Murder by Proxy

18

Michael Shayne reached his office at exactly nine o’clock the next morning, just as Lucy was unlocking the door. He was clear-eyed and cheerful, and when she mockingly said, “No hangover, Michael?” he looked properly shocked.

“On Cordon Bleu? That would be sacrilegious. By the way, when are you going shopping for office glassware?”

“Maybe when I go out for lunch.” She preceded him into the office, but he caught her by the arm and swung her about.

“Go get some now. I’m sure Tim will be along in a few minutes, and we should be getting a Special Delivery very soon. We’re going to have some celebrating to do and common, old paper cups just won’t do. Get some snifters. Not the big ostentatious kind, but regular ones… you know.” He cupped his hands to indicate the size.

Lucy laughed and said, “Genuine crystalware, I presume?”

“Nothing less. Get half a dozen, angel, to allow for breakage.” He pushed her out of the office exuberantly, and went through the door to gaze fondly at the cardboard case of Cordon Bleu still sitting in the middle of his desk.

When Lucy returned with a large paper-wrapped parcel half an hour later, she found Timothy Rourke sitting with her employer, and they had a single bottle of cognac on the desk in front of them with no paper cups in sight. The rest of the case had been modestly removed from sight, and Shayne said reproachfully, “We’ve been waiting, Lucy. It took you long enough.”

“No picture yet?”

Shayne looked at his watch. “Any minute now… if Jim got it on a plane.” He helped her open the package and take out half a dozen spherical glasses of thin, rock crystal, which she insisted on rinsing at the water cooler before allowing liquor to be poured in them. She dried and polished them lovingly with paper tissues from her desk, and set two of the shining receptacles in front of the cognac bottle just as a voice called, “Special Delivery,” from the outer office.

“Perfect timing,” beamed Shayne, reaching for the bottle. “Bring it in, angel.”

She hurried out, and reentered with a large manila envelope marked PHOTOGRAPHS. DO NOT BEND. She tore it open and pulled out two thin sheets of cardboard with two glossy studio photographs between them.

They were two poses of the same young woman. A very beautiful young woman… and very definitely the same young woman whose picture Herbert Harris had already furnished them.

The trio stared down at the two photographs in stricken silence. Shayne opened the center drawer of his desk and took out one of the blown-up prints of Ellen Harris and laid it beside the two which had just arrived.

There was not the faintest doubt in the minds of any one of the three that the same woman had posed for all of the pictures.

Shayne snorted loudly and lifted a snifter of cognac high into the air. “Here’s to more and better theories.” He drank deeply.

“That’s not the way to use a snifter,” Lucy protested. “You’re supposed to…”

“Right now, I’m supposed to seek inspiration,” Shayne told her grimly.

Timothy Rourke nodded solemnly and lifted his glass high. “To the clarification of ultimate evaluations,” and tossed half of it down.

“I don’t understand, Michael,” Lucy said hesitantly. “You made it all so clear and logical yesterday. And I thought about it during the night and I just knew you were right.” She puckered her forehead and looked down at the prints again, then drew in her breath sharply. “If one of those is of the secretary…” She turned them both over. On the back of each print Gifford had sent was printed boldly: “Miss Ellen Terry one month before her marriage to Herbert Harris. Said to be an excellent likeness.”

“No such luck,” muttered Shayne. “No identical twins in this one.”

Lucy peered inside the Manila envelope and said, “There’s a note inside.” She withdrew a single sheet of paper with a typed message which she read aloud:

“Mike. I enclose two poses of Ellen Harris taken shortly before her marriage. Unable to locate a picture of the elusive Ruth Collins, but probably can, if you want me to keep trying. It’s signed, Jim,” she ended, dropping it to the desk.

