“What the devil do you mean, Mike?”
“Just that. Somebody telephoned her at Lucy’s apartment about twelve-fifteen and pretended to be me and arranged to have her meet him some place. Whoever did it was cagey enough to warn her not to tell even Lucy where she was going.
“I thought, of course, it was you, Will,” he went on, his eyes bleak and a heavy scowl between them. “I knew you were sore about my keeping her away from you-and Rourke suspected where I had her. I was sure you’d suspect, too, when you started bearing down on finding her. I wasn’t too worried, except I was afraid my little game of hocus-pocus with a guy named Burton Harsh might be busted up. But if it wasn’t you or Rourke-”
“It wasn’t,” Gentry said gravely. “I was sore about your hiding her, but I trusted you to take care of her. Who else knew where she was?”
“That’s the hell of it, Will. No one knew. No one could possibly have known.” Shayne thrust his hands deep in his pockets and walked up and down in front of the desk.
Gentry creaked his swivel chair back and chewed savagely on his cigar. “Yet someone phoned her there,” he growled. “If you’ve let the killer get hold of her, Mike-”
“I know,” Shayne broke in harshly. “Don’t waste time throwing it up to me. She called one of Martin’s cabs to pick her up at Lucy’s place,” he went on swiftly. “About twelve-fifteen. I tried to find out from the cab company where she went but they refused to give me the dope. They’ll give it to you.”
Gentry had already creaked forward and was reaching for the telephone. He spoke into it tersely while Shayne straddled the chair again and lit a cigarette with shaking hands, puffed on it while he went over in swift sequence everything that had happened since he deposited Beatrice Lally at Lucy’s apartment. Who could possibly have guessed where she was?
Leo Gannet? He could have put a tail on his car when he left the Beach with the girl. Frowning in concentration, he went over every minute of the fast drive across the Venetian Causeway. He couldn’t swear there hadn’t been a car following him. He hadn’t thought much about it at the time. But he felt certain he would have noticed, instinctively, if there had been. He had worked at the business too long, developed a sort of sixth sense, and even when he wasn’t working and had no conscious realization that he was doing so, he always knew when a car was behind him-staying that certain distance behind.
If not Gannet, who else? Harsh, Garvin, Morton, Paisly? These were the only names that had entered into any phase of the murder investigation insofar as he knew, and two of them he hadn’t even met.
Edwin Paisly? He was apparently a newcomer in Miami and probably didn’t know he had a secretary.
Burton Harsh was not a newcomer. Harsh knew all about Michael Shayne, as did any constant newspaper reader in the city. He had known how to reach him at his hotel apartment, and had recognized him by sight at the Golden Cock. Also, Harsh had contacts in the city. It wouldn’t be difficult for him to learn that Lucy Hamilton was his secretary.
Did he have reason to suspect that was where Beatrice was hiding? Shayne’s clenched palms were wet and his eyes tightly shut as he went over his conversation with Harsh. Harsh had not once, that he recalled, named Miss Lally, but referred to her as that secretary. She was the person he feared most. Had he, in his distraught mind, figured it out and decided, after all, not to trust the arrangement they had made?
He had been careful to close the door of the telephone booth in the beer joint, and even interpose his body between Harsh and the phone when he dialed Lucy’s number. It was possible to hear the faintest whir of the dial, he knew, but he couldn’t accept the probability that Harsh could discern the number he dialed.
He had often heard rumors of smart operators who claimed to be able to recognize a number by counting the clicks, but he had yet to meet such a man. He had, in fact, wasted several weeks when he was much younger, trying to train himself to do the trick, and had given up in disgust.
No. Harsh could not have learned Lucy’s number that way. Then how else?
Shayne opened his eyes wide as one remote possibility came to him. He had swung back the booth door to admit Harsh as soon as he finished dialing. Lucy answered the phone. But he had not spoken her name. What he had done was possibly as bad. He had addressed her as “angel” in Harsh’s hearing. It was barely conceivable that Harsh might know this casual term of intimacy applied to Lucy, or guessed it, or contacted someone who knew.
On the other hand, what could Harsh gain by luring Beatrice away? He had already spilled his story back there in the car. Did Miss Lally know something he hadn’t told? Some positive bit of evidence Harsh couldn’t bring himself to tell that directly tied Sara Morton’s murder around his neck?
