“He’s the local office manager of the syndicate Miss Morton works for.”
“Is Garvin a regular here?” Shayne demanded of Gannet.
Gannet had stopped massaging his scrawny throat and it was as red as a turkey’s wattle. Venom replaced the soft glow in his eyes, and he snarled, “Ask him yourself.” One hand moved toward a row of buttons on his desk as the other picked up the gun.
“Don’t touch that button, Gannet,” Shayne grated. “And don’t count on the gun. It’s empty.” He was thinking swiftly, deciding that Mart and Henry were the only gorillas on duty, feeling certain of it when Gannet’s fingers stopped short of the buttons.
“Who gave you the go-ahead to reopen this evening?” Shayne demanded.
“Nobody gives me the go-ahead, shamus. No she-reporter from New York can tell me whether I open up or stay closed. The Morton dame can go straight to hell,” he exploded, and the venomous anger he had stored up behind his soft voice and limpid eyes burst out in damning expletives against Miss Morton.
Shayne looked down at him with a grin intended to further infuriate Gannet, who had established a reputation for remaining calm, no matter what the provocation. The gambler’s face was growing dangerously red. Shayne shrugged his wide shoulders and turned to take Miss Lally’s arm.
“We are walking out of here, Leo,” he said. “Down the front stairs. If you’re as smart as I always thought you were, none of your boys will try to stop us.”
Henry pulled himself up on wavering legs as they started to the door. He squinted at Gannet through swollen eyes, staggered aside, and Shayne opened the door. They went out and down the corridor to the wide front stairway.
Shayne glanced down at Miss Lally’s bespectacled face as she moved primly beside him and said, “You act as if this were all in a night’s work. That was a darned good tackle on Gannet.”
“I’ve been Miss Morton’s secretary for ten years,” she told him. “Since I was nineteen. I’ve encountered hoodlums of that type before. Do you think his reopening the gaming-rooms tonight is an indication that he knows she’s dead and can’t bother him any more?”
Shayne squeezed her arm for silence as they reached the bottom step, where entry to the upper floor was blocked by a velvet rope and guarded by a dapper young man with sparkling black eyes and a thin black mustache.
He had been looking up at Shayne’s incongruous apparel with an expression of horrified disbelief. Shayne grinned and lifted his hand airily, saying, “Leo sent me down to show his dame to her car.” He closed one eye in a slow wink and the young man unhooked the rope.
In the foyer others looked at them curiously, but no one interfered. They went past the doorman without a glance and down the driveway to his car, where Shayne left her to open the door for herself and hurried around to make a fast getaway.
When he turned south on Ocean Drive and was speeding toward the Venetian Causeway he referred back to her question.
“It would have been fast work for Gannet to get things opened up and running in the short time that’s elapsed since Morton was murdered. Still, it’s a good bet.”
“But he could have known beforehand,” she pointed out.
“Yeh,” said Shayne absently.
“We know he tried to bribe her to leave town. And then those threatening letters began coming-”
“Which Leo Gannet didn’t send her,” he said irritably. “He’s a businessman and might arrange to have her rubbed out, but he’d never pull that sort of Dick Tracy stunt.”
“Why not? It seems to me that would be the smart way to do it, to make people like you-people who know him-think he didn’t.”
Shayne didn’t answer at once. He was thinking back to Gannet’s behavior. Losing control and showing an outsider his true nature was unprecedented insofar as he knew. “Crooks like Gannet aren’t so devious,” he muttered. They rode swiftly and silently for a while; then he slowed for the toll booth, fished out the right change, and stopped to pay it.
When he had the car going sixty again he said, “I want to hear more about Sara Morton’s husband. And if I don’t show up soon Will Gentry’ll have a radio pickup out for both of us,” he added grimly.
“Oh, I’d forgot about-”
“I’d like to keep you away from the police tonight,” he cut in, “if I can swing it. This place I’m taking you to is my secretary’s apartment. Miss Lucy Hamilton. She’ll give you a drink and bed you down on the studio couch, but I want your promise not to leave her place for anyone or anything until you hear from me.”
“I’ll do whatever you say,” she agreed meekly. “But-why are you going to so much trouble, Mr. Shayne? You didn’t even know Miss Morton.”
“Have you forgotten she retained me to take the case if she was murdered tonight?”
“That torn bill? I wonder what she meant by sending you that. It’s no good without the other half, is it?”
“She had the other half clenched in her hand when she died,” he told her in a tight-jawed mutter that was almost a low growl.
Miss Lally drew in her breath sharply and wilted against him, sliding her glasses off and letting her hand fall laxly in her lap. “I can hardly realize it yet,” she sobbed. “It doesn’t seem real. At first I felt dazed, but now when you speak of her being dead it seems you must be talking about someone else. Some stranger. N-Not M-Miss Morton. She was so vitally alive.”
Shayne put his arm around her shaking shoulders. He had wondered how long her self-control would last, and was surprised that the inevitable reaction had been so long delayed. He drove to the mainland with one hand on the wheel, not saying anything, and when he stopped in front of Lucy’s apartment she sat up, blew her nose, and wiped her eyes. “I’m all right now,” she said. “It’s just that all at once I-”
“You’ve been terrific,” he told her warmly, giving her shoulder a final squeeze before removing his arm. He got out and looked up at the windows of Lucy’s second-floor front apartment. Enough light showed through the drapes to assure him she was not asleep.
“Come on. Miss Hamilton is still up,” he said, opening the door for her. “I’ll go up for a drink, and if you feel like it you can fill in the gaps I’m still vague about.”
He was gentle with her crossing the walk and going up the steps, sensing that she couldn’t see without her glasses; and in the lighted vestibule he again had the impression of a chubby childishness about her, the misty eyes and the round blue collar hugging her white neck.
He frowned as he pushed the button, then grinned fleetingly when the buzzer sounded instantly, as though Lucy waited with her finger on the answering button in her apartment.
Lucy was in the open doorway wearing a sheer dressing-gown over blue silk pajamas. Her hair was tousled and a frown of surprise or dismay flitted across her smooth brow when she saw Miss Lally.
“Michael! You might at least have let me know. I was almost ready for bed,” she said.
“It’s okay, angel,” he said. “This is Miss Lally. Miss Lally, Miss Hamilton. She needs a drink and a place to sleep tonight where the cops won’t bother her,” he went on swiftly, herding them into the room, without giving them a chance to acknowledge the introduction. “And make it fast on the drinks. I have to be moving.”
“Of course, Michael. How do you do, Miss Lally, and what would you like to drink?” She smiled a welcome, added chidingly, “You don’t have to be rude, Michael.”
“Please call me Beatrice,” Miss Lally said with a wan smile. “Could you-do you have the makings for a daiquiri?”
“With the lemon juice already squeezed,” Lucy said and disappeared through the open archway into the kitchenette.
Shayne invited the girl to sit on the couch and pulled a chair up to sit facing her. He took out a package of cigarettes and after lighting one for each of them he asked abruptly, “You say Miss Morton’s husband is in Miami and called you at the Tidehaven this morning?”
Her mouth twisted in a grimace of disgust. “He wanted to see her at once-wanted to know when she’d be in. I didn’t tell him,” she said defiantly. “I hung up on him.”
Shayne rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, vaguely conscious of a stubble of beard. “Do you know where he’s staying?”
“No. But I think he saw her this afternoon. I was typing in the other room. The bathroom door on my side
