“Perhaps that explains my poor luck,” the New York broker agreed. They had reached two chairs drawn close together, under two umbrellas. Morrison paused and asked, “Will your business take long?”
“I think not. If you have a few minutes we might talk right here.”
“Very well. Have a seat.” Mr. Morrison seated himself and took a broken cigar from a pocket of his sweater. He carefully licked the outer wrapper to seal it, and got a match. “What is the nature of your business?”
Shayne took the envelope containing the four photostats from his pocket. Picking one at random, he passed it across to the financier. “I’d like to know just when and under what circumstances you wrote this letter.” Morrison had struck the match on the side of the chair and was holding it to the end of his cigar. He accepted the photostat with his other hand and glanced at it while he puffed on his cigar.
He stopped puffing and his face became a mottled red. The match burned down to his fingers. He dropped it and asked thickly, “May I ask where you got hold of this?”
Chapter Nine: ANGLING FOR THE BIG ONE
Shayne waggled his head and reminded him, “I’m waiting for you to answer my question.”
The financier had strong hands with short blunt fingers. They tightened on the photostat for an instant, crumpling the lower portion of it. Then he dropped it in his lap and took an experimental puff on his cigar. It hadn’t caught fire from the first match.
He got out another match and struck it, held it steadily and carefully to the end of his cigar. His broad, ruddy face looked thoughtful and his eyes no longer twinkled. He blew out the match, expelled a cloud of smoke and leaned back in the reclining chair. “I don’t believe you mentioned your business, Mr. Shayne.”
“I didn’t.”
“Will you do so now?”
“I’m a detective.”
Morrison lowered wrinkled eyelids for a moment. He picked up the crumpled photostat and studied it with care. “Why do you think this concerns me?”
“It’s in your handwriting. It’s signed ‘Vicky.’”
“The similarity to my writing startled me at first,” he admitted. “I assure you, however, I never wrote anything like this, and I certainly never signed myself ‘Vicky.’”
“I have photostatic copies of other somewhat similar notes written by you.” Shayne didn’t offer to show them.
Morrison cleared his throat “I should like to see the originals.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Shayne told him blandly.
Mr. Morrison sat erect in his chair. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re after, Shayne. You have some clever forgeries of notes purportedly written by me at some unknown date to some unknown person. What point is there in it? What do you expect to gain by bringing them here?”
“I want to know when and to whom they were written.”
“That’s preposterous,” said Morrison loudly. “I deny any knowledge of them whatsoever.”
Shayne sighed and leaned back, crossing his long legs at the ankles. “Circumstances are against you, Morrison. Let’s see, which one of the notes did I show you?” He reached out a long arm and took the note from Morrison’s lap. It was the one dated Friday afternoon and the salutation read, My dearest love. He glanced through it to refresh his memory as to the context, then flipped it back to Morrison.
“Unfortunately for your denial, you had a good-looking young secretary with whom your wife suspected you were in love. To stop her nagging, the young lady resigned her position. But you didn’t stop seeing her. These notes prove you were desperately seeking a way to get rid of your wife so you could marry the girl.” He tapped the envelope on his knee. “Do you want me to read these others to remind you of exactly what you said?”
“No,” he said hastily. “I don’t care to listen to any more of this nonsense.” He paused, chewing savagely on his cigar and staring across the bay. He looked older now, and tired.
“I think I see your game now,” Morrison resumed. “It’s very clever. You’ve dug up a certain set of facts and tailored your forgeries to fit those facts and given them an evil meaning. But I think you’ve forgotten one important link in your so-called chain of evidence. Those notes are utterly worthless unless you can prove they were written to and received by a certain party. And I assure you that the party in question will never lend herself to such a deception.”
“You sound very sure of that,” Shayne murmured.
“I am.”
“Suppose it could be proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that the notes were discovered by reputable witnesses in the possession of that certain party?”
Mr. Morrison removed the chewed cigar from his mouth and regarded it distastefully for a long moment. He finally said, “That would have been infernally clever, Shayne, if you could have managed it.”
Shayne said, “If you’ll look closely at the photostat on your lap you’ll see four sets of initials in the margin. Four different people were present when the notes were found and each of them initialed them in the presence of each other, and are prepared to swear to the circumstances.”
Morrison stuck the cigar in his mouth and picked up the note, scrutinized it closely, and said, “You seem to have thought of everything.”
“It’s going to be difficult for you to deny authorship,” Shayne told him.
“How much?”
Shayne shook his head. “I’m investigating a homicide that won’t be solved until I know the truth about these notes. I want the whole story from you.”
“A-homicide?” Morrison echoed weakly.
“That’s right. A woman has been murdered.”
“Murdered?” Morrison’s jaw went slack and the cigar dropped from his mouth, spilling ashes down the front of his sweater.
“And these notes are a vital clue,” Shayne said somberly.
“You can’t prove it.” Morrison reached for his cigar with shaking fingers. “You can’t possibly prove it.”
“I think I can.”
Morrison was sitting erect, gripping the arms of his chair. “I’m a wealthy man, Mr. Shayne. I admit nothing, you understand, but it seems fairly obvious that you’re determined to drag my name into a nasty scandal. Name your price.”
“I’m not even in a position to return the originals,” Shayne said bluntly. “I want the truth.”
“Nonsense. Every man has his price. Take time to think it over carefully.”
“There are four other people involved,” Shayne pointed out. “The four who initialed the letters. Let me give you a bit of advice, Morrison. Once you start paying out money to hush up a thing like this you’ll never be done. Even your millions won’t be enough. In the end you’ll be ruined, and the threat of exposure will still hang over your head. Let me have the whole story now. If your hands are clean you have nothing to fear.”
“But I insist there is no story,” said the financier stubbornly. “What more can I say or do? It’s a devilishly contrived frame-up and I realize how it can be made to look. Though I find a hundred experts to swear the letters are forgeries, you can counter with another hundred who will testify the opposite. I fully understand the position I’m in. You have nothing whatever to gain by forcing me out in the open. If you and your confederates will agree on any sort of reasonable terms I assure you I won’t be niggardly.”
“I have no confederates,” Shayne said angrily. “My only interest is clearing up a murder and preventing a girl’s marriage from being wrecked. I have to know how those notes came into Christine Hudson’s possession. The whole case hinges on that. I’m convinced you wrote them to her. Who else knew you had written them to her? Was she actually your sweetheart in New York, and is she lying when she denies receiving the notes from you? Or is she telling the truth and are these part of a deliberate plot to wreck her marriage and force her to accept you?” Shayne tapped the envelope containing the letters.
Morrison was chewing steadily on his cigar while Shayne spoke. “Are you telling me that Christine Hudson gave you those notes?”
