a long panel, tore that into strips and bound Curt’s ankles. After that he bound and gagged Morrie and turned to the girl.
“I don’t suppose you’ll make an exception,” she said.
“Why should I?”
She stood quietly while he tore off more pieces of her skirt and tied her wrists and ankles. “I’m sorry about that dumb trick in the bar,” she said. “I told Hugh I didn’t want to do it, but he said I had to. Am I going to see you again?”
“I hope not.”
He placed the gag and fastened it, then put her into the back seat with the others.
“My advice,” he said, addressing everyone who was still conscious, “is to keep your heads down and try not to move. If anybody calls the cops, you’ll get your picture in the paper. Manners won’t like that. I’ll tell him where he can find you. Just be patient.”
He cranked up the windows and went back to his Ford. As he drove past the Buick he tapped his horn.
CHAPTER 8
1:10 A.M.
The Royalton Arms, a shabby brick apartment house in an out-of-the-way neighborhood, seemed an unlikely place to find Hugh Manners. Probably, Shayne decided, the industrialist didn’t want the public to know that he was sufficiently worried by the Hitchcock investigation to come to Washington to take personal charge of the counteroffensive.
Shayne reviewed quickly the few things he knew about Manners. Before World War II, Manners’ fighter planes had been the fastest in the world. He tested them himself. He had grown up during the glamorous early days of aviation, and he had an obsession with speed. He had walked away from a dozen serious crashes. He ran his company the way he flew his planes-as enormous as it had become in recent years, it was still a one-man business, the last in the industry. His business methods were unorthodox and sometimes brilliant. One year he might make one hundred million dollars, and the next year be in serious danger of losing his shirt. He never gave interviews, believing that his private life was nobody’s business. Nevertheless, he had often been in the headlines with spectacular paternity and alimony suits.
There were twelve apartments in the building. Manners’ name didn’t appear beside the doorbells in the cramped, poorly lit lobby. Curt Rebman was listed as the tenant of a third-floor apartment. Shayne pressed that bell and waited.
There was no answering buzz. Before long he heard footsteps and the door opened. A large man stepped out all the way, closing the door behind him. He was easily six feet six, with the chest-spread of a steer and the relaxed expression of many powerful men. He had been hit in the face various times over the years, by various things that were harder than fists. His eyes were quick and intelligent.
“Michael Shayne to see Mr. Manners,” Shayne said.
The big man looked puzzled. “You rang 3-B. Nobody there by that name.”
“Curt sent me,” Shayne said. “You can give Manners this.”
Inside the last piece of Cheryl’s skirt, the redhead had tied all the trophies he had taken from her little party: the two wallets, her evening bag, the blackjack, the.38, the loose rounds of ammunition. It made an odd-looking bundle. The big man’s eyebrows disappeared in the scar tissue on his forehead. But as he felt the hard outlines of the gun through the cloth, the eyebrows came down in a frown.
“I hope you’re not trying to be funny.”
“Doesn’t Manners have a sense of humor?”
“He hasn’t cracked a smile in years. Wait here.”
He unlocked the door and went in, and was back again in almost exactly the length of time it would have taken him to go up and down two flights of stairs.
“You get in,” he said more pleasantly. “Now don’t take this wrong, but I’ve got to frisk you. That’s the condition.”
“I’m carrying a fountain pen,” Shayne said, “and it’s only fair to tell you that it’s loaded.”
“Will you stop trying to be smart, for your own good?” He extended both his hands toward Shayne’s chest. “OK?”
Shayne spread his arms and let the big man go over him rapidly. He was asked to pull up his pants to show that he wasn’t carrying a knife or a small gun strapped to his calf. He did so, after which the door was finally opened for him. The big man stayed a half-step behind him going up the stairs.
“What was all that stuff wrapped in? Was that the dress the kid had on?”
“Part of it,” Shayne said.
“That’s what I thought. Boy, oh boy. This is something I want to see.”
On the third floor he let Shayne into a short foyer leading to a small living room. There was no rug on the floor and not much furniture. What there was looked as though it had been bought from a secondhand dealer by somebody who wasn’t concerned about anything but the price. Manners, in his shirt-sleeves and wearing a green eyeshade, was sitting in a swivel chair behind an unpainted kitchen table. There was a neat stack of manila folders in front of him, a phone, an overflowing ashtray, and Shayne’s little heap of souvenirs. He must be in his middle fifties, Shayne thought, but he looked younger. He was lean and hard, with a heavily ruled face and piercing black eyes.
“Give him a drink if he wants one, Stevens,” he said to the big man. “I’ll let you know when I need you.”
All they had was whiskey. It wasn’t good whiskey. Shayne asked for soda, but they didn’t have soda. He didn’t bother to ask for ice, knowing they wouldn’t have that either. After handing Shayne the warm drink, Stevens went into a bedroom, closing the door. There was one other bedroom; that door was also closed. A jazz record revolved on an open phonograph, the sound turned down to a faint mutter. The TV picture was on, with no sound coming from the set. On the small flickering screen, a tongue-tied Western badman was silently holding up a stagecoach.
Shayne sampled the drink. He had drunk worse whiskey, but not lately.
Manners spilled the money out of Curt’s wallet. “You could have helped yourself, Shayne. There’s a couple of thousand here. Wasn’t it enough for you?”
“That’s not how I make my living,” Shayne said.
“All right, what’s the proposition?”
Shayne put the watered whiskey on the floor so he wouldn’t forget what he was doing and drink any more. He was on a battered sofa facing the TV set. The bandit, completing the holdup, swung onto his horse and galloped quietly away.
“First,” Shayne said, “I want you to tell me how you knew where I was going to be so you could pick me up, or try to. Second, I want you to give me Maggie Smith.”
Manners’ eyes, fixed on Shayne’s face, didn’t shift. “Sam Toby told me it would be a good idea to get you out of town. I don’t know why. He said we could catch you as you left Senator Hitchcock’s. That’s your first point. Now who is Maggie Smith?”
“You don’t know?”
“That’s correct. I don’t know.”
“She runs a theatre here, and works for Toby on the side. You know how people like Toby are when they’re being investigated. They feel a lot more comfortable if they can get a picture of the chairman of the committee in bed with somebody he’s not married to. Maggie had that just about organized when I showed up. I’ve got a temporary postponement, but Hitchcock refuses to listen to anything I tell him about the woman. I want it canceled from your end.”
Manners’ face had tightened. “I have nothing to do with any of that.”
“Maybe not. But you’re paying the bills, and if anything goes wrong, it’s your neck.”
After hesitating briefly, Manners said, “All right, you can consider it canceled.”
“Call him while I’m here,” Shayne said. “And just so you won’t call him again the minute I leave, I want a
