thrust both hands deep into the patch pockets of his shabby jacket and whistled shrilly. “Lucy said you were hanging one on. She didn’t mention the fact that you were working your way through a case.”
Shayne waved his hand grandly toward the cardboard box on his desk. “Little token of esteem from a client. Guy’s got a hell of a taste in liquor, it seems. Try a bottle.”
“I’m on the edge of a deadline,” Rourke told him severely. “Last night, you told me to check before we went to press today, to see if I could print any of that stuff from Gifford in New York. So, I’m checking.”
Shayne very carefully poured more cognac into the nested cups. “The answer is no.” He peered at Rourke owlishly. “Gifford hasn’t called back. Situation remains unchanged. Ultimate evaluations are becoming momentarily clearer. Have a drink, Tim.”
Rourke said, “Later,” sitting down and looking at his old friend happily. “I remember a couple of times in the past when ultimate evaluations became clearer, Mike. Are you onto something this time?”
Michael Shayne made a sweeping gesture with his right hand. “We’re on the edge of a breakthrough, Timothy.” He drank more cognac.
His desk buzzer sounded. He lifted his phone and Lucy said, “Mr. Gifford on the wire from New York.”
He said, “Hello, Jim,” and Jim Gifford said, “I thought I might as well check in, Mike. I’ve been working.”
“So?”
“I talked with Ruth Collins’ room-mate for one thing. I don’t think she’s as surprised as she pretends to be that Ruth didn’t turn up at the Catskill hotel. I think she had a hunch she planned some other gambit for her vacation, but nothing definite. She didn’t know about an affair between Ruth and her boss, but I’m pretty sure she sensed it. In other words, take this for what it’s worth, Mike, I’d say that Ruth Collins and Harris had planned to spend most of these two weeks together while his wife was on vacation in Florida.”
“All right.” Shayne sounded and acted completely sober. “I’ve got that. You’ve been snooping around the office, Jim?”
“I have that. And there is plenty of low-down here on the Harris-Collins affair. Nothing overt, but… it was pretty generally accepted. What’s more important, everything I can find out about Herbert Harris puts him on the pretty fine edge financially. Nothing desperate, but… he’s a few weeks late paying his bills. He has two thousand a month drawing account from the business, and stays drawn in advance most of the time. Nothing really serious, but… I gather a hundred thousand insurance from his wife’s death wouldn’t be amiss.”
“Despite all that,” grated Shayne, “do you maintain that he could not possibly have done the job on her in Florida last Monday or Tuesday?”
“When I began to get this other stuff, I rechecked, Mike. He just couldn’t have. I can place him here… I’ll put it all in my report,” Gifford broke off. “No use running up a long distance bill. Take it from me, Harris was not in Miami murdering his wife last Monday or Tuesday.”
Shayne said, “All right, Jim. Send me a detailed report and a bill, and drop it.” He started to hang up, but was interrupted by Gifford.
“There’s one more very small thing. It’s so tenuous that I normally wouldn’t include it in a report… but you can have it for what it’s worth, Mike. There’s a faint suggestion, somehow, that his secretary, Ruth Collins, might have been holding something over his head. It comes mostly, I think, from those who knew his wife and couldn’t understand how he could even look at another gal. In order to justify it, I think, they suspect Ruth has some hold on him… though nobody is sure what it is. Now, I will hang up.” And he did.
Shayne dropped his phone onto its prongs and cheerfully emptied his paper cup. “We’re getting closer to the breaking point all the time. It’s already later, pal. Have a drink of this stuff and we’ll ratiocinate together.”
“I will if there’s nothing to add to my story as written.”
“Nothing to add at this time, Tim. The plot is thickening in New York… that’s all. Lucy!” he called out commandingly through the open door into the outer office.
She came to the doorway and stopped, shaking her head in mock despair when she saw Timothy Rourke filling a paper cup from the bottle in front of Shayne.
“Come on in and join the party,” Shayne ordered her. “We’re solving a murder case and I need the feminine point of view. And not an entirely sober point of view either.” He pointed a finger at her sternly. “Sobriety doesn’t solve murder cases. Not tough ones like this. We need inspiration. Got twelve whole bottles of the stuff, so drink some of it.”