It was a possibility. Harsh had wanted to be assured repeatedly that Miss Lally hadn’t talked. He had been doubtful throughout that he, Shayne, could prevent her from talking. If he convinced himself that she hadn’t yet spilled the really damning evidence, he would have worked fast to make sure she didn’t have another chance.
Gentry broke into his bitter cogitations when he cradled the receiver and said:
“Got it, Mike, but I don’t know how much help it is. Miss Lally had the driver take her to the corner of Northeast Second Avenue and Twelfth Street. She got out on the southeast corner and tipped the driver a quarter. He saw her start walking back the other way, but drove on without seeing where she went.”
“Second and Twelfth,” Shayne muttered. “Whoever phoned her was smart enough to tell her to get off at the corner and walk to wherever she was to meet him. There are dozens of rooming-houses and small hotels within a few blocks. There’s the Edgemont Hotel on Eleventh-”
“The Edgemont!” Will Gentry pounded his fist on the table resoundingly. “That’s what I’ve been trying to get hold of ever since I heard where she went. Miss Morton has made quite a number of calls to the Edgemont from her hotel,” he went on in response to Shayne’s quirked and inquiring eyebrows. “One of the things we turned up in our investigation. We don’t know, of course, who she called-what room number.”
Shayne was already on his feet and yanking his hat brim down. “Get some men over there, Will. Fast. And spread others all over that neighborhood. It’s probably too late now, but make it quick,” he ended as he went out the door into the corridor.
Three minutes later Shayne’s brakes screamed as he jammed them on at the curb in front of the Edgemont. He flung himself out, noticed the three taxicabs parked up above, and rushed into the large, ornate lobby. It was empty except for the clerk at the desk and two dozing porters.
He strode to the desk and demanded, “Do you have a Ralph Morton registered here?”
“Morton, sir?” The clerk blinked and shook his head nervously. “Indeed not. I heard over the radio that he-”
“Paisly?” Shayne interrupted. “Edwin Paisly?” The moment he spoke the name he saw the answer in the clerk’s eyes. “What room number?”
“Why-I believe he’s in four-nineteen. If you’re from the police-”
“I am,” he cut in harshly, “and I’m on my way up to Paisly’s room. Send your house dick up after me, and any other cops that come in.”
“But I’m quite sure Mr. Paisly’s not been in all evening,” the clerk called after him as he started for the elevator. “His key is here.”
“How long have you been on the desk?” Shayne asked, turning back slowly.
“Since midnight. I noticed a message in his box with the key.”
“Let me have the message.” Shayne held out his hand.
The clerk moistened his thin lips, hesitated, glanced up at Shayne’s eyes, and hurried to get the slip of paper from the pigeonhole.
Shayne read: Received at 5:40. Call Miss Morton at once. He laid the message on the desk as a uniformed officer and a plainclothesman hurried into the lobby and over to the desk.
“Do you boys know what you’re looking for?” Shayne asked.
“Only to co-operate with you.”
“A young lady got out of a cab at Twelfth and Second about twelve-thirty,” Shayne told them wearily. “She was probably meeting Sara Morton’s murderer. Sara Morton’s fiance is registered here, but apparently hasn’t been in the hotel since five-forty. Edwin Paisly in four-nineteen. The boys can take it from there. If you can locate Paisly-if anyone in the neighborhood saw him meet a woman on the street about twelve-thirty-” He ran his hand across his forehead, then clenched it into a tight fist. “The woman is Beatrice Lally, Sara Morton’s secretary,” he went on, his arm falling futilely to his side. “She’s wearing a gray two-piece suit with a blue blouse-blond hair, about five-five and plump. Might be wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses. If she’s still alive she probably knows who killed her employer.” He strode past them and went out to his car and pulled away.
There was a radio patrol car at the next corner. He could hear two or three sirens converging on the spot as he drove on to the Boulevard and turned north. There was nothing more he could do there to help find Beatrice Lally. The local police were much better equipped than he to search the neighborhood and make inquiries, and to trace Edwin Paisly.
His eyes were bleak as he turned east at 14th Street to cross Biscayne Bay for the second time that evening. Whatever had happened to the girl was essentially his fault, and he accepted the blame, but regrets were never any good. The thing now was to repair the damage that might have been done by her disappearance, to make sure the murderer did not profit by his cunning in luring her away from Lucy’s apartment before she could be questioned by the police.
