face was ashen, and his gray-green eyes were glazed with terror.
“Is-he-dead?” Garvin asked in a hoarse whisper.
Shayne gave a snort of disgust. “Is it Morton?”
Garvin nodded and continued to stare while Shayne went to the window. The sashes were locked. He turned the latch and yanked the window open. A blast of wind emptied an ash tray on the table in front of it before he could lower the sash again. He left it open an inch and went over to the bed.
Ralph Morton was lying on his back and there was a neat round hole in his right temple. A splotch of blood on the counterpane showed where blood had soaked through onto the sheets and mattress. He was a large, heavy- featured man, and a stubble of black beard stood out against the death pallor of his face. A small pearl-handled automatic lay on the bed close to his right hand, and Shayne guessed it to be either a. 22 or. 25. There was an empty glass on the bedside table, and a whisky bottle was overturned on the floor beside it.
Shayne picked up the telephone receiver and when the drowsy clerk answered gave police headquarters’ number. Gentry answered, and Shayne asked:
“Picked up anything on Miss Lally yet?”
“Nothing, Mike. I’ve got Paisly’s room staked out in the Edgemont, but he hasn’t showed yet. There’s no evidence she went there. My men worked the neighborhood, but no luck.”
“Call them off, Will. Bring your homicide boys to the Ricardo Hotel on Eleventh. Room three-oh-nine.”
“What’s up, Mike?” Gentry’s voice changed from a weary rumble to alert interest. “Is she there? Dead?”
“She’s been here, all right,” Shayne said grimly. “But Ralph Morton is the stiff.” He hung up and turned to see Garvin hesitantly advancing across the threshold. He was staring down at the broken spectacles with the glazed terror still in his eyes.
“They look-like-Miss Lally’s,” he stammered. His pointing finger trembled. He looked from the glasses to the body on the bed and exclaimed, “Good Lord, Shayne! Do you think she did it?”
“Right now I’m not trying to think,” Shayne told him. “Stand where you are and don’t touch anything until Gentry’s boys get here.” He went across to the open bathroom door and glanced inside, came back, took Garvin firmly by the arm and led him out into the hall.
“When were you up here to see Morton last?” he asked casually.
Garvin trembled violently. “I haven’t been here at all. I told you-”
“Keep your voice down,” Shayne admonished. “We don’t want to wake up the whole floor. You told me a lot of things,” he went on wearily. “Now I want the truth.”
“But I’d even forgotten this address,” Garvin whispered hoarsely. “Even having that memorandum at the office had slipped my mind until you reminded me of it.”
“That was all hocus-pocus. You also told me you didn’t know Morton’s room number, but you walked straight to this door from the elevator and stopped.”
“I-heard the desk clerk give you the number,” he whispered desperately.
“No, you didn’t. You were outside the lobby door when he told me. And I’m guessing now that you knocked your hat off in the wind purposely when I insisted that you come with me. You hung back outside until I was ready to come up so you could rush past the clerk with your glasses off and rubbing your eye in the hope he wouldn’t recognize you. Quit stalling, Garvin. With a hat on your head and your glasses on, you know he’ll recognize you.”
“I did come up to see him yesterday,” Garvin quavered. “But he was drunk and abusive, and-”
The elevator stopped on the third floor and the first contingent of police filed out. Shayne nodded to them and jerked his head toward the open door of 309.
When the men came up, Shayne stopped a tall thin man and said, “Lend me your hat a minute, Riley.”
The man glanced at Shayne’s bushy red head and started to grin, but when he saw Shayne’s grim face he looked puzzled. He slowly lifted a snapbrim brown felt from his head and handed it over, stood by while Shayne passed it to Garvin and demanded, “Put it on.”
Garvin set the hat on top of his head. It was half a size too small, and he made no attempt to pull it down until Shayne said grimly, “Don’t stall, Garvin. Put it on and pull the brim down the way you wear yours.”
