Brett Halliday: One Night with Nora

“So you’re up, too,” he pointed out mildly. “Bad conscience keep you awake?”

Shayne closed the door and followed him to the center of the room while Gentry settled himself in the chair Nora Carrol had just vacated.

“Too hot to sleep,” the redhead replied. “My conscience is as pure as a lily right now.” He seated himself, picked up the cognac bottle, and said, “Drink?”

Will Gentry shook his graying head and took a thin black cigar from his breast pocket. “Too hot for drinking, too,” rumbled Gentry. He bit off the end of the cigar and lit it, then asked, “What do you know about Ralph Carrol?”

Shayne’s glass was against his lips. He held it very still, arched ragged red brows meditatively, and didn’t reply for at least twenty seconds. He set the glass down and asked, “Who was that again?”

“Carrol. Ralph Carrol.”

“Oh, yeh, Carrol. I thought that was what you said. What’s your interest?”

Gentry’s slightly protuberant eyes met Shayne’s in a level gaze. “I’m asking the questions right now, Mike. How well do you know Carrol?”

“I don’t,” said Shayne promptly.

“Don’t waste time lying to me. When did you see him last?”

“I never saw him in my life, Will. Not to my knowledge.”

“Why did you call down to the desk a few minutes ago to ask if he was registered here?” probed the chief.

Shayne hesitated, lowering his lids over the glint of excitement and interest in his eyes. Finally, he blurted out, “How the devil do you know that? It hasn’t been more than five minutes ago.”

“That’s why I’m particularly interested,” Gentry told him patiently.

“There could be a thousand reasons,” said Shayne lightly. “Maybe I had a date with his wife and wanted to be certain the guy was in bed and would stay put while I kept it.”

“Cut it, Mike. I just want one reason. The real one.”

Shayne sobered and said quietly, “I’m not sure I can give you the real reason without betraying a confidence. I certainly can’t without knowing your reason for asking.”

“If it’s any news to you,” Gentry rumbled, “Ralph Carrol is dead. You know better than to hold out on a murder investigation.”

Shayne’s eyes were hooded, his face expressionless, but he was thinking fast. In a sense, the chief’s statement came as no great surprise. From the moment Gentry asked his first question about Carrol, Shayne had realized that it must be something like this that placed the Chief of Police in the hotel at the same time Shayne made his query to the desk. The substitute clerk had relayed the information to the police, of course. A bad break for the detective which would not have occurred if Dick had been on the switchboard.

“In that case,” he said, after a short silence, “I think you’d better get your answers from the source, Will.” He strode across to the bedroom door, and opened it.

Nora Carrol jumped up from the edge of the bed, a question forming on her lips. Shayne led her into the living-room and said to Gentry, “This is Mrs. Ralph Carrol.” And to the girl he explained gently, “Will Gentry is our police chief. He tells me your husband has been murdered.”

She went white and swayed against him. “Murdered?” she gasped with a convulsive sob. Shayne put his arm around her waist and half carried her to a chair opposite Gentry and eased her onto it. He held his brandy glass to her lips. “Drink this,” he ordered.

Gentry had risen, his rumpled eyelids rolled high as he stared at the girl in complete bewilderment.

Nora Carrol stiffened. Resisting Shayne’s efforts, she seemed ready to spring from the chair. She looked up into Gentry’s agate eyes, then subsided meekly and drank the remaining ounce of liquor in the glass. A series of retching coughs came with her sobs. Shayne thrust the water glass into her hand and stood over her while she gulped it down.

“Get hold of yourself,” said Shayne swiftly. “Sit right where you are, and repeat your story to Chief Gentry. And tell all of the truth this time. If you lied to me in one single instance before, now is the time to change it.”

“I didn’t lie,” she protested, suddenly shaken from her shock and grief by his accusation. “Why should I?”

“I don’t know,” he growled. “But I’ll be getting some clothes on and I’ll leave the bedroom door open while you’re talking. You might just happen to remember something else, this time, that’ll be important.

“She’s all yours, Will,” he went on to Gentry. “When you’re through with her, you’ll know as much about this as I do.”

He turned away to the bedroom, and scowled heavily, as he listened to Nora Carrol’s tearful, anxious questions about her husband’s death.

Gentry parried them, giving her no more information than he had given Shayne. Ralph Carrol had been murdered and the police were in his apartment one floor up, investigating the affair, at the time the substitute clerk reported Shayne’s inquiry about the dead man.

In the bedroom, Shayne stripped off his pajamas and began dressing. Through the open door he heard the girl give Gentry the same story she had told him, with only minor and unimportant variations. Her voice broke several times when she spoke of her relationship with the dead man.

He finished dressing and strolled into the living-room buttoning the sleeves of a fresh white shirt as she completed her recital. He grinned briefly at the expression of open disbelief on Chief Gentry’s broad, florid face.

Circling the pair, he sat down in the swivel chair and refilled his cognac glass. He rocked back and listened with interest as Gentry asked the same question he himself had asked upon learning that Ralph Carrol was occupying the suite directly above.

“Could you have mistaken the number, Mrs. Carrol?” Chief Gentry asked. “Are you sure you were told to come to one-sixteen instead of two -sixteen?”

“I’m positive.” Nora Carrol was composed now, dry-eyed and tight-lipped. “It was written out in the instructions that were waiting for me at the hotel when I arrived yesterday; and distinctly repeated again over the telephone tonight.”

“I suggested some such mix-up, too,” Shayne told Gentry moodily. “A sure way to check would be to try the key Mrs. Carrol has on her husband’s door. That’s it right there on the desk. I’m interested in finding out if a key made for two-sixteen also fits my lock.”

Gentry picked up the shiny new key and studied it. “All these Yale keys look alike to me,” he rumbled. “But we’ll have to leave the test to an expert, Mike. The first men who arrived here, after getting the report on Carrol, couldn’t get a duplicate key from the new man on the desk. He couldn’t find a master key, either. So they forced the lock of two-sixteen to get in, and it’s jammed. It would be impossible to make the test right now.”

Shayne thought for a moment, then said, “Look, Will, I’m damned anxious to know whether this is just a crazy mistake, or whether this woman was given a key to my room, and sent here for some definite purpose, while her husband was being murdered. Seems to me a lot depends on that. Let’s do this. Call upstairs and have the key to number two-sixteen brought down. If it doesn’t unlock my door, then we’ll know that this key couldn’t possibly unlock his.”

“Good enough.” Gentry reached for the phone and spoke into it briefly.

Shayne went into the kitchenette to replenish his glass of ice water. When he returned, he said, “I think it’s our turn to have a little dope from you, Will. When was Carrol murdered?”

The chief removed the soggy cigar from his mouth and aimed it at the wastebasket “There was a telephone call about two twenty-five. A man called. Didn’t give his name. He was excited, and all he said was that there was a dead man in room two-sixteen at this hotel, and then he hung up. A patrol car got the flash and got here a few minutes later.