“You don’t,” Shayne agreed promptly. “You’ve got to take that chance. But I’ll be where you can blast me if I don’t play ball.”
He waited tensely while Gorstmann considered his proposition. Finally, the headwaiter said, “Don’t think you’ll keep on living if you try to pull anything. There’ll be a gun on you all the time.”
“Sure. I expect that. Set your time.”
“Ten o’clock.”
“I’ll leave here on my way to the East Coast depot at nine forty-five.” Shayne dropped the receiver on its prongs and sat for a long moment without moving. His hand shook as he lit a cigarette. His belly muscles were drawn up in a tight knot. He had expected more trouble from Gorstmann. Still, the man had little choice in the matter. As Helen had pointed out, Phyllis was actually worth nothing to her captors. On the other hand, Gorstmann knew that if he forced Shayne’s hand and the detective went to the authorities he would lose everything.
He called Information after a time and got the telephone number of a pay phone at the station-the one nearest the baggage room.
He jotted down the number and went into the living-room, intercepting a look of loathing on Rourke’s face as he passed the foot of the bed.
Shayne got a sheet of paper and wrote:
Phyl: Call this number as soon as you read this. I’ll be at the other end. Call me BEFORE you untie Tim Rourke or untape his mouth. Let him go as soon as you’ve called me.
He signed the note and set it up in a conspicuous place on the table where it would be the first thing she would see upon entering the door.
He still had a long time to wait before the curtain went up on the last act. He paced back and forth restlessly, filled with torturing doubts, now that the die was cast.
If he was wrong-but he couldn’t be. There was only one definite pattern into which all the facts fitted. True, there were still a few facts missing. He could fill most of them in by guesswork. But there was one point he didn’t like to guess about. He needed a telegram from the fingerprint division of the FBI to reassure him on the one point of conjecture upon which his entire course of action was based.
His tension increased minute by minute. He went in the kitchen and started another pot of water boiling. He then dropped six eggs into it and timed them for four minutes. He cracked them into a cereal bowl, dropped in a hunk of butter, then crumbled two slices of bread into them.
Food eased some of the tension, but as the hands of his watch crawled toward 9:45, he was still pacing the floor and rumpling his hair fiercely. At 9:35 he grabbed his hat and went out. He couldn’t wait for the telegram any longer. There was no telling what Gorstmann might do if Shayne didn’t leave his hotel at the appointed time.
He hurried down to his office on the next floor and took the small piece of cardboard from its hiding-place. It was 9:42 when he reached the lobby.
He was striding toward the door when a Western Union messenger entered with a yellow envelope in his hand. Shayne stopped him and asked, “Could that be for Michael Shayne?”
The boy said it was. Collect from Washington. Shayne told him to collect the charges from the desk, seized the envelope, and ripped it open. A glance at the message sent him out to his car fast. He couldn’t afford to mess things up now by being late.
The fingerprints on Phyllis’s note which was handed to him by the headwaiter at the Danube Restaurant were identified by the FBI as those of Harry Houseman, wanted by the New York police. He didn’t have to depend on guesswork any longer.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A coupe was parked across the street and up near the drawbridge when Shayne wheeled his car in a U-turn to go north. He saw two men in the coupe, slouched low in the seat with hatbrims pulled over their faces. As he straightened out after making the turn, a glance in the rearview mirror showed the coupe pulling away from the curb behind him.
He drove north across Flagler Street at a moderate pace, then left on Northeast 3rd Street. The coupe trailed him a discreet half block away, made the turn behind him. He drove on to the Florida East Coast railway station and parked. The coupe stopped behind him, and the two men were getting out as he went into the station.
Shayne strolled toward the baggage room without looking back, and glanced at the phone numbers in the booths until he located the one over which Phyllis was to call him.
It lacked three minutes of ten o’clock. He lounged in the open door of the booth and lit a cigarette. He hadn’t seen the faces of the men in the coupe, but was certain they were Leroy and Joe.
A man bought a newspaper and sauntered to a position twenty feet from Shayne’s right, ostentatiously holding the open paper in front of his face. He wore the same belted sport coat and wrinkled flannels that Leroy had worn the preceding afternoon when he visited Shayne’s apartment.
Shayne let smoke dribble from his nostrils while his incurious gaze drifted around the crowded waiting-room. A northbound train was due to leave soon, and there was a lot of bustle and movement.
There were two uniformed cops laughing together just outside the door leading to the men’s room. His gaze stopped and gauged half a dozen other men loitering about at what might be considered strategic points, but none of them were Leroy’s burly companion, nor did he see Gorstmann’s horsy face anywhere.
He glanced at his watch again. Thirty seconds to go. He took a last draw on his cigarette and dropped the butt to the floor. The telephone inside the booth rang sharply.
He stepped inside the cubicle and closed the door. Phyllis’s excited voice came through the receiver to him.
“Mike!”
“Yeh. Are you-”
“I’m all right, darling. I’m perfectly safe. But be careful, Michael, and-what about Tim? Why did you have to-”
“Untie him as soon as you hang up and tell him I’m at the depot,” Shayne cut her off. “Have you got the money?”
“Yes. A thousand dollars. Promise me you’ll be terribly careful and-”
“I’m always careful, angel. Keep the door locked and stay inside.”
He hung up. Sweat ran down his face and soaked his shirt collar as he opened the door.
Leroy stood in front of the door. His short-barreled. 45 was concealed by the folded newspaper in his hand. His pallid features twitched as Shayne stepped out. In a hoarse whisper he said, “Walk straight ahead to the can.”
Shayne started walking toward the men’s room. The two harness men were no longer laughing in front of the door.
Joe came around a corner and joined Leroy behind Shayne. Everything was perfectly casual and no interest was aroused in the little procession.
Gorstmann stood just inside the door of the men’s room. His eyes glittered with excitement but his long, bony face was emotionless. He said, “All right, shamus,” and held out his hand.
Shayne said, “It’s in my right-hand coat pocket. Shall I reach for it, or-”
Gorstmann grated, “Keep your hands in sight.” He stepped close, reached into Shayne’s pocket, and got the small piece of cardboard. Leroy and Joe stood close behind the detective.
Gorstmann breathed heavily as he retreated a pace. He muttered, “Everybody hold it while I check to see if this fits my pieces.”
He got two longer strips of cardboard and a small piece from his pocket and began fitting Shayne’s piece with them.
The swinging doors burst inward and erupted men with guns in their hands. The two uniformed cops were in the lead. Behind them, Shayne saw Will Gentry’s beefy face and Pearson calmly moving beside him with a. 45 automatic in his hand. Peter Painter was behind them.
Shayne dropped to the tiled floor as the shooting started. He saw Joe whirl with gun extended. A bullet in the