Both men could hear Garvin’s teeth grinding together as he yanked the hat to a tight fit and pulled the brim low. Shayne said, “Thanks, Riley. I’ll bring it back in a minute.”
Riley went into 309 and Shayne led Garvin to the elevator, where the boy was leaning out and staring with goggle-eyed wonderment toward the death room.
“Have you ever seen this gentleman before?” Shayne asked the boy pleasantly.
“See here, Shayne.” Garvin’s voice cracked on an absurdly high note. He started to remove his glasses, but Shayne ordered sternly, “Keep them on.”
“I-reckon-” the Negro boy stammered, rolling his eyes fearfully from Shayne to Garvin.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Shayne said soothingly. “Just tell the truth and you’ll be all right.”
“I reckon he’s rightly the one what was heah not more’n a hour ago askin’ fo’ three-oh-nine,” he blurted out rapidly. “Didn’t stay but jes’ a li’l while.”
“I was a fool to think I could get away with it,” Garvin said miserably. “But when I looked in that room and saw him lying there, blood trickling out and gunpowder smelling in the room, I–I didn’t know what to do. I realized he’d killed himself,” he broke off hysterically.
The elevator buzzer was sounding frantically while the Negro boy’s eyes bulged with curiosity and fear, and his hands seemed paralyzed.
“Take it down,” Shayne ordered, and heard the door close as he walked toward the death room with Garvin. “Are you going to claim Morton was dead before you got here?”
“He was. I tell you he was lying there just like you saw him. The light was on, and when he didn’t answer my knock I tried the door. It was unlocked, so I opened it and looked in. I know I should have reported it, but I didn’t think of anything but getting out as fast as I could. I was frightened.”
“Why?” Shayne insisted.
“Because-Good Lord, Shayne. I didn’t want to be caught here with a man who’d just shot himself.”
They had reached 309 and Shayne glanced in at the homicide experts. “Suicide or murder?” he asked.
Riley looked up, shrugged, and spread out his hands significantly, then walked over to Shayne. “It could be either,” he said.
Garvin had removed the tight-fitting hat. He handed it to Riley without a word or a glance. Riley looked at Shayne with a grin, but Shayne was looking toward the elevator.
The door opened and Will Gentry stepped out, followed by Tim Rourke and Lieutenant Hastings, who was in charge of the homicide division. They stopped at the door, and Shayne answered the unspoken questions in Gentry’s eyes:
“Ralph Morton is dead and Miss Lally’s glasses are lying on the floor just inside the door-broken. This is Carl Garvin, who paid Morton a visit about the time it happened, but sneaked away without reporting it. Claims he thought Morton had shot himself.”
Garvin moved unsteadily and leaned against the wall. Shayne swung around and demanded, “What about Miss Lally? Did you see her here? Was it you who phoned her to meet you here?”
Garvin’s face was gray. He began to retch and clawed at his throat, reeling sideways and then sliding limply to the floor. He lay very still on his side and the smell of liquor from a sour stomach rose from the vomit oozing from his mouth.
Shayne looked at him for a moment, then said to Gentry, “He’s all yours,” and swung on his heel toward the elevator.
“Hold on, Mike,” Gentry called out “Where are you going?”
“To see what I can find out about Miss Lally,” he flung over his shoulder. He got out a five-dollar bill as he approached the boy, who now stood boldly outside the elevator, watching and listening.
“You hit the jackpot a moment ago,” Shayne told him. “How are you on ladies?”
“I dunno, suh.”
“About an hour ago,” Shayne interrupted. He swiftly described Miss Lally and her glasses, and added, “It may have been a little more or a little less than an hour ago.”
The boy shook his head, looking wistfully at the bill in Shayne’s hand. “I tell you how ’tis,” he confided. “We gets lotsa ladies goin’ in an’ out all hours. Don’t none of ’em hardly wears glasses, though.”
