what my services shall consist of. I’m not a lawyer, but I believe it protects both of us from any charge or suspicion of wrongdoing or complicity.”
“The agreement is worded very cleverly,” conceded Sims. “Substitute ten or even twenty thousand for your first absurd demand, and I’ll advise my client to sign it at once.”
Shayne patted the diary in his hip pocket and said, “It’s a quarter of the estate or nothing.” He turned to Mrs. Meredith and said, “That applies to your share, too. Three-quarters… or nothing. Would you rather have nothing? Just say the word and Lucy can tear up her notes and you two can get out while I turn Groat’s diary over to the chief of police for safe-keeping as evidence in a couple of murders.”
While she hesitated, her eyes blazing venom at him, Jake Sims snarled, “He means it, Mrs. Meredith. I know Shayne. He’s perfectly capable of doing what he threatens if you don’t sign that agreement.”
“And then Jake wouldn’t get his cut either,” Shayne pointed out sympathetically. “Make up your mind, Matie.”
She said, “I’ll sign… goddam your greedy soul to hell. If I hadn’t hired you to get hold of the diary…”
“Exactly,” said Shayne dryly. “Then you wouldn’t have been faced with this decision. My typewriter’s in the bedroom,” he told Lucy briskly. “Make three clean copies of that agreement, with places for Mrs. Meredith and me to sign, with you and Sims witnessing our signatures. More Scotch, Matie?”
She held out her glass wordlessly, but as Shayne got up to take it from her, Lucy Hamilton laid down her pencil and said in a carefully precise voice, “I shan’t do it, Michael.”
He frowned, tugging at his left ear lobe. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I shan’t do it. I’m not going to let you do it, Michael. You’ll hate yourself the rest of your life if you do. Don’t you see? You’re stealing the money from the rightful heirs. From the Hawleys to whom it legally belongs. This is stealing, Michael. It isn’t just another one of your smart gimmicks where you play god and get paid for it. You can’t do this. I won’t let you do it.”
He studied her flushed face with raised eyebrows. “How about that mink coat, angel? And the convertible. Think how you’d look whooping it up around town with your curls flying in the wind and all the wolves whistling…”
“Stop it, Michael!” Lucy’s voice rose shrilly. “You know how I feel about mink coats and convertibles. I’ve done without both of them for a good many years, and I can keep on doing without them. Stop trying to kid about this, Michael.” Her voice became pleading, with a heartbroken sob in it. She completely disregarded the other two people in the room, baring her heart to him as though they were utterly alone.
“I’ve admired you and looked up to you, Michael. I’ve watched you cut corners in the past, but it was always for an ultimate good. Damn you, I’ve believed in you even when things looked black as hades. And you’ve always justified my belief, darling. Don’t do this, Michael. I beg you. Do you hear me? I beg you.” She stood up from the table facing him, her arms forward and out from her sides, palms upward.
There were deep trenches in his cheeks as he faced her unwaveringly. “You’ve trusted me in the past, angel. Keep on trusting me.”
“How can I?” It was a despairing cry, wrenched out of the uttermost depths of her being. “This is absolutely nasty-crooked. I don’t care whether there’s a quarter of a cent or a quarter of a million dollars involved. Please! If you care one tiny little iota about me, don’t do this.”
He said, “You know I love you, angel.”
She said, “I know you’ve pretended to love me. Prove it. Tell Mrs. Meredith and her crooked shyster to get out of here. Give the diary to Will Gentry tonight and wash your hands of the whole thing.”
Michael Shayne shook his red head slowly from side to side. In a tone of real regret, he said, “I can’t pass up an opportunity like this, angel. Another one like it may never come along again. Go ahead and type out three copies,” he added persuasively. “I give you my word you’ll never regret it. A quarter million bucks, Lucy?” His voice was wondering, almost awed.
“I won’t do it. I’ll be eternally damned if I’ll do it.” Lucy Hamilton whirled and snatched up her notebook with tears beginning to stream down her cheeks. She ripped at the pages containing her shorthand hieroglyphics, tearing them into shreds and scattering them on the floor.
Shayne lunged forward and clamped a hand on her shoulder, ordering harshly, “Stop it, Lucy. You’re not making sense.”
“Oh yes,” she retorted. “I am making sense. For the first time in a lot of years. You know what, Michael Shayne? I hate and despise you. I don’t care what you say, I’m not going to let you do this thing to yourself. Do you hear me? I’m not going to let you.”
She flung the last of the torn fragments of her notes on the floor and faced him defiantly.
He said, “You’re forgetting something, Lucy. You’re my secretary… not my wife. Stop acting like one.”
“Thank God I am just your secretary,” she cried out through her tears. “Because I can quit, and if I were married to you I couldn’t. And I am quitting. As of now. I wouldn’t be married to you, Michael Shayne, if you were the last man on earth… and I wouldn’t be your secretary if you offered me a salary of a million dollars a week.”
She eeled away from him, dislodging his hand from her shoulder, and ran to the door, jerking it open and then slamming it shut behind her with a bang that reverberated in the silent room.
Shayne stood looking at the closed door for a long moment, then shrugged his shoulders and said equably, “Lucky I’m a fair one-finger typist. Give me ten minutes and I’ll have the document ready for your signatures.”
He turned and stalked into the bedroom where a portable typewriter stood in one corner of the room.
18
Michael Shayne awakened early the next morning. He noted early sunlight streaming in the window, checked his watch to be assured it was as early as it seemed, then got a cigarette and match from the bedside table, and drew in the first lungful of smoke for the day.
For some reason it wasn’t as satisfying as usual. The smoke seemed to have an acrid bite to it, and he frowned and glanced at the pack to make sure it was his own familiar brand. It was, and his frown deepened as he took another deep draw.
Then the events of the preceding night came flooding back into his memory and he knew why his first cigarette did not taste as good as usual.
Lucy! And her incomprehensible behavior. Last evening he had steeled himself against her, had resolutely refused to allow her temper tantrum to affect his decision or his judgment in the delicate process of preparing the agreement for Mrs. Meredith’s signature and getting it properly witnessed so it would stand up in court without compromising him. And after she and Sims had left, he had tossed off half a tumbler of cognac before stumbling to bed and into a sound and dreamless sleep.
But now it all came back to him with depressing clarity. Lucy’s face, flushed with anger as she defied him. The exact intonation of her voice when she scathingly declared her pleasure that she was just a secretary instead of a wife… that she hated and despised him and wouldn’t marry him if he were the last man on earth.
And he winced and crushed out the bitter-tasting cigarette as he recalled that, in order to persuade her, he had gone so far as to say to her what he had said to only one other woman before in his life.
“You know I love you, angel.”
It was the first time he had ever told Lucy Hamilton that he loved her. He had been, on the verge of such a declaration several times, but had held off until last night to put the feeling into words.
For what purpose? To be angrily denounced as a crook.
He threw back the covers angrily and swung out of bed, padded out on bare feet to the kitchen where he put coffee water on to boil, and then went back into the living room to check with the airport and be assured that the Mid-American flight from Chicago was scheduled to arrive on time at eight-thirty.
He went back into the kitchen and poured boiling water into the top of the dripolator, set it over a low flame and hurried into the bathroom for a quick shave and shower. He dressed swiftly and drank two fast cups of coffee liberally laced with cognac, going over his plans for the morning with grim expectancy, forcing Lucy Hamilton and her defection out of his thoughts and out of his consciousness… reminding himself again and again that there was a quarter-million dollars at stake this morning if his wild hunch was correct and if he played it to the limit without
