Lucy Hamilton was pushing aside a luncheon tray, brought in from the drugstore downstairs, when Shayne entered the office. She said in a worried voice, “There hasn’t been a thing, Michael.” Then, noting the expression on his face, she stopped abruptly. “What is it? You look like the cat that ate a cageful of canaries.”
Shayne grinned happily. “I’m beginning to feel like one. Take a look back in the records, angel,” he went on swiftly. “Bill Nash. The punk I hired to hold down the office while you were on vacation. I want his address.”
Lucy frowned and turned to a filing-cabinet beside her desk. “Why do you want him? You fired him before I got back because you caught him snitching petty cash.”
“He was a lazy, no-good s.o.b.,” Shayne agreed cheerfully. “And if you ever take another vacation, I’m going to close up shop and go with you. But I want him now.”
Lucy drew out a card and read aloud, “William C. Nash. The Dillmore Hotel.”
“Get me the Dillmore, angel.”
She consulted the directory and dialed a number. When someone answered, she said, “Just a moment, please,” and handed the receiver to Shayne.
“Mr. Nash. William Nash.”
A girl’s voice said, “I’m sorry. We have no Mr. Nash at the present.”
“Do you have a Michael Shayne registered?”
“No, sir. I’m sorry.”
“Look, honey,” said Shayne persuasively. “This is very important. Bill Nash was living there a couple of months ago, the first two weeks in January, for sure. Will you check and see when he left? And what forwarding address you have?”
“It’ll take a few minutes.”
Shayne said, “I’ll hold on.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and explained to Lucy. “You heard enough this morning to realize that a lawyer in Wilmington claims he hired me to locate Ralph Carrol in Miami a couple of weeks ago. He didn’t, but he swears he had letters and phone calls from me. I just learned that he first wrote me early in January, while you were on vacation and Nash was in the office. Nash evidently decided to turn detective himself, and kept the letter from me, had some Michael Shayne letterheads printed, and replied to Bates on one of them. God knows how many cases he may have picked up.”
The girl’s voice was on the wire again. He said, “Yes?”
“Mr. Nash checked out on January fifteenth. He didn’t leave any forwarding address, but had us hold his mail. He drops in to pick it up occasionally.”
Shayne said, “Is there any mail there for him now?”
“Yes. Two letters that came several days ago.”
“Thanks. You’re a sweetheart and I’ll buy you a drink next time I’m around.” Shayne bent forward to cradle the receiver. He tugged at his ear lobe for a moment, muttering, “Bill’s biggest trouble was the bangtails. Where is the Dillmore Hotel?”
Lucy looked at the open directory and gave him a number in the seven-hundred block on North-East Second Avenue.
Shayne took a small address book from his pocket, read a telephone number to Lucy, asked her to dial it, and then reached for the receiver.
A man’s voice answered, and Shayne said, “Len? Mike Shayne. How they running these days?” He grinned as he listened. “That’s good. Look, Len, do me a favor? Where would I go on the seven-hundred block on North-East Second Avenue to lay two bucks on a filly’s nose?” The redhead gave Lucy Hamilton a left-eyed wink as the voice came over the wire. He said, “Maybe you haven’t got it in your head, Len, but check, will you? It’s damned important. Sure, I’ll hang on.”
Shayne waited for several minutes, then said happily, “That’s just what I wanted. I’ll do you a favor some day.” He tossed the instrument to Lucy and went out fast. Ten minutes later he pulled up at the curb, in front of a dingy bar and grill, half a block from the Dillmore Hotel.
Half a dozen loungers were clustered at the end of the bar, near the television set, watching a baseball game. The bald-headed bartender languidly chewed on a frayed matchstick and drew two steins of beer.
Shayne slid onto the front stool and waited until the bartender drifted toward him. “A slug with a beer chaser,” he said, and lit a cigarette. When his order was placed before him he asked casually, “Seen Bill Nash around lately?”
“Not much. He moved, you know. Drops in sometimes. I don’t know you, do I?”
