Die Like a Dog

8

“What is it, Mike?” Rourke was beside him, his voice anxious.

Shayne extended the sheet of yellow paper wordlessly. Rourke read the brief message at a glance and swore softly. “They moved fast. Goddamn it, Mike! If you hadn’t been so quick on the trigger getting hold of Tolliver…”

“But I was quick on the trigger,” said Shayne angrily. “And the autopsy’s already ordered.” He grabbed the sheet of yellow paper from Rourke and glared at it. “Who, in the name of God? And how did he know…? Did you leave the grave open, Tim?”

“No. I filled it back in and smoothed it over the best I could in the dark. Of course, if someone went back and checked carefully…”

“Someone did,” Shayne said. He whirled around and strode to the center table, opened the telephone book and riffled through the pages to the Rogell number. He gave it to the operator and waited for a long time with the receiver to his ear. A woman’s voice finally said, “Mrs. Rogell’s residence.”

“This is the police,” said Shayne curtly. “Sergeant Hanson speaking. I want to talk to the Rogell chauffeur. At once.”

“Charles?” He was certain it was Mrs. Blair’s voice. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. He’s sleeping now… under heavy sedation.”

“Wake him up then,” grated Shayne. “This is the police.”

“I don’t care who it is,” said Mrs. Blair spiritedly. “I don’t believe you could wake him if you tried. Doctor gave him two pills he said would knock him out at least eight hours. He needs the rest, goodness knows. I suppose the doctor did report what happened here tonight?”

“That’s why we’re checking,” lied Shayne. “How long ago did Charles take his pills and go to bed?”

“Right after doctor left. I made him go out to his own apartment and tucked him in myself.”

“Is Mrs. Rogell’s brother still there?”

“Marvin’s here, all right, but you won’t get much out of him either. He didn’t need any pills to pass out cold.”

Shayne hung up the receiver, shaking his head at Rourke. “No help there. The housekeeper claims both Charles and the brother are dead to the world and can’t be wakened.”

“I been thinking, Mike. Whoever snatched Lucy and wrote this note thinks you got it before you had time to do anything with the dog. They wouldn’t know about Tolliver doing a fast job for you. If you can keep them thinking that…”

Shayne said, “Yeh.” He lifted the phone again and gave Will Gentry’s home telephone number. When the chief answered, he said, “Mike Shayne again, Will. Something has come up at this end.” The urgency in his voice kept Gentry from asking any questions. “Have you ordered the autopsy?”

“Sure. They should have already picked the body up from the undertaker’s.”

“How many people know that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I asked. Can’t you understand plain English?”

“Hold your water, Mike. Nobody outside the department except the undertaker, and he’s sworn to secrecy. Doc Higgins promised him he’d have the corpse back in its casket tomorrow morning so no one will know.”

Shayne breathed a fervent, “Thank God,” and then went on strongly, “Promise me this, Will. Don’t take any action tomorrow morning no matter what the P.M. says. Not till you talk to me first. Will you promise that?”

“Now, wait a minute, Mike. What gives?”

Shayne hesitated, then said flatly, “They’ve got Lucy. She’ll stay alive as long as they think we haven’t found poison inside the dog and haven’t autopsied Rogell. If he can be cremated tomorrow with them still thinking that…”

“Lucy?” rumbled Gentry. “Who’s ‘they’?”

“That’s what I’ve got to have time to find out, Will. Someone who doesn’t want an autopsy on Rogell. So, for the love of God, keep it quiet, Will.”

Gentry said gruffly, “I like Lucy, too. You want help?”

“That’s what I don’t want right now. Just complete secrecy on the autopsy… and a call as soon as you know.”

Gentry said, “You’ll have that,” and Shayne hung up. He got up and said, “Drive me out to Lucy’s, Tim. Maybe we can pick something up there.”

The reporter hastily tossed off the last of his drink and said “Let’s go.”

Downstairs, Shayne stopped at the desk to tell the clerk, “I’ll be at Miss Hamilton’s number in about fifteen minutes. Try her phone if anything comes up.”

He got in the driver’s seat of Rourke’s car and headed toward Miami Avenue, explaining, “We’ll stop at the Shamrock first.”

“I don’t get this, Mike. How could anyone get to Lucy so fast? None of the people involved know her, do they?”

“She was out there this afternoon. Charles was smart enough to figure she was my secretary, and the rest of them knew what he suspected.”

