Lana Moore drew in an audible and outraged breath and looked bewildered. “Of all the nerve! That’s the biggest lie I ever heard.”
Handley set his jaw and his eyes were scornful; Quinlan shook his head sadly as though he regretted the necessity of embarrassing the girl.
“What condition was the apartment in, Handley?”
“I didn’t see anything out of the way, sir,” Handley answered. “I went in the kitchen while Miss Moore was dressing, and I managed a look in the bedroom after she came out of it. Everything looked all right.”
Quinlan looked at Shayne again, and again moved his head from side to side.
“I’m not nuts,” Shayne said with angry emphasis. “It’s a damned frame, and if you can’t see it you’re blind as hell.” He appealed to the inspector: “Get your chemist over there and I swear he’ll find evidence of blood on the rug where I was lying when I woke up this morning. She may have washed it off, but it’ll be in the nap.”
Lana shuddered delicately and asked the inspector, “What’s he trying to prove? I don’t know what any of this is about, but he certainly sounds crazy to me.”
“What about Lieutenant Drinkley and you?” Quinlan asked abruptly, and watched her closely.
“Lieutenant-Drinkley?” She repeated it slowly and gave the impression of trying to recall the name. “I don’t recall ever having met him. I meet a lot of soldiers.”
Shayne’s eyes glittered. He started to speak through hard set lips, but the inspector gestured for silence.
“Shayne is trying to talk himself out of a murder rap,” Quinlan told Lana. “You can’t blame him for trying. You’ve been very helpful, Miss Moore. If you’ll wait in the outer office I’ll have your testimony transcribed and ask you to sign it.”
“Make it under oath,” Shayne snapped angrily, “and you’ll have a goddamned perjury on your hands.” He hunched forward, staring at the tips of his shoes. His right thumb and forefinger pulled at the lobe of his left ear.
When Handley took the girl out and closed the door, Quinlan said calmly, “Looks as though you haven’t got a leg to stand on.”
Shayne nodded. “She did a good job. It takes a woman to think up a deal like that.” He spoke with grudging admiration.
“What’s the angle, Shayne? You talked before about her luring you there to get you beaten up. Now you’re trying to make me believe she pulled this frame. There has to be a reason for a thing like that.”
“There is. A good one.”
“What?”
Shayne shrugged. “Another damned case.” His tone was depressed. “I was beginning to crack down-that’s all.”
“Anything to do with the Lomax emeralds?”
“Sort of,” Shayne admitted cautiously. “They tie together, though I’m damned if I know how.”
“Are you trying to make me believe that girl had something to do with Trueman’s death? That the whole thing was a gag to be sure you didn’t have any alibi for it?”
Shayne straightened up and stopped tugging at his ear. “Damned if I know. It’s hard to believe the whole thing was prearranged. No one knew I was going to have an argument with Dan Trueman and lay myself open to a murder accusation. What kind of a story did the morning paper run?”
“A full account of the whole thing. Your argument with Trueman was played up, and it was made clear that we were hunting you-for questioning at least.”
Shayne glared at him angrily. “Now, by God, that’s sweet publicity. You had to run to the newspaper with it- try me there before I had a chance to tell my story.”
Inspector Quinlan compressed his lips. “I don’t hand out that sort of stuff. A reporter happened to be in the barroom last night and saw the whole thing. He recognized you and brought the story to me as soon as the murder broke. Hell, I couldn’t tell him not to print it.”
“Could be it wasn’t a cold frame,” Shayne muttered. “If Lana woke up right after I left and read the paper- she’s smart enough to have seen I was going to need her to alibi me. So she fixed things to make a liar out of me as soon as the checkup came.”
“Could be.” Quinlan was noncommittal. “But you still lack any proof, and you haven’t given me any reason to think she’s lying instead of you. Can you prove her connection with Drinkley?”
“I doubt it. She’s probably disposed of his photograph, and the clerk at the Dragoon would probably deny that she went to Drinkley’s room if she asked for him at the desk. Which she probably didn’t.”
“Dragoon Hotel?” Quinlan asked.
“I told you I was on a case,” Shayne said. He got up, wincing slightly, flexed his body and thrust his hands deep in his pockets. “So?”
“Unless you want to give out more than you have-I’m holding you on suspicion of murder.”
Shayne nodded. He hunched his head forward and prowled the length of the office and back, stopped beside the inspector’s desk and asked hoarsely, “Have you got a drink?”
The inspector went to a filing cabinet and from one of the drawers took a pint bottle with only a couple of drinks gone from it. Shayne pulled the cork with his teeth, tilted it and gurgled. It was half empty when he handed it back to Quinlan and said, “Thanks.”
His eyes were brighter. He started his restless prowling again while Quinlan sat down and waited in silence.
After a time Shayne muttered, “You’re putting the pressure on, aren’t you?”
Quinlan didn’t reply. He appeared to be preoccupied with the ease with which he ran a fountain pen through his folded hand.
“You’ve got me over a barrel,” Shayne stated with anger and disgust. “You and Lana Moore. You know me too well to believe I’d be crazy enough to hand you an alibi I knew couldn’t stick.”
“It is out of character,” he admitted. “But there it is.”
“Yeh. There it is. It’s fallen in your lap and who are you to question a gift from the gods? That the way you feel about it?”
“You’re my only suspect thus far.”
“You’re after something,” Shayne reasoned bitterly. “You’re using this thing as a lever to pry it out of me.”
“I’m still waiting to hear the truth about your argument with Dan Trueman.”
Shayne sat down and said, “Look, I’m trying to make a living. Recovery of the Lomax necklace means over twelve grand in my pocket-if I do the recovering. Where’d I be in my business if I came to you cops with all my dope?”
“Then you’re admitting that Trueman was tied in with the stolen necklace?”
“Sure. I’ll admit that much.”
“I’ve been waiting to hear you say that,” Quinlan said quietly, “because I’ve been wondering-” He laid the fountain pen aside and got an envelope from a desk drawer. He opened it and carefully emptied a single small emerald on the desk blotter. “This was found on the floor of Trueman’s office.”
The green gem blinked malignantly up at them.
Shayne’s eyes blazed. He leaned forward and poked the emerald with his forefinger. “One of the Lomax beads?”
Quinlan eased his stoic face with a slight smile. “It’s an emerald,” he corrected, “torn out of its setting.”
Shayne picked it up between thumb and forefinger and dropped it into the palm of his left hand. His eyes were fiercely questioning between shaggy red brows. He rolled it around in his cupped palm, held it up to the light and squinted at it as though fascinated by its polished green facets.
After a time he handed it back to Quinlan without comment.
Quinlan put the gem in the envelope and returned it to the drawer.
Shayne said with heavy meditation, “So the sonofabitch had it there in his office all the time,” and stared fixedly across the room.
The inspector cleared his throat and said, “That’s one thing that didn’t get in the paper. Don’t you think it’s time for you to start talking?”