“No. But you’re Joe, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“Bill’s moved, and I can’t locate him. I remember he told me once that you handled all his bets, and I figured maybe he still laid a few with you.”
Joe chuckled. “He phones one every day. Regular as clockwork.”
“Know where he hangs out?”
“Can’t say as I do.”
“But you do have a phone number where you can reach him,” suggested Shayne with a grin. “Just in case a broomtail should happen to drop in and whinny a hot tip.
“I might, and I mightn’t. You a friend of his?”
“We’re old pals. I’ve got a deal I could use him on if I knew how to get in touch.”
“That so?” Joe asked without much interest.
Shayne had a bill in his hand. He folded it to show the $10.00 denomination. “Bill’s phone number is worth this to me.”
Joe moved back warily, eyeing the bill. “Must be a big deal.”
Shayne shrugged. “You’ll be doing us both a favor.”
The bartender propped both elbows on the damp bar, directly in front of Shayne, and said in a sneering tone, “If you’re such a good friend of Bill Nash’s, whyn’t you save yourself money by taking a look down at the end of the bar and talking to him yourself?”
Shayne looked at the bartender with surprise and suspicion, then narrowed his eyes at the group watching television. “What the hell you giving me?” he said angrily. “None of those men even halfway look like Bill.”
The folded bill was expertly plucked from his fingers, and Joe said pleasantly, “Just wanted to make sure you’re a pal of his.” He moved to the center of the bar and consulted a book stashed under the counter. He returned and gave the redhead a number which he wrote down in his little black book. He shoved a half dollar across the bar and said, “I’ll tell Bill I saw you.” He went out without touching the drink he had paid for.
At the first public telephone down the street he dialed a number and said, “Mike Shayne. Give me an address that fits this telephone number.” He had the information in less than a minute, an address on North Miami Avenue in the Forties.
Some twenty minutes later he was standing before a door opening from the street onto a stairway leading up to an apartment above a cigar store. He went up and tried the door at the top. It opened readily into a shabby sitting-room with shades drawn against the sunlight. He crossed to an open door on the right and looked into a small bedroom.
Bill Nash lay on his back. His mouth was laxly open, and with every breath he emitted a snorting snore. Shayne stood on the threshold regarding the man with distaste. “Little man has had a busy night,” he muttered under his breath.
Turning back to the living-room he let up one of the shades, opened the window, crossed to a table with a portable typewriter on top, and opened the center drawer. There was stationery inside. He drew out one sheet and read the letterhead neatly printed:
MICHAEL SHAYNE
Private Investigations
It carried Nash’s North Miami Avenue address and telephone number. He took the sheet with him when he went into the bedroom and shook Bill Nash ungently.
His former employee sat up with a grunt. His jaw gaped when he saw the redhead leaning over him. Shayne slapped him with his open hand before he could speak.
Nash fell sideways on the bed and cowered there, holding his hands up to ward off another blow.
“Don’t, Mr. Shayne! Don’t hit me again. I swear I’m sorry, but I didn’t mean any harm.”
“Shut up,” Shayne growled, towering over him and holding out the forged letterhead. “Where’s the correspondence with Bates about the Carrol case that you stole from Wilmington this morning?”
“I burned it all up.” Nash cringed and clawed at the flimsy sheet as if to pull it over him for protection. “Soon as I heard on the radio that Carrol was dead, I knew it was a bad mess. But I never meant any harm. It just seemed like a smart angle when I started it. You were turning down that kind of case all the time and I didn’t see why I couldn’t get in on some of them. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“How many other cases did you take on in my name?” Shayne demanded, his right palm poised above Nash’s face.
“Only three or four,” he vowed in a whining tone. “All stuff I knew you’d turn down, divorces and like that. I was all ready to quit when I got that second letter from Bates.” He paused to moisten his thin, dry lips, and added, “So I thought I might’s well do one more.”
“Why did you give Mrs. Carrol the wrong key last night?” grated Shayne.
“The wrong key?” His teeth chattered nervously, and he gulped before adding, “I didn’t. What you mean? I gave her the key to her husband’s apartment so’s she could slip in and get him caught with her to stop the divorce.”
