The precinct captain was followed by Sergeant Parks and a burly officer whom Shayne had not seen before. None of the three men noticed Shayne in his corner. Denton walked to the murdered girl and stood over her. He grunted, “She’s plenty dead. Call Doc Matteson, Parks — and tell Homicide to get on the job.” Captain Denton turned to the Frenchwoman as Parks went to the telephone. “Who are you? Did you phone in the report? What do you know about it?”
“I am Madame Legrand,” she answered, “and I know nothing. He called the police.” She nodded toward Shayne.
Denton turned slowly. He reached into his breast pocket for a cigar, bit off the end, and savagely spat a fragment of tobacco on the floor.
He said, “I might have known you’d be mixed up in this.”
Shayne shrugged and said, “I always like to get in on the ground floor.”
“Why did you bop her?” snarled Denton. “That the only way you can handle a dame in the Quarter?”
Shayne said, “That lacks a hell of a lot of being funny.”
“All right. Give.” Denton crossed the room and set himself solidly before the redhead and chewed his unlit cigar across his mouth.
“I had a date with Miss Macon. I was detained by a couple of your boys.” Shayne touched his bruised face tenderly with the tips of his fingers. “Before I could get back here to keep my date, somebody else had got to the girl.”
“Macon, eh? That her name?”
“Margo Macon.”
“Friend of yours?”
“Sort of. Daughter of a friend. He asked me to look her up when I hit town.”
“And your story is gonna be that you just walked in by chance and found her like this? Hell, you’d better think up a better one fast.”
Shayne nodded toward the Frenchwoman. “She’ll verify my story. I punched her bell by mistake when I was trying to rouse the girl. She came in with me.”
Denton took the cigar from his mouth and frowned at it. He turned from Shayne to face Madame Legrand and barked, “Well, what about it? What are you doing here?”
Madame Legrand’s black eyes flashed angrily. She shook a trembling finger at Shayne and burst into a wild babble of French. She stamped her foot and her eyes glittered with fear.
Denton yelled, “Hold it! Wait a minute. Don’t tell me you can’t speak English. I heard you a while ago.”
Shayne said, “Madame Legrand always has hysterics in French. She can go faster that way. If you wouldn’t scare the living daylights out of her you might find out something.”
“Shut up,” Denton barked. “I’m running this show.” He turned to the woman again. “Let’s have your story.”
“He made me stay,” she screamed. “He made me come in. I live in the next apartment and I know nothing about this. Only what I have told him.”
“Tell me everything you told him,” Denton ordered. She lowered herself into a chair and began a tight-lipped recital. When she told him of seeing the man leap from the balcony of 303 to the hotel balcony opposite, Denton pounced.
“Get out on the balcony and take a look, Parks,” he ordered. Then to the woman: “Describe the man you saw. What time was it?”
“There was not much light. Not enough to see him well. It was, perhaps, an hour ago. I was in bed and did not look at the time.”
Parks came back from the balcony. “Looks like a good bet. Not more’n two feet from this balcony to a dinky one in the next building.”
“Get the number of that room. Look it over. Find out who’s in it — all about it.”
The sergeant hurried out. Denton turned and scowled at the dead girl. “Been dead about an hour. That checks.” He said to Shayne, “Where were you an hour ago?”
“Do I need an alibi?”
“You’re likely to.”
“I’ll dig one up when I need it,” Shayne promised, and demanded in disgust, “Why in hell doesn’t Homicide get on the job so we can have an intelligent investigation? I have a personal interest in this case.”
Denton clamped his teeth hard on his cigar. He turned to Madame Legrand and asked, “What time did this man come up? How did you get into this apartment?”
“It was a little after eleven. I asked him why he disturbed decent people at so late an hour and he was most anxious that Miss Macon should reply to him. He pounded on the door and turned the knob and it came open.”
“Unlocked, eh?” Denton transferred his suspicious gaze to Shayne.
The detective nodded blandly. “I didn’t jimmy it if that’s what you’re getting at.”
Light suddenly flashed through the French doors and windows of Shayne’s hotel room across the way. As Denton whirled in that direction, Sergeant Parks’s excited voice came from the opposite balcony: “I don’t think you’re going to need Homicide to hang this case up to dry, Captain. Didn’t you say that redhead’s name is Mike Shayne?”
Denton stepped onto the balcony. He nodded to Parks. “That’s it. How does it tie up?”
“In a tight knot.” The sergeant’s voice was exultant. “This is Shayne’s room — rented this afternoon. And get this, Captain. He acted plenty suspicious when he rented it. Asked the clerk about Apartment three-oh-three in the Peloine and wanted the room adjoining it. He slipped the clerk a ten-spot to fix it for him to have this special room. How do you like that?”
“I like it fine,” Denton told him. He went back into the room to face Shayne. “Got an answer to that?”
