'I'm waiting for it.' Gentry drummed fingertips on his desk irritably. 'There's a telephone listed for Barnes at that New York address. It didn't answer. I phoned the police to get anything they could on Barnes. And I've got a detective driving down from Jax with a picture of Bert and Nellie Paulson. Nothing to do but mark time, I guess.'
Shayne squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. He wished, now, that he had told Gentry in the beginning about sending the girl to Lucy's apartment. He wasn't quite sure why he had held that fact out. With a vague feeling of protecting her, he supposed glumly. In a sense, he looked on her as a client, and until he knew more about the case he had instinctively withheld the information that would have automatically brought her in for police interrogation.
Now he probably had a positive identification of the dead man in the palm of his hand, but he hesitated to admit that fact to Will Gentry yet. The chief would be sore as a boil because Shayne hadn't told him earlier, and Shayne still felt there were a lot of things he'd like to know, about the case before seeking a showdown with her.
Of course, if she were just a cheap little accomplice in ' a badger racket in wliich her brother had gotten himself murdered, he had no sympathy for her at all. But he | couldn't help feeling there was something mixed-up in ¦ that diagnosis. Recalling her as he had first seen her waiting for him in his room, she simply didn't fit into the picture that way.
He was roused from his brief reverie by a tap on the door and the entrance of Sergeant Hopkins of the Identification Squad.
He was young and square-jawed and had a crew-cut, and was not in uniform. He nodded incuriously to Shayne, stood stiffly in front of the desk and reported, 'I'm just back from the Hibiscus, sir. We gave three-sixteen the works.'
'Well?' Gentry rumbled.
'We got nothing very definite, I'm afraid. Photographs of the bed with careful lighting indicates someone has lain heavily on it since it was made up. We found no bloodstains. One set of fingerprints pretty well all over, in places that indicate they must be from the occupant of the room-another set that we checked out as the hotel maid. Prints of an unidentified man on the door-frame and the back of a chair.'
When he stopped, Shayne broke in, 'What about the windows?'
The sergeant regarded him stolidly. 'Only the occupant's prints there. One of the screens is very tightly latched and probably hasn't been opened for months. The other opens easily and there was no dust underneath or on the sill.' He shrugged and added, 'On the other hand, the maid says she quite likely opened it herself recently in cleaning up the room. She can't swear to that, so there's nothing conclusive either way. It certainly could have been opened tonight to allow a body to be shoved out, but there's no way of proving that happened.'
Gentry took his saliva-soaked half cigar from his mouth and glared at it, fielded it expertly into the spittoon. 'Get out to the morgue and fingerprint the Barnes stiff. See if they check with the extra set you found in the room and let me know.'
He shrugged at Shayne as the young sergeant wheeled about and went out. 'Wouldn't you know that's about what we'd get?' he demanded savagely.
Shayne let out a deep sigh. 'I guess that puts it straight up to me.'
'Puts what up to you?'
'You're not going to like it, Will.'
'Holding out on me?' Gentry was instantly and suspiciously alert.
'Not very much, but- I guess we'd better see if we can get our corpse identified before we do any more guessing.'
'It wouldn't be a bad idea at all,' Gentry agreed in a very smooth voice. 'You got an idea?'
Shayne grinned at him. 'The girl who claims he's her brother.'
Gentry's heavy black brows came down threateningly. 'You told me she ran out on you. Down your fire escape and disappeared.'
'She did. But I somehow forgot to mention that before she went into the kitchen I'd given her Lucy's address with a note to Lucy, and told her to go there.'
'Goddamn it, Mike! Do you mean to say you've got reason to think she's at Lucy's now?'
Shayne kept his grin working and said lightly, 'I can do better than that. I know she is. Remember when Lucy telephoned? That was to say she'd arrived safely.'
Shayne reached for the telephone hastily as a rumble of anger spilled out from between Gentry's thick lips.
'You've got to admit we're lucky to have her on tap this way.' He gave Lucy's number into the phone and settled back, not looking at Gentry who was cursing in low monosyllables.
He listened to her phone ring five times before she answered. Then her voice sounded curiously thick, and the words were fuzzy at the edges. 'Hello. Who is this?'
'Mike. Have you been asleep?'
'Just dozed off, I guess.'
'Well, get yourself waked up,' he said impatiently. 'Both of you. I'm on my way over.'
'Both of us? What do you mean, Michael?'
'Miss Paulson. Is she in bed?'
'But she left, Michael.'
'What? When? Goddamn it, Lucy, I sent her there for you to take care of her.'
'You didn't tell me I was to lock her in, did you? How was I to keep her here if she decided not to stay?'
'When did she leave, Lucy? What did she say?'
'Fifteen or twenty minutes ago. She didn't say anything. Just thank you for the drink and I tank I go home now. And she went.'
Shayne slammed the phone down to prevent himself from taking any more of his sickening anger out on Lucy. He looked up, bracing himself to meet Gentry's fierce gaze, and said unnecessarily:
'She's ducked out on us, Will. God knows where-on why.'
FIFTEEN: 11:20 PM
As Lucy Hamilton put the telephone down in her apartment, she sat silently and with bowed head for a long moment, feeling the impact of her employer's anger and sensing his frustrated disappointment in her as he slammed down at his end.
The only sound in the apartment was the labored breathing of her guest standing close behind her.
Lucy fought to remain calm, lifting her head finally and forcing herself to turn and ask listlessly, 'Is that what you wanted me to do?'
'You were just fine that time. If he calls back again, or anyone else, be damn sure and tell them not to come here tonight. That you're in bed or sick or something-or else you get this fast.'
Lucy shuddered and closed her eyes as the ugly, short-bladed knife made a sickening arc close to her throat. She heard a pleased giggle bubble up out of the other girl's throat. There was already blood on the blade of that knife. Whose, she didn't know. The girl hadn't said whose blood it was as she calmly withdrew it from her bag and displayed it when Shayne's call came through.
But the fierce glitter in her eyes as she crisply told Lucy what to say over the phone had been proof enough that she wouldn't hesitate to use the knife again if she were thwarted in any way.
It was all so utterly incomprehensible. They had been sitting on the sofa calmly chatting away when the phone rang and Lucy had involuntarily exclaimed, 'That'll be
Michael now.' The other girl had been telling her an involved story about being in Shayne's apartment when some man had come looking for her and how she'd escaped down the fire escape.
Then the wild gleam in the girl's eyes and the bloodstained knife that came leaping out of the suede bagl
Now the girl backed away from her and said calmly, 'Get up and move away from the telephone. You won't
