Brett Halliday - This Is It, Michael Shayne

Holding the bill out to Gentry, he asked, “What would you do to the guy you caught with the other half of this, Will?”

“Lock him up for murder.”

A slow grin twisted Shayne’s wide mouth. “I’ve been trying to decide whether to hold this out on you or not. I guess I’d better confess.” He reached in the pocket of his dungarees and got out the special delivery envelope from Sara Morton. He fished out his half of the bill and handed them both to Gentry. “See if they fit.”

Timothy Rourke leaped to his feet and came over to watch Gentry fit the pieces together. “Did you get that off Beatrice, Mike?” he exclaimed incredulously. “For God’s sake-”

“Spill it,” Will Gentry said grimly, rolling his rumpled eyelids up slowly and turning to Shayne. “And it better be good if you don’t like the inside of my jail.”

Shayne hesitated, tapping the envelope with its enclosures against his knee, then said decisively, “Wait one minute while I check what I hope will be an alibi for Miss Lally that even you will have to accept, Will.” He looked up at Rourke, who was still standing before Gentry, puzzling over the torn bill.

“Do you know what time Beatrice met you in the bar, Tim?”

“Six o’clock,” Rourke said promptly.

“Are you sure? Can you swear to it?”

“I’ll be glad to. My date with Morton was for six. I got there a couple minutes early and checked my watch with the lobby clock to make sure how much too early I’d arrived. It was two minutes of six. I went straight to the bar and was just sitting down at a table when Beatrice came in.”

“Is that good enough for you?” Shayne asked Gentry. “You’ve heard Rourke say that afterward she wasn’t out of his sight long enough to go up fourteen floors and back.”

“I’ll take Tim’s word for it,” the chief agreed after a moment’s consideration. “But we’ve still got before six o’clock,” he added impatiently.

“No we haven’t,” Shayne told him evenly. “We’ve just got after six-thirty.” He flipped the envelope over into Gentry’s lap and rose with a simulated yawn. “I forgot to mention that I found that waiting for me at my office when I got there at eight-thirty.” He went to the liquor cabinet, brought back a bottle of cognac, and poured a drink.

Gentry had pulled the contents of the envelope out, and two of the pasted-word threats lay on the floor. Rourke picked them up while Gentry read the brief note from the dead woman.

Shayne said, “Help yourselves to a drink,” and took his glass with him when he sauntered into the bathroom. He ran the hot water and began lathering his face. He looked around with pretended surprise when Gentry roared from the bathroom door.

“What the hell do you mean by holding out on me, Mike. Get that damned lather off your face so we can talk.”

Shayne reached for a straight razor. “But that clears Miss Lally, doesn’t it? I told you I had a date.”

“Cut it out, Mike. This is murder.”

Shayne sighed and wiped the lather from his face with a hot washcloth and followed Gentry into the living-room. When the chief resumed his seat, Shayne faced him with a look of injured innocence and said, “That’s a privileged communication, you know. From a client.”

“Was your half of the bill in that envelope when you opened it?” Gentry demanded.

“If you read what she wrote-”

“I read it,” Gentry cut in heavily. “What did you find out from Lally about those three threats?”

“Not much. One each day in a plain post-office envelope with the address typed. The first two envelopes were destroyed, but she thinks the one that came this morning may be in Miss Morton’s room.”

“No such luck,” said Gentry sourly. “The waste-basket was clean. Nothing at all turned up. Who does Lally think sent them?”

“How would she know?” With both hands shoved deep in the dungaree pockets, Shayne took three slow steps up and back again, then added, “Leo Gannet offered Miss Morton twenty-five grand to get out of town a few days ago.”

“Why?”

“I presume,” said Shayne, walking again, “she was tying his gambling activities in too closely with police graft and political corruption. That was her assignment, wasn’t it, Tim?”

“Something like that. A general expose of crooked operations during the winter season. Any investigation would bump into Gannet from several angles.”

Shayne stopped opposite Gentry. “Morton’s been needling him just for the hell of it, I guess. Dropping in during the evening at his Green Barn and Red House. Worried him enough so he closed down the upstairs rooms in both places. Until tonight,” he went on grimly. “I didn’t know she was dead, you see, when Beatrice and I stopped in looking for Miss Morton; but Leo was definitely not pleased when I asked him how come he’d reopened tonight.”

Gentry frowned distastefully at the soggy cigar butt in his hand. “When Gannet couldn’t buy her off and couldn’t frighten her off-?”

“I don’t actually believe he’s dumb enough to send threats like that,” Shayne broke in. “But he’s got some dumb bunnies working for him. Any one of them might have thought it a smart idea.”

“Why do you figure she didn’t call the police about the threats?” demanded Gentry.

“You’d have to ask her that. Beatrice says the first two didn’t seem to bother her, but when the third came she asked her to look up my phone number.”

“Sara Morton hated the police and distrusted all of them,” Timothy Rourke said. “She’s spent her life reporting criminal conditions in the big cities around the country and I guess that’d disillusion almost anyone.”

“All right,” said Gentry harshly. “So she sits in her room all day behind a locked door trying to reach Shayne. But at six-thirty she gives up trying. She’s convinced the threats mean business and she’s slated to die tonight. So what does she do then?” He pounded his fist on his heavy thigh and the veins in his red face were purple. “Failing to reach Shayne, does she condescend to call in the police? No! She sits down at her typewriter and writes Mr. Shayne a letter, begging him to catch her murderer after he bumps her off. Nuts! No sane person would sit there and wait for death.”

There was a stillness in the room when Gentry finished his reasonable deduction and threw his slightly smoked and half-chewed cigar toward a wastebasket beside Shayne’s desk.

“Sounds like she might’ve got herself into something she couldn’t quite face,” Rourke offered lightly.

Gentry grunted sourly, and Shayne said, “Maybe she wasn’t sane. I never met her. But you have the evidence right there in your hand. She did exactly that, whether you like it or not.”

“Where’s that secretary?” Gentry demanded again.

“Probably passed out by this time, the way she was pouring stuff down when I left her. You have to admit that Sara Morton’s letter clears her.”

“I don’t admit anything,” Gentry rumbled. “I want to talk to her. Now.”

Shayne’s gray eyes glittered angrily. “What’s the matter with you tonight, Will? You’ve got proof enough-”

“There’s no proof Morton actually wrote the letter at six-thirty,” Gentry broke in stubbornly. “Perhaps her watch was wrong. By God! It was wrong,” he roared, pounding his thick thigh with a fleshy fist. “Almost an hour slow. It was still ticking when we found her. If she timed the note by her watch-” He paused to consider the difference this would make.

“An hour slow,” Shayne said mockingly, watching the triumph die out of the chief’s beefy face. “So if she went by her watch, it was actually seven-thirty when she wrote the note.”