quart bottle, emptying it. “Renslow would be glad enough to hang it on Carl,” he went on argumentatively. “I hope neither of you thought I was fooling this noon when I said I was going to throw somebody to the wolves.”
“And you don’t care whether it’s the guilty person or not,” Mona charged. “You’d frame any one of us if you saw a chance to do it.”
“Sure.” Shayne drank some wine. “I’d frame any one of you I thought was guilty,” he explained. “But you’re wrong about thinking I’d hang anything on a person I believed innocent.”
“Very generous of you,” Mona answered ironically, “but it would still be a frame.”
Shayne emptied his wineglass and raised ragged red brows in a cynical grin. “I might have to manufacture some evidence to convince the police,” he admitted. “Painter is so bullheaded he’s going to take a lot of convincing.” He paused, then added musingly, “I had a hunch Renslow would offer you enough to overcome your objections to our idea of fitting Carl for the trap when I left you two together today.”
“He did make me an offer.” Mona’s tone was sullen, brooding.
“Not big enough to wean you away from your husband?”
“Say!” Mona threw him a startled glance. “How’d you know-” She checked her words with a sharp intake of breath, after which she clamped her lips.
“Smart guessing,” Shayne told her. “You said you were married and not working at it very hard. You seemed absolutely certain of your string on Carl.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t hard to dope out. Does Renslow know?”
“No. Why should he?”
“He might raise the ante if you told him how it was.”
“We didn’t go into that very far,” Mona admitted. “Maybe he would.”
“If you drank much absinthe after I left, you weren’t in any condition-” Shayne was looking past her and saw Buell Renslow standing in the entrance. He wore a dinner jacket and looked immaculate, but his eyes were bloodshot and veins showed in his face.
Shayne glanced across at Dorothy Thrip and saw her looking at her step-uncle without apparent recognition. Renslow saw Mona and Shayne sitting together. He moved toward their table after a moment’s hesitation.
Shayne muttered, “Here’s your drinking companion now-coming straight toward our table. Want to duck out?”
Mona turned to look at Renslow and pushed her chair back. With loud vivacity she said, “I’ve wasted too much time at one table, redhead. I got to be circulating.” She nodded casually to Renslow as she went away.
When the white-haired ex-convict sat down heavily in the chair she had vacated, Shayne greeted him cheerfully.
“You look like the fag-end of a misspent life, fellow. What are you drinking?”
“Nothing for me, thanks,” Renslow’s eyes followed Mona across the room. He complained, “I’ve got the jitters.”
“Absinthe?”
“That’s all there was to drink after your bottle was emptied.”
“And I’ll bet she’s the kind that’ll keep on at it indefinitely,” Shayne offered sympathetically.
Renslow nodded. He seemed withdrawn, remote from everything about him, with that same quality of secretive stillness which had characterized his sister, Leora Thrip.
“Did the party just break up?” Shayne asked after a while.
“About an hour ago. I’ve been home washing the green taste out of my mouth with peroxide.”
“Try a glass of beer,” Shayne suggested.
Renslow shuddered. “Not yet. After a while maybe.”
A uniformed attendant of the Tally-Ho was threading his way between tables toward them. As he passed, he paused at each table to ask a question, but evidently, Shayne noticed, he was receiving negative responses.
Renslow puffed jerkily on a cigarette and he and the detective watched the attendant approach.
Michael Shayne had one of his Irish hunches that destiny approached him as the man came on. He didn’t know what it was that told him, but there was an odd tremor playing over his spine as the callboy came up, asking, “Mr. Buell Renslow?”
Renslow nodded and the attendant handed him a sealed envelope. Shayne tossed him a quarter while Renslow tore the message open. Shayne watched him unfold a single sheet of paper and read the few typed lines on it.
Renslow kept staring at the paper and his fingers tightened spasmodically. His knuckles were white and the paper shook in his grip. A wave of sickness swept over his face and Shayne leaned forward to ask sympathetically, “Bad news, old man?” straining to get a glimpse of the words but seeing only the signature of Carl Meldrum in heavy pen strokes.
Renslow looked up quickly, crushing the message in his hands. “No-it’s-” His expression hardened. He looked past Shayne and his eyes were tortured with something that went beyond the limits of physical fear. “It’s a joke,” he said hoarsely, “a-lousy joke.”
His fingers folded the note and began tearing it in long strips. His gaze was still remotely on nothing, on a shadowy something which no other man could see. He said, “Excuse me,” and got up. He dropped the torn bits of paper on the table and walked away stiffly.
Shayne watched Mona come up and intercept him on his way to the door. It seemed to him that she must have been watching, as though she had waited for something like this to happen.
She spoke to him and he snarled an answer. Mona’s eyes widened and she appeared to protest.
Renslow started for the door and she clung to him. He pushed her off, then deliberately slapped her face with the full force of a wide open-handed swing.
She went to her knees crying out something unintelligible to Shayne. Renslow darted away while waiters began to converge on the spot. Shayne watched them help Mona to her feet, then he began gathering up the torn strips of paper the ex-convict had dropped.
It was a laborious business getting them pieced together in order. It took him a full half-hour of concentrated work to put together this much:
— Saw yo-urder Mrs.-rip-willing-talk it over-midnight-meet-at 306 Terrace Apt-Oth-wis-am go-to the- lice.
He slid the pieces of paper into his coat pocket and jumped up. Pausing to drop a ten-spot on the table, he hurried out and retrieved his hat and coat. Dorothy Thrip had disappeared while he was working on the torn note.
In his car he drove at savage speed down the boulevard to Ninety-Sixth, where he made a screaming right- hand turn to the Grand Concourse which angled down to Northeast Second Avenue.
It took him less than five minutes to reach the Terrace Apartments in Little River, but he knew he was too late when he slowed to turn off the avenue onto the side street where he had parked earlier in the day.
Police cars lined the curb in front of the apartment building and excited residents of the district crowded the wide lawn where children had played in the sunlight that noon.
Shayne rolled past the police cars, cut his ignition, and parked. He lit a cigarette and sat behind the wheel for a moment, then shook his head angrily and got out. If he had trailed Renslow when he left He hadn’t. Instead, he had stopped to put the note together. He got out and went toward the apartment building. His mouth was dry and he wondered where Phyllis was.
Chapter Sixteen: A MAN SAYS THINGS
There were police all over the place. A thick-necked sergeant recognized Shayne as he crossed the lobby, and he stepped forward to intercept him. He took Shayne by the arm and said gruffly:
“What you wanta pop up here for, Mike? We got a pickup on you for the Beach in case you don’t know.”
Shayne said, “I know, Shannon. Is the chief upstairs?”
“Yeh. Three-o-six.” They moved toward the elevator together. “You could duck out the back way right now,”
