Times bound in monthly batches between stiff paper-covers. He pulled up a stool and selected the Herald-Tribune, turned back two months, and began scanning the daily headlines.
He went through four issues before coming on the headline he was looking for: Daring Daylight Robbery.
He hunched forward and ran over the account of the holdup. Jim Lacy, bank messenger for a well-known brokerage firm-attacked in broad daylight by a lone gunman-knocked to the pavement by a single blow that rendered him groggy-Lacy could give the police only a hazy description of his assailant.
There was nothing in the account to either prove or disprove Shayne’s half-formed suspicion of collusion. The gunman had been resourceful and well prepared, equipped with a pair of heavy steel shears with which he snipped the chain handcuffing the money bag to Lacy’s wrist. Then, menacing onlookers with a gun, he commandeered a taxicab and disappeared in the afternoon traffic.
Shayne turned to the next issue. A photograph of Mace Morgan confronted him on the front page. The cutline read, Identified as Holdup.
Shayne read the account of Mace Morgan’s capture carefully. He had been arrested in a rooming-house a few hours after the robbery as the result of a tip from an anonymous telephone call. He had vehemently denied any knowledge of the crime and attempted to prove an alibi, but it was checked and disproved by the police. None of the loot nor any physical evidence to connect him with the crime was found, but he was positively identified in a police line-up by three eyewitnesses. Lacy, confronted by Morgan, thought it might be the right man.
A lot of newspaper space was devoted to the large sum of cash and unregistered securities Lacy had been carrying when he was robbed. The total was slightly over one hundred thousand dollars according to figures furnished by his employers. The junior member of the firm had been hastily recalled by telegraph while en route to a vacation cruise in the Caribbean, and it was reported that his wife was bearing up well under the disappointment of having her trip canceled. The wife was a prominent member of the Junior League, and her reactions had made a good human interest story. There were printed reassurances from the brokerage firm that the loss was fully covered by Lacy’s bond, and that none of their clients need worry about the firm’s solvency.
Shayne lit a cigarette after reading the concurrent stories. There was nothing at all to indicate definitely whether Lacy had or had not been in cahoots with Morgan. Yet someone had fingered the job for Morgan. A hundred grand was an extraordinary sum for a bank messenger to be carrying. It was hardly coincidence that Morgan had chosen that particular afternoon for his daring robbery.
Yet that wasn’t a definite clue to Lacy’s participation either, for Shayne knew it was often a firm’s policy to keep its messengers in ignorance of the value of the parcels they carried, simply to prevent what he suspected in this case.
He turned the bound pages back slowly to an issue several days earlier than the robbery. Pearson had said the government plans were stolen two days before Morgan committed the holdup. To be on the safe side, Shayne went back four issues. He read through the complete papers carefully without finding any mention of any such loss in a government plant.
He cursed himself with mild exasperation when he finished wading through the many pages of newsprint. He knew damned well he wouldn’t find anything. With the country at war, there would be strict censorship over such news. The government couldn’t be expected to publicize the loss of an important military secret.
He hesitated for a time, sucking smoke into his lungs and weighing one angle against another in his mind.
After careful consideration of the known facts, he turned to the issue of the preceding week and began a careful study of less important local news items, quite sure that the story he sought had not been important enough to make front-page headlines at a time when American ships were being torpedoed up and down both coastlines.
He paused to glance through half a dozen accounts of burglaries and allied crimes in the great city before he found the one he was looking for: a two-column story on the second page, dated six days previously.
At 11:00 p.m., when returning to their Fifth Avenue apartment from the theater, the socially prominent Mr. and Mrs. J. Winthrop Barton had been accosted at the door by an armed thug wearing a handkerchief over the lower part of his face as a mask. He gruffly ordered them inside, promptly disposed of the lady with a handkerchief doused in chloroform, and threatened her husband with death unless he opened the small wall safe and gave up his valuables.
Mr. Barton had complied with proper celerity, explaining to the police later that the safe held only a moderate amount of cash, which the masked intruder had seized, departing immediately and without causing further trouble.
A set of fingerprints had been conveniently left on the doorknob, and from them the thief had been identified as one Harry Houseman, possessor of a long police record under many aliases, lately a guest of the State of New York at Ossining. Police promised an early arrest of Houseman, and there the affair ended as far as its publicity value was concerned.
After glancing through the next few issues to assure himself that the promise of “an early arrest” had borne no further fruit, Shayne closed the file and went out past the lady with her knitting, leaving a cheerful, “Thanks, mom,” behind him.
As he strolled out, he asked Grange, “Any report from Tim yet?” and received a blasphemous negative reply.
“And if you see that double-jointed no-good,” Grange bellowed, “tell him he’d better turn in a story before we go to press-and not one about pink elephants and mauve lizards.”
“I’ll probably run into him,” Shayne said with a wide grin. “And I’ll deliver your message if he’s in any condition to listen to it.”
He went out, took the elevator to the ground floor, and got into his car as the first faint streaks of crimson on the horizon preceded the rising sun.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Shayne stopped on the corner of Flagler Street and bought a newly printed Herald from a yawning newsboy. He drove on to his hotel and went into the lobby, pausing to fold the newspaper back to the advertising section.
His advertisement was near the bottom of a short row of Personals. He tugged at the lobe of his left ear as he read the printed words. With his fountain pen he made a conspicuous ring around the one-line advertisement, then went to the desk and got a large envelope. He put the Herald inside, leaving it folded open at the marked advertisement, printed an address on the envelope, and gave it to the clerk with instructions to call a messenger and have it delivered at once.
Upstairs, he hesitated just inside the door of his apartment, listening for sounds from the bedroom. While he heard nothing from Rourke, he crossed the room and stopped in the bedroom doorway.
Timothy Rourke lay twisted up at the foot of the bed in a position which showed he had been unsuccessfully trying to make his finger tips reach the cord binding his feet to the bedpost. His eyes glared up at Shayne with a blaze of frustrated fury. His throat muscles worked spasmodically, but only a faint mumble was audible past the efficient taping job Shayne had done on his mouth.
Shayne took off his hat and angrily ruffled his red hair. He said, “God damn it, Tim, why do you make me do this to you? If you’ll agree to listen to reason I’ll let you up from there.”
Rourke shook his head violently.
“You’re a stubborn fool,” Shayne expostulated in a reasonable tone. “I’ve just been talking to Grange. He’s pretty sore because you haven’t showed up on the job.”
Rourke lay back and stared at him. He was breathing heavily through distended nostrils.
“I told Grange you were working with me on an important story,” Shayne went on cheerfully. “I fixed it with him so I don’t believe he’ll fire you this time.”
He stepped forward to sit on the edge of the bed, complaining, “Quit looking at me like that. It’s giving me the jumps. Damn it, Tim, if you’ll promise to listen to me-give me a chance to explain-”