“But she’s not listed in the phone book. This may all be a bluff.”

Shayne said, “Maybe.” He was driving north on Miami Avenue, and slowed as he approached Fourth Street. A corner saloon had a sign in green neon, SHAMROCK BAR. He parked and they got out.

It was a small bar, dingy and dimly-lighted. At this hour there were only three men on stools with drinks in front of them. The bartender was thin and sallow-faced, wearing a dirty white jacket. He came toward them incuriously as they ranged up against the front end of the bar, and Shayne said, “A cognac,” mechanically, his gaze sliding over a row of bottles behind the bar. “Martel will be fine, with water on the side. And Grandad on the rocks.”

He got out his wallet and extracted a five-dollar bill, smoothed it flat on the bar between his big hands as the bartender set their drinks in front of them. He moved the bill forward and said, “Keep the change. I want to ask you a question.”

The bartender put his fingertips on the bill but did not pick it up. Pale blue eyes studied Shayne’s face warily. “Sure, Mister. Go ahead and ask.”

“A messenger from Western Union picked up an envelope from you fifteen or twenty minutes ago. Tell me about it.”

“What about it?”

“Everything.”

The man shrugged, keeping the tips of his fingers on the bill, but not drawing it toward him. “There was this guy came in and busted a ten for a boiler-maker and asked could he use the phone. I said sure.” The bartender jerked his head to a coin telephone on the wall behind him. “I was standing close enough to hear him ask for Western Union, and then say to send a messenger to make a pick-up from here for immediate delivery. Then he asked what the charge would be for downtown Miami, and then hung up.

“He came back to his drink, and gave me these two envelopes, see? And three ones. Said he was in a hurry and would I give the letters and the money to the messenger when he came. I said sure, and that’s all there was to it.”

Shayne said hoarsely, “Two envelopes?”

“Yeh. There was two. Just alike. Addressed with a pencil.”

“Addressed to whom?” Shayne’s voice was unnecessarily harsh, and the bartender looked at him with a touch of belligerence. “How do I know, Mister? None of my business and I didn’t pry. I just laid them on the cash register with the three bills, and gave ’em to the messenger when he came. Anything wrong in that?”

Shayne slowly exhaled a long-held breath. He said, “No. Nothing wrong with that. You’re sure you didn’t see either of the names? It would be worth twice that bill to me.”

“Gee, I wisht I had.” The bartender sounded truly sorry that he hadn’t been more curious. “I just didn’t look.”

“What did the man look like?”

“Like a bum,” he said promptly. “Wearing a ragged coat and needing a haircut. Thin and hungry looking. Hell, I didn’t pay no heed. Twenty-five or maybe thirty. Just a medium-looking bum.”

“You never saw him in here before?”

“Sure didn’t. I get a pretty good class of customers in here.” The bartender glanced proudly down the bar to the trio on stools near the other end. “It’s thinned out now, but half an hour ago I was pretty crowded.”

“But you’d know the bum if he ever comes in again?” persisted Shayne.

The bartender screwed up his blue eyes. “I… reckon I might.”

“If he does show his face there’ll be ten bills like that in it for you if you call the police and hold him till they get here.”

“Well, sure,” said the man uncomfortably. “If the law wants him…”

Shayne said emphatically, “They do,” and finished his drink.

As they got back into his car, Timothy Rourke said worriedly, “I guess that didn’t help much.”

“Not a damned bit. Whoever sent the note covered his tracks perfectly. Some hobo off a park bench who was delighted to earn the rest of a ten-dollar bill by having a drink in a bar and calling Western Union.”

“The notes,” Rourke reminded him emphatically as he swung around the corner and headed east on Fourth. “Who was the other one to?”

Shayne shrugged. “For you, maybe. If anyone knew you were with me tonight and it was you who did the actual grave-robbing.”

“No one knew that. I swear no one saw me there.”

“Lucy knew you were going with me,” Shayne reminded him, and neither one of them said any more until Shayne unlocked Lucy’s first-floor apartment, east of Biscayne Boulevard with a key that Lucy had given him many years before and which he had never used until tonight.

The outer door opened directly into a long pleasant sitting room with double windows overlooking the street. There was a softly cushioned divan beneath the windows, with a low coffee table in front of it. Shayne switched on an overhead light as they entered, and the two men stood close together without speaking, their eyes searching the room for any sign of disorder, any indication that Lucy had been taken away forcibly or had attempted to leave a clue as to her whereabouts behind her.

