possibly be unfaithful?”
Shayne looked away from the man and his eyes were bleak. He said, “Yes, Harris, it happened to me once.”
“Then you know what I’m talking about? Will you help me?”
A muscle twitched in the hollow of Shayne’s right cheek. He said, “I’ll do what I can. Do you have a picture of your wife?”
“Just a snapshot. But it’s a very good likeness.” He got out his billfold and eagerly removed a small picture of an extraordinarily beautiful young woman which he passed over to the detective. “I happened to have two pictures of Ellen with me. The other is a different pose… both taken a few months ago. Painter kept the other one… though he didn’t seem much interested in having it reproduced in a newspaper as I suggested. He kept promising me in that reassuringly snide way of his that I needn’t worry about the matter being given any publicity.”
“And you don’t mind publicity?” Shayne was studying the picture carefully, liking what he saw.
“Mr. Shayne.” Harris’ voice was low and intense. “I want to find my wife. That’s all in the world that matters to me. Of course I don’t mind publicity if it will help. I’m not afraid of the truth. Don’t you understand? I trust Ellen. I know something terrible has happened to her. I… I’m afraid to let myself think what.”
“All right,” said Shayne briskly. “I think this picture will blow up fine and reproduce well in a newspaper. If we haven’t something by this afternoon’s deadline, I’ll see that it’s on the front page of tonight’s News. Now, I need some facts about yourself and your wife. I’ll have my secretary come in.” He pressed a button on his desk, leaned back and lit a cigarette. “Could you do with a drink?”
“No, I… thank you, I think not. I had two drinks at the hotel earlier.”
Lucy Hamilton came in with her notebook. Shayne said, “Take some notes, Lucy.” And to Harris, “I want all the facts I can get.” He waited until Lucy was settled with pencil poised above her open book, and then said, “Your full name and New York address?”
“Herbert Harris.” He gave the residence address in the East Seventies, and slid a business card out of his wallet. “My business address.”
Shayne glanced at it before sliding it across to Lucy. “You’re a partner in this brokerage firm?”
“It’s a relatively small firm, but moderately successful. Most of our accounts are out-of-town clients whose business we handle on an annual basis.”
Shayne nodded. “You live in an apartment? Have a maid?”
“Part-time. She comes in twice a week. Her first name is Rose. I don’t know her last name, but she does work part-time for other tenants in the building. She hasn’t been in since my wife left. They gave the place a thorough cleaning on Sunday, and Ellen had arranged for her to come in next Saturday…” He broke off with a frown. “Is our maid important?”
“I don’t know what’s important at this point. Your wife’s maiden name?”
“Ellen Terry. She was a professional model and a very successful one when I met her about a year and a half ago.”
Shayne nodded. It was very easy to believe that the original of the snapshot had been a successful model. “What agency did she work for?”
“It was one of the big ones… located in Rockefeller Center.” Harris knitted his forehead in thought. “Noble,” he announced. “Noble and Elliot. But she stopped working when we were married.”
“That was just a year ago?” Shayne said. “Let’s have a physical description.”
“She’s thirty-one years old. Rather tall, five-eight, I believe, and weighed just under a hundred and forty. She wore a size fourteen dress, I believe, sometimes a twelve. Her hair is blond and she carries herself beautifully. Every movement she makes is grace personified. She… was a woman people looked at when she entered a room.”
Shayne nodded, glancing over at Lucy whose pencil was racing over her pad. He leaned back and tugged at his left earlobe, and said, “Fine. Now give us the names and addresses, if you can, of her closest friends… male and female.”
Harris looked at him sharply. “See here, Shayne. I’ve told you she had no men friends. And anyhow, I fail to see how her friends in New York have any bearing on what has happened here.”
Shayne said flatly, “If I came into your brokerage office, a complete novice about stocks and bonds, I don’t believe you would welcome my advice on how you should do your job. I have to do my job my way. Now, start giving Miss Hamilton a list of your wife’s closest friends. Going back to her modeling days, if you can.”
Harris said, “I think I could use that drink now, if you don’t mind.”
Shayne nodded and pushed back his chair to get up. Harris turned to Lucy and thoughtfully began giving her a list of names, mostly feminine, some married couples, with addresses or partial addresses as he recalled them.
On the other side of the room, Shayne busied himself getting a cognac bottle from the second drawer of the filing cabinet, fitting two pairs of paper cups into each other and filling each to the brim with liquor and carrying them to the desk, then getting cups of ice water from the cooler which he brought back and set beside the nested cups.
He pushed cognac and ice water toward Herbert Harris as the New Yorker concluded earnestly to Lucy, “That’s all the names I can think of at the moment.” He glanced at Shayne and explained, “I’ve told your secretary we didn’t go out a great deal socially. Actually, we were both pretty well wrapped up in each other and we didn’t need other people.” He lifted the cognac and sipped it appreciatively.
Shayne said heartily, “I can understand that… during your first year of marriage. Let’s see, now. Have you got the name of her hairdresser, Lucy?”
She shook her head as Harris broke in vehemently, “Now what in the living hell has her hairdresser in New York got to do with Ellen’s disappearance in Miami? You may know your business, Mr. Shayne, but I certainly fail to understand…”
“All right, Lucy.” Shayne’s voice was grim. “Make a notation that Mr. Harris refuses to divulge the name of his wife’s hairdresser.”
“Wait a minute. I didn’t refuse. Hell, I don’t know her name,” Harris said sulkily. “It’s a shop on Park Avenue just around the corner from our place. Blanche, I think. Something like that.”
Shayne nodded noncommittally. “Now, let’s let Miss Hamilton get down the facts about your wife’s arrival, and so forth.” He settled back and took a long sip of cognac and narrowed his eyes. “You put her on a plane for Miami Monday afternoon. She phoned you from the hotel after her arrival, and you have heard nothing further from her. Didn’t that disturb you, Harris?”
“No. Why should it? I didn’t expect her to call or write me unless there was some particular reason.”
“And you didn’t bother to call her?”
“No.” Harris was on the defensive. “We’re mature people. I wanted her to have these two weeks away from me. I wanted her to meet new people and have fun without feeling that she had to report to me or that I was checking up on her.”
Shayne nodded, expressionless. “Now, this trip you suddenly decided to make. Did I understand you to say it was completely unexpected… not planned at all… that your wife hadn’t the faintest idea you might turn up in Miami today?”
“That’s right.” Harris became suddenly aggressive. “I didn’t know, myself, until late Thursday afternoon. A situation came up in the office that required me to be in Charleston, South Carolina on Friday. One of our elderly clients took a sudden notion to discuss his portfolio. I drove to Charleston that night, arriving Friday morning. I caught a few hours sleep in a motel and spent the afternoon with our client, and on a sudden impulse decided to drive on down here and spend Saturday and Sunday morning with my wife. By driving straight through, I planned to be back in New York Monday morning.”
“That’s a lot of cross-country driving,” Shayne suggested. “Most businessmen find a plane much easier these days.”
“I happen to like to drive,” Harris informed him coldly. “Especially by myself and at night. There’s something about driving across the country at night alone. You can really put the miles behind you… and stopping along the highway at the little all-night diners where the truckers congregate…” He paused, shaking his head as though a little ashamed of the enthusiasm with which he spoke. “I happen to like it,” he repeated. “And, when I left New York, I really had no idea at all of coming on. But when I realized it was Friday evening in Charleston and there was
