pills.’”
Forbes came to his feet abruptly, then sat down again. Shayne held his eyes for a moment, and swung around on Candida.
“Then you came up. You told her Forbes was in trouble over that old poker debt, and she could help by leaving town for a few days. She agreed-anything to help her boy. You gave her five hundred dollars. There were ten fifties in her purse, separate from the rest of her money, which added up to nine and a half bucks. Then you got her a fresh glass of water so she could take a couple of pills and forget it. Make it three. No, she has to counteract all that benzedrine. Four.”
“That’s pure fantasy!” Candida snapped. “And you know it.”
“I don’t know a goddamn thing. All I’m doing is wrapping a couple of guesses around a theory. Maybe you didn’t pay Ruth to organize that poker game, but at this point it sure as hell looks like it. A statement from her to that effect would cost United States Chemical two million bucks and put Hal Begley in bankruptcy. You’re an ambitious girl, Candida, too ambitious. Success or failure, prestige or exposure-and the whole thing hinged on whether or not Ruth was alive in the morning. When she asked you if you’d seen her taking her sleeping pills, it would be so easy to say no.”
“It wouldn’t be easy, and it didn’t happen.”
Shayne laughed unpleasantly. “And what about you, Forbes? Your father has just about had it with you. If I can show that you sold Candida that folder, he’ll kick you out of the company and change his will.”
“I don’t care.”
“I don’t believe you.” The detective lit a cigarette deliberately. “Slavery was abolished years ago. If you don’t want the job, quit. You’ve got a terrible record on your own showing. Add it all up, and a hard-eyed district attorney would get a profile of a spoiled rich kid who wouldn’t hesitate a minute about slipping a couple of extra pills to a girl who was that much of a danger to him.”
Forbes looked at Shayne defiantly, but there was terror in his eyes.
“Which one of you did it?” Shayne said. “You both had the opportunity. You both have a motive.”
Candida looked at Forbes, whose eyes had narrowed. She said warningly, “Don’t let him rattle you, Forbes. If it’s that bad, we both need a lawyer.”
“You won’t have time to talk to a lawyer,” Shayne said. “Talk to me. I’m not a cop. Nothing’s going to be signed here. I can’t hurt you with a verbal admission.”
“I don’t think I’ll start trusting you this late in the game.”
“I’m setting a deadline-seven tomorrow morning. At five after seven I dump the whole thing in the D.A.’s lap. District attorneys can’t leave anything hanging. They have to come up with a solution. If what he comes up with is conspiracy to commit murder, I want you to realize that he can make it stick. The one basic thing to prove is that Forbes was the source of the T-239 folder. Everything follows from that. We can bring in Jake Fitch to testify about the locker-room time sheet. We establish the exact moment the transfer took place, and then we talk to Lou Johnson and find out when he was paid off. If the folder changed hands April twenty-third and Johnson got his money that evening or the next day, what else will a jury need?”
He saw that he had finally managed to reach her. There was a tense line between her eyebrows. Her eyes were steady on his face.
He said less harshly, “How did you make the arrangements, by phone? You couldn’t accept anonymous material. You had to have a name to go with it. I’ve been telling you how this will look to a jury. That doesn’t mean I think it happened that way. I think you were fooled, Candida, badly fooled. There’s only one person who could do it, and only one way it could be done. One important thing is missing. Until I get that, the rest of it isn’t worth a goddamn.”
“Stop!” Forbes said. “Tell me one thing. Do you think Ruthie was murdered?”
“Yes,” Shayne said bleakly. “And I think it was meant to be written off as a suicide. The fact that you and Candida were with her before she went to sleep couldn’t have been arranged in advance. But it gives me a lever, and I mean to use it. You have a choice: talk to me now or the D.A. in the morning.”
“I haven’t concealed anything,” Forbes said sullenly. Candida picked up her drink. It was a Scotch highball, nearly full. She tilted the glass higher and higher and set it down empty.
“Forbes sold me the folder,” she said.
Forbes shot out of his chair. “How can you lie like that? Whatever Shayne wants to think happened when Ruthie went to bed, I know what happened! She took two sleeping pills and her birth-control pill and asked me to get in with her and hold her until she fell asleep. Then the phone rang. I don’t know what you said to her, but it woke her up. She told me to go. If anybody gave her any extra pills, it was you! When I worked on the proofs of the report, I took them home one weekend. Ruthie was with me. Did you hire her to sneak them out to you? Did you?”
He started for Candida. Shayne moved between them.
“Shut up, Forbes! Candida’s going to tell us what happened. Sit down and listen.”
He backed Forbes into his chair and then returned to Candida.
“O.K., it’s the middle of April,” he said. “You can see there’s no hope of getting what you want out of Walter Langhorne. You’re about ready to start putting the heat on Jose Despard. Take it from there.”
She held out her glass and he poured Scotch over the ice.
“Hal got a phone call at the office,” she said. “It was a man’s voice. Hal buzzed me and I listened on an extension. The voice was faint and very fuzzy, as though he was speaking through a tissue stretched over the mouthpiece. Walter had a way of using synonyms for common expressions, and this man did the same thing. But I knew instantly that it wasn’t Walter. It was somebody else who wanted us to think it was Walter. He offered us the T-239 material.”
“Who suggested the country-club locker?”
“He did. He gave us precise instructions. There were two packages. The first one had every alternate page of the report, pages one, three, five and so on. Hal picked it up. We checked with United States. They were delighted and told us to go ahead. We wrapped thirty thousand dollars in fifties and hundreds and Hal left it in the locker. Somebody picked it up and left the even-numbered pages.”
“Somebody!” Forbes said. “We all belong to that club-the company pays for our memberships. What makes you think you can pin it on me?”
Shayne explained,
“The club bartender was one of their people. They gave him a list of Despard executives. He clocked them in and out on the crucial dates.”
“And we ruled out everybody but you, Forbes,” Candida said. “But we had to be really sure. Walter had told me enough about you and your friends so I knew where to look. I found out about Ruth and your poker losses. I went to New York and tracked down Lou Johnson. I offered to buy your IOU’s. He didn’t have them. He’d mailed them to a Miami P.O. box. He got his money April twenty-fourth, in fifties and hundreds.”
Forbes pushed back his long hair with both hands. “Is that true? It can be checked.”
“It’s true, Forbes.”
He looked from Candida to Shayne. “It looks bad, doesn’t it? But I didn’t do it. I went through a kind of semi- crackup after Mother died. If you have proof I was in the club on the right days, I suppose I was there, but I wasn’t playing golf. I didn’t call Begley pretending to be Walter. I know nothing at all about this exchange of packages. I didn’t give Johnson any money.” He threw out both hands. “I’ll take a lie-detector test.”
Shayne grinned sardonically. “I believe everything you say. That doesn’t mean I won’t turn you in at seven o’clock tomorrow unless you can give me something more than a simple denial.”
“What else can I give you? I’ve been thinking about it for six months. I haven’t been able to move it an inch.”
Shayne looked at his watch. “You’ve got four and a half hours. We won’t get anywhere with questions and answers. Whoever rigged this thought of all the questions and made sure of the answers in advance. I wasn’t impressed with this soul-session technique when I first heard about it, but I can see it might have possibilities if the people involved really want to make it work. You and Candida have a pretty good incentive-think up an explanation or go to jail.”
He refilled his glass and looked at Candida.
“Forget about T-239 and those locker-room arrangements. All that is incidental. What I want to find out is
