He straightened his shoulders and told Gentry absently. nodding toward Paulson, 'He's all yours. Will. He'll explain all about the guy Lieutenant Neils has got staked out as Paulson.' There was a curious look of concentration on his face as he turned to go out.
'Hold it, Mike. Where you going now?'
'I've got a date with Lucy,' Shayne said over his shoulder without slacking pace. 'Promised her I'd be back by midnight to have a night-cap with her.'
He was out the door without bothering to close it, and he lengthened his stride almost to a run down the corridor and out the side door.
It was something like sixteen blocks from police headquarters to Lucy's apartment, and Shayne covered the distance in something like sixty seconds.
He cut his motor ofiE while swinging into the block that held her apartment building, cut off his lights and slid silently to a stop directly across the street.
The curtains were drawn at her front windows, but edges of light showed around them.
Shayne got out and closed the car door quietly, crossed the street to the foyer and went in.
He had a key on his ring that opened both the downstairs inner door and also her apartment. Lucy had given it to him more than two years before all tied up with a pink ribbon, making a laughing ceremony out of it and jesting about the depravity of a girl who gives her employer a private key to her apartment.
Shayne had been touched by the gift, and he had been very careful never to use it. He had a special signal he always rang on her bell from the foyer so she would know who was calling.
Tonight, he didn't ring her bell. He got out his keys and picked out the shiny new one that had never been used, and carefully inserted it in the lock.
It turned easily and he went in.
He climbed the one flight of stairs slowly and cautiously. testing each tread for squeaks before putting his weight on it.
At the top, he stopped in front of Lucy's door and drew in a deep breath. Sweat beaded his corrugated forehead and crept down the trenches in his cheeks.
He still held the shiny new key in his hand. He stooped in front of the door and put his left hand on the lock, with thumb and forefinger pressed loosely together in front of the opening to make a sheath of flesh through which he inserted the key without the slightest scraping sound.
When it was firmly bedded, he transferred his hand to the door-knob and pulled on it firmly while he turned the key. Thus, there was no sudden click to betray him when the catch was released.
He turned the knob, keeping pressure on it, and then went into the apartment in a violent lunge.
He caught one fleeting glimpse of Lucy seated in a chair beside the telephone as he went by, but his attention was centered on the other occupant of the room.
Female and blonde and deadly, she sprang from the sofa to meet his rush, and there was the reddish gleam of dried blood on the short-bladed knife in her hand.
Shayne went under the vicious arc of the knife and hit her brutally in the bosom with his shoulder and the full weight of his charging body.
The impact slammed her back against the wall with a crash and she sank to the floor in an unconscious heap.
TWENTY-FIVE: Midnight
Shayne wasted one brief look at her face to assure himself that it was the girl with the red patent-leather bag who had thrust Charles Barnes's picture in his pocket in the lobby of his hotel earlier, and that she wouldn't be using her knife again for some time to come.
Then he turned to Lucy with a reassuring grin.
Her ankles and her right arm were bound tightly to the legs and arm of her chair with wide strips of cloth that had been torn from a sheet. Her other hand had been left free so she could lift the telephone receiver behind her. Her face was white with strain and her eyes had a glassy look, but she managed to twist her lips in a feeble smile and to ejaculate with spirit:
'It's about time you were coming to the party.'
'Sorry I cut it so fine, angel.' Shayne picked up the blood-stained knife from the floor and went to her to kneel and slash her bonds. 'You all right?'
'Sure. Just perfect. Aside from my heart being permanently lodged where my adam's apple used to be and a few minor things like that. She's insane, Mikel She's already killed two people with that knife tonight. She boasted about it to me. And she was going to cut my throat, too, just as soon as she got the call she was waiting for. She told me just how she was going to do it-and she giggled while she told me.'
Shayne rocked back on his heels and looked up at her sharply. 'What call was she waiting for?'
'Some man she called Lanny. He's in cahoots with her and pretends to be her brother. She left word two places for him to call here the moment he came in. That's all she was waiting for. So she could arrange to meet him. And she let me keep on living so I could answer the phone if you or Will or anybody called in the meantime and tell you not to come here.'
Shayne cut the last strip of cloth binding Lucy's wrist, and she stood up, wincing with pain as she rubbed circulation back into her arm.
He lifted the phone and dialed the number that was a direct line to Will Gentry's office, and when the chief's grufiE voice answered, he said wearily:
'Come around to Lucy's place to pick up your killer. Nellie Paulson. But do this first. Put a fast tap on Lucy's phone and stake this place out. Nellie's accomplice is supposed to call here any moment. When he does, Lucy will try to stall him long enough for you to trace it-or get him to come here, if she can. You got that?'
'Nellie Paulson?' said Will Gentry. 'I thought-'
'Save it until you get that tap fixed and get up here. She spilled the whole story to Lucy.'
He hung up and turned to look at Lucy who had limped across the room and was now seated at the end of the sofa in front of the low table holding the liquor tray. Nellie Paulson still lay in an unconscious heap against the wall beyond the sofa. She hadn't stirred since she crumpled to the floor there.
The cognac bottle still stood on the tray, and the glass of brandy Lucy had poured out for Shayne two hours previously was still standing full to the brim.
He looked at his watch and grinned wryly as he went to the chair beside the sofa. 'Sorry I didn't quite make it by midnight for that drink, angel.'
She shuddered, but kept her tone as light as his. 'What made you come at all? I knew she'd cut my throat happily if I said one word over the telephone to indicate what was going on.'
'I came because it still lacked five minutes of midnight when you told me I shouldn't dare come here at that hour — that you wouldn't let me in if I did. I knew you too well to believe you wouldn't give me that last minute to keep my promise in-and suddenly everything clicked into place. I knew the murderer was Nellie Paulson and that she hadn't left your place at all. And I still needed this drink,' he ended simply, reaching for it and lifting it in the air in a silent toast to his secretary.
Her aplomb exploded suddenly in great racking sobs. 'It was terrible, Mike. Just horrible. She told me every single ghoulish detail after she got started. About killing a man named Charlie Barnes in her hotel room after he balked about being shaken down in the badger game she was working with Lanny who has been living with her in Jacksonville as her brother.'
'Was she in the room when Barnes's sister looked in and saw Charles dead on the bed?'
'Yes. She hid in the bathroom. She told me all about it, giggling as though it was a big joke. How she wound his coat about his throat so the blood wouldn't spill out, and pushed him out the window into the bay and then ran out and up two flights of stairs and down the elevator without anyone noticing her.'
'One of the things I don't get is how she came to be in my hotel lobby waiting for me with a picture of Barnes when I got there.'
'She told me all that, too. After she left the hotel, she walked up the street looking for a cab. She found one
