“Hot off Petie Painter’s platter. Revocation of Shayne’s License Demanded. And it’s subbed: An indignant citizenry rallied solidly behind police authorities and civic leaders this morning to press demands upon the governor that Michael Shayne’s authority to prey upon innocent victims be annulled at once,” Rourke quoted gravely, “or words to that effect.” He grinned cheerfully and offered Shayne a cigarette.
Shayne shook his head. “So you boys are convicting me without a trial.”
“A trial? What the hell, Mike? Isn’t it open and shut? You don’t deny Darnell was working for you, do you?”
“It wouldn’t do me any good to deny that,” Shayne admitted. “The catch is, Tim, Darnell didn’t choke the dame.”
“Wh-a-a-t?” Rourke choked over a windpipeful of smoke.
“He didn’t,” Shayne said with a driving intensity that riveted all of Rourke’s attention. “I’ve given you stuff in the past,” Shayne went on harshly, “and you’ve made money by listening to me. The Herald nailed me to the cross on Painter’s say-so this morning. Why don’t you guys try printing the truth?”
Rourke’s flaring nostrils quivered like a hound’s on the scent. “Good God, Mike! Have you got any proof?” He was reaching for a wad of copy paper and a pencil.
“Not a damn bit. But I’m telling you. You can quote me, can’t you? Do you think I’m taking this lying down? Joe Darnell didn’t kill Mrs. Thrip. Painter’s willing to let it lie that way because he hasn’t got brains enough to catch the real murderer and because it harpoons me.”
“But what about Thrip? If Darnell didn’t kill Mrs. Thrip what reason did Thrip have for killing Darnell?”
“Plenty of reason,” Shayne insisted. “Breaking and entering. Hell, I’m not blaming Thrip. His story is straight enough. He did what any man would do under the circumstances. My quarrel is with his interpretation of what he saw when he turned on the light. I’m working on the theory that Mrs. Thrip was dead before Joe Darnell entered her bedroom.”
Rourke’s keen eyes dulled as Shayne spoke. “That’s not like you, Mike,” he observed absently. “This is the first time you ever blatted out a theory for publication. I thought you left that angle for the Painters.”
“I’m working on this with two strikes on me before I come to bat,” Shayne explained. “I want the murderer to know I’m on his tail. I’ve got to smoke something out, Tim. There are so damned many angles-” He paused, shook his head gloomily, then asked, “Well, Tim?”
“It’s a story,” Rourke told him. “Right or wrong, it’s a different angle.”
“Play it like it was right and you won’t regret it,” Shayne assured him. He slid off Rourke’s desk and barged out of the smoke-fouled room to the elevator.
Out on the street, he strolled leisurely to his car, got in, and drove to his hotel. Going through the lobby, he saw that the clerk had observed his entrance but was studiously pretending to be looking elsewhere in the evident hope that Shayne would go on up without stopping.
Shayne’s heels thudded across the tiled floor. He stopped in front of the desk. “Anything for me, Jim?” he asked pleasantly. “You know, Michael Shayne,” he added as the young man jerked around with a show of surprise.
“Oh, yes. Sure, Mr. Shayne. Of course, I know-ha-ha-No, there isn’t anything in your box this time.”
“Don’t believe everything you see in the newspapers,” Shayne admonished. He turned to the elevator and the clerk gaped after him, rubbing his diminutive chin with shaking fingers.
Shayne knocked on the door of his apartment, a gay rat-ta-tat-tat-tat-tat which would tell Phyllis that it was himself coming home. When the knock was not answered he opened the door with a key. He called, “Phyl-hey, Phyl,” but the call was echoed back by silence from the four empty rooms.
He made a quick survey of the apartment in frowning perplexity and when no playful hiding-place revealed her presence he came back to the living-room and opened the liquor cabinet.
The note from Phyllis was balanced on top of a half-full cognac bottle. He poured himself a drink while he read her hurried scrawl:
Darling-after seeing that girl I just couldn’t sit here and do nothing. I won’t tell you where I’ve gone because you’d disapprove, though I’m really quite capable of looking after myself. If I’m lucky I’ll come back with some good news.
Your own Angel.
He read the note for the fifth time, then crumpled it up viciously. He didn’t say anything out loud, but his eyes were harried slits. Then for the first time his gaze slid down from the signature, Your own Angel, and saw Dora’s address scribbled in a postscript.
Hastily he opened the table drawer and scrambled in it, hunting for Dora’s pistol. The. 25 automatic was gone.
His blunt, bony fingers drummed against the desk-top for a moment, then he got up and carried the bottle and glass to the center table and set them down, went aimlessly into the kitchen as though his legs were carrying him from force of habit rather than by conscious motivation.
He put ice cubes in a tall goblet and filled it from the faucet, stalked back into the living-room and placed it beside the cognac bottle.
He paced around the room briefly, lit a cigarette, sat down at the table, filled his glass and sat staring at it. With an angry gesture he tossed it off. He said aloud, very gently, “You shouldn’t have done that, Phyl.”
He refilled his glass, splashing some of the liquor on the back of his hand. He set it down, untouched, and got up.
In the bedroom he called the Palace Hotel and asked for Carl Meldrum. He stood on widely spread legs, jaws clamped, listening to the phone ring echo hollowly over the wire, then asked the hotel switchboard to connect him with the room clerk on duty.
The room clerk reported that Mr. Meldrum was not in, that a young lady had called for him not long ago and they had gone out together. Upon close questioning, the clerk described Phyllis in flattering detail. Shayne thanked him and hung up.
With his left ear lobe clutched between thumb and forefinger he stared moodily around the room, then went back to the living-room.
At the desk he found a long envelope and a sheet of heavy note paper. He wrapped the sheaf of fifty twenty-dollar bills which he had secured from the bank in the note paper, placed them carefully in the long envelope, went outside and dropped them in the mail chute after addressing the envelope to Mrs. Dora Darnell at the address on Phyllis’s note.
Then he came back and took up his vigil with the bottle of cognac and glass of ice water.
Chapter Ten: DANGER-SULKING TIGRESS
It was shortly past noon of a morning that had seemed endless when the telephone rang in the bedroom of the Shayne apartment. The sound rasped spitefully through the stillness, buzzing in his ears like a hornet, penetrating the fog hugging his senses as he slumped in his chair before the center table in the living-room.
He lurched upright and steadied himself with one hand on the table. His eyes were bloodshot, his face bleak and expressionless. An empty cognac bottle lay on its side on the floor. Another, holding two-thirds of its original contents, sat on the table. The ice-water goblet was empty except for the remains of two ice cubes in the bottom. For the past half hour he hadn’t been bothering with chasers.
The telephone kept on ringing. Shayne walked into the bedroom with flat-footed carefulness, swaying a trifle but otherwise apparently sober. He lifted the phone and said, “Shayne,” into the mouthpiece.
Will Gentry’s voice answered him: “I’ve located the Tabor woman, Mike. She has an apartment in Little River.” He gave the address.
Shayne said, “Check, Will.”
“She works as a hostess in that classy Tally-Ho dump north of Little River,” the detective chief went on. “It’s beyond the city limits and we don’t pay much attention to what goes on there but none of it is very good. And
