steadily, “No, Mr. Shayne. I haven’t. Not even to you. I don’t know how you learned about-”
“Never mind that. You understand that you are to stay where you are and under no circumstances talk to anyone about the case until I give you the word?”
“I understand that, Mr. Shayne.”
“Good. Now, go on to bed.”
“One moment, Shayne,” Harsh interrupted swiftly from beside him. “What about the original copy of the story Miss Morton wrote about me? I told you she sent me a carbon. If the police have found that among her stuff, they will certainly realize it gives me a motive for her murder, and are probably already looking for me.”
Shayne said, “Let me check.” He said into the mouthpiece, “Miss Lally?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know anything about the original copy of a story Miss Morton had dug up about Burton Harsh?”
“Why, yes. I have that in a file with some other important papers in my own bedroom. She told me several days ago she had decided not to publish it, but wanted it kept in a safe place for a time.”
Shayne looked sideways at Harsh. “The police have had no reason to search Miss Lally’s bedroom, which is down the hall from the connecting room she was in when you heard Miss Morton call her. Satisfied?”
“It sounds all right. If you can get hold of that original and destroy it.”
“I’ll get it,” Shayne assured him, “and turn it over to you so you can destroy it.” Into the phone, he said, “That’s all, Miss Lally. Relax until you hear from me.”
He hung up and told Harsh, “The next thing for you to think about is delivering five grand in cash to my hotel within an hour. I may not be there to receive it, but give it to the desk clerk and get a receipt.”
He pushed Burton Harsh out of the booth and shut the door again and put another nickel in the slot. He dialed Timothy Rourke’s newspaper, got the city room, and was told that the reporter was out working on an assignment.
He tried Rourke’s apartment number. When there was no answer he inserted the nickel again and dialed police headquarters, watching Harsh through the glass door, noting the deep frown between his eyes, the doubt and uncertainty in his expression. In the light, the financier looked haggard and weary and deeply troubled.
Gentry answered. Shayne pitched his voice high and spoke crisply: “City desk calling. Tim Rourke around?”
“Hold on a minute,” Gentry rumbled, then a muffled: “It’s for you, Tim.”
“Yeah?” said Tim.
“Don’t call my name before Will,” Shayne said cautiously and in a low voice. “You still too sore at a guy to get in on a story?”
“I’m never too sore for that,” Rourke told him heartily. Too heartily, it seemed to Shayne. “What’s up?”
“Meet me for a drink at the Hotaire in ten minutes.”
“Sure.”
Shayne hung up and stared absently at the telephone, his bushy red brows drawn together in a frown. Rourke wasn’t the sort to hold a grudge-yet he wasn’t the sort to cheerfully turn the other cheek. He sounded a little too exuberant, a little too eager to forgive and forget-as though he and Will Gentry had something up their sleeves.
Chapter Eight
The Hotaire was a small bar on Miami Avenue a few blocks north of Flagler. Rourke was resting his bony frame against the bar when Shayne entered. He smiled blandly and lazily lifted his hand in greeting as Shayne approached and he straightened up to join him.
“What you been doing, Mike?”
“Trying to earn an honest dollar.” Shayne caught the proprietor’s eye, ordered drinks, and led the reporter to an empty booth. “What’s new with you?” he asked when they were seated opposite each other.
“Nothing. When your call came I was sitting in Gentry’s lap waiting to hear if you’d made that contact Will’s men messed up at the Golden Cock.”
“So he told you about that,” Shayne muttered.
“Will felt plenty bad about it,” Rourke assured him earnestly, “after you explained how you were trying to work some bird for information. You could’ve told me what you were up to at the apartment,” he went on in an injured tone, “and I would have left without having to be slapped in the face.”
Again Shayne was suspicious that Rourke was laughing up his sleeve, although his face was deadly serious and his voice sounded sincere.
A waiter brought a double shot of cognac and a double rye and water. Shayne paid him and waited until he went away to say impatiently:
“Okay. The way you guys were acting, I didn’t know how else to get rid of you so I could move if the guy called.”
“What happened after you left the Golden Cock? Will said you were going back to your place,” Rourke explained ingenuously, “and wait for the man to call again. Did he?”
“Gentry knows whether he did or not,” Shayne growled. “With his tap on my line did he actually think I was going back to wait for another call?” He lifted his glass and drank half the liquor, set the glass down, and studied the reporter’s face intently. “Look, Tim, do you want to help me break the Morton case? Or do you want to play around with Gentry while he tries to?”
“I walked out of his office to meet you here, didn’t I?” Rourke’s voice was gently reproachful.
“Okay. What did you think of Sara Morton as a person? Forget about her professional ability.”
“She was a tough baby inside and out, and plenty on the make for a fast dollar. She came up the hard way and intended to stay up, no matter what it took to do it.”
Shayne twisted his glass round and round while he considered this information, then asked, “How’d she play it?”
“Both ends against the middle,” said Rourke promptly. “You got something special on your mind, Mike?”
“Beatrice Lally claims she turned down twenty-five grand from Leo Gannet.”
“Sure. That’s what I mean. That’s a hunk of money, but la Morton was regularly pulling down from two to four times that much annually. If she walked out of Miami without a story, word would get around fast that she was slipping. Pretty soon there wouldn’t be any fifty or hundred grand income. Why kill the goose for one small piece of a single golden egg?”
“I see how that would work.” Shayne’s expression cleared. That was one thing that had bothered him about Harsh’s story. He hadn’t been able to reconcile Miss Morton’s turning down money from Gannet and at the same time trying to extort a similar sum from Harsh. Now he thought he understood. The Harsh story was a sort of sideline she had happened upon while pursuing the real story that had brought her to Miami, the one involving Gannet. There would be no loss of prestige in dropping the Harsh story, but failure to expose Gannet’s racket would be a blow to her reputation.
“She must run on to a lot of stuff around the country that various guys would pay to keep out of the headlines,” said Shayne. “You heard any rumors about anything like that?”
“Nobody gets very far in the newspaper business playing that way,” Rourke told him emphatically. “You may play certain things down in a story, or suppress them, but you don’t take money for it. Not and keep Morton’s reputation year after year.”
“All right. But I may make you eat those words. Do you know Carl Garvin?”
Rourke’s slaty eyes showed surprise. “Sure. I run into him now and then.” He grinned and added, “Morton and Garvin got along just like that,” holding up both index fingers and moving them apart the full length of his arms.
“Why?”
“She worried him. Garvin’s not a newspaperman. Just a glorified office boy for her syndicate. He’s probably a
