Sturgis, the senior detective, gravely unfolded a document he had taken from his pocket and handed it to the detective. Shayne read it through carefully, his rangy body still blocking the doorway.
“All right. Come right in, the joint is yours.” He turned his back on them, crossed the reception room, and went into his private office, where he pulled out one of the steel drawers of a filing-cabinet and reached inside.
“Hold it, Mike,” Sturgis said from the doorway. “You know I can’t let you destroy evidence.”
“Evidence of what?” Shayne demanded.
“What we’re looking for. Your file on Ralph Carrol.”
Shayne’s hand came out holding a bottle of cognac. He said, “Everything in this cabinet is ancient history, including this cognac, I hope. You won’t mind if I destroy a little of it?” He carried it back to his desk and sat down. “Go right ahead and examine my files. If you find anything on the Carrol case I’ll be interested to see it.”
“Where do you keep recent correspondence? No use tearing everything up.”
Shayne poured cognac into a glass and took a drink. “You’ll have to ask Lucy about the current files,” he said. “I don’t know where she keeps things.”
“You know she won’t be here today,” said Sturgis patiently.
“All right. So you lock her up on a bum rap and then come crying around because she’s not here to help you go through my private papers. To hell with it.” He settled back and lit a cigarette.
Sturgis’s partner came to the door and said, “Hey, Len, there’s a file out here at the reception desk marked ‘Current Correspondence.’ Nothing in it on Carrol.”
The telephone on Lucy Hamilton’s desk rang. Shayne got up and trotted into the outer room. The other detective turned hastily toward the phone. Shayne slammed a big hand on his shoulder and jerked him back.
“Keep your goddamned hand off my phone.” All the frustrated rage that had been boiling inside the redhead since early morning was in his voice.
“Better be careful who you push around, shamus,” the big plain-clothes man growled while the phone continued to ring.
“Hold it, Gene.” Len Sturgis spoke placidly from the inner doorway. “Let him answer his phone.”
The detective stepped aside reluctantly. Shayne picked up the receiver and barked, “Hello,” but all he heard was the buzz of the dial tone. He slammed the instrument down and turned to face the detective. “Next time you get in my way like that, I’ll give you a hell of a good excuse for putting me in a cell with my secretary.”
“You listen to me, shamus,” the man began belligerently, but Sturgis stopped him with a curt: “That’s plenty, Gene. A search warrant doesn’t give you the right to push anybody around. Get on with searching the files.”
Shayne turned back to the desk, fumbled with the buttons, found and pushed the one that sent calls directly into his private office, then went back to his own desk.
Len Sturgis was standing in front of the steel filing-cabinet with all the drawers pulled out. He said, “Don’t pay any attention to Gene. What does give on the Carrol murder, Mike? You holding out on the chief?”
“I’m not holding out a damned thing,” Shayne said bitterly. “You tell me about Carrol.”
“We got nothing,” Sturgis assured him. “The guy was found lying on his bed murdered, front and back doors locked tight. No visitors anybody knows about. No suspicious fingerprints in the joint. There’s his wife — the dame Will Gentry brought up to identify him. All I know is, the chief is plenty steamed up about catching Lucy Hamilton prowling Mrs. Carrol’s hotel room.”
Shayne took another drink and, avoiding Sturgis’s eyes, asked, “How do you know it was Mrs. Carrol’s room? The newspapers missed that item.”
“Yeh. But I was there when Gentry sent Mark Hagen to take her to her hotel. I heard him telling Hagen on the side to take a look around to see if he could find a letter from you in her room. So it’s easy to figure where Hagen found your secretary, and what she was looking for. Now there’s a gal for you!” he went on admiringly. “Damned if she’s not worth ten of the jerks, like Gene in there, that I got to work with. She sure took Hagen for a ride, and he don’t even know it yet. That story he gave the Herald!” Sturgis chuckled. “You mind too much if I lift a drink, Mike?”
“Help yourself,” Shayne said absently.
So, Gentry had caught it, too? Nora Carrol’s faint hesitancy before she declared she had destroyed her letter from Michael Shayne! Well, Gentry had been in the business as long, or longer, than he, himself. It wasn’t surprising that the police chief had been just as quick to check the possibility that she was lying about destroying the letter.
His thoughts were interrupted by Timothy Rourke’s sanguine voice saying, “Hi there, Gene. You taking over Miss Hamilton’s job?”
Then Shayne heard quick footsteps in the corridor. He shoved his chair back and stood up as Lucy Hamilton entered the outer office. She wore the light suit and yellow scarf, and looked trim and personable despite her incarceration.
Shayne stepped around the desk, took her in his arms, and held her tightly, pressing her face against his chest.
