Brett Halliday - When Dorinda Dances

“Nonsense,” said Elliott Gibson. “You couldn’t possibly have kept an eye on him every minute through the night. He probably fooled you by pretending to go to bed, and you don’t want to admit it.”

Black ignored the lawyer. He said to Gentry, “If Brewer was alive at five-thirty, you’ll never be able to make a charge against Godfrey. Not with Mathews and me on the stand.”

“There’s no actual evidence that he’s dead.” Gentry growled disgustedly. “So he’s afraid his partner plans to kill him, and he goes off some place where he isn’t known, and hides.”

“He was in a tizzy to get away from my office at five-thirty to see Mr. Gibson,” Shayne reminded the chief. “It’s a five-minute walk. Yet Gibson says he hadn’t turned up by the time he left, sometime after six.”

“Maybe he changed his mind after he left your office.”

Shayne shrugged. “Maybe. It’s no skin off my nose either way.” He got up.

“Nothing more on the dancer?” Gentry asked.

“Nothing at my end.” He looked inquiringly at the chief.

“Nothing from the radio pickup.” Gentry regarded him quizzically. “You sure there was any dancer, Mike? Sure that wasn’t a fast story to cover up something entirely different on Moran’s death?”

Shayne snorted. “You saw her picture and cased her apartment.”

“I know. But you’re the only one that places her in your apartment at the right time.”

“Try the night clerk at my hotel,” Shayne suggested sourly. “He’ll describe her.” He paused, noting Gibson’s growing impatience with this interchange which excluded him, and went on before the lawyer could interrupt.

“What sort of story have you given to the papers on Moran? They haven’t been around my place for hot copy.”

“I haven’t given them anything,” the chief told him in a mild rumble. “Until we find the girl — if she is what you say—”

“Thanks, Will. We should know for sure by noon when I get a call from Washington. What about the Waldorf Towers? Have you checked further on Mrs. Davis?”

“What sort of run-around am I getting here?” Gibson broke in angrily. His face grew very red and he pounded his fist on the chief’s desk. “I believe my client to be murdered, and I demand immediate action.”

Gentry calmly disregarded the attorney. He nodded in answer to Shayne’s question and consulted a memorandum on his desk. “I had a man waiting for the day shift. I got his report just before this Brewer thing came up. She still hasn’t returned to her room. No one remembers seeing her go in or out last night, or any visitors. No outgoing phone calls and no recollection of any incoming calls except your attempt to reach her.”

“What about her reservation?”

“It was made by telephone the previous day. But get this, Mike. The clerk who made the reservation thinks it was made by a man. He won’t swear to it, but has that distinct impression.”

Shayne scowled heavily. “No name, of course.”

“Only the Mrs. Davis.”

“A local call?”

“He thinks so. But suppose it was long-distance? You call a hotel, and the operator connects you with the desk. He has no way of knowing whether it’s local or not.”

Shayne said abruptly, “I’m going to check that room. Have you got a man there?”

“I told Olsen to stick around.”

Shayne went out, hearing Attorney Gibson’s wrathful voice raised behind him as he closed the door.

He drove swiftly to the Waldorf Towers with the additional fact of Milton Brewer’s disappearance nagging at his mind. Brewer and Mrs. Davis. And Dorinda—

As yet, he couldn’t see any connection between the first two. Two clients who happened to pass each other in his waiting-room. One client, and a prospective client, he amended. If it hadn’t been for the accident of Mrs. Davis reaching his office first, he would have been on Hiram Godfrey’s tail instead of Henry Black.

Now they were both missing. How did that add up? Was the girl a connection between them? She had mentioned that either Brewer or Godfrey was a friend of her father’s (if she was Julia Lansdowne) and Mrs. Davis had claimed to be her mother’s closest friend.

If it were Brewer who was her father’s friend — that indicated a connection between him and Mrs. Davis. Yet, he could recall nothing to indicate that either was more than casually aware of the other. Of course, he had not given Brewer more than a glance during the brief moment when he escorted Mrs. Davis into the outer office. That was something he would have to ask Lucy.

At the Waldorf Towers, he looked around for Olsen whom he knew by sight. Gentry’s man was not in the lobby, but as Shayne started toward the desk he was accosted by Ben Hutch, the house detective.

“Hi, Mike,” said Hutch. “You here on Mrs. Davis?”

Shayne nodded. “Gentry told me Olsen was staked out here.”

Hutch was a wiry man of medium height. He wore a quiet brown suit and a deceptively casual expression. “Olsen stepped out for a cup of coffee,” he said. “I promised to keep an eye out.”

“Let’s go up to four-eighteen,” Shayne suggested, and moved toward the elevators.

“Okay, Mike. But she can’t be up there. She left her key in the box. I’ve got it right here.”

“People have been known to leave hotel doors on the latch when they went out — for various reasons,” Shayne told him equably. “Maybe Mrs. Davis had a reason.”

“What?” Hutch asked as an elevator took them up.

“She’s in the middle of something funny. I’m worried, that’s all.”

They stopped at 418, and Ben Hutch knocked perfunctorily before trying the doorknob. It was locked. He inserted the key and opened the door, and stepped cautiously inside.

Shayne entered a large, pleasant room that showed no sign of occupancy except the presence of an obviously new case of expensive airplane luggage standing unopened on a luggage stand. The bed was neatly made, and the spacious closet was empty.

Ben Hutch went into the bathroom and returned with a puzzled frown between his eyes. “Looks like she didn’t even wash her hands. I forgot to mention that the maid reported this morning — said the bed hadn’t been used, and towels all clean.”

“So you forgot to tell me,” Shayne growled. “Are you going to open that bag? Or shall I?”

“If it’s not locked.” Hutch went over and pressed the center catch. It opened, and he withdrew its entire contents, a heavy bundle wrapped in a cheap dressing-gown with a Burdine’s price tag still attached to a button on the sleeve. He laid it on the bed, unrolled the gown, and revealed four new novels with bright jackets.

“An obvious plant,” Shayne said with disgust. “Those books make about the right weight, and the robe kept them from sliding around and attracting attention when her luggage was carried up.”

“In the name of God, why? This bag cost a lot more than a night’s room rent, and she didn’t even sleep here.”

Shayne’s gray eyes were narrowed and remote. “I don’t know, Ben. Leave the room locked, and I’ll have Gentry send up a fingerprint man right away.”

He left the house detective and long-legged it to the elevator where he went down and out to his car.

So now both women were really missing, he thought, as he drove to his downtown office. And Mr. Milton Brewer.

He increased his speed, suddenly hopeful that Lucy Hamilton had noticed a glance between Brewer and Mrs. Davis, a casual word, perhaps. His hunch that the woman’s name was not Davis persisted, but he had liked her and wanted to help her. She had obviously had no intention of spending the night at the Waldorf Towers. There were no toilet articles in her case — nothing.