Shayne grunted. “Swell. I’m all puffed up with pride over your opinion of me.” He continued to sit in his chair without looking at the girl, and after waiting a moment she went to the door and let herself out quietly.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
After Helen had left the apartment Shayne sat in the same position for a long time. Then he got up and went over to Rourke. The reporter was still breathing with the even cadence of the unconscious.
Shayne sighed and lifted the limp body in his arms. He carried Rourke into the bedroom and stretched him out on the bed, got a roll of adhesive tape from the bathroom, and taped his mouth shut firmly. He then bound his wrists tightly to his sides, fastened his feet together to one of the bed posts, and carefully moved the telephone table away from the bed as far as the cord allowed.
When the job was completed to his satisfaction, Shayne took a belted trench coat from the closet, tugged a hat down over his unruly red hair, and went out of the apartment.
He walked down one flight of stairs and unlocked the door of his office. Everything was in order, as he and Phyllis had left it that afternoon.
He closed the door and went to his wife’s desk, lifted a corner of the typewriter pad. The piece of claim check lay where he had placed it.
He picked it up and studied it with furrowed brow. Torn irregularly on both sides, this was the center portion of a baggage receipt. But he saw, now, that it was no more than half of a center portion. If it had been torn into three pieces as Pearson said, Lacy’s third should have been twice as long as this piece.
Still, he saw at once this was the most important half. It had been torn directly below the row of identifying figures making up the serial number which was the only means by which a piece of baggage could be claimed by its owner.
He closed his eyes for a moment, bringing back into focus that first scene in his office which had started the case off with a bang. He had withdrawn Lacy’s left hand from his coat pocket, discovered this small piece of cardboard tightly clenched in the dead man’s fingers. No portion of it had showed until he spread Lacy’s fingers apart.
Shayne nodded his head with satisfaction. That doubtless explained the missing bottom part, and explained, too, why Leroy and Joe had permitted Lacy to escape from them on the causeway without getting what they were after. They must have snatched the strip from Lacy’s fingers, but only succeeded in tearing off the bottom half. In their hurry, they did not realize that Lacy had retained the portion with the all-important serial numbers, and allowed him to drive on-thinking he was so badly wounded he would surely die before he got very far.
That was guesswork, but it fitted the facts as Shayne knew them. And it cleared up a point that had been puzzling him all evening-why a pair of tough killers like Leroy and Joe had let Lacy remain alive without finishing their obvious assignment.
He put the piece of cardboard back where it had been. That seemed as good a hiding-place as any for the moment.
Outside, Shayne rolled both front windows of his car down when he got behind the wheel. The air of the new-born day was soothing, almost soporific, as he rolled slowly north through the deserted business section of the city. It swept the maggots of worry from his mind, pleasantly eased the tension inside him. Even the fact that Phyllis was helpless in the hands of ruthless killers seemed not nearly so oppressive as it had a couple of hours previously. He was beginning to get his finger on the pulse of the baffling case and there was no action he could take until he received the answer to his advertisement in the morning Herald.
He lolled back against the cushion and welcomed the feeling of relaxation, yet at the same time he sensed an inner revolt against it. It was dangerous, this lulling of a man’s faculties. It was an insidious component of the drowsy tropical night, a virus that got into a man’s blood if he was long exposed to the deadly surface placidity of life in the resort city.
Shayne knew it was an unhealthy state of mind, yet he was as guilty as any of the other residents who refused to face the reality of war. Tonight, while listening to Pearson’s story of spies and secret weapons, it had all seemed a little absurd and fantastic. Rourke’s impassioned pleading that he forget the danger to Phyllis and serve a larger cause had left him untouched.
Shayne didn’t enjoy admitting that accusation against himself, but he could not deny it was true. It was the lethargic state of mind that the semitropics induced in a man, he told himself, and he was no better than the others who came to bask in the sun and the sea and escape the grim responsibilities of citizenship.
He was scowling darkly when he parked in front of the News Tower on Biscayne Boulevard. It was up to him, now, to justify the course of action he had chosen for himself in the face of terrific pressure from Will Gentry and Tim Rourke.
Nominally an evening paper, the News put out a noon edition, and when Shayne got off the elevator on the floor housing the city desk and editorial staff, it was already beginning to hum with a new day’s activity.
He sauntered in and nodded to a couple of rewrite men, was nearing an arched doorway marked Library when an irritated voice hailed him from behind. “Hey. Mike! Shayne.”
He turned and lifted a hand in greeting to a dyspeptic-looking man in his shirt sleeves. He said, “Hi, Grange,” and went toward the desk in response to a beckoning finger.
Grange wore a perpetual scowl that was the dual derivative of chronic indigestion and having to depend upon irresponsible reporters to help him get the paper out. His scowl was more pronounced than usual when Shayne rested an elbow on his belittered desk and inquired solicitously, “Something you et, Grange?”
“No, I feel fine. Never felt better in my life. Where’s Rourke? What’s he doing? Who the hell does he think he is?”
Shayne turned to survey the room in mock surprise. “You mean Tim isn’t here?”
“What else do you think I mean? Gentry told me Tim was with you. Maybe I’d better call headquarters again and-”
“I wouldn’t bother Gentry,” Shayne interposed. “That is, it wouldn’t get you anywhere. I happen to know Tim’s on the trail of a story. Something really hot. I wouldn’t worry if he doesn’t call in. You know how Tim is.”
“Yeh. I know how Tim is.” He pounded an authoritative fist on a pile of papers. “Are you covering for him, Mike? If he’s drunk again-”
“He’s not drunk. He was pretty well tied up when I left him, and he’s likely to stay that way until the story breaks.”
“Working with you?” Grange asked suspiciously.
“In a manner of speaking, yes. This is big stuff, and it ties in with the death of Jim Lacy yesterday.”
“The bird that kicked off on your threshold?” Grange grabbed a pencil and wad of copy paper. “Give.”
“Nix.” Shayne backed away, shaking his head. “It’s strictly off-the-record right now. You can trust Rourke to cover it as fast as it breaks.”
Grange grunted sourly. “The only thing I can trust Rourke to cover is any female who stumbles in his path.” He continued to regard the redhead with suspicion. “Give me enough of it so I’ll know you’re on the level.”
Shayne kept on backing away and shaking his head. “It’s a military secret right now. Honest to God, Grange. Ask Gentry if you don’t want to believe me.”
He swung around and went into the file-room, said cheerfully, “The top of a fine mornin’ to you, mom,” to a stout middle-aged woman who sat in a rocking-chair plying a pair of steel needles to a ball of wool.
She glanced up without slowing her knitting and snapped, “Don’t think I’m going to put my knitting down just to look up something for the likes of you, Michael Shayne. I drop a stitch every time I let go of the needles, and if I drop many more stitches I’ll end up with a sweater to fit one of those Japs instead of our own boys.”
Shayne grinned and said, “Maybe that’s the secret weapon I’ve been hearing about. Get enough of you women knitting sweaters with freeze holes for the Japs-”
He stopped and backed away as her black eyes flashed angrily. “’Tis a great kidder I am, mom. Pay no heed to me. Where do you keep your current New York file?”
“At the end of the third counter-to three months back.”
“That’s far enough.” He went to the end of the third counter and found the files of the Herald-Tribune and
