Michael Shayne was comfortably relaxed in a deep chair beside the battered oak desk in his apartment. He was expecting a telephone call, and with cognac and ice water at hand, there had been pleasurable anticipation in the two hours of waiting. He had no doubt whatever that the call would come through sooner or later, and was perfectly content to wait.
It was nine o’clock when the phone rang. He lifted the receiver and said, “Hello, Nora.”
A little gasp came over the wire at his greeting. “How on earth did you know it was I?”
“I’ve been expecting your call. We have unfinished business, you know, you and I.”
She said, “Yes,” very quickly and eagerly, then paused for a long moment before continuing rapidly. “Mr. Bates has been telling me everything about the man who pretended he was you and all. And I realize I owe you an apology for having even suspected last night that you had intentionally given me the wrong key to — you know — to get me to come there and—” Her voice trailed off.
“Looking back on it now,” said Shayne pleasantly, “it doesn’t seem such a bad idea.”
Again there was a pause, a brief one. “That is sort of what I’ve been thinking, too,” she said with new warmth.
“Good. If you’re sticking around Miami for a while, why don’t we try it again some night?”
“That is what I wanted to talk about. I’m going back tonight. I’m all packed, and if you’re not doing anything special, I thought I might stop in to apologize in person.”
“I’m not doing anything special,” he assured her in a mellow tone, “except getting up right now to mix us a drink. Sidecars suit you?”
“Oh, yes. A sidecar will be wonderful.”
“You know your way and the room number,” he reminded her. “Don’t be too long.”
“I won’t. Right away.” Her voice held a sensuous lilt.
Shayne hung up, shaking his red head slowly. Women! He marveled. By God, they were wonderful. Talk about resiliency! Here was a dame, whose estranged husband and current lover had both died violent deaths, practically in her arms within the space of twelve hours, making a fast date with a new man whom she had encountered by accident.
Picking up the two glasses in one hand and the cognac bottle in the other, he carried them to the kitchenette where he squeezed a cupful of lemon juice and poured it into a cocktail shaker. He then added an equal amount of Cointreau and two cups of cognac, filled the shaker almost to the top with ice cubes, screwed the lid on, and went back to the living-room shaking it lazily.
He set the shaker on the desk, got two champagne glasses to place beside it, frowned at the arrangement of chairs, and moved his own a little. He then pushed another comfortable chair so that Nora Carrol’s knees would be practically touching his when they were seated. He turned on a floor lamp with indirect lighting, switched off the bright desk lamp, and was giving the sidecars a few extra shakes when he heard high heels coming up the hall. He went to the door and opened it.
Nora Carrol was bareheaded and wore a blue traveling-suit, simple in style, that revealed her curves. Her brown hair was brushed back from her flushed face, and she looked older than when he first saw her. Her dark eyes met his steadily and her lips parted in a diffident smile.
Shayne knew he could kiss her if he wished. This fleeting moment was the one in which the tone of their meeting would be established.
He put out one hand and touched her lightly between the shoulder blades, and a faint pressure brought her a step forward and into the curve of his arm. Her lips were cool and only slightly parted, but she made no attempt to withdraw them from the insistent and increasing pressure of his. She lifted her right hand and trailed finger tips across his cheek.
He released her then, and she stepped away from the circle of his arm at once, lowering her lashes, and saying with sharply indrawn breath, “I didn’t mean that. I don’t know what you’ll think of me.”
Shayne grinned and closed the door. “Exactly what I was thinking before you came,” he assured her. “That you’re pretty damned terrific.” He took her arm and led her to the chair facing his, unscrewed the cap from the frosted shaker, and poured the champagne glasses full. He handed one to her and held the other high. “Here’s to the wrong key,” he said buoyantly, “may you use it often.”
Her color deepened slightly, but she drank to the toast.
Nora glanced around the room, then studied her drink for a moment before saying, “That’s what I came to talk about,” in a low voice. “I keep thinking about last night—”
“I keep thinking about that, too,” Shayne told her helpfully. “It’s due to be one of my pleasantest memories.”
She lifted her glass, drained it, and held it out to him. “May I have another, please? I need several of these to make me stop feeling like a shameless wanton.”
