Brett Halliday - One Night with Nora

“But he was involved with her,” said Shayne, “and now with Carrol dead and Nora legally a widow, he comes dashing down here to comfort her. You can’t deny that.”

“I’m not attempting to. Let me point out that your case against Granger falls to pieces because of one insurmountable contradiction. In the first place you hypothecate that he killed Nora’s husband for love of her. Yet at the same time, you suggest he chose a time and method that was bound to involve her, and quite possibly bring an accusation against her — against the woman he loves, and hopes to marry,” Bates elaborated. “You can’t have it both ways, Mr. Shayne.” Again a half-smile was on his thin lips.

“All right.” Shayne turned to Chief Gentry. “I can’t think of anything else, Will. But if I were you I’d check with Wilmington damned carefully to determine whether Granger actually spent the night there.”

“If you’re finished with your questions,” Bates said, “may I ask a few of my own?” He turned to the chief.

“Go ahead. But leave out your accusations about the corruptness of the Miami police,” Gentry warned in a deep rumble.

“Do you actually accept this man’s denial that he was retained by me to locate Ralph Carrol?” the lawyer demanded sharply. “Do you believe that he did not agree to make arrangements for Carrol’s wife to visit him last night?”

Will Gentry answered with a blunt: “Yes.”

“Do you believe me to be lying about the matter?”

Gentry hesitated, glancing doubtfully at Shayne. “I don’t go that far. I don’t believe Shayne does, either. I think you were taken in by an impostor, and that you thought you were dealing with Shayne, but that it was someone else altogether.”

“How do you explain such a hoax? I had letters from him — telephone calls.”

“We’re guessing,” Shayne interjected, “that your first letter to me was intercepted somehow. That the person who got hold of it had a letterhead printed, using his own address and telephone number instead of mine. Naturally, you would have no reason to suspect you weren’t dealing with me.”

“How could my letter have been intercepted?” Bates asked with incredulity, his pale eyes shifting from Shayne to Gentry.

“I won’t even try to answer that,” Shayne growled. “The most likely place, I should think, is before it ever reached the mail. In Wilmington. In your own office, perhaps. Could your secretary have been careless and showed it to someone?”

“Certainly not. It’s quite impossible. Miss Evans is completely trustworthy.”

“Perhaps she gave it to someone to mail for her,” Shayne suggested casually. “Think back over the routine in your office. You dictated the letter, no doubt, and she typed it. It was probably given to you to sign. There were, doubtless, clients in and out of your office while this was going on. When did Margrave come to Miami?” he threw at the lawyer abruptly.

“Why, a week or so ago. Certainly you don’t suspect—”

“Someone got hold of that letter and prevented it reaching me. Someone who was able to write you on forged stationery, a day or so later, from Miami, exactly as though I were replying. Someone,” he went on harshly, “who supplied Mrs. Carrol with a key that ostensibly would open her husband’s door. But it was a key to my apartment instead of Carrol’s, and she was sent to my room just about the time her husband was being murdered on the floor above.”

“Why?” demanded Bates in bewilderment. “What possible reason could anyone have for doing those things?”

“It must tie up with Carrol’s death,” Shayne told him. “When we know how, we’ll probably know who.”

Gentry’s telephone rang. He answered it, listened a moment, then said, “You’d better pick him up and bring him in for questioning on suspicion,” and hung up.

In answer to Shayne’s unspoken question, he said, “That was a report on your friend at the Roney. He claims he was in bed early last night, but no one can verify it. I’ll get after the airlines and see if I can get witnesses up here.”

“And check on a later flight,” said Shayne. “Anything after four-thirty that stops in Wilmington. Maybe you can put it closer.” He added to Bates, “Did Granger contact you this morning?”

“Yes. He phoned about ten, after hearing the news about Ralph. When I told him I was flying down, he invited himself to join me.”

“Any flight between four-thirty and eight, then,” he told Gentry. “I don’t suppose he used his right name, or that the stewardess will be back in Miami yet but someone in the ticket office might remember him.” Shayne stood up and started for the door.

“Where you headed, Mike?” Gentry asked.

“To have a talk with the widow and her boy friend from Wilmington. Then I’d like to see Ann Margrave again and find out where she was at two o’clock this morning.”

A vagrant idea was nagging at the back of Shayne’s mind. It wasn’t clear, yet. He didn’t know exactly what it was or what he hoped it might prove but it was a point that had subconsciously bothered him ever since early in the morning when he and Gentry talked by telephone to Bates in Wilmington.

Upon reaching his car he got in and sat for a moment before starting the motor. In the rush of events since Carrol’s murder, he hadn’t had an opportunity to check at his hotel. This seemed a good time to do it, so instead of driving directly to the Commodore, he stopped off at his hotel.

The clerk on the desk had known the rangy detective for years and greeted him affably. “Bad business in two-sixteen last night, Mr. Shayne. Anything new on the Carrol murder?” His eyes flickered upward to the wound on Shayne’s head and a smile of admiration was forming on his lips when the redhead snapped at him in mock anger.

“Hell of a thing for Dick to be sick last night when it happened. The man you had on the switchboard didn’t even warn me I was trying to call a stiff when I asked for Carrol.”

“We’re all sorry about that, Mr. Shayne,” the clerk told him soberly, lowering his voice and glancing at an elderly couple near the desk. “And that’s something I’ve been wanting to see you about in private. Dick called up this morning and told me to tell you he tried to call you at your office about ten o’clock, but no one answered.”

Shayne’s memory flashed back to the call he had been prevented from taking by the interference of one of Gentry’s men, the burly, surly Gene Benton. He asked, “What did Dick have on his mind?”

“Something that worried him when he heard about Mr. Carrol being murdered. He knew it might be important, but Dick sure wouldn’t spill it to the cops unless you gave him the okay. It’s about your man casing Mr. Carrol’s apartment last week.”

Only a muscle twitching in his left cheek gave an indication of Shayne’s intense interest. This was it. This was what had been nagging at him.

“My man?” he asked quietly. “I thought all of you knew I work alone.”

“Dick didn’t give me too much on the phone,” the clerk said apologetically, “but that’s what he said. You did have an assistant a couple of months ago. Remember? You brought him in and introduced him around and said he was to use your room any time he wanted.”

Shayne’s eyes were very bright, but he said, “Yeh, Nash,” casually. “For a couple of weeks in January. He was around last week asking about Ralph Carrol?”

“Dick didn’t say it was him. Just said he was your man. ’Course we all know you always worked by yourself, but I recollect you did have this man that one time, and—”

“I remember,” Shayne cut in impatiently. “What’s Dick’s home number?”