was being committed.” She sprang up and jammed an absurd little hat down on her brown hair.
Shayne covered an amused smile by pretending to rub his jaw.
“And I thought you were decent,” Lucy went on, averting her eyes. “I thought, by golly, I was in love with you this morning.” She started toward the door with her head high.
Shayne stopped her with a big hand on her wrist. “Don’t walk out on me, Lucy.”
“Get out of my way, Michael Shayne. I certainly am walking out. You think you can buy anything, but you can’t buy me. Not for a hundred times eighty dollars a week.” She laughed hysterically, and her fingernails scratched at Shayne’s hand on her wrist.
Shayne held her wrist tighter and slowly moved her toward one of two chairs in the small reception room. He said, “Sit down.”
She sat down and he let her wrist go. She massaged the angry red spot his tight hold had made and did not look at him when he drew the other chair up in front of her.
He said, “You’re going to listen to me and then you can suit yourself about walking out. I’m in a tight spot with a murder frame around my neck. I fast-talked Inspector Quinlan into a few hours of grace to give him another suspect. If I don’t produce, he’ll slap me in jail and two murders will never be solved.”
“Two murders!” she gasped.
“Two,” he told her implacably. “Katrin Moe and Dan Trueman.
“Do you think the chauffeur-is guilty?”
Shayne hesitated, tugging at the lobe of his left ear. “This is the God’s truth, Lucy,” he said finally. “I should lie to you but I’ll be damned if I will. I don’t know. I thought I did. I had a beautiful theory all built up and I sold the inspector on it. I thought the chauffeur was our man, and Quinlan thinks so. He’s waiting for me to prove it. He doesn’t know my theory has been blown sky-high.”
Lucy’s interest was gaining over her anger. “But if you haven’t any evidence against the chauffeur-”
“I’ve got to go on the way I started. I can’t stop now. I’ve got to give the inspector somebody to work on while I build up another theory.”
Lucy shuddered. “And they’ll beat him with hoses and things until he confesses, whether he’s guilty or not,” she argued, anger flaring again.
Shayne said, “All right. So maybe they’ll beat him.” His eyes were bleak. “Maybe he’s guilty. Even if he isn’t I’ll be gaining time to find out who is. I’ve got to keep going now,” he went on earnestly. “If Quinlan ever suspected how uncertain I am he’d throw me in the can and let me rot there.”
Lucy said in a subdued tone, “But there is such a thing as playing square.”
“Not in homicide work. Not if you stay on top. Scruples are something the boys write about in detective novels.”
She shuddered again and looked away from him. “You sound so ruthless. I don’t think you care about anything-or anybody.”
“I’m working for a fee,” he said. “Twelve and a half grand is riding on this case.” He considered her averted face for a moment, and a look of humility erased the harshness of his features. He started to say something else, but turned abruptly and said over his shoulder, “If you walk out now don’t come back. I’ll send a check for two weeks’ salary.” He went into his office and closed the door.
At his desk he sat with his heavy shoulders hunched forward easing his fingertips around the wound on his head. He felt old and tired and he wondered if he ought to get out of the business. It was no place for a man when he got soft. Once you started wondering whether an end justified a means, you were lost.
He sat like that for a long time without moving. His eyes brooded across the room, unseeing. Subconsciously, he was listening for some movement from the outer office-the scrape of a chair or the slam of the outer door that would tell him Lucy was walking out. No sound came to him. The silence grew oppressive. There had been another girl once who had walked out on him in a different way. Death was one thing you couldn’t beat. For the first time in months he hungered acutely for Phyllis. He had thought that pain was whipped after leaving Miami and its memories behind him. Lucy was helping him to whip it. She was a lot like Phyllis. If Lucy left him too-His telephone rang.
He stiffened and held a long breath waiting for it to ring again.
It didn’t ring again. He relaxed and didn’t feel as old or as tired as he had a moment before. A driving tension took hold of him when he heard Lucy’s vibrant voice speaking into the outside phone.
He lit a cigarette and covertly watched the door. It swung open and Lucy came in. “It was the Victoria Hotel in Baton Rouge. They say Mrs. Lomax wasn’t registered there Tuesday night.”
Shayne nodded, his gray eyes bright. “Anything on the call to the state pen?”
“They haven’t reported. Shall I check on it?”
“Please do,” said Shayne.
Lucy turned to go.
Shayne said, “Wait a minute. I’m sorry I hurt your wrist.”
“I suppose I deserved it,” she said. “I was acting like a fool.” She smiled and added, “I guess I’ll just have to get used to being in the detective business.” She went back to her desk and called long distance.
After a brief interchange over the phone she called in to Shayne, “They’re ready to connect you now.”
He picked up the receiver and waited. Presently a voice said, “Hello-ready on your call, Mr. Shayne.”
“Hello. Warden’s office?”
“Who do you want to talk to?”
“It’s about those two escaped convicts. I think I have a line on one of them. This is Mike Shayne in New Orleans.”
“What kind of a line, Mr. Shayne?”
“I need a little dope from you to make certain. I’d like to know whether either of them had any visitors. Regular visitors. Your visiting day is still Wednesday afternoon, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Just a moment and I’ll connect you with Purcell, the supervisor.”
Shayne waited until a new voice said, “Purcell speaking.”
“I’m checking on visitors to the pair of escaped convicts. Did either of them have a regular weekly visitor? Anton Hodge would be my pick.”
“Just a minute.” The minute stretched to three before Purcell reported, “Hodge did have a regular visitor. His wife. She came every Wednesday afternoon.”
Shayne sucked in his breath with sharp disappointment. “I’m afraid that won’t help much. No one else?”
“No record of anyone else. Gillis had only one visitor while he was here.”
Shayne said, “This thing gets worse by the minute.” He paused, then asked sharply, “Could you give me a description of Mrs. Hodge?”
“You bet. She was the kind of girl a man remembers. You know how it is. You wonder how a girl like that can get herself mixed up with-”
“This is costing me money,” Shayne cut in. “Describe her.”
“Sure. Sorry,”
The supervisor gave him a detailed description of the convict’s wife.
Shayne knew he was listening to a careful and minute description of Katrin Moe. He broke the connection as soon as the supervisor finished, and went out to the reception room shaking his red head. “Those damned Norwegians,” he said helplessly. Lucy looked up at him with a gleam of amusement in her eyes.
“What’s wrong with the Norwegians now?”
“Married virgins,” Shayne told her. “Of all the goddamned-” He stopped abruptly and grabbed his hat “Be back in half an hour if anyone calls,” he tossed at her and hurried out before she began the question framing on her lips.
He had a little trouble in the Federal Building with government clerks who weren’t greatly impressed by his private detective’s badge and who were jealous of their small authorities over minor affairs.
Finally reaching a departmental head who could be bullied, he was allowed to see the records pertaining to recent naturalization proceedings.
There was quite a dossier on Katrin Moe, and he studied it carefully, making several notations before hurrying out and getting in his car again.
His next stop was at the bank where Neal Jordan told him Katrin transacted her business. It was a small savings and loan association with only two tellers. The first one he approached replied that he knew Miss Moe quite
