn canary and spoil the deal you and Lacy were working on together. That’s the way it reads-and that’s the only way it reads.”
Her face screwed up for crying again, but after studying Shayne’s stony features for a moment, she nodded and said, “It was-sort of like that. But I didn’t intend to double-cross Mace. I would have saved his part for him until he got out of jail.”
“But you couldn’t make him believe it?” Shayne prodded her relentlessly.
“No. He-he wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell him I was doing it for him.”
Shayne laughed. “Knew you too well to swallow a lie like that, eh? I suppose he gave you his part of the claim check when they sent him up the river?”
“Yes. He gave it to me to keep for him. But I didn’t know what it was. He wouldn’t tell me-except that it was something important.”
“Where is it now?”
“I don’t know. That is-well, not exactly.”
“What did you do with it?”
She sprang up suddenly, a wild look in her eyes. “Give me a drink,” she begged. “I’ll tell you everything. I know I can trust you. There’s no one else now-with Jim and Mace both dead.”
Shayne poured her a drink in Rourke’s glass, glancing down at Rourke’s limp body as he handed it to her. Rourke’s thin lips purled out at regular intervals, making a soft, snoring sound.
Helen seized the glass avidly, slopping some of the cognac as she raised it to her lips. She drank half of it in two gulps, then sputtered, and her eyes watered. But the strong potion gave her a lift, and her voice was quiet and resolute as she began her story.
“Like I said, I didn’t know what the little strip of cardboard was when Mace gave it to me to keep for him. He thought he’d draw a short rap, but they hung a five-to-eight on him. Well, I didn’t think much about it-I couldn’t make out what the parts of words and figures meant-until a couple of weeks ago.
“Then a man came to see me in New York. His name was Harry Houseman. He said Mace had sent him. He’d been Mace’s cellmate and was just released after doing his time. He said I was to give him the piece of cardboard-that Mace had said for me to. So I did.”
“For how much?” Shayne asked caustically.
She widened her eyes. “What?”
“How much did you get for it?”
“What makes you think-”
“You’re not the type to pass it over for nothing. You knew it must be valuable. How much did you charge Houseman?”
Color spread over her face. She took another drink of cognac, then said defiantly, “Well, why not? Sure, I knew it must be valuable. I deserved anything I could get out of Mace. God knows he never supported me. Most of the time I had to support him. And he didn’t leave me a dime to live on-”
“Don’t justify yourself to me,” Shayne interrupted impatiently. “How much did Houseman pay you?”
“A thousand dollars. And he haggled about it for two days. The lug. He swore it wasn’t worth that much.”
“One grand?” Shayne whistled. “You evidently didn’t know what it represented.”
“No. That’s what Jim said. Jim Lacy. He came around a couple of days later raving about me practically giving it away. That was the first time I knew-that Lacy knew anything about it. And he hadn’t known until then that Mace had left it with me.”
“Houseman had gone to Lacy to arrange the payoff,” Shayne surmised.
“That’s right. That’s exactly the way it was. Well, Jim said I might as well come down to Miami with him and maybe I could persuade Houseman to give me a bigger split-or we might work on him together-refuse to go in with him unless he agreed to take a smaller cut. Like Jim said, Houseman really didn’t deserve any of it. He’d just horned in and sold me a bill of goods.”
“And Houseman’s in Miami, too?” Shayne asked softly.
“Yes. He’s here.”
“Where?”
“I-why should I tell you everything?” Helen suddenly became defiant. “How do I know you won’t take the whole thing into court?”
“You don’t.”
“Well, then-”
“You’re out anyway,” Shayne argued. “What have you got to lose? You’re on the outside. Lacy’s dead-”
“And you’ve got Lacy’s piece,” she charged. “I heard you admit it to your friend there.”
“Maybe I have. Tell me where I can find Houseman and I’ll see if I can fix a deal with him.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“I tell you, you’re out in the cold. Hell, I covered you in Morgan’s murder. Isn’t that enough?”
“I can’t live on that.”
“You’ll keep on living,” Shayne reminded her. “Which is more than you might have done if I’d turned you over to the law tonight.”
“But that’s already done,” she pointed out. “You can’t change your story now. And it’d be just about as tough on you as on me if you did tell the truth.”
“So,” said Shayne slowly, “I don’t get any credit for that?”
“Credit?” She spoke with a strident note of scorn. “You can have all the credit you want. All I’m interested in is the cash.”
Shayne studied her for a moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t need your information. Houseman has already come to me. He had to.”
Helen hesitated, turning the glass around in her fingers. “That advertisement I heard you phone to the paper-was that it?”
Shayne nodded.
“You’re a fool if you sell out for a thousand,” she cried.
“You sold him Mace’s part for that.”
“But that was before I knew what it was worth. Can’t you see that you’ve got Houseman where you want him? He’ll pay ten-maybe fifty times a thousand if you hold out.”
“I’m not in a position to hold out,” Shayne said tonelessly. “He’s got my wife.”
“Your wife? You mean-”
“So he’s got me where he wants me, too,” Shayne explained. “I took a chance by demanding a grand extra-a little something to pay expenses.”
She looked tragically disappointed. “You’re a fool if you don’t collect big. Suppose he has got your wife? She’s no good to him.”
“Except to make me come across.”
“Oh, he’ll bluff with her, of course. But you can bluff right back. All you’ve got to do is make him believe you don’t care what happens to your wife. That won’t be hard for you. You know what they say about you in Miami-that you’d sell your own mother out for enough money.”
Shayne’s gaunt features tightened. “Yes,” he admitted. “I know that’s what they say about me.” He frowned, then asked, “What about the third man in the deal?”
Her hands stopped twisting the handkerchief in her lap. They started again after lying quiet for a moment. “What about him?” she asked with seeming casualness, but Shayne was aware of a note of caution in her voice.
“Is he here-ready to co-operate with us?” Shayne asked.
“I don’t know anything about him.”
“You weren’t going to lie to me,” Shayne reminded her once more.
“I’m not lying. I’ve told you all I know.”
“Who killed Lacy?”
“I don’t know that either. Houseman, I suppose. Or he had it done. He wanted to horn in and take all the profits.” She drained her glass and got up. “I’d better be going.”
Shayne stayed in his chair. “Where?”
“To my apartment.”
“The local law,” Shayne warned her, “will likely have that joint covered by this time. They’re going to ask you a lot of questions if they find you.”
She hesitated. Her lips trembled piteously and her eyes were downcast. “I suppose-you don’t want me to stay here?”
“And have you found here-after I’m supposed to have killed your husband tonight? Some women,” said Shayne wearily, “have the damnedest ideas.”
“I guess it would look-funny.”
“Have you got any money?”
“A little.” She clutched her bag nervously.
“Better go to a hotel under an assumed name. The Tidewater is right down the street. Clean rooms at three bucks a throw. Register as-Ann Adams,” Shayne directed. “And stay in your room. I’ve got enough to do without worrying about you. I’ll get in touch with you as soon as anything breaks.”
She sidled up to him as he sat in his chair. She timidly touched his shoulder. “Don’t forget what I told you about bluffing Houseman. He’ll pay plenty if you make him. And when he does, don’t forget who put you wise.”
Shayne said, “Beat it to the Tidewater. I won’t forget. If you’ve got anything coming after this is all over, you can trust me to see that you get it.”
“I’ll have to trust you. I feel that I can trust you now. You’re the first man I ever felt that way about.”
Shayne grunted. “Swell. I’m all puffed up with pride over your opinion of me.” He continued to sit in his chair without looking at the girl, and after waiting a moment she went to the door and let herself out quietly.