Shayne grimaced and seated himself in his swivel chair. He leaned forward with his forearms on the desk, idly turning the cognac snifter in his hands. He said slowly, “I’ve always distrusted theorizing. But this one seemed to fit so damn perfectly. What else does fit?” he demanded. “Why did Ruth Collins disappear from New York last Monday afternoon, if she didn’t come down here masquerading as Ellen Harris? Where is she all this time, damn it? If that was Ellen Harris at the Beachhaven… and I guess there isn’t any doubt about it now… why did she set herself up as a sitting duck for murder? Don’t tell me,” he groaned, “that she loved her husband so much she set out deliberately to get herself bumped off, just so he could collect insurance on her and have his secretary, too. This, I refuse to accept.”

“I guess I haven’t got any new lead for today,” Rourke muttered morosely.

“Not unless Painter’s got one for you. Talked with him lately?”

“Just before I came here. For the first time in his life Petey cautiously admitted that all his clues had petered out. He’s about ready to mark it off as the work of a homicidal maniac.”

Shayne tossed off the rest of his cognac and set the fragile glass down gently. He lifted both of his palms to his face and said in a queerly subdued voice, “Both of you go in the other room. I’ve got thinking to do.” They looked at each other and Rourke shook his head and led the way out. Shayne sat there for a long time with bowed head and closed eyes. There was a faint smile of satisfaction on his rugged features when he got up and went into the outer room where Rourke was perched on the low railing, talking quietly to Lucy. They both looked up at him expectantly.

He said, “Call the airport, Lucy. Book me on the next jet flight to New York that has a vacancy.”

She nodded alertly and started dialling. Rourke slid off the railing and demanded, “Another brainstorm, Mike? You got another answer?”

Shayne said, “It’s a brainstorm all right.”

“What is it?”

Shayne shook his red head and said flatly, “No. I made a damned fool out of myself yesterday by jumping to conclusions without any proof.” He drew in a deep breath. “Think where I’d be today if I had let you call Painter and persuade him to hold Harris.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I shot off my mouth to you and Lucy,” Shayne growled. “I sat in there and guzzled cognac and outdid Sherlock Holmes with my deductive prowess. This one, I’m keeping strictly to myself.”

Lucy told him, “The first flight that has space will put you in International at four-forty this afternoon.”

He nodded and said, “Fix it. Then get Gifford on the phone.” He stalked back to his desk, picked up the cognac bottle and corked it tightly, deposited it in a drawer of a filing cabinet behind his desk. Turning back to see Rourke observing him from the doorway, he said with a wry smile:

“Mighty potent stuff… Cordon Bleu. Induces delusions of grandeur and pipedreams. I’m strictly off the stuff until I tie this case up in a knot.”

“Which you’re going to do in New York this afternoon?”

“Which I hope to do in New York this afternoon,” Shayne corrected him.

His buzzer sounded and he lifted the phone. “Jim? Those were mighty pretty pictures you sent me, but they were a real monkey wrench. No chance you made a mistake, huh?”

He listened a moment and nodded glumly. “All right, Mike Shayne rides again. You got a pretty good pipeline into the New York Police Department?”

“Couple of guys there will give me the time of day… if I pay for it,” Gifford told him cautiously.

Shayne grinned at the phone. “I know you better than that, Jim. Listen. I’m arriving by jet at International Airport four-forty this afternoon. Lucy will give you the airline and flight number. I want you to meet me, Jim. Wangle a duplicate set of Ellen Harris’ fingerprints from Headquarters. Miami Beach sent them up for positive identification of the body. And have a fingerprint man at the airport with you. It would be nice if you could bring along the same man who took the comparison prints from the Harris apartment in New York.”

“Would you like the Police Commissioner to come along, too?” Gifford demanded sarcastically.

Shayne said cheerfully, “Bring him, by all means, if he wants to come along. See you at four-forty, Jim. Lucy, give him the flight dope.”

He hung up.

“Won’t you give me an inkle, Mike?” pleaded Rourke. “You’re beginning to look as though you’d swallowed a whole cage full of canaries.”

“That’s the reason you don’t get even an inkle,” Shayne told him firmly. “I felt this same way yesterday afternoon, and look what happened.”