wouldn’t do that-not after-what happened to Bert.”
“If he killed Bert or had him killed,” Shayne promised soberly, “I give you my word he’ll pay for it. I wish you’d try to think back and recall all the things Bert must have told you about everything,” he urged. “Any names at all on this story of his, any facts. He must have talked about it to you, at least back in the beginning when he was so enthusiastic and didn’t realize quite what it might lead into.” Shayne put a small amount of whisky in her glass and sprayed it with soda, then resumed his seat and waited.
Marie lifted the drink with trembling hands, swallowed half of it, and said, “Bert didn’t talk to me about things like that.” A poignant sadness in her voice caused the detective to wince involuntarily.
What had they talked about, he wondered, these two young people caught up in a passion that could not be legalized. He raked blunt fingers through his hair as he compared Marie with Betty Jackson who vowed she was in love with her husband, and gave a forelock a savage jerk recalling Tim Rourke’s anomalous position in the situation. Tim, who had always preferred unattached blondes, had evidently beaten a triangle into a square, intentionally or not, and left Shayne with many unanswered questions, vague relationships, contradictions, and all because of a brunette.
Shayne came to his feet impatiently. The first light of dawn was streaming through the triple windows. He didn’t want Gentry to find him here when the police chief got around to connecting the lone key in Bert Jackson’s wallet with the Las Felice apartments.
Marie roused and stood up. In spite of her claim that she seldom drank, she was steady on her high heels after three stiff drinks of Scotch. She took a couple of steps and looked up at Shayne with a wan smile.
“The police will be here to question you about Bert Jackson,” he said, placing a big hand lightly on each of her shoulders. He kept his voice even, neither pleading nor warning as he continued. “Tell them as much of the truth as you wish about Bert being here last night-and so forth. But thus far, they don’t know anything about his extortion plan. You don’t have to tell them about it if you don’t want to. Not right away. I’d rather work on it alone.”
“Nothing matters very much to me now,” she murmured, lowering her lids.
“Nonsense,” said Shayne cheerfully. He shook her shoulders gently and took his hands away. “You’re young, and tomorrow is another day. I’ll be in touch with you.” He picked up his hat from the floor where he had tossed it and went toward the door, jamming it down on his heavy hair and pulling the brim low over his forehead. He stopped suddenly, turned, and asked, “Do you know Bert’s home address?”
“It’s not far from here,” she said, “on Sixtieth Street. I don’t know the house number. Only the telephone number.” She repeated the telephone number without hesitation.
Shayne hid his surprise by pretending to admire the lamp on the Japanese table. None of the figures Marie gave him coincided with the number Rourke had asked for in his apartment when he called the Jackson home to find out whether Bert had returned last night. “Are you positive?” he asked.
“Of course. I’ve called there often enough.”
“But-you must be mistaken,” he protested. “That’s not the number-”
“It is,” she interrupted loftily, “unless it has been changed in the last day or so. There’s the telephone book.”
The telephone was on a small stand that just missed the front door when it was wide open. Shayne stalked to it, picked up the directory, and began leafing through it, positive that he could not be mistaken.
He found Bert Jackson’s street address on Northwest Sixtieth Street in the directory, but a tingle crawled up his spine when he saw the telephone number. It was identical with the one Marie had given him. It was not the one Rourke had called.
Shayne kept his back turned to Marie as he scowled at the stippled wall. He had heard that number before, and recently. Very recently. He had not consciously memorized it, but the peculiar circumstance under which he had heard it had impressed it upon his memory.
Suddenly he knew.
Bert Jackson’s number was the one that Dirkson, Rourke’s city editor, had reluctantly given him when Bert insisted that he get in touch with Tim yesterday afternoon. A private, secret number that was to be called only in emergencies; and the deep-throated voice who had answered that call was Betty Jackson. She was the woman Rourke was with.
And Bert Jackson knew it!
Chapter Seven
Shayne swore under his breath, and when Marie said, “It is the right number, isn’t it?” he began flipping through the book.
“Yes, it’s the right number, Marie, but there are a couple of others I want to look up.”
This made so many things clear to him that hadn’t made sense before. Timothy Rourke’s evasiveness, his disinclination to discuss Bert and Betty and his relationship with them, his reason for sending Betty to his apartment to pump him for information the moment he learned that Bert had been there.
It explained Bert Jackson’s arrogant self-confidence when he suggested that Shayne call Rourke and put the proposition to him. Conscious that the older reporter was visiting his wife, he had used the fact to try to force Rourke to go along with his blackmail scheme.
Where did Rourke stand?
One count against his old friend came with the stabbing recollection that he had not called the Jacksons’ number while ostensibly trying to find out whether Bert had come home. He had called an entirely different number, listened for a long time before hanging up and reporting that there was no answer and advancing the theory that Bert was not at home and that Betty was asleep under the influence of sleeping-tablets.
Bert was dead at the time. Did Rourke know?
Shayne thought of the blood on the cushion of the reporter’s car, and of Rourke’s refusal to discuss that, and other details of Jackson’s murder; and as these thoughts flashed through his mind an even deadlier realization came in their wake.
In attempting to shield Rourke from Gentry’s probing, he had accomplished exactly the opposite! Inadvertently, his lie to the police chief about Bert wanting divorce evidence against his wife now appeared to be too near the truth for comfort. By withholding information on the blackmail scheme in which he believed Rourke was somehow involved, however innocently, he had actually tipped Gentry off to a fact that would eventually put the police on the track of Rourke as the “other man.”
All because Rourke hadn’t been frank with him, Shayne thought furiously, remembering that Marie was standing back of him, waiting until he had found what he was looking for.
“There’s a pencil and pad in the drawer of the telephone stand,” she said. “Unless it’s true that you remember everything you see and hear-like I’ve heard.”
“Thanks. I don’t,” he said soberly. He took a pencil and memorandum book from his pocket and pretended to write down numbers, grinding his teeth and damning Rourke for his lack of faith and failure to tell the whole truth.
It was too late now. At any moment, and certainly before many hours, Gentry’s men would have Rourke pegged as Betty Jackson’s lover, through a confession by Betty or the sudden return of Marie’s memory about the “other man.” Add that to the known bad blood between the two men, the undeniable fact that Rourke had combed the bars for Jackson last night, and the police would have evidence of murder.
Shayne picked up the receiver and dialed Rourke’s apartment, clamping the receiver against his ear, then dropping it with an oath when he heard a busy signal.
He whirled around to face Marie.
She cried out in alarm at the expression on his face. “What is it? I don’t-”
“Is there a rear stairway and a door in this place?” he interrupted rudely.
“Yes. The stairway is past the elevator at the end of the hall. There’s a back door that goes out to the parking-lot where we leave our cars. But why?”