“Have all you want, of course, but don’t stop feeling that way on my account. Men like nothing better than shameless wantons, if you don’t already know it.”
She took the glass and smiled fleetingly, drank half its contents, and accepted a cigarette and light from him. She settled back and said soberly, “I think I’d say it differently. That men like women who act like shameless wantons when they’re not.”
“You should know better than I,” he told her agreeably. “I was told today that one night with Nora has been known to change strong men into infatuated weaklings.”
“Who told you that?” she flared angrily.
“Don’t jump at me,” he said with a slight shrug. “I consider it one of the greatest compliments I ever heard.”
“Who said that about me?” she demanded.
“Ann Margrave.”
“Oh, her!” She made a gesture of dismissal and emptied her glass, and settled back again with her cigarette. “Ann is the perpetual adolescent. She chased after Ralph for years and she never did forgive me for marrying him.”
Shayne took a long drink, then asked, “So, you’re going back to Wilmington tonight. Do you have to?”
“Yes. I — Mr. Bates made the reservation. Of course, I have to go.” She smiled and added, “Which doesn’t leave us much time for those drinks.”
Shayne filled her glass the third time. “You don’t have to stay in Wilmington, do you?”
“Not forever, I hope.” She smiled quite gaily and sipped at her cocktail. “I wouldn’t call this really weak yet. A little more and I’ll be tight enough to tell you what I really came to say.”
“Have a little more by all means,” he invited with a wide grin. “If you should happen to miss that plane?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I really mustn’t do that. That’s why, well—” She fluttered her eyelids and took a deep drink, as though seeking courage to go on.
Shayne didn’t help her. He crushed out his cigarette, sipped, and waited.
“That’s the reason why I wanted to tell you I hope to come back to Miami in a few weeks,” she said breathlessly.
“I hoped you were going to say that, Nora.”
“Did you? Did you really?”
Shayne nodded. “We don’t have to pretend to each other, do we?”
“No. I guess we don’t, Michael.” Her voice was beginning to slur a trifle, caressing and sensuous. “So you won’t be shocked if I confess that I’ve been thinking, if I had the key to your room when I do come back, and, well, if — some night, when you were sound asleep, like last night, it would be something to anticipate — to look forward to and wonder when—”
“It would, indeed,” he said. “And I’m certainly not shocked, darling.” He half stood, reached across the desk to open the center drawer, took out the key she had left behind early that same morning, and held it up. “You really want to take this with you?”
“Oh, yes,” she exclaimed breathlessly. “I really do.”
Shayne drew it back, looking down at it broodingly. “I wondered,” he said flatly, “how long it would take you to realize your pretty neck was in danger as long as I have this key.”
“What do you mean?”
“I imagine you realized the danger in the beginning,” mused Shayne. “While Chief Gentry was here this morning. But you couldn’t very well ask for it then. It was some sort of evidence. You showed remarkable restraint by walking out and leaving it here as though it meant nothing to you.”
“What do you mean?” she demanded again, her voice rising shrilly on the last word.
“You’ve been pretty damned remarkable throughout this whole thing,” Shayne went on flatly. “What actually happened in your hotel room during the minute and a half you waited for me to reach your door? Did Ted Granger really shoot himself? Or did you grab the gun away from him, when I knocked, and then kill him?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Michael,” she moaned. “Tell me you’re joking.”
“This key isn’t any joke,” he told her harshly. “It’s going to unlock the death chamber for you, and you know it. I’m afraid we can’t touch you for shooting Ted Granger. You’re the only one who can testify as to what happened in that locked room. But you’ll never talk yourself out of murdering your husband, Nora. It just isn’t in the books.”
She slowly brought her emotions under control, sat back rigidly erect, and stared at him.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she told him calmly. “No matter what absurd theory you have about Ralph’s death, I couldn’t possibly have gotten into his room, if I’d tried. You know, yourself, that’s the wrong key.”
Shayne said dispassionately, “You made one slip, Nora. One tiny slip in some of the neatest and fastest work to beat a murder rap I’ve ever run into. Why did you close my door on the night latch last night before coming to bed?”
“Because I thought you were Ralph. I’d left the door open to have a little light to see to undress. You can’t be serious,” she pleaded. “You’re just joking, and I don’t think it’s funny at all.”