There was nothing. The room looked exactly as Shayne had seen it so many evenings in the past when he had stopped by with Lucy after a dinner together, or dropped in late to enjoy a nightcap before going on to his own bachelor quarters.

In a completely calm and exceedingly quiet voice which revealed to his old friend the intensity of the emotion he felt, Shayne said, “You stay back, Tim. I want to go through the place alone. There may be something out of place… something I’ll recognize…”

Awkwardly, Timothy Rourke said, “Sure, Mike. You go right ahead.” He leaned against the doorframe, digging out a cigarette and lighting it while he watched Shayne’s tall frame move slowly away from him with shoulders squared and chin thrust out.

The detective noted three cigarette butts in the glass ashtray on the coffee table near the end where Lucy generally sat when they were in the apartment together. That meant a couple hours of occupancy to Shayne, indicating she had come in after a leisurely dinner and relaxed for a couple of hours before going out again. There was a single dried ring on the glass table beside the ashtray. Lucy’s ingrained tidiness would never have left that ring undisturbed had she finished her drink and gone off to bed without interruption.

He moved on past the divan into the small kitchen, found everything in perfect order except for a tall glass standing on the drainboard of the sink with a small amber residue in the bottom. Again, Lucy would not have neglected to rinse out the glass and turn it upside down if she had not left hastily. He reached up a long arm and opened a cupboard across from the sink, lifted down a bottle of cognac that his secretary always kept there for him to drink from, together with a four-ounce wineglass. He emptied the warm remnants of her drink into the sink, got two ice cubes from the refrigerator and put them in the tall glass. He splashed brandy on top of them, added a modicum of tap water, and filled the wineglass nearly to the brim.

Rourke was still standing beside the door when he reentered the sitting room. Shayne held out the tall glass and said pleasantly, “Want to gargle on this while I look at the bedroom?”

Rourke said, “Sure,” and came toward him. “What do you make of it?”

“Not much this far. Lucy was here… alone… for a couple of hours after dinner. Had one drink and left in a hurry.”

“Under duress?” Rourke took the drink from him, studying his face keenly.

Shayne shrugged. “I should guess not. There’d be an overturned glass… something to signal me. She’d know I’d be around…” His voice trailed off and he took a sip of cognac, then moved to the telephone and stared down moodily at the clean white pad beside it. No telephone numbers jotted, not even a doodle. But Lucy was not the doodling kind, he reminded himself.

He went into the neat bedroom in which the only sign of disarray or hurried departure was a pair of furry mules lying on their sides near the foot of the bed. With his intimate knowledge of Lucy’s habits, Shayne knew she had changed to them immediately after coming in, had hurriedly kicked them off and put on her shoes before going out again. It was another sign of hurried departure, but not necessarily of coercion.

He went to her closet and opened it and surveyed the neat contents with bleak eyes. The array of dresses and outer wraps on hangers told him nothing, but he did note the small overnight case on the shelf above, and knew she hadn’t packed for a protracted stay.

The bathroom was immaculate, as Lucy always kept it, and told him nothing more. Rourke was lounging in a deep chair when he came out, and his deep-set eyes regarded the detective with feverish brightness. “What does the mastermind make of it?”

Shayne sighed and crossed to the divan where he sank down and took a long sip of cognac. “She came in alone and relaxed for an hour or so… then ducked out hurriedly. I don’t think she had any idea what she was getting into, Tim. She’d have managed to do something… leave some sort of sign for me…”

Lucy Hamilton’s telephone rang.

Shayne’s hand jerked and some of his cognac spilled on the carpet. He crossed to the instrument in two strides and said, “Hello,” into the mouthpiece.

The voice that answered him was deep and strong, but undoubtedly feminine. “Is that you, Mr. Shayne?”

“Yes.”

“Your hotel gave me this number. Henrietta Rogell.”

Again, Shayne said, “Yes?”

“I must see you at once. At the Waldorf Towers. It’s a matter I cannot discuss over the telephone.”

Her voice was inflexibly determined, and Shayne wasted no time in what he realized would be useless argument. He said, “In a few minutes, Miss Rogell,” dropped the receiver and strode toward Rourke who was already on his feet draining his glass.

Without pausing on his way to the door, he said, “The Waldorf Towers, Tim. Drop me there and I’ll pick up my car at the dock later.”