Both car windows were down, and the clean salt air blew some of the cobwebs from his mind as he drove across the County Causeway at a moderate speed. He relaxed at the wheel and mentally reviewed everything that had happened since he stepped inside his office at 8:30 and found the special-delivery letter from Sara Morton.
There wasn’t much. Nothing he could really put his finger on. A lot of elusive things that melted away when he tried to put on the heat. Burton Harsh’s story. Damn it, the man didn’t act like a murderer. Yet, by his own confession he had murdered at least once. Or had been suspected so strongly that he had been indicted for the crime.
From the beginning he had been inclined to sympathize with the financier who was writhing in the net cast about him by an unscrupulous blackmailer. Of all the crimes in the book he detested blackmail most, and it had been difficult to work up any real feeling about Sara Morton’s death since learning of her attempted extortion scheme.
True, blackmail didn’t excuse murder in the eyes of the law, but in Harsh’s case, considering his enormous loss if she exposed him, it was a pretty fair excuse.
If Harsh had lured Beatrice away and murdered again in order to conceal his first crime, that was a far different matter. Insofar as he could see now, Harsh was the only person involved who could possibly have guessed where Miss Lally was. There was no way, with his present knowledge, of tying Harsh and Paisly together, yet whoever telephoned her had instructed her to leave the cab a block from Paisly’s hotel.
This might be a mere coincidence, but he didn’t believe in coincidences when they involved several people mixed up in murder. There could be strong connections between the two men which weren’t apparent on the surface. He would not be surprised at anything he found if he should dig into Paisly’s background.
He shrugged off all the questions puzzling him when he reached the peninsula and stayed on Fifth Street until he arrived at an all-night bar.
He parked and went in, consulted the telephone directory, and found Burton Harsh listed with a business and residence address. The residence was far up the beach, just south of 79th Street, evidently one of the large estates in that vicinity fronting on the ocean.
Shayne drove faster going north. He hoped the financier had already delivered the money to his hotel as promised, but whether he had or not there would have to be an immediate showdown.
Clouds covered the stars now, and a sharp inshore wind lashed the dark waves that thundered against the bulkheads and the shore on his right. The speeding car carried him swiftly beyond the closely built section, past huge resort hotels on the ocean front, and on to the residential section where metal plates on stone archway entrances bore the names of the owners.
The Harsh estate was spacious and surrounded by a low wall of limestone rock. Shayne stopped beyond high gateposts with a chain stretched between them. He cut his headlights and got out, walked back, and ducked under the heavy chain.
A wide oiled driveway curved toward the house between boxed hedges of Australian pines, and beyond, the palms and formal shrubbery and a three-story mansion seemed blended in one dark mass. As he made his way, the wind in the palms and the crash of the waves drowned his footsteps.
The windows of the house were dark except for a streak of light below a drawn shade in a ground-floor room. Shayne stopped before the window and looked around. The drive circled to the left and led to a four-car garage with living-quarters above.
Not more than ten feet away he saw a car parked in the drive. He went toward it, noting with tingling excitement that it was a shabby coupe in the lower price range, at least five years old and not at all the sort of automobile likely to belong to anyone living in the Harsh mansion. The tingle spread through his whole body when he touched the hood and found it warm.
Without hesitation he went back to the path leading to the lighted window. The shade was up about four inches. The window sill was some four feet from the ground, and Shayne bent down and peered into what appeared to be a small library.
Burton Harsh sat in a deep, brightly cushioned wicker chair and smoke curled lazily upward from a cigar in his left hand. He held a highball glass in his right. His profile was toward the window, and he was apparently listening to someone who stood at the far corner of the room.
Moving to the extreme end of the window, Shayne saw the beginning of a fireplace and mantel. Then he saw a man’s hand reach out and set a drink on the mantel. The hand was white and slender and shaky, and glancing back to Harsh, he gathered from his look of worried concentration that the visitor was relating unpleasant news.
With the roar of wind and ocean it was impossible to hear a word that was spoken through the tightly closed window. Shayne straightened up, retraced his steps, and turned the corner where a flagstone path led to the front door.
He found the electric button, put his finger on it, pushed, and waited.