“If I hadn’t been standing in the bedroom doorway, if I hadn’t seen you go to close the door, it might never have come to me. But I couldn’t get that picture of you out of my mind. You looked good,” he went on angrily. “So damned good that it kept coming back to me. And finally I realized the truth. You knew perfectly well you weren’t in Ralph’s apartment. Your whole story was a desperate lie to alibi yourself.”
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to get at at all,” she told him, her voice still calm and cold.
“Ludlow,” said Shayne grimly. “The photographer who was supposed to take a picture of you in bed with Ralph as clinching evidence to kill the divorce. We got it from Ludlow; and from Bill Nash, who was posing as Michael Shayne in the deal. You knew the setup. Everything was timed to the minute. They’ll testify you were to enter Ralph’s apartment at exactly two-ten. You were to leave the door ajar for Ludlow to follow ten minutes later, get undressed and into Ralph’s bed, and have the picture taken.
“And you did just that, Nora. The door was open for Ludlow at two-twenty. Ralph was there waiting for his picture, but you weren’t.”
“Where was I, mastermind?” she asked scathingly.
“You were in Ralph’s kitchen going out his back door onto the fire escape with his back-door key, which is just a common one that opens most ordinary doors. I tried my back-door key on his this afternoon and it fits, all right. You worked fast to get out of a hell of a spot after you stabbed him. You knew the photographer was due in that open doorway any moment. I imagine you ducked in the kitchen with your clothes in your arms about the time Ludlow walked in. Or did Ralph wake up before you were fully undressed, threaten to throw you out, and got you so angry you grabbed up the paper knife and let him have it, before you realized you were trapped there?”
“You’re telling it,” she said, feigning indifference, but her voice was unsteady.
“That’s right, I am,” he agreed pleasantly. “Anyhow, you did come out on the fire escape, bringing the backdoor key to two-sixteen with you, and down one flight to my landing. By that time, you’d had a moment to think. Ralph was dead, and the detective and photographer would place you in his room at the right time. If you could get into the apartment below, pretend you believed it was Ralph’s and that you had been given the wrong key by mistake; well, it was a crazy chance, but the only one you saw. And you took it, babe, with the aplomb of a seasoned murderess, may I say? I don’t know how much practice you’d had, but—”
“You actually sound serious,” Nora broke in, bewildered and frightened. “How can you possibly believe all that nonsense? I had no way of getting into Ralph’s room. That key doesn’t fit his door. You and the chief tried it last night.”
“No,” said Shayne grimly. “That was a big break for you. The merest chance, but it almost put you in the clear. The police had jammed the lock on Ralph’s door when they broke in, and we brought his key down here to try it on my door. It didn’t fit, of course. But we didn’t try this key on my door. You said you’d come in the front door and we assumed you had, and it didn’t occur to us to test it.
“But after it was all over and you had Ted Granger conveniently dead and framed for the job, you realized that I still had the key. ‘One of these days,’ you must have thought, ‘he’ll absent-mindedly try to open his door with that key I left behind, and it won’t open’
“You knew that would be the payoff. I’d immediately know your entire story had been a lie. But if you could get hold of this key, and get rid of it before I happened to try it on my door, you’d be clear. And you tried, honey,” he went on, his voice suddenly sympathetic. “God knows you tried. That’s why I expected your call tonight. I knew you’d call.”
Nora Carrol had been leaning back listlessly as he spoke, nervously toying with the suède purse in her lap. Her hand dived inside as he ended, and came out with a tiny.25 automatic. She sat up with teeth bared and her finger tight on the trigger.
“All right, you smart bastard,” she grated. “Once that key is gone you’ll never prove a thing. Give it to me.” Shayne shrugged and tossed it into her lap. “You can have it. I didn’t mention that you forgot something else. Your fingerprints are on Ralph’s back doorknob and on mine. If you had wiped those off—”
“I did wipe them off. You’re lying—”
Shayne jerked his right foot, that had the toe of his shoe under the edge of her chair, just as she realized what she had said. She pulled the trigger of her automatic, and the small bullet went over his head into the ceiling. He had her in his arms, with one hand clamped over the gun, while his other reached for the telephone to call the police to take her away.