“Was he drunk?”
Hallam moved his head. “You couldn’t tell with Walter. His speech wasn’t slurred or heavy.”
“Will you try to remember what you said just before he jumped? It might be important.”
Hallam reflected. “It had something to do with you. I believe I said to wait till we found out if you deserved your reputation. Something like that.”
“Do you think he’s the one who passed the paint material to Begley?”
Hallam turned his head sharply. “Certainly not.”
“Forbes doesn’t think it’s impossible.”
“Forbes doesn’t know what he’s talking about!” Hallam snapped.
“Were you told that Langhorne had been dickering with Candida Morse of the Begley firm?”
“What do you mean, ‘dickering’? They were seen together once, at a sort of party. We don’t know who initiated it or what was said. I don’t condemn a man on that kind of evidence.”
“How was he fixed for money?”
Hallam shrugged. “We paid him a good salary. He had no one to spend it on but himself. And it always seemed to me that he kept getting small inheritances from various aunts. He never talked about the vulgar subject. That’s usually a tipoff that somebody’s not suffering.”
“You’ve been living with this thing for several months now. If you don’t think Langhorne did it, do you suspect anybody else?”
“I suspect everybody. That’s the damnable thing. Everybody suspects everybody. This has opened a real fissure in the company, and we won’t be able to close it until we find out who’s actually guilty.”
“Forbes said he was beginning to suspect himself. I don’t think he was serious. What do you think of the possibility?”
At his son’s name, Hallam’s arm jerked and the horn blared. “Excuse me. I don’t think much of it. He’ll inherit fifty percent of my stock. He’d be going against his own interests. I don’t want to close off any legitimate inquiry, but you’d be throwing away your time pursuing that one. I suppose he meant he had the opportunity. So did fifteen or twenty other people. You’d better sit down and have a talk with Miss McGonigle, our counterintelligence department.”
“That’s the first thing I’d do if I had time,” Shayne said. “But if I’m going to come up with anything between now and Monday, I’ll have to work on it from the other end.”
“By that you mean Begley?”
“Begley’s firm. He didn’t break out of the small time until Candida Morse went to work for him. She’s the brains of the combination. And Begley’s going to be out of contention all day, probably into tomorrow. As a rule, he’s a fairly cool drinker. His strategy for the weekend is to get drunk and stay drunk, so nobody can ask him any questions.”
“You know your business,” Hallam said doubtfully. “But if you simply go to this Morse woman and ask her who she was dealing with at Despard’s, why should she tell you anything?”
Shayne’s eyes were hard. “That’s not the way I’ll do it. I’ll push her a little first. We have a small score to settle. It may not work, but I can’t see any other way of getting results in a hurry. If there isn’t a quick payoff, I’ll come to the office Monday morning and run a routine credit check on the list of possibilities.”
A black Chevrolet appeared, moving fast.
“There’s the sheriff. If he talked as fast as he drives, I’d stick around. He’ll tie you up most of the day. Is your plane still at the airstrip?”
“Yes. Use it if you want to. Some of the others may want to go back at the same time.”
The Chevy went into a long screeching skid in front of the lodge.
Shayne said, “Do you think there’s any chance Langhorne committed suicide?”
“Suicide?”
“He did everything but throw himself on your gun. People sometimes have scruples against killing themselves, and get somebody else to do it for them. It’s not unknown.”
Hallam squinted at the approaching sheriff. He didn’t answer.
Shayne went on, watching him, “And there’s a third possibility. Homicide.”
Hallam’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “I think I see what you’re trying to do, Shayne, prepare me for my morning with the sheriff. But I doubt if Ollie Banghart will want to open up that area. You’re wondering if Walter admitted selling us out and I lost control and shot him. The answer, for the record, is no. It’s true that I identify myself closely with the interests of my company, but anyone will tell you I am not what you would call a passionate man.”
CHAPTER 4
At 6:30 that evening, the phone clanged in Michael Shayne’s Buick. Shayne and his friend Tim Rourke, a reporter on the Miami News, were parked in front of a fire plug on Biscayne Boulevard, talking quietly. Rourke had a big square Speed Graphic camera on his lap. He was slumped deep in his seat with his bony knees up against the dashboard. Extremely thin, unshaven, his clothes wrinkled and spotted, he gave no indication that he was actually extremely hardworking and very difficult to fool. He had won one Pulitzer Prize for local reporting and had been cited three other years, usually in connection with stories he had worked on with Shayne.
Shayne picked up the phone.
“Teddy Sparrow,” a voice said. “The Morse dame. She’s having dinner at Larue’s with a date.”
“Who’s the man?” Shayne asked.
“I never saw him before, Mike. He hasn’t got much of a tan. Good clothes-I think he’d be tanned if he lived here year-round. He’s driving a Hertz Chevy. I peeked at the card on the steering column.”
“Good, Teddy. Wait there. I’ll be with you in five minutes.”
He hung up and started the motor. Rourke dropped his cigarette to the floor and ground it out.
“How hammy do you want this to be, Mike? I take it the girl isn’t too stupid.”
“She’s probably smarter than both of us put together. We’re not trying to fool her. This is pressure.”
“The funny thing is,” the reporter said thoughtfully, “it would actually make a very nice series. These headhunters haven’t had much publicity yet. There’s a couple of others in town besides Begley. Miami’s logical place. A guy can come down and a personnel man can meet him. It’s really a job interview, but the theory is that everybody’s just on vacation.”
Shayne drove south on the Boulevard, turning left after a dozen blocks to a long ramp which took him onto the MacArthur Causeway. Halfway across the bay, he dropped onto Poinsettia Island and parked near a small French restaurant that had recently opened there, with a long private dock for customers who came by boat from the Miami Beach marinas.
Teddy Sparrow shambled up as Shayne got out. He was a mountainous, hopelessly inept private detective who seldom handled anything except open-and-shut divorces or tracer jobs for collection agencies.
“They got their table, Mike. They had one martini at the bar, one at the table. How do we handle this?”
“I handle it, Teddy,” Shayne said. “She’ll probably come out alone. See where she goes. She may have spotted you by now, but that’s not too important. Just don’t lose her.”
“I don’t get flimflammed too often,” the other detective said confidently. “Then I call you on the car phone, right?”
“Right.”
“I wish I had one of those phones in my car,” Sparrow said wistfully. “Throw me some more business, Mike, and damn if I won’t put my name on the waiting list.”
Shayne and Rourke entered the restaurant. “What’s the name of the maitre?” Shayne said. “George, isn’t it?”
“Hell, no!” Rourke said, shocked. “Albert. Imagine forgetting anything that important. You could end up at a table next to the kitchen.”
A dark man in a tuxedo came out of the crowd that was overflowing from a small bar.
“Mr. Shayne!” he exclaimed, glad to have the well-known detective to dress up his room. “A table. Certainly.”