Shayne let the letterhead flutter to the bed as he caught the man’s scrawny shoulders and, holding him aloft with his left hand, he clenched his right fist and drew it back.
“So help me, God,” he warned, “I’m going to coldcock you if you don’t tell the truth. Did you think it was funny to send her to my room instead of her husband’s, or did somebody pay you to do it that way?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Nash swore, writhing and twisting in the redhead’s grip. “I had the lawyer get him in there on account of they knew I’d worked for you and wouldn’t think anything if I asked for a key.” Shayne slapped his face with cold, precise, and carefully calculated force. Blood spurted from Nash’s flattened nose and a deep gash in his upper lip. He cried out in agony, choked, and spit out two front teeth in a mouthful of bloody froth.
The redhead lowered him until his feet touched the floor, but he still held Nash inexorably with his left hand. “That’s just a sample,” he said with frightening calm. “I’ll knock every goddamned tooth down your throat if you don’t start talking.” He shook Nash like a rag doll. “Who paid you to switch keys on Mrs. Carrol?”
Nash’s eyes bulged with fear. His body went limp in Shayne’s grasp and, as he drooled and sputtered wildly, he denied any knowledge of what Shayne was talking about.
Giving up in disgust, the redhead tossed him across the bed where he lay in a heap. “Get into some clothes,” he ordered, stalking into the other room. He found a bottle half full of whisky, took a long drink out of it, then went back to the bedroom. Nash was trying to staunch the nosebleed with the top of his pajamas.
“You can let it bleed,” he told Nash flatly, “or you can get into the bathroom and put cold water on it. I’ll give you five minutes. Then, we’re going to headquarters whether you have any clothes on or not.”
Back in the living-room he took several sheets of the forged letterheads and stuffed them in his pocket, looked at his wrist watch, and was angrily aware of the dull, throbbing pain in his wounded head.
He returned to the bedroom on the second to find Nash wearing a blood-spotted shirt and trousers, and groping on the floor for his socks.
“You’re all right the way you are,” he growled, taking him firmly by the elbow and jerking him erect. He swung the arm up in a half nelson behind his back and shoved him out to the stairway and down to his car at the curb.
Nash huddled in the corner of the front seat, sniffling and choking, while Shayne drove to headquarters.
Parking in the police lot, he yanked Nash out and half carried him in the side entrance and back to Gentry’s office.
Timothy Rourke was with the chief when Shayne kicked the door open and tossed him inside. “There he is, Will. I hope I left him enough teeth to talk with.”
Gentry rolled his rumpled lids up and stared at the bloody, barefoot man. “Who the hell is it?” he thundered.
“ What the hell is it would be more appropriate,” Timothy Rourke said mockingly, and his nostrils flared like a bloodhound on the scent.
“The name is Bill Nash,” Shayne grated. “I had him in my office pinch-hitting for Lucy a couple of months ago. He got smart and tried to grab up all the new cases that came in while I wasn’t around. Bates’s letter was one of them.
“I got everything from him,” he went on grimly, “except the straight about mixing up my room with Carrol’s. Maybe your boys’ technique will be better than mine for that.”
Pulling the forged letterheads from his pocket, he tossed them on Gentry’s desk and started out.
Rourke sprang up and caught his arm. “Look, Mike, give me the dope. What’s new?”
Shayne stopped in his tracks. “Take a look at the forged letterheads I gave Gentry, Tim,” he said thoughtfully. “This is a good chance to clear up the thing on Lucy in the Herald extra. Say she was there in the line of duty, helping me to solve a murder.”
“You mean—”
“I mean that Lucy was trying to get hold of a letter written on one of those letterheads when she broke into Mrs. Carrol’s room.”
Rourke beamed. “A good follow-up after Granger’s confession and suicide. Will do. And don’t forget I’ve got a private date with Lucy.”
“Lucy knows your preference for blondes,” Shayne told him with a crooked grin, “so watch your step.”