from my apartment in a cab, had it wait outside while she went in to get something, then was gone again just about long enough to drive to the post office.”
Will Gentry nodded slowly. “Ned Brooks has been telling me about the efforts he and Betty Jackson were making to keep Bert from selling out. But you told Tim Rourke that Betty killed her husband in order to get this money,” he objected with a heavy frown. “After she learned he was going to turn the story in to the paper instead of selling it. Now you say she mailed this data to herself to prevent Bert from selling it. That doesn’t add up, Mike.”
“Like two and two adds up to three,” Shayne agreed somberly. “I muffed that, Will. I honestly believed that when I told it to Tim. But I didn’t know then that Miss Leonard would be at the post office shortly after ten to pick up the money. I thought Betty had arranged the payment that way after killing Bert.” Shayne paused again. His eyes brightened, and his mouth quirked in a crooked smile. “By the way,” he said abruptly, “I haven’t introduced you properly, Will. Meet Miss Marie Leonard of apartment Three A at the Las Felice.”
The name didn’t immediately register with Gentry. He was absorbed in puzzling over the latest developments. He rumbled, “Then Tim was right all the time, and Betty did kill her husband because of him.”
“I’m not too sure about that yet,” Shayne hedged. He turned to Marie Leonard and said, “I think you’d better explain how you knew that money would be at General Delivery after ten o’clock.”
“I’ve told you,” she said sullenly. “Bert made a phone call from my place and arranged for the money to be paid this way. I don’t know why he had it addressed to Mrs. Jackson instead of to him. Maybe he thought it was safer that way. Anyhow, after I heard Bert was dead I thought it wouldn’t hurt just to go down and see if it was there.”
“We might buy that story,” Shayne told her, “if I didn’t know you lied about the call Bert made from your place. He did make a phone call, all right, but it was to the city editor on the Tribune, not to the man he was going to expose. Then he left your place to go home and get the data to take to Abe Linkle. That call was made a little before ten o’clock,” he went on swiftly, sure of himself now and of the actual sequence of events. “But Bert didn’t reach home until sometime after ten.
“You fought with him about the phone call, all right,” he went on grimly. “But it was because you were sore at him for turning soft and not going after the money. You saw a chance to get it yourself, didn’t you, Marie? A long chance, but you took it. With Bert dead before he had a chance to turn the story in, it was you who phoned the blackmail threat and not Betty Jackson. But you used her name to make it sound authentic, knowing you could pick up the envelope from General Delivery addressed to her just as easily as one addressed to you.
“And for good measure,” Shayne continued, “you tossed in the idea that Mrs. Jackson and I were working together and that I would turn the dope over to Rourke if the payoff failed to come through. That’s why my office and apartment were searched,” he ended wearily, turning to Chief Gentry, “and why an elevator operator was killed last night.”
“None of it’s like you say,” Marie protested shrilly. “How could I know Bert was dead? He was all right when he left my place. Ned Brooks will tell you he saw him about a block from his own home. Bert was killed right there, wasn’t he? On his own front porch? How could I have done that?”
“How do you know he was killed on his front porch?” Shayne pounded at her. “Only the killer knew that-until a few minutes ago when Tim Rourke admitted finding the body there and carrying it away to protect Betty.
“You were not a witness to that confession,” he went on inexorably. “You knew because you shot him, didn’t you, Marie? From the front seat of your car at the curb while he was going up the steps-and with Tim Rourke’s target pistol which you then tossed out where Rourke found it later.”
“No!” she screamed. “I didn’t do it! I don’t know who told me where he was killed, but I heard it some place.”
Shayne took a step toward her, his face ludicrous with one eye nearly closed and the other wide open staring at her. “Jackson had that pistol in his pocket when he was at my place late in the afternoon,” he drove in relentlessly. “I suppose he found it where Betty had hidden it. He went directly to your apartment from there. He was pretty drunk when he left, and I imagine it was quite easy to get the pistol from him.”
“The doorman will tell you I didn’t leave my apartment all evening,” she protested wildly. “I never even saw his pistol.”
“There’s a back stairway,” Shayne reminded her, “leading directly to the parking-area where you leave your car at night. It was easy enough for you to slip down and follow him home. A neighbor of the Jacksons saw your car pull up to the curb and stop as Bert Jackson staggered up the walk. She didn’t hear the shot because a twenty-two isn’t loud, and she didn’t see him fall because she can’t see his front steps.”
“I didn’t! I didn’t!” Marie Leonard shrank away from him as she cried out in terror.
“It had to be you who made the phone call, Marie. We know about the one call Bert made. This other call was from a woman. Betty Jackson was unconscious from an overdose of sleeping-pills at ten o’clock.” Shayne turned back to Gentry and said wearily, “It could have happened just like I said. In fact, I think you could take her into court and get a conviction on that much, Will.”
The police chief removed a cigar from his mouth and studied the soggy end of it broodingly. He said, “I think so, too. Come on, Miss Leonard, make it easy on yourself. Tell us the whole thing-”
“Which would just go to prove once more,” Shayne broke in musingly, as though he had not heard a word the chief said, but was continuing with his own thoughts, “the dangerous unreliability of circumstantial evidence. It could have happened that way, Will, but it didn’t.”
“No?” Gentry didn’t look up or change the stolid expression on his heavy face. “Then what the devil?”
“We’re forgetting a couple of things,” Shayne told him. “Most important is the fact that while there was a hole in Bert Jackson’s coat pocket, there wasn’t any hole anywhere in Tim Rourke’s suit.”
Chapter Seventeen
“What has a hole in somebody’s pocket got to do with any of this?” Chief Will Gentry demanded.
“Everything,” Shayne told him blandly. “That pistol has an eight-inch barrel. The only way you could carry it in your pocket would be to make a hole in the lining for the barrel to stick through. When we found that hole in Bert’s coat pocket I was pretty sure it was there to accommodate a long-barreled pistol-the one that killed him.”
“All right,” said Gentry impatiently. “But what have Rourke’s pockets got to do with it?”
“There wasn’t any hole, remember?”
Gentry’s rumpled lids rolled up, and his eyes were like streaked granite. “Suppose you give out with the information you’ve been holding back,” he said to Shayne. “Maybe then some of your theories will make sense.”
Shayne looked around at the group gathered just inside the living-room door, the policeman from the Black Maria who still held a firm grip on Marie Leonard’s arm, Jenkins, and the cop stationed just outside the open door, and Lucy Hamilton who stood close beside him. He glanced across the room to see Ned Brooks still slumped in a chair in the corner, his head buried in his hands. His gaze came back to Gentry. They had been friends for years, and he had no desire to discredit the chief before his subordinates.
He said, “You know how it is when I have a client, Will. I know I have to hustle to keep a step ahead of you and your boys.”
“So?” Gentry growled.
“So Tim Rourke couldn’t have been carrying that pistol in his pocket when he came here to Ned Brooks’s house. I saw him leave his apartment to come here, and there wasn’t any pistol sticking out of his clothes.”
“So?” Gentry repeated sourly.
“How did that pistol get here-in Tim’s hand, as we found it?” Shayne said pleasantly.
“You tell us,” the chief rumbled.
“The murderer brought it. That is,” he amended, “if Ballistics prove it’s the weapon that killed Jackson. I think you’d better ask Ned Brooks about that, Will.”
“Brooks?” Gentry roared the word and turned to the reporter. “Come over here.”
