better.”
“Where’s the diary now?”
“That’s what I don’t know. The reporter took it off this morning and I don’t know whether Jasper saw him again or not. One thing I’ve been wondering… with Jasper missing like he is… if something has happened to him… you know. Would that reporter still have the right to print his diary?”
“You mean if Groat is dead?”
“Well… yeh. Like I say, I know something kept him from meeting me for dinner.”
Shayne said, “That would depend on whether they had concluded an arrangement to print it. Otherwise the diary would become Mrs. Groat’s property, I assume, and she’d have the right to arrange for publication.”
“Could you get it back, do you think?”
“I don’t know. Depending on who’s got it.”
“I’d pay good money to go through it and mark out the places I don’t want published.”
Shayne said, “I might arrange that… if a Daily News reporter has it.” He took another drink of cognac and set his glass down. “What about Leon Wallace?” he asked casually.
Cunningham’s big hand jerked and he spilled some of his whisky. His eyes widened in consternation or in fear. “What about him?”
“That’s what I asked you.”
The steward’s expression hardened into a sullen glare. “What kind of game are you and Jasper playing, mister?”
Shayne leaned back with a shrug. “I asked you a simple question.”
“And I’m asking you what you know about Leon Wallace. Where’d you ever hear about him, that’s what I want to know.”
“I’m a detective,” Shayne said quietly. “Remember? It’s my business to know about things.”
“Yeh, but… Was that just a put-up deal with you and your secretary and Jasper’s old lady tonight? Was it, huh? Just to fool me so I’d blab off to you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“The hell you don’t,” Cunningham spat out truculently. “The way they fed it to me was that when you walked in there tonight was the first you’d ever heard of Jasper or his diary. That was just play-acting to fool me, huh? What did Jasper tell you about Leon Wallace?”
Shayne said, “Nothing.”
“The old lady then? After I left, huh?”
Shayne said, “She didn’t mention Wallace’s name either.”
“You’re lying,” Cunningham said thickly. He half arose and leaned over the table, thrusting his square chin toward the detective. “Don’t think you’re cutting in on it, mister. To hell with that. Nobody’s playing Pete Cunningham for a sucker.”
Shayne said, “Sit down.” His voice was like a whiplash and his gaze held the inflamed eyes of the younger man steadily. When Cunningham sank back slowly, Shayne said, “I don’t lie. At least to punks like you.” He stood up. “You’re paying for these drinks. If you decide you want to talk to me further, you can reach me at my office or this address.” He gave Cunningham the name of his hotel.
He slid out of the booth into the aisle and strode to the front, nodding curtly to Ernie as he passed him.
Driving home, he stopped at a newsstand to pick up the early edition of the Herald, which he carried up to his room after garaging his car for the second time that night.
He laid the folded paper on the table beside the water tumbler that still held some unmelted ice, shrugged out of his jacket and loosened his collar, poured more cognac into the glass he had emptied after receiving Lucy’s telephone call, and settled down to read the front-page story about the dramatic rescue of the two civilian crew members of the airplane that had been lost at sea two weeks previously while flying forty enlisted men back to the United States for discharge after completing a tour of duty in Europe.
Since they had been scooped on the story by the afternoon edition of the News, the Herald coverage was not so full or dramatic, but there was more background material presented in a sober and factual manner.
There were photographs of Groat and Cunningham, bearded, that had been snapped at the dockside, and a picture of Albert Hawley, the young soldier who had succumbed on the life raft, which had evidently been dug out of the newspaper morgue. Jasper Groat was a thin, middle-aged man with sunken eyes and almost cadaverous features, while the picture of Albert Hawley showed a slender youth in riding togs and a debonair smile that was weakened by a slack-lipped mouth and a chin that was noticeably nonaggressive.
Shayne read the entire newspaper account with care and without encountering any mention of the diary which Jasper Groat had kept during the ten-day ordeal on a life raft. Nor did the name of Leon Wallace appear in the story.
The prominence of the Hawley family in the social and economic life of Miami caused a large portion of the account to be devoted to them and to their only son. It was duly noted that the young soldier was survived by his mother and a married sister named Beatrice. A portion of the background material was devoted to Albert Hawley’s marriage at the age of twenty, not much more than a year before, which was described as one of the gala social events of the season. It had evidently occurred just prior to the young man’s induction into the army, and, by reading between the lines, there was clearly evident a cynical interpretation of the marriage as a last-ditch and desperate attempt of a wealthy, spoiled young man to thus escape being drafted into the service of his country as a common soldier, an attempt which had been thwarted by a stern and incorruptible local draft board.
Curiously enough, there was no further mention of the widowed Mrs. Albert Hawley in the wealth of background material on the family. It was stated that no member of the Hawley clan was available for interview. No comment was forthcoming from the family on the death of young Hawley at sea, the only one on the passenger list miraculously saved from the crash along with the two crew members.
It was duly noted by the Herald, however, that this seemingly cold-blooded reticence of the Hawleys was due in part, at least, to the fact that the family was already in mourning for the recent death of Ezra Hawley, Albert’s uncle and the actual, patriarchal head of the clan for the last six years, since the death of his brother who had been a partner with him in the Hawley Enterprises.
Ezra Hawley’s death at the age of sixty-eight had occurred during the period after it was known that Albert’s plane had crashed into the ocean and before it was reported that Albert was the only passenger who had survived. This was coincidental enough to provide the writer of the story with a couple of paragraphs of philosophical comment on the Unknowingness of the Unknown and some vague conjectures concerning the disposition of Ezra Hawley’s immense fortune, which had not been released to the press.
Shayne laid the Herald aside with a brooding and dissatisfied frown. He drank the last of his cognac and drummed blunt fingertips unhappily on the table top, while he tried unsatisfactorily to fit various fragments of unrelated information into place to form a complete pattern that would begin to make sense. He glanced at his watch and again dialed Timothy Rourke’s home telephone number which had not answered when he tried it in Jasper Groat’s apartment.
Again he waited for a number of rings before hanging up. This time he tried the Daily News number and got the City Room. But Rourke was not on tap and no one knew exactly where he could be reached. Shayne settled for the City Editor, and when he was connected said crisply, “Mike Shayne, Dirkson. I’ve been trying to get hold of Tim Rourke.”
He listened a moment and then broke in impatiently, “Okay. I’ll check with Tim tomorrow. In the meantime… who covered the story of those two rescued airline personnel this morning?”
Dirkson said, “Joel Cross interviewed them first. What’s up, Shayne?”
“I don’t know,” the redhead said honestly. He didn’t know Cross, but had heard Rourke mention his co-worker in somewhat derogatory terms. “Is Cross around now?”
Dirkson said, “Hold it a minute.” In less than a minute, his voice came back: “Joel’s out on a story. Is this important, Shayne?”
Again the detective said honestly, “I don’t know. I’m chasing down a rumor that the copilot of the plane, Jasper Groat, kept a diary while on the life raft… that the News may be planning to publish it… or excerpts from it.”
There was a slight pause, and then Dirkson’s voice purred, “Now, wherever would you have picked up a piece of information like that, Shayne?”