She said, “You’re already tight as a tick,” but she smiled and got herself a paper cup and held it while he poured it half full.
He paid no attention to her remark, but said, “Now then. Let’s get our basic facts straight in our minds. Let’s go back to the Harris’ in New York. He’s a partner in a small brokerage firm drawing two grand a month and spending it. He’s married to a luscious blonde with a hundred-thousand-dollar insurance policy on her life, and he’s playing around on the side with his secretary, who’s also a blonde, but maybe not quite so luscious. But a hundred grand might make up for that difference.
“All right. So he insists his wife come to Florida alone for two weeks coincident with his secretary’s vacation from the office. Question number one: Did his wife know about secretary’s vacation? Did she care?”
He paused and Lucy promptly said, “No, to the first question. Sure, she would have cared. Any wife would.”
Shayne said, “Ah,” and filled his nested cups again. “At this point the meeting should consider the strange conduct of Mrs. Harris the moment she arrives in Miami. As soon as she reaches the hotel, she makes a point of telling every man she contacts that she is alone in town and more-or-less available. Let’s see, there were…” He ticked them off on his fingers, “The desk clerk, bellboy, bartender, Gene Blake, Benjamin. That last name is strictly off the record, Tim. Five of them altogether in the course of her first evening in town. What does that add up to, Lucy?” He took Ellen’s picture from his pocket and laid it on his desk. “Look at her,” he urged. “And you saw and talked to Harris here on Saturday morning. Here’s where we need an inspiration. Let’s all have a drink.”
He and Tim drank while Lucy knit her brows over the picture.
“Keep in mind, too, Lucy,” Shayne sounded completely sober suddenly, “that everything Gifford found out in New York paints the same picture of Ellen Harris that we got from her husband. A loving and loyal wife. Even back in her modeling days, before her marriage, she had a reputation for chastity. This is what has been bothering me from the beginning. How can a woman change so suddenly and blatantly?
“She can’t,” he told them flatly. “It just isn’t in the books. So, what is the answer? I give you two possibilities. Either it wasn’t Mrs. Harris who flew to Miami Monday afternoon… or she drew attention to herself intentionally and with malice aforethought… for reasons which are at present unknown to us.”
He calmly sipped cognac and beamed at Rourke as the reporter objected. “But we know it was Mrs. Harris, Mike. A dozen people identified that picture. And the fingerprint report was positive.”
Shayne nodded agreeably. “We all know that fingerprints don’t lie and the New York police are infallible. All right, we’ll have to accept the fact that the dead woman is Mrs. Harris. We’ll come back to that later. If she was going around drawing attention to herself, giving men the impression that she could be had easily, why? What possible reason could she have had?” Neither of them answered him. He took a sip of cognac and declared, “That’s the crux of the problem. Let’s crack the crux. Come on, Tim. You need more inspiration. Hell’s bells, man, you and I have cracked more difficult crux’s than this in the past.” He leaned forward and poured fine old cognac into Rourke’s cup. “You, too, angel?”
Lucy put her hand over her cup and shook her head absently. “One answer is that she was deliberately creating this image of herself, knowing that she was going to be away from her hotel room for several days and fixing it so too much fuss wouldn’t be made about it. I’m not saying it very well, I’m afraid. But she would know the hotel would check around, if her room remained vacant, and, if they got reports from the hotel clerk and bellboy and bartender indicating that she was the sort of woman who probably would, be sleeping around, then they’d be inclined to sit back and let matters take their course.”
“Which is exactly what happened,” Shayne pointed out, happily. “Go to the head of the class, Lucy. Bob Merrill did get those reports about her, and since her room was on a credit card and her luggage still there, he did nothing about reporting her. So now we have a logical reason for the way she acted. And that brings us to another crux. Why did she plan to be away from her hotel for several days? Disregarding the obvious reason which doesn’t seem in character… what other reason could she have?”
Again, he received no answer. He sighed deeply and took another drink.
“Let’s not at this point disregard a strange coincidence. I correct myself. Seeming coincidence. I don’t believe
