tittered slightly.
“And he told me he’d brought this other woman playing roulette, but he’d just as leave ditch her anyhow, and so why didn’t we go some place else.”
“Did he point her out to you?”
“Sure. That is, I watched him go over and speak to her. A sort of horsy blonde wearing a bright red dress cut all the way down to here.” She made an exaggerated slashing motion down to her navel. “So you didn’t have to do too much guessing about what was underneath the red dress, if you know what I mean. Some men go for that kind of thing, but Gene admitted he preferred to make his own discoveries.” Again, she gazed fondly at her room-mate. “Anyhow, she was already making up to some other guy, and so we slipped out.” She shrugged. “That’s all there was to it.”
“Did you notice the man you say she was already making up to?”
“I can’t say that I did. I wasn’t too interested in either one of them right about then.”
“Is this a picture of the woman at the Gray Gull?” Shayne showed her the picture of Ellen Harris.
She nodded disinterestedly. “I guess. She wasn’t really near that pretty, but I guess it’s her all right.”
“Are you prepared to testify that you haven’t seen the blonde since then, and that you and Gene spent the rest of that night together… and have been together ever since?”
“Hey! What’s this about testifying? You don’t have to drag Peggy into this.”
“She’s already dragged into it,” Shayne told him coldly. “So far as anybody knows right now, you two are the last people who have seen Mrs. Harris. You’ll have to come down to police headquarters and sign a statement.”
“Police headquarters?” It was an anguished cry from Gene’s outraged lips. “You’re private. What you got to do with the police? Look, I came clean with you thinking we could keep the whole thing nice and quiet.”
“This woman has been missing for five days. Her husband is here from New York raising hell all over the place. This picture is going to be reproduced on the front page of tonight’s News with a headline asking for information about her. You can’t get away from it, Gene. If your story checks out, the chances are it won’t have to be made public. Let me take you in and give you to Peter Painter right now, and your chances for keeping it quiet will be just about doubled. He hates my guts enough that he’s going to be so damned sore I got to you first that he’ll do practically anything to prove your innocence. So, let’s go.
“Besides, you haven’t got any choice,” Shayne ended grimly, getting to his feet. “Either get dressed and come along with me like a good citizen, or I’ll call in and have them send the wagon around for both of you.”
11
Peter Painter kept the three of them cooling their heels for at least fifteen minutes in a small anteroom just off his private office at Miami Beach headquarters. Shayne sat in a chair a little removed from the other two and placidly smoked two cigarettes while they talked together in whispers, interspersed now and then by a fluty giggle from Peggy.
Neither of them appeared really upset or frightened. They resented being brought down by Shayne, but that was perfectly natural under the circumstances. He would have resented it himself in the same situation.
Shayne went over Blake’s story of Monday evening point by point while they waited, and he was inclined to believe it… or most of it at least. It shouldn’t be too difficult to check what had happened at the Gray Gull on Monday night. The cashier would remember passing out the packet of free chips to Blake, and what sum he returned. One of the roulette dealers would almost certainly remember the striking blonde whom Gene Blake had brought in, and who deserted him during the course of the evening for another man. With more opportunity to observe them together at his table, he might well have formed an opinion as to whether they were strangers when they met.
At the moment, this was the most puzzling aspect of Blake’s story. If this later meeting had been prearranged before her arrival in Miami… if it were, in fact, an assignation, why go to such a roundabout, cloak- and-dagger way of effecting it?
There was only one answer that made sense to Shayne. If she suspected she was being tailed, all that circumlocution about picking Gene up in the bar might have seemed necessary. Otherwise, for God’s sake, she was ostensibly on her own in Miami for two weeks with no strings attached. All they had to do was to meet some place. Her reservation had been made in advance at the Beachhaven… her plane ticket purchased in advance and time of arrival known.
Yet both she and her husband had gone out of their way to make it clear that he had wanted her to make the trip, that he expected her to have fun, and had no intention of spying on her.
If not her husband, then whom had she suspected of keeping track of her movements in Miami so that she felt the need to cover up her tracks?
Of course, the simpler answer might be the correct one. It was entirely possible that she did just want to go out on the town and had tired of Gene Blake’s company after an hour or two. It is simple enough to strike up an acquaintanceship with a fellow gambler at a roulette table, and as Peggy had phrased it in the hotel, maybe the chemicals were right with this new man. In that case it was going to be much more difficult to trace a casual bystander than if there had been a previous connection between the two.
A young officer opened a door into the waiting room and stuck his head in. “The chief is ready for you, Mr. Shayne.”
Shayne got up and nodded to the couple, and preceded them into Painter’s office.
The detective chief looked up irritably from a desk littered with papers. He was a small, dapper man, with a very black, pencil-thin mustache.
He snapped, “What is it, Shayne? I’m extremely busy.”
Shayne said, “I’ve brought in a couple of people who want to make statements about Mrs. Herbert Harris.”
“Harris?” sputtered Painter. “That New York woman who’s been sleeping out a couple of nights? What’s your interest in her?”
“The New York woman who’s been missing since Monday night,” the redhead corrected him. “I’ve been retained to find her.”
“He came to you?” Painter’s voice trembled with wrath. “After I assured him everything possible would be done to locate her without publicity or a scandal? Why?”
“Possibly,” said Shayne modestly, “because I have a reputation for being one of the best men in my field in the entire country?”
“Who says so?”
“Mr. Harris,” said Shayne. He shrugged and grinned innocently. “I thought maybe you told him Petey, because he came straight to my office from here.”
“I told him nothing. Except that we have far superior facilities for that sort of work than any private detective, and that it would be a waste of money to hire one.”
“What have your facilities turned up?”
“Nothing very definite… as yet. We have determined that she allowed herself to be picked up in the Beachhaven bar Monday evening by some smooth-talking gigolo, and went out with him evidently determined to make the rounds. We have a pick-up on her rented car, of course, and as soon as we locate that I’m positive it will lead us to her and her paramour.” Shayne shrugged and nodded toward the couple who stood close together, unhappily waiting to be noticed. “Here’s your smooth-talking gigolo, Painter. And standing beside him is his paramour of the moment. Do you want statements from them, or don’t you?” Peter Painter gulped back an oath and his black eyes glittered as he turned slowly to survey Gene and Peggy. “All right, Shayne,” he said in a choked voice. “How’d you dig them up?”
“By using my own facilities. You want me to sit in while they tell you what they know about Mrs. Harris, or shall I leave them to you? By the way,” he added, “I understand that Harris left a picture of his wife with you… a different pose from the one he brought me. It might be a good idea to let them identify it as well as the one I showed them.”
