She Woke to Darkness

12

Less than an hour later the two men were settled comfortably in Ed Radin’s cluttered office on Butcher’s Row in New York’s lower west side with the duplicated copy of Elsie Murray’s manuscript between them.

The duplicating office had been able to shed no light on Halliday’s disappearance. He had left with the original manuscript under his arm about six o’clock, and that was all they knew.

Radin began reading the manuscript first, laying the pages on the table between them for Shayne to pick up as he finished each one.

Both read in absorbed silence, Radin stopping occasionally to make a penciled note, Shayne plowing through the script a little more slowly, making no comment until he turned down the final page with a sigh and a shrug of his broad shoulders.

Having finished it ten minutes earlier, Radin was going through the drawers of a green metal filing cabinet beyond the battered desk that held his typewriter. He had taken a bottle of whiskey from the top drawer and set it on the table, and when Shayne sighed and turned down the final sheet, he turned to gesture to the bottle and say, “Help yourself, Shayne. There are paper cups by the water cooler.”

Shayne said, “Thanks,” and got up as Radin turned back to continue busily searching his file.

The redhead fitted two paper cups together and poured the inner one half full of whiskey, filled it to the brim with cold water and returned to his chair, frowning at Radin’s back and sipping the mixture slowly.

A few minutes later, Radin turned with several newspaper clippings in his hand, an expression of excitement on his face.

“This is what I was looking for,” said Radin triumphantly, waving the clips and reseating himself. “I had a nagging feeling of familiarity about it all the time I was reading the script. These clips are from the Times three months ago. I didn’t follow up the story because there was never anything to follow up, but I always file away case clippings on the chance it will be solved later.”

He cleared his throat and read a headline: “UNIDENTIFIED BODY FOUND IN HOTEL. WOMAN SOUGHT.”

“I remember the whole thing, so I won’t waste time reading it all to you,” he interpolated. “It does tie right in to Elsie’s story. The hotel maid in the Beloit on 23rd Street found the body at ten A.M. He was lying fully clothed on the floor with his head beaten in. Blood in the bathroom looked as though he’d been killed there and dragged out. No papers. No identification. He had registered with a woman about one A.M. under the name of… let’s see.” Radin consulted the clipping.

“Mr. and Mrs. Robert Pell of Greenwich, Connecticut. No street address. No luggage. They paid cash for the room. Woman was described by clerk as medium height and sort of dark. Under thirty and nice-looking. She appeared tight but able to navigate. No one saw her leave the hotel, but she had disappeared when the body was found. That’s all in the first clipping.”

Ed Radin laid it aside with satisfaction. “Does it begin to add up?”

“Wait a minute,” objected Shayne. “Your clipping says the Beloit Hotel on 23rd Street. The script calls it the Halcyon on upper Madison. And Elsie Murray had her man’s throat slashed. This one was slugged to death. Yet she told Halliday that her story was factual except for changing names and descriptions of the people involved.”

“I’d say it is still factual,” argued Radin. “Naturally, she’d change the name and location of the hotel. And the actual manner of the man’s death. A knife or a blunt instrument? That isn’t a change of fact. Not really. You’ve got to realize she hoped to have this story published, and she couldn’t afford to describe the scene so definitely that readers would remember the case from their newspapers.”

“How will we know how much else she may have changed to suit herself?”

“We won’t, for sure. But I’d guess she changed only the facts that appeared in the newspaper accounts. My interpretation of what she told Brett would be that she used the truth wherever it was possible without pointing the finger at her or any other real person. Let’s go on with it and see. Here’s the next day’s follow-up.”

He smoothed the second clipping out and glanced down it, nodding slowly:

“The body was identified that afternoon by the man’s room-mate, Alfred Hayes, who read a description and checked on it because his friend was missing. A man named Elbert Green. Shipping clerk in a publishing house. Unmarried, thirty-five and a quiet, studious type. Green and Hayes had been to a party the preceding evening… name of host considerately not mentioned… and Hayes told the police he was under the impression that Green might have left the party with one of the female guests, identity unknown to him (he claims).

