Brett Halliday - She Woke to Darkness

“How will we know how much else she may have changed to suit herself?”

“We won’t, for sure. But I’d guess she changed only the facts that appeared in the newspaper accounts. My interpretation of what she told Brett would be that she used the truth wherever it was possible without pointing the finger at her or any other real person. Let’s go on with it and see. Here’s the next day’s follow-up.”

He smoothed the second clipping out and glanced down it, nodding slowly:

“The body was identified that afternoon by the man’s room-mate, Alfred Hayes, who read a description and checked on it because his friend was missing. A man named Elbert Green. Shipping clerk in a publishing house. Unmarried, thirty-five and a quiet, studious type. Green and Hayes had been to a party the preceding evening… name of host considerately not mentioned… and Hayes told the police he was under the impression that Green might have left the party with one of the female guests, identity unknown to him (he claims).

“There isn’t much more on it,” Radin ended dolefully. “The principals weren’t important and nothing sensational developed. The next story simply says that police interrogated all the guests at the party and were given the name of one girl who several of them thought might have left with the murdered man. But she was able to produce an alibi in the person of another man who had actually driven her home, and that was that. Doesn’t say so here,” Radin went on, “but you can be sure the cops tried to get her identified by the people at the Beloit and failed. That doesn’t mean much either way, but with nothing more to go on, they’d have to drop her.”

He paused and laid the clippings aside. “What do you make of it?”

“I’d still think,” said Shayne, “it was just a jump-off for a purely fictional story except for one thing.”

“Her murder last night and the missing manuscript?”

“Exactly. That may be important. If Elsie Murray was the mystery woman in Elbert Green’s death, and if she wrote it up pretty much as it happened to her…” Shayne paused to frown and take a drink of his watered whiskey.

“That’s the crux,” said Radin emphatically. “Elsie’s death just as she was presumably on the eve of showing her script to Brett… a professional mystery writer who might come on an unpleasant truth which had eluded Elsie… that, and now Brett’s own disappearance. Those are two tangibles we can’t disregard.”

“We need a lot more information about Elsie herself,” said Shayne decisively, “and about all the people involved in the investigation of Elbert Green’s death three months ago. The room-mate, for instance. She describes him as an author. Was he? How close is her physical description of him to what he was?”

“It doesn’t say in the paper,” Ed Radin admitted. “I can follow that line up with my pipelines into the police files. Shall I mention the possibility that it may tie in with Elsie’s death?”

“I don’t see how you can unless you give them this script to read for themselves. Think you want to do that?”

“I don’t see how in hell I can without telling the whole story of how Brett came by it and how I advised him last night to sit tight and not stick his neck out. It’s a mess,” Radin ended ruefully.

“Not too much of one. Hell, if I know cops they wouldn’t have the brains to see anything in the script anyhow. If you’d given them Brett last night, they’d be spending all their time trying to sweat something out of him right now and the script would be disregarded. As it is, we can work on it.”

“If they were trying to sweat something out of him, we’d at least know he was alive and safe. Goddamn it, Mike! I wish to God…”

“No regrets,” said Shayne savagely, draining off his drink and swinging to his feet. “Never waste time on regrets. Maybe you did make a mistake. All right.” His voice was hard, the lines in his rugged face deepening to trenches as he glared down at the despondent writer. “Everybody makes mistakes. The man who’s worth a damn is the one who goes forward from each mistake he makes. Never look back. Right now, we’ve got to find Brett Halliday. Get off your dead butt and let’s move. You take the police angle on the Green case. I’ll pick up the Murray angle myself. If we can pull any threads of the two together, we may have something to work on. Will two hours be enough for you?”

The driving urgency in the redhead’s voice automatically brought Radin to his feet. He saw it for himself now. What Halliday had tried to describe in his accounts of Michael Shayne’s past cases. There was something in the man that wouldn’t let him fail. It was much more than conscious determination. Something from deep within that drove him on and on in the face of the most impossible odds. At this moment, with his best friend probably dead or in danger of death and with the man before him who might well be responsible for it, Michael Shayne wasted no moment nor one iota of energy on recriminations. When things went wrong, you picked up the pieces and went on.

Between his teeth, Ed Radin responded grimly, “Two hours will be plenty for me. Shall I meet you here?”

“Yes. We’ll leave the script and maybe it’ll mean more to us when we get back.” Michael Shayne grinned briefly and held out his hand.

“Don’t worry too much about Brett.” His voice was warm now, assured and vibrant. “I’ve known that guy for fifteen years and I’m not going to worry. We’ve got other things to do. Let’s roll. Where do I start getting background on Elsie Murray?”

“Gosh, I hardly know. The police hadn’t picked up much by this morning.”

“What about her job?”

“I don’t think she had one. I believe she told Brett she’d quit work a couple of months ago when she moved into the Johnson apartment and started writing this book. I’ve seen her around MWA meetings recently, but I don’t know any particular friends.”

“What about the fellow who turned Brett in this morning?”

“Avery Birk?” Ed Radin brightened. “He’d be one to ask. He’s hot on the tail of every gal who shows up at MWA without an escort carrying a sap. He wouldn’t get to first base with a girl like Elsie, but God how he would have tried. Seeing a perfect stranger like Brett walk off with her last night must have soured him plenty.”

“So he calls the cops quick when he hears about her,” agreed Shayne. “Where do I find him?”

“Some place in the Village, I think. I’ll call MWA headquarters and ask for his address.”

Radin turned to his telephone and dialed a number. He asked a question after identifying himself, and scribbled down the reply after waiting little over a minute. He handed the notation to Shayne, saying, “No telephone, but you’ll likely find him in this time of morning.”

Shayne pocketed it and they went out of the office together.

A congenitally frustrated Lothario, Avery Birk was feeling exceedingly well pleased with himself on this particular morning. He lay on his back on a wrinkled and soiled sheet covering a double bed on the third floor of a Village walk-up and contemplated the florid and erotic painting that covered the entire ceiling of the bedroom while he made little sucking sounds of satisfaction with thick lips and briefly considered the pleasures of sex.

Avery Birk never failed to find voluptuous pleasure in contemplating the painting over his bed. It reminded him of the one complete and undiluted sexual triumph in his life. The artist had been a horsy female from the midwest who was, if possible, even more sexually frustrated than he. He had met her, luckily, only a few days after her arrival in New York from some village in Indiana where she had spent forty-two drab years waiting for her widowed mother to die and leave her a small legacy with which she could storm the artistic citadels of New York.