Brett Halliday - This Is It, Michael Shayne

“I didn’t encourage him to mention any sum,” said Garvin with dignity. “You can see that it must have been Ralph Morton who sent the threatening letters you mentioned.”

“Maybe. Where is Morton staying?”

After a barely perceptible pause Garvin replied, “I don’t know,” too emphatically.

“He must have given you an address. How were you to get in touch with him?”

“I wasn’t going to get in touch with him,” said Garvin, growing sullen again.

“Look-he comes in and makes you a proposition,” Shayne said patiently. “Even though you turned him down as you claim, he must have hoped you might change your mind-and he wouldn’t have left without telling you where to contact him.”

“If he did, I don’t remember.”

“But you made a note of it,” Shayne said flatly. “It’s in your office some place.”

Again there was a faint hesitation before he said, “It may be,” in an overly indifferent tone. “I don’t see-”

“The hell you don’t,” Shayne burst out savagely. “You know the police are looking for him. Why are you holding out his address? Do you hope he’ll get away?”

Garvin’s apathy was shattered abruptly. “I hadn’t thought-I didn’t realize the importance-you’re right,” he stammered, coming to his feet and drawing his slender frame erect. “I should have thought of it at once. I’ll go to my office and see if I can find it.”

“I’ll go with you,” Shayne grated. “But before we go there’s one more thing I need, Harsh. That blackmail note you received from Sara Morton.”

“It’s right here.” All three men were standing, and Harsh went to a secretary and drew a square white envelope from a pigeonhole. He handed it to Shayne.

The paper was of the same heavy consistency as the special delivery he had received. The address was typed, and the envelope bore no return address. He took the single sheet of notepaper out and saw Sara Morton’s printed blue signature at the top. The final paragraph read:

I don’t wish to discuss this matter with you further, and suggest you mail this sum to me immediately with a signed note stating that I am to consider it full payment for services rendered.

Sincerely,

The signature was in blue ink and as nearly like the printed name as signatures usually run.

After reading it, Shayne glanced at Garvin and asked, “Have you seen this?”

“Of course. Mr. Harsh called me over to see it last evening.”

“Can you identify the signature as Miss Morton’s?”

“Why-I presumed it must be. It certainly looks the same as the printed name at the top of all her note-paper.”

“Which would make it a simple matter for anyone to forge a duplicate at the bottom.”

“What are you getting at?” Harsh broke in sternly. “Who else could or would wish to write a letter like that and forge her signature?”

“I don’t know,” Shayne admitted absently. He folded the note, replaced it in the envelope, and thrust it into his pocket. “Is the carbon of Morton’s story on you here?” he asked.

“I have it locked in a private safety deposit box.”

“Okay.” Shayne turned to Garvin and said, “Let’s go.”

Outside, the black clouds to the east were cut through with long streaks of lightning at frequent intervals, followed by distant rolls of thunder. They pushed against the sudden gusts of wind to Garvin’s shabby sedan, and Shayne said, “Get in and I’ll ride with you to the entrance.”

Garvin backed around and drove slowly, stopped before the entrance. Shayne leaped out, said, “Hold on a minute,” and ducked under the chain. He hurried to his car, made a U-turn and drove back past the high gateposts, got out and unhooked the chain. “Go ahead,” he yelled. “I’ll follow you.”

Back in his car, he slipped the idling motor into gear, fell in behind the sedan, and followed it a few blocks north, then across the bay on the 79th Street Causeway to the mainland. Here Garvin turned and drove past the Little River section, then south on Miami Avenue, and stopped in front of a dark and dilapidated four-story building on 46th.

Shayne pulled in behind him, parked, and got out to join Garvin, who waited with a key ring in his hand. “We’ll have to walk up two flights,” Garvin said nervously. “The elevator stops at ten o’clock.”

The building was in complete darkness. Garvin unlocked and opened the front door, switched on a dim light that showed a hall leading past a single elevator to a stairway in the rear. Shayne followed him two flights to another door. This he unlocked and reached in to turn on the light.

They entered a small, messy office with a teletype machine in one corner, a large desk littered with clipped news stories and pages of typed script that appeared to have no orderly sequence, and as he walked across the room his big feet stepped on or kicked aside wadded copy paper. He hoped earnestly that Garvin wouldn’t have to hunt through the scrambled papers on his desk for Morton’s address.

But Garvin went confidently to the swivel chair and sat down, began pulling out drawers and pawing through them with a frown of concentration rimming the bulge higher up on his forehead, and muttering to himself as he searched.

The frown went away when he took a scratch pad from the bottom drawer and held it out to Shayne. “Here it is. I remember now. I tossed it in here after Morton left. The bottom drawer was open and I hit my shin on it when I got up.”

Shayne wasn’t listening. The Ricardo Hotel was scribbled on the pad. He asked, “Where is the Ricardo?”

“On Eleventh Street between First and Second Avenues. He didn’t give me the room number.”

“Let’s get out of here.” Shayne’s eyes were very bright. The address was within a block of the corner where Beatrice Lally had dismissed the cab. He whirled and started to the door, kicking balled paper aside, and reached it before realizing he heard no sound behind him.

He turned and saw Garvin settled back in his swivel chair lighting a cigarette. “I said let’s go,” he growled.

“Go on, if you want to. It’s not my business to chase murderers. Particularly one as unpleasant as Ralph Morton.” Garvin’s tone was cold, almost insolent.

Shayne strode back to the desk and leaned over it. A muscle quivered in his lean jaw. “You’re coming with me,” he grated, and his arm shot out toward Garvin’s face, palm open.

Garvin skidded the swivel chair back and took off his glasses a second before Shayne’s hand hit his face. He leaped to his feet and protested angrily:

“See here-you can’t use your high-handed-”

“I haven’t got time to argue.” Shayne started around the desk.

Garvin shrank back before the bleak and driving urgency in Shayne’s gaunt face. He began sidling away toward the door. Shayne backtracked and caught his thin arm in a hard grip and shoved him out the door, waited while he closed and locked it, then impelled him down the stairs and across the sidewalk to his car. “We’ll leave that crate of yours here,” Shayne said flatly. He jerked the door of his own car open just as a gust of wind caught Garvin’s hat and sent it sailing through the air.

“My hat,” panted Garvin. “Have you gone crazy? You can’t-”

Shayne held the door of his car open and leaned against it, half-lifted the slender man, and shoved him into the front seat. The door whipped shut with a bang when he took his weight from it. He hurried around to get under the wheel, gunned the motor savagely, lurched away from the curb, and was doing thirty in second gear before Garvin recovered sufficiently to drag himself erect.

“I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such treatment,” he whimpered. “I’m willing to co-operate, but I certainly don’t intend-”