Shayne said, “Sure. But I’m not wasting my answers on you. You’re nothing but a goddamned precinct bull. When the dicks come I’ll do my talking.”
Denton’s face reddened. He thrust his head forward, glaring at Shayne. He started to close the gap between them when the sound of tramping feet on the stairs and in the hallway stopped him.
A slender, middle-aged man sauntered through the doorway with his hands in the pockets of a blue serge suit. A cigarette drooped laxly from one corner of his mouth. He nodded curtly and said, “All right, Denton, I’ll take over.” Men tramped in behind him — photographers, fingerprint men, and Doctor Matteson, the medical examiner. They shunted Denton and his harnessmen aside as they began a methodical investigation of the body and the death scene.
“Sure, Inspector. Sure,” Denton said to the slender man in plain clothes. “This is your baby, all right. But there’s not much left for your smart boys to find out. If you’re looking for a killer, there you are.” He gestured toward Shayne, his black eyes triumphant.
The inspector lifted grayish brows at Shayne. Cold blue eyes surveyed him with ironic detachment. “Nice of you to hang around for the pinch,” he commented quietly.
“I’ve got him dead to rights,” Denton blustered. “Name’s Shayne. Been in trouble here before. A two-bit private op who got run out of town years ago and just got up the guts to sneak back. Thought he could pull a fast one and get out before we heard about him being here.”
The inspector said, “Shayne?” He studied the redhead an instant longer, lifted one shoulder slightly and turned away. “Fair enough, Denton. You’ll get credit if it’s coming to you. What have you got on him?”
Denton went into details with great gusto. When he finished relating the incriminating evidence against Shayne the captain whirled on Madame Legrand and demanded, “This is the man you saw sneak out of here and leap across the balcony, isn’t it? Look at him? Isn’t he the one?”
“I cannot say, Monsieur. I cannot say yes and I cannot say no. It was not light, you understand.” She spread out her hands in a gesture of futility.
Parks came across from the hotel balcony and entered the room. He drew Denton aside and conferred excitedly for a moment. The captain nodded and chewed happily on his cigar, turned to the inspector and said, “My man has some more important dope. Mind if I ask Shayne a couple of questions?”
“Go ahead,” the inspector answered.
Denton pivoted until his blunt jaw was within six inches of Shayne’s gaunt face. He asked, “Where have you been all evening?”
Shayne said, “For the inspector’s benefit, I’ll tell you. A couple of your tough boys jumped me a little after dark — after you’d told them I wasn’t welcome in your precinct. They bounced me around and jugged me on a false d.-and-d. While I was in jail, this girl was deprived of my protection — and murdered.”
“That’s just too damned bad,” purred Denton. “Do you happen to know what time you were released?”
“Not exactly. About ten-forty-five.”
“It happens to have been ten-thirty-six. Parks just called headquarters and confirmed it.” Denton darted a glance at the detective inspector to be sure he was listening. “How long has the girl been dead?” he asked the medical examiner.
The doctor was getting up from beside the body. “Not more than an hour and a half. Not less than forty minutes.” He looked at his watch. “Say between ten and ten-fifty.”
Denton swung on Shayne again. “All right — you turned up here ringing Miss Macon’s bell at eleven-fifteen, mighty anxious for a witness to see you discover the body. Where were you during those forty-five minutes between the time you were released and eleven-fifteen?”
Shayne said calmly, “I needed a drink. And I had to clean up a little after my going-over before I kept a date with a girl.”
Denton’s black mustache quivered. “The clerk at your hotel says you haven’t been back to your room this evening. Where’d you go to clean up?”
Shayne said irritably, “I don’t know the name of every joint where I go for a drink and a crack at the lavatory. What the hell? The clerk’s testimony clears me. If I haven’t been back to my room how could I have jumped the railings and murdered the girl?”
“Suppose you tell us.” Denton stepped aside and motioned to Parks. “Here, Sergeant — let Shayne have a look at your stuff and explain how that got in his room.”
The sergeant knelt on the floor and solemnly unwrapped a newspaper from a bloodstained bath towel and wash cloth. When they were spread Out, Denton asked the inspector, “From the looks of things around here wouldn’t you say the murderer might have got some of the girl’s blood on him? He’d be in a hurry to wash it off. And that’s just what Shayne did. There’s the evidence. In his own bathroom not ten feet from the body. What more do you want?”
The inspector leaned over and poked his forefinger at the damp towel and wash cloth. When he straightened up his eyes were agate-hard. “Want to make a statement, Shayne?”
“Maybe,” said Shayne, “the murderer took advantage of an empty room and washed up with my towel.”
“We can find out by a chemical analysis,” the inspector stated.
