answered the phone but ducked out before I could get up on the elevator.”
“She’s determined to be helpful.” Shayne grinned widely. “She waylaid me down in the lobby to warn me that a couple of hounds of the law were lying in wait for me up here.”
“And you came up anyway?” Gentry squinted at him through a screen of thick blue smoke. “That means you’re ready to come clean, eh?”
“On what?” Shayne went into the bathroom and poured himself a drink of cognac. The boy was at the door with the two whiskies when he returned. Shayne tipped him and signed the check, then passed the tall glasses to his guests. He sat down, swinging one leg over the arm of his chair.
“I think you know what I’m talking about, Mike.”
“Maybe I do. Maybe not. Do you want to make a parlor quiz out of it?”
Gentry sighed and shifted his heavy bulk. “A woman named Mayme Martin was murdered in Miami tonight.”
Shayne pursed his lips and whistled. “Murdered, eh?”
Gentry nodded emphatically. “The killer messed things up trying to make it look like suicide by using a safety-razor blade. The medical examiner says she was dead before her throat was slit.”
Shayne held up his glass and squinted through it. “Why are you telling me about it?”
“Are you going to deny that you knew her?”
“N-o-o,” Shayne hedged. “I won’t deny that I had met her, Will. But we didn’t get very well acquainted. I never saw her before this afternoon.”
“She checked into the Red Rose from Cocopalm this afternoon,” Gentry told him. “You called on her just before dark-the only visitor she had. Then you came helling up here. What’s the connection?”
“When was she killed?” Shayne countered.
“Evidently not long after you went up to talk to her. The doctor hadn’t got around to picking an exact time.”
“If I had done it,” Shayne growled, “I wouldn’t have been fool enough to think I could cross you up by slitting her throat after she was dead.”
Will Gentry nodded unhappily. “I’m not going to hang the murder on you,” he protested. “But she’s mixed up in this Cocopalm thing somehow. I thought she might have told you something that would give us a line to work on.”
“She didn’t tell me anything, Will. She claimed she had information worth a grand to me. That’s as far as we got.”
“Information about what?”
“This counterfeiting deal.”
“I was pretty sure there had to be a connection. That makes three killings in one evening, Mike.” He looked at the redheaded detective reproachfully. “Boyle says you hadn’t more than reached town before you blasted two of the local yokels.”
“In self-defense,” Shayne replied cheerfully.
“I know all about that. But the Martin woman wasn’t murdered in self-defense.” Gentry paused to sip his drink. “Nobody in the apartment house saw anybody else go in or out of her room except you.”
“Did you talk to the redhead at the end of the hall?”
“Yep. She says you acted funny. Passed her by when she gave you the come-on.”
Shayne grinned, then stated flatly, “Mayme Martin was plenty alive when I left her room.”
“Maybe so. But the hell of it is nobody saw her alive afterward.”
“No one,” Shayne corrected, “that you know anything about.”
“Well, yes. You were the only one seen visiting her.”
“I know at least one person who saw her after I did.”
“Good. I thought maybe you’d have something, Mike. Who was it?”
Shayne shook his head solemnly. “Not yet, Will. I’ve got to figure the angles.”
Will Gentry’s manner became brusque. “Don’t hold out on me.”
“But I’ve got to see where I stand,” Shayne protested. “Maybe I’ve got something to trade on. If I give it to you I won’t have anything left.”
“If you don’t give it to me you’re going to be in pretty deep yourself.”
“So that’s the way it is?”
Gentry lifted a square, pudgy palm. “I’m giving it to you straight. We found a little something in her room that I think you can explain.”
Shayne’s eyes narrowed and his face took on a hard, pinched expression. He wasn’t deceived by Will Gentry’s placidly casual approach. They had been friends a long time, but Gentry never mixed friendship with business. Shayne knew he would get a square deal from the Miami detective chief, but no more than that.
He said, “I’m willing to explain anything I can, but I swear to God, Will, I don’t know any more about the woman than you do.”
“Are you sure of that? Sure you never saw her before this evening?”
Shayne nodded and growled, “I’ve never had to prove a statement to you before.”
“You’ve never made the mistake of making one I think I can disprove,” Gentry told him.
Shayne’s wide mouth tightened. He started to say something, but restrained himself. Gentry was selecting an envelope from among several in his coat pocket. He opened it in his lap and selected a torn slip of paper. He held it toward Shayne and asked, “Ever see that before?”
Shayne looked down at his own name and Miami telephone number written in blue ink on the piece of paper. Below were the two words Thursday afternoon.
He wrinkled his forehead and shook his head. “Why should I have seen it before?”
“It was in Miss Martin’s purse. It isn’t her writing. There wasn’t any blue ink in her apartment. It looks more like the sort of thing a man would write and give a woman when he wanted her to call him on a certain day. This is Thursday.”
“Sure. And yesterday was Wednesday. Why does that mean I’ve seen it before?”
“Positive it isn’t your writing?” Gentry persisted. “It looks a hell of a lot like the way you write your name, Mike. Boyle and I compared it with your signature downstairs when you registered.”
“That’s right,” Boyle agreed.
Shayne snorted disgust through his nose. “It’s no more like my writing than that of a thousand other men. Give it to your handwriting expert and he’ll point out a thousand differences.”
“I’ll do that.” Gentry sighed and took the slip of paper from the detective, replaced it in its identifying envelope. “If that’s all you’ve got-” Shayne began angrily, but Gentry shook his head and held up his hand.
“On top of that,” he said, “and maybe it isn’t your writing, what happened here in the hotel tonight looks to me like pretty good proof that she did tell you something. Are you going to deny that you had advance information that you were going to be jumped by those two torpedoes when you arrived?”
Shayne’s gray eyes were frosty with suppressed anger. “Suppose I do deny it?”
“It’s going to be pretty hard for me to swallow, Mike. In the first place, why did you take a gun with you when you went to Hardeman’s room? I’ve never known you to carry a gun on a case before. From Hardeman’s story, they were all set and waiting for you the moment you stepped in. Yet you came out of it with nothing but a grazed side. Pretty damned lucky if you walked in there without knowing what was coming.”
“What are you trying to prove?” Shayne asked.
“That Mayme Martin talked to you this afternoon. She’s the only contact you had with the case before you arrived. It must have been her that tipped you off. And if she told you that much, she must have told you a lot more. Don’t hold out on us. I know how you are about suppressing information until you’re all ready to spring it and clean up-but three people are already dead. Don’t be stubborn and hold out until some more die.”
“You’ll be held accountable if you do,” Boyle warned him importantly.
Shayne didn’t pay any attention to Boyle. He spoke earnestly to Will Gentry: “Did they tell you that the guy in Hardeman’s room who answered the phone told me to knock in a peculiar way so he’d know for sure it was me when I came?”
“No,” Gentry admitted, “but-”
“But, hell!” Shayne interrupted impatiently. “Don’t you think that was enough to put me on my guard? It
