office. Beatrice Lally is down the hall in fourteen-oh-eight.” He appealed to Rourke. “You stopped in with us when she got her wrap, Tim.”
“She was moved into that room a little after two this morning,” Gentry said grimly. “Up to that time she slept in the connecting bedroom as well as using it to work in. That’s something else Miss Lally didn’t think to tell you,” he ended with heavy irony.
“I didn’t have time to get her life story,” Shayne snapped, glowering at the faded dungarees. “I have a hunch she might get a little more intimate if you’d let me change and keep my date with her.”
“Where is she, Mike?” rumbled Gentry. “She hasn’t gone back to the hotel. The Tidehaven is covered, and my men have instructions to call me here the minute she turns up.”
“She didn’t go back to the hotel. I dropped her off at a friend’s to have a few drinks while I came home to clean up.”
“What friend?”
“Now wait, Will. I’ll see that you get her for questioning just as soon as you convince me there’s any real evidence tying her in with murder. Just because they had a scrap and Morton had her moved to another room-” He shook his head and turned to Rourke.
“How about it, Tim? You knew Sara Morton. Wouldn’t you guess she was difficult to get along with?”
“Like a buzz saw,” said Tim emphatically. “She was hot stuff and knew she was hot stuff. The incomparable Sara-and don’t you forget it-was her theme song.”
“There you are, Will.” Shayne spread out both hands. “It’s natural for two women like Morton and Lally to get on each other’s nerves when they’ve worked so closely together for ten years.”
“Don’t forget their argument last night was about money, Mike,” said Gentry.
“So what? You’ve got the word of the man in the next room. Maybe Miss Lally wanted a raise.” Shayne’s voice was harsh with anger.
Shayne and Gentry had worked successfully together for many years, and now, seeing Shayne’s anger and impatience rising, Gentry became calm. “I don’t think it was that, Mike. The tie-up is this: The best we can figure, the murder was committed during a quarrel over money.”
“What do you base that on?”
“This.” Gentry took a rumpled half of a five-hundred-dollar bill from his vest pocket and handed it to Shayne. “It was in the dead woman’s hand,” he said quietly. “Looks like the murderer tried to snatch it away and tore it in two, then got panicky and killed the dame and left her lying there without taking time to pry her fingers open to get out the other half of what they were fighting over.”
Shayne placed the half of the bill on the table and smoothed it with the tips of his fingers, turning it over and over, pretending to examine it carefully. “One thing more,” he said. “How’d you happen to find the body?”
“I found it,” Rourke said. “I had another drink at the bar and got worried after you went off with Bea. I was sore, too, I guess.” Rourke paused for a short, mirthless laugh, then continued: “I got to brooding over being stood up by one dame and then having another one walk out on me with a lug like you, Mike. Anyhow, I was tight enough to doubt that la Morton would walk out of the hotel without even stopping by the bar to say hello and good-by. So I hunted up the house dick and made him take me up to her room. When his passkey wouldn’t unlock the door, he tried to brush me off. Said the reason she had her door bolted on the inside was because she didn’t want to be bothered. His tone of voice intimated she particularly didn’t want to be bothered with a drunken bum like me.
“I got mad then,” the reporter went on, his slaty eyes avoiding Shayne. “I told him I knew her well, and was afraid she might have taken an overdose of sleeping-pills. I pointed out that she wouldn’t have left her room with the lights on. He could see the light through the transom, and he got scared and finally unlocked the adjoining room. We went in through the bathroom-and there she was.”
Shayne swore softly and looked surprised. He was relieved to learn that their plan had worked and the police had no suspicion they’d both seen the body previously.
Holding the bill out to Gentry, he asked, “What would you do to the guy you caught with the other half of this, Will?”
“Lock him up for murder.”
A slow grin twisted Shayne’s wide mouth. “I’ve been trying to decide whether to hold this out on you or not. I guess I’d better confess.” He reached in the pocket of his dungarees and got out the special delivery envelope from Sara Morton. He fished out his half of the bill and handed them both to Gentry. “See if they fit.”
Timothy Rourke leaped to his feet and came over to watch Gentry fit the pieces together. “Did you get that off Beatrice, Mike?” he exclaimed incredulously. “For God’s sake-”
“Spill it,” Will Gentry said grimly, rolling his rumpled eyelids up slowly and turning to Shayne. “And it better be good if you don’t like the inside of my jail.”
Shayne hesitated, tapping the envelope with its enclosures against his knee, then said decisively, “Wait one minute while I check what I hope will be an alibi for Miss Lally that even you will have to accept, Will.” He looked up at Rourke, who was still standing before Gentry, puzzling over the torn bill.
“Do you know what time Beatrice met you in the bar, Tim?”
“Six o’clock,” Rourke said promptly.
“Are you sure? Can you swear to it?”
“I’ll be glad to. My date with Morton was for six. I got there a couple minutes early and checked my watch with the lobby clock to make sure how much too early I’d arrived. It was two minutes of six. I went straight to the bar and was just sitting down at a table when Beatrice came in.”
“Is that good enough for you?” Shayne asked Gentry. “You’ve heard Rourke say that afterward she wasn’t out of his sight long enough to go up fourteen floors and back.”
“I’ll take Tim’s word for it,” the chief agreed after a moment’s consideration. “But we’ve still got before six o’clock,” he added impatiently.
“No we haven’t,” Shayne told him evenly. “We’ve just got after six-thirty.” He flipped the envelope over into Gentry’s lap and rose with a simulated yawn. “I forgot to mention that I found that waiting for me at my office when I got there at eight-thirty.” He went to the liquor cabinet, brought back a bottle of cognac, and poured a drink.
Gentry had pulled the contents of the envelope out, and two of the pasted-word threats lay on the floor. Rourke picked them up while Gentry read the brief note from the dead woman.
Shayne said, “Help yourselves to a drink,” and took his glass with him when he sauntered into the bathroom. He ran the hot water and began lathering his face. He looked around with pretended surprise when Gentry roared from the bathroom door.
“What the hell do you mean by holding out on me, Mike. Get that damned lather off your face so we can talk.”
Shayne reached for a straight razor. “But that clears Miss Lally, doesn’t it? I told you I had a date.”
“Cut it out, Mike. This is murder.”
Shayne sighed and wiped the lather from his face with a hot washcloth and followed Gentry into the living- room. When the chief resumed his seat, Shayne faced him with a look of injured innocence and said, “That’s a privileged communication, you know. From a client.”
“Was your half of the bill in that envelope when you opened it?” Gentry demanded.
“If you read what she wrote-”
“I read it,” Gentry cut in heavily. “What did you find out from Lally about those three threats?”
“Not much. One each day in a plain post-office envelope with the address typed. The first two envelopes were destroyed, but she thinks the one that came this morning may be in Miss Morton’s room.”
“No such luck,” said Gentry sourly. “The waste-basket was clean. Nothing at all turned up. Who does Lally think sent them?”
“How would she know?” With both hands shoved deep in the dungaree pockets, Shayne took three slow steps up and back again, then added, “Leo Gannet offered Miss Morton twenty-five grand to get out of town a few days ago.”
“Why?”
“I presume,” said Shayne, walking again, “she was tying his gambling activities in too closely with police graft and political corruption. That was her assignment, wasn’t it, Tim?”
“Something like that. A general expose of crooked operations during the winter season. Any investigation would bump into Gannet from several angles.”
