Brett Halliday - Marked for Murder

Shayne stood up and said harshly, “Painter had the same chance I did to pick up that dope. A letter from Madge Rankin was in Rourke’s apartment mailbox from Wednesday morning until last night and Painter was too dumb to think of looking for it. To hell with him. I don’t mind doing his work, but I intend to do it my way.”

“Yeh-I know, I know,” Gentry said heavily.

“You know how it is, Will,” Shayne said, softening his tone. “Painter’s likely to barge in if he has an extra scrap of information and spoil everything. I’ve had that trouble with him before.”

“Have it your own way,” the chief called to Shayne on his way out

“Be seeing you,” Shayne called back with a friendly wave of his big hand.

Shayne got in the police coupe and drove around to a small dairy lunch half a block from the Courier offices, went in and dialed the newspaper’s number from a telephone booth. When the switchboard operator answered, he said, “Mr. Bronson’s office,” and waited. In a moment Minerva Higgins’s prim voice came over the wire.

“Mr. Bronson’s office.”

“Mike Shayne, Minerva. I’m in the dairy lunch down the street. Can you slip away a minute? It’s important”

“I guess I can,” Minerva agreed reluctantly.

He hung up and went to a table in the corner and ordered a bottle of milk and two glasses. Minerva came hurrying in a few minutes later. She wore a dinky little hat perched askew the knot of gray hair and she took long, mannish steps in her low-heeled shoes.

Shayne jumped up and pulled a chair out for her and she sank into it. “I can’t be but a minute, Mr. Shayne. Mr. Bronson thinks I’ve just gone-out of the room.”

“It’ll take only a minute,” Shayne promised, pouring milk in her glass as he spoke. “I couldn’t afford to have Bronson see me talking to you up there. All his calls go through your desk, don’t they? You can listen in?”

“I can-but I have other things to do.”

“This is important,” Shayne said earnestly. “I need a record of every number he calls not definitely connected with business matters, and the exact time. And the exact time of every call he receives not definitely a business call. And a shorthand transcript of any conversations that sound screwy at all. Can you do it?”

Minerva drank a glass of milk while she listened. Her eyes were troubled. She asked tartly, “Why should I spy on Mr. Bronson?”

“To help me catch a murderer.”

“Mr. Shayne! Timothy’s not-dead!”

“Not quite-on the last report,” he said, “but four other people are.”

“But you can’t possibly think Mr. Bronson is-”

“I know he’s mixed up in it somehow,” Shayne told her placidly. He poured her glass full of milk. “I don’t know how deeply yet, but I give you my word that what I’m asking will help to get the lug who shot Rourke.”

Minerva’s thin lips tightened. “Mr. Rourke always said your word was good enough for him.” She nodded and asked matter-of-factly, “Is that all?”

“I’m particularly interested in a certain call that may come after the first edition is on the street. That is: if this advertisement is in the Personal column, Minerva. ‘Yes.’ Signed, ‘Colt.’ Just those two words. If that ad isn’t in the Personal column, incoming calls probably won’t be important.”

“Yes. Colt,” Minerva repeated wonderingly. She finished her second glass of milk and got up. “I’d better get back.”

Shayne said hastily, “Have dinner with me tonight and we can go over your notes.”

“Very well. I’ll be at home after five and until seven.” She gave him her address and hurried out.

Shayne downed a glass of milk and went out to his car. He drove to the LaCrosse Apartment Hotel on 14th Street. It was one of the better-class residential hotels in Miami, featuring two- and three-room suites with hotel service at exorbitant weekly and monthly rates.

The lobby was large and heavily carpeted, furnished with comfortable chairs and couches, many of them occupied by elderly people who drowsed or talked together in low tones.

A buxom woman was behind the desk. She wore a pince-nez and regarded the redheaded detective with cold disapproval as he came toward her, her eyes candidly observing his rumpled suit. She began shaking her head when he reached the desk and pulled off his hat.

“Do you have a Mr. Dillingham Smith here?” Shayne asked.

“I’m afraid we don’t. Mr. Smith checked out this morning.”

“Can you tell me where he went?”

“He may have left a forwarding-address,” she said, but made no motion to look it up.

Shayne flipped his wallet open and said, “It’s a police matter. Will you get his forwarding-address for me?”

She glanced at his credentials, said, “Hmph. The police? I’m not at all surprised.” She stepped aside and pulled out a drawer, glanced at a slip of paper, and said disapprovingly, “Mr. Smith asked that any mail be forwarded to the Front Hotel.”

“So you’re not surprised to have the police interested in Mr. Smith?” Shayne asked.

She said, “Hmph,” again, and tossed her head.

“Did his wife move with him to the Front Hotel?”

“Mrs. Smith left several days ago.”

“Can you describe Mrs. Smith?”

“She was a blonde,” said the woman, as though that was all that was necessary.

Shayne groaned, “Another damned blonde.” He put his hat on and yanked the brim low. “Where did she go?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. I understand she left the city.”

“When was that?”

The woman thought for a moment and said, “I think it was last Tuesday afternoon.” A portly gentleman who looked like a Belgian diplomat came up to the desk and she turned her attention away from Shayne to simper. “Good morning, Mr. Rochemont.”

Shayne went across to the revolving door and let a horse-faced doorman turn it for him as he went through. He stopped and got out his billfold, extracted a five-spot, and gave it to the man. He asked, “Do you remember a Mrs. Smith who checked out last Tuesday afternoon? I think her husband stayed on until this morning.”

The doorman squinted at the bill, grinned, and said, “A man doesn’t forget a number like her in a hurry.” Little red veins showed in his cheeks and his eyes were rheumy. “She made a man wish he was fifty again,” he added.

“Pretty?”

He pursed his colorless lips and whistled. “And plenty swishy too, by golly.”

“Did you see her leave Tuesday afternoon?”

He pushed the door to let an old lady out, touched two fingers to the beak of his cap, then said to Shayne, “No, but I helped her husband get a big trunk out in time to catch the five-o’clock train. He said he was going to meet her at the station.”

“Did he take the trunk in his car?”

“No sir. He tried to but it was too big and heavy to handle. We had to call an express truck. Just lucky I’ve got a pal that rushed a truck right over from the Royal Palm Moving Company.”

Shayne thought about that when the doorman went to the curb and whistled for a cab for an old man who came out. When he returned, Shayne asked, “What apartment did the Smiths have?”

“Four-eleven.”

Shayne thanked him and went back into the lobby. The big woman at the desk had her back turned and didn’t see him when he crossed to a waiting elevator and got in. “Four,” he said, and the operator took him up.

Two maids were cleaning 411 when he walked through the open doorway. The one who was running the vacuum turned off the current and looked up curiously.

Shayne asked, “Getting it cleaned up for me to move in?”

White teeth gleamed in her black face when she smiled. “That’s right, if you’s the new gen’leman what’s waitin’.”