Die Like a Dog

16

Getting off the elevator, Michael Shayne strode across the hall and mechanically reached for the knob of the door lettered:

MICHAEL SHAYNE

Investigations

The knob turned but the door refused to open. He cursed himself methodically and in a low voice because he had forgotten momentarily that Lucy Hamilton would not be inside the office waiting for him, and he unlocked the door and flung it open with savage force.

The small anteroom was empty and silent. Lucy’s chair in front of the typewriter desk beyond the low railing was empty, and the silence was oppressive.

There were deep trenches in Shayne’s cheeks and his jaws were set together tightly as he turned away after one fleeting glance at Lucy’s desk and walked through the door into his private office. He circled the big desk to a filing cabinet against the wall, pulled out a drawer on its ball-bearings and lifted a half-full bottle of cognac from it. He thumped the bottle down on the desk in front of his swivel chair, turned to a water cabinet and got down two paper cups which he fitted one inside the other. He filled the inner cup to the brim with amber liquid from the bottle and settled his rangy figure into the swivel chair. With a lighted cigarette dangling between the first two fingers of his left hand, he took a long drink of brandy and closed his eyes.

Distorted images danced before his eyes as he fought to concentrate on the problem at hand. Lucy Hamilton seated at her desk in the outer room. Henrietta Rogell in her mannish bathrobe last night pouring a heavy slug of whiskey into her glass. Lucy seated across from him at a white-clothed table, her brown eyes dancing with life and gaiety as she lifted a champagne glass to her lips. Anita Rogell standing against him last night and her warmly-timbred voice telling him wantonly, “I want you, Michael Shayne”. Lucy Hamilton seated sedately at one end of the sofa in her own apartment with bottles and glasses on the low coffee table in front of her, shaking the brown curls back from her animated face while she leaned forward to pour him a final goodnight drink before shooing him out so she could go to bed. The stiffened body of a tiny Pekinese that appeared to be grinning at him. Lucy Hamilton…

Shayne jerked his eyes open angrily and glared across the silent office. His right hand instinctively strayed out to grasp the nested paper cups, and he had them halfway to his mouth when he grated, “Goddamn it to hell!” and set them down again without drinking.

Thus far he had done nothing about Lucy. Nothing at all. He was relying on the kidnapper to keep her alive as a hostage until the remains of John Rogell were consumed by fire and his murderer was positive that all evidence of murder had been consumed with the body.

After that-what?

Michael Shayne didn’t know.

He was no closer to a solution now than he had been when Henrietta first came to him more than twenty-four hours ago.

Marvin Dale? There was his suicide and the ambiguous note he had left behind. But if Marvin Dale had put the digitalis in Rogell’s milk-what about Lucy? Was it conceivable that Dale had snatched her and hidden her away, and then swallowed strychnine without mentioning a word about her in his farewell note?

No! Shayne told himself savagely. It wasn’t conceivable. Yet only Rogell’s killer would have a motive for snatching Lucy.

So Dale wasn’t the murderer.

Yet the man had committed suicide.

Or, had he?

Michael Shayne sat at his desk tensely, his eyes narrowed and burning across the room while he pondered every word and phrase of the suicide note which he had memorized. Somewhere, somehow, there was a clue in those scribbled words that eluded him. The answer was there. Some tiny portion of his subconscious mind had glimpsed that fact when he first read the words, but it refused to come through to him.

He growled another oath deep in his throat and forced himself to relax. To cease concentrating. To stop trying to force it out of his subconscious. If he could divert his thoughts into other channels-blank his mind away from the problem entirely-

He stretched out his arm and lifted the telephone and dialled Chief Will Gentry’s private number at police headquarters.

When Gentry answered, he asked briskly, “Any long distance calls for me, Will? From Colorado particularly?”

“Your man called here a little before twelve. He got hold of nothing positive in Central City except ancient gossip and strong suspicions among the townfolk that John Rogell and Betty Blair did have an affair in the old days. It was revived when he hired her to come to Miami as his housekeeper, and the town is buzzing again now that he’s left her that hunk of cash in his will. One other small thing, Mike. A lot of oldtimers agree that Henrietta was the aggressive, strong one in the early days, and that it was her vigor and drive that laid the groundwork for the Rogell fortune.”

“Not much there that we didn’t already know or suspect,” grumbled Shayne. “Anything else?”

“Nothing important. A preliminary report indicates that Dale swallowed a big batch of strychnine on top of one hell of a lot of liquor some time between midnight and dawn.”

“What do you make of the suicide note?”

“It bothers me. But, goddamn it, Mike, it’s undoubtedly genuine. It’s been examined microscopically by our expert. Same pen as was lying there, same notepaper. Handwriting is positively Dale’s, indicating great mental stress and probable alcoholic haze at the time of writing. Exactly what you would expect under the circumstances. What are you doing about Lucy?” Gentry ended abruptly.

“Funeral going off all right?” countered the redhead.

“So far as I know. I’ve got four men covering it and they haven’t reported anything. Goddamn it, Mike! I think it’s time we stepped in. If Lucy is…”

“You promised me until three o’clock.” Beads of sweat had formed on Shayne’s forehead and were coursing down the trenches in his cheeks.

“I know I did, you stubborn Mick. But I don’t see…”

“I don’t either,” Shayne interrupted him much more calmly than he felt. “I’m coming over, Will. I can’t just sit here…”

He dropped the receiver and slowly got to his feet. His glance fell on the half-filled cup on his desk and he reached for it, checked his big hand before he touched it and hesitated a long moment.

Then his lips came back from his teeth in a terrifying sort of grin, and he swept up the twin cups and downed the liquor in two gulps. He was getting childish, by God. Or senile, maybe. Any time Mike Shayne walked out of his office and left a half-finished drink on his desk it would be time for him to turn in his license.

And maybe it was at that.

But not quite yet. Not until three o’clock.

Not until he was convinced that Lucy-