“A blood test will only show the type of blood. If it’s the same as the girl’s you won’t prove anything,” Shayne protested. “Only that it might be hers.”
The inspector shook his head. “There are other tests. Perspiration, for instance. After we’ve made the tests we’ll know whether you used that towel or not, Shayne.”
“All right,” Shayne admitted angrily, “like a damned fool I forgot I’d left that stuff lying there in plain sight. But hell, I didn’t know a murder had been committed next door. I did go up to my room to clean up before coming here to keep my date.”
“Don’t forget the blood test. If it’s the girl’s type and not yours—” The inspector’s voice was coldly warning.
“I’m not worried about that. I know damn well it’s my blood on that towel. Of course, if her type is the same as mine it’s not going to help my story very much,” Shayne conceded.
“Why did you lie about not going to your room?” Denton barked.
“What would you do?” Shayne flared. “Why shouldn’t I protect myself? I know I’m in a jam. People jumping from a death room to mine — and you eager to jump at anything to put me away because you’re afraid I’ll uncover some of your dirty stuff here in the Quarter. Sure I lied about it.”
“But the clerk says you didn’t go to your room all evening,” the inspector reminded him.
“I went up the back stairs. I looked like hell and hated to go through the lobby looking like that.”
“He’s fast on the trigger,” Denton warned the inspector. “He sneaked in the back way to his room, stepped over here and did the job he was paid to do in New Orleans, jumped back and slipped down the back way again and out to the front to put up a show of innocence and discover the body of the girl he’d murdered. Why, Shayne? Who is she? What’s this got to do with the cock-and-bull story you handed me at the station this evening?”
Shayne turned his back on Denton and appealed to the Homicide men. “Does a harness bull conduct murder investigations in New Orleans? Can’t you see he hates my guts and can’t see anybody in the picture but me?”
The inspector lifted one grayish eyebrow. “Thus far,” he confessed, “I fail to see anyone else in the picture either.”
“Hell, you’ve been influenced by Denton’s spouting off,” Shayne argued. “What earthly motive would I have for killing the girl?”
“That,” said the inspector curtly, “will be worth looking into.”
“She’s the daughter of a client,” Shayne growled. “I came here to look her up, sure. I had her address and I bribed the clerk to give me the room opposite hers so I could keep an eye on her. Everything falls into line if you look at it the right way.”
“The way you’d like to have us look at it?” asked the inspector in a mild voice.
“Put it that way if you want. Before your men go,” Shayne said wearily, “you might have them dust the railing of my balcony and the interior of my room for fingerprints. According to Madame Legrand’s statement, the murderer must have got away through my room.”
“Sure,” agreed the inspector. “How do you suppose he got into your room from the balcony and out of it into the hotel?” he went on casually.
“I left my French doors open for fresh air. And my room door has a snap lock that opens from the inside. When I came back to my room my door was closed and the shades drawn.”
“Just like I told you, Inspector,” Denton put in aggressively. “Shayne is plenty slick. He’s always got an answer ready even if it isn’t always a good one.”
The inspector nodded slowly. He made a slow survey of the room. His men had finished their work and two men from the coroner’s office were waiting to take the body out. He asked, “Did you find the death weapon?”
“Not a sign of anything like that,” one of the men told him. “We’ve covered everything inside and out.”
The inspector said, “Remove the body,” and walked over to Madame Legrand. “And you, Madame,” he asked, “live in the adjoining apartment?”
“I do,” she answered stiffly. She stood up. “If that’s all, Monsieur, may I go now? I shall go to my bed but not to sleep. Not again tonight.” She shuddered and looked at the bloodstained carpet from which the girl’s body had been lifted.
“Just a few more questions,” said the inspector in a gentle voice. “I’d like to hear everything you can tell me about the murder.”
“I’ve already got her story,” Denton blustered. “It don’t amount to much. She cooked dinner for the Macon girl and two others, heard the girls leave about ten, and later woke up and saw Shayne jumping across from here to his hotel. Isn’t that right, lady?”
“The first part, yes. But I do not know whether it was this man I saw.” She studied Shayne, shook her head, and said, “I think it was not,” with conviction.
Denton laughed. “That’s the way dames are, Inspector. They tighten up just when you think you’ve got a case sewed up. Let me talk to her a little. I can maybe make her remember better who it was she saw.”
The inspector ignored Denton. He asked, “These girls who were here for dinner, Madame — do you know them? Where they live?”
“No, Monsieur. One was Miss Hamilton. Lucile Hamilton. She has visited Miss Macon before. The other girl I think they called Evalyn.”
“You don’t know how we could get in touch with them?”
“No, Monsieur. I do not know.”
“What does it matter, Inspector?” Denton broke in. “You’re holding Shayne, aren’t you?”
The inspector said, “Yes. I’m holding Shayne. Come along Shayne.”