Timothy Rourke sauntered in. The hard-bitten reporter from the Daily News had a cynical smile on his cadaverous face. He stopped just inside the door and struck a melodramatic pose as he declaimed, “My kingdom for a camera! If only I could get a shot of this and print it with the caption, ‘All is Forgiven!’ I might get myself an extra, too.”
Rourke was an old and privileged friend. Shayne grinned at him briefly over Lucy’s head, then slipped his fingers under her chin and tilted her face upward. “Was it tough, angel?”
“Not so bad.” She was smiling now, and her eyes were luminous. “I wasn’t worried in jail. Not really. After all, Michael, it wasn’t the first time. Remember New Orleans?”
Shayne nodded somberly. He remembered New Orleans. They had been arrested together that time. That was when he first met Lucy Hamilton. She hadn’t known him at all, but she had trusted him from the very beginning.
He took his arm from around her waist and said, “Sturgis, here, and his pal out there, have a search warrant, angel. They’re looking for our file on the Carrol case. Can you help them find it?”
Lucy shook her head and looked at Sturgis with astonishment. “Carrol? Carrol who?”
“Ralph Carrol,” Sturgis supplied. “The guy who was bumped in the apartment right above Mike’s last night.”
“Then you’re wasting your time,” Lucy told him. “We don’t have any file on any Carrol.”
Shayne shrugged and said, “There you are, Len. Right from the horse’s mouth.” He patted Lucy’s shoulder and added, “Show him where and how you file everything.” He turned to Rourke who was sitting on a corner of the desk swinging one thin leg back and forth.
“Did you and Lucy come here together?” he asked.
“Almost. She was delayed a minute in the corridor — ah — by a powder puff, I believe.”
“Where did you find her?”
“I’ve been hanging around waiting for you to spring her ever since I got the flash she was locked up. Where in hell have you been, Mike? And, for chrissake, what happened to your head? Nobody’s been able to locate hide or hair of you since you ducked out of your hotel about four o’clock. Will Gentry is fit to be tied.”
“Gentry can go fly a kite,” said Shayne shortly, ignoring the reference to his wound. He glanced at Lucy and Sturgis who were busy at the filing-cabinet, then asked Rourke in a low voice, “What do you know about this whole thing?”
“Only what I read in the Herald, and tidbits I’ve picked up here and there.” Rourke spread out his bony fingers and lowered his slaty eyes to examine them carefully. “The rumor is floating around that you’re in the Carrol murder up to your neck. I’ve heard all sorts of stuff, including something about Carrol was suing his wife for divorce and naming you as corespondent.”
Shayne grinned briefly, then said, “You can deny that one categorically.”
“How do you fit into it, Mike? Can I also deny that Mrs. Carrol was sleeping with you last night while her husband was getting himself bumped off?”
Shayne signaled for him to keep his voice low and glanced significantly at Lucy. “Are they saying that?”
“And more,” Rourke assured him. “No one seems to know what any of it is about, and Gentry refuses to make any statement. I’ve got to have something, Mike, to combat the Herald’s extra.”
“I’ll give you something just as soon as I get it myself,” Shayne promised. He paused abruptly and listened to heavy footsteps in the outer office.
Will Gentry rumbled, “Making any headway, Benton?”
“Not much, sir,” Detective Gene Benton replied. “Shayne has been throwing his weight around and refusing to help any.”
The chief came stolidly through the inner doorway.
His face was gray and rumpled, and his suit looked as though he had slept in it. “Where in hell have you been, Mike?” he demanded.
“Places,” he replied.
“You damned sure ducked out of sight in a hurry. You knew I’d be right back when I left your apartment, but you were gone when I got there.”
Shayne shrugged and said, “Someone has to solve your murder cases for you.”
“All right. So you’ve solved it. That’s just fine.” Gentry turned to Sturgis and asked, “You and Benton about through here?”
“We haven’t found anything, Chief.”
“I didn’t expect you to,” Gentry told him gruffly.
“Just sent them here to needle me a little, eh?”
Gentry looked at him with weary eyes and growled, “Why did you send Lucy to Mrs. Carrol’s hotel room last night?”
“For the same reason you sent Hagen home with her, I guess. The way she acted I had a hunch that letter she said was signed by me might still be lying around. I wanted it.”
“Why?” Gentry thundered.
“I was curious to see the signature. Damn it, Will,” he burst out, “don’t try to make something out of it that isn’t there. If I were lying and trying to cover my tracks in this thing, it wouldn’t do me any good to get hold of that particular letter. The Wilmington lawyer claims he has others signed the same way. If I were going to destroy hers, I’d have to get hold of his, too.”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking,” the chief said ominously, “for the past fifteen minutes or so, at least. I just got a call from Bates in Wilmington. His office has been burglarized and the entire file of correspondence with you has been stolen. So right now I’m wondering where you were between four and nine o’clock this morning.” He fixed his agate eyes on Shayne’s purplish wound and fished a cigar from his breast pocket.