“There isn’t much more on it,” Radin ended dolefully. “The principals weren’t important and nothing sensational developed. The next story simply says that police interrogated all the guests at the party and were given the name of one girl who several of them thought might have left with the murdered man. But she was able to produce an alibi in the person of another man who had actually driven her home, and that was that. Doesn’t say so here,” Radin went on, “but you can be sure the cops tried to get her identified by the people at the Beloit and failed. That doesn’t mean much either way, but with nothing more to go on, they’d have to drop her.”

He paused and laid the clippings aside. “What do you make of it?”

“I’d still think,” said Shayne, “it was just a jump-off for a purely fictional story except for one thing.”

“Her murder last night and the missing manuscript?”

“Exactly. That may be important. If Elsie Murray was the mystery woman in Elbert Green’s death, and if she wrote it up pretty much as it happened to her…” Shayne paused to frown and take a drink of his watered whiskey.

“That’s the crux,” said Radin emphatically. “Elsie’s death just as she was presumably on the eve of showing her script to Brett… a professional mystery writer who might come on an unpleasant truth which had eluded Elsie… that, and now Brett’s own disappearance. Those are two tangibles we can’t disregard.”

“We need a lot more information about Elsie herself,” said Shayne decisively, “and about all the people involved in the investigation of Elbert Green’s death three months ago. The room-mate, for instance. She describes him as an author. Was he? How close is her physical description of him to what he was?”

“It doesn’t say in the paper,” Ed Radin admitted. “I can follow that line up with my pipelines into the police files. Shall I mention the possibility that it may tie in with Elsie’s death?”

“I don’t see how you can unless you give them this script to read for themselves. Think you want to do that?”

“I don’t see how in hell I can without telling the whole story of how Brett came by it and how I advised him last night to sit tight and not stick his neck out. It’s a mess,” Radin ended ruefully.

“Not too much of one. Hell, if I know cops they wouldn’t have the brains to see anything in the script anyhow. If you’d given them Brett last night, they’d be spending all their time trying to sweat something out of him right now and the script would be disregarded. As it is, we can work on it.”

“If they were trying to sweat something out of him, we’d at least know he was alive and safe. Goddamn it, Mike! I wish to God…”

“No regrets,” said Shayne savagely, draining off his drink and swinging to his feet. “Never waste time on regrets. Maybe you did make a mistake. All right.” His voice was hard, the lines in his rugged face deepening to trenches as he glared down at the despondent writer. “Everybody makes mistakes. The man who’s worth a damn is the one who goes forward from each mistake he makes. Never look back. Right now, we’ve got to find Brett Halliday. Get off your dead butt and let’s move. You take the police angle on the Green case. I’ll pick up the Murray angle myself. If we can pull any threads of the two together, we may have something to work on. Will two hours be enough for you?”

The driving urgency in the redhead’s voice automatically brought Radin to his feet. He saw it for himself now. What Halliday had tried to describe in his accounts of Michael Shayne’s past cases. There was something in the man that wouldn’t let him fail. It was much more than conscious determination. Something from deep within that drove him on and on in the face of the most impossible odds. At this moment, with his best friend probably dead or in danger of death and with the man before him who might well be responsible for it, Michael Shayne wasted no moment nor one iota of energy on recriminations. When things went wrong, you picked up the pieces and went on.

Between his teeth, Ed Radin responded grimly, “Two hours will be plenty for me. Shall I meet you here?”

“Yes. We’ll leave the script and maybe it’ll mean more to us when we get back.” Michael Shayne grinned briefly and held out his hand.

“Don’t worry too much about Brett.” His voice was warm now, assured and vibrant. “I’ve known that guy for fifteen years and I’m not going to worry. We’ve got other things to do. Let’s roll. Where do I start getting background on Elsie Murray?”

“Gosh, I hardly know. The police hadn’t picked up much by this morning.”

“What about her job?”

“I don’t think she had one. I believe she told Brett she’d quit work a couple of months ago when she moved into the Johnson apartment and started writing this book. I’ve seen her around MWA meetings recently, but I don’t know any particular friends.”

“What about the fellow who turned Brett in this morning?”

“Avery Birk?” Ed Radin brightened. “He’d be one to ask. He’s hot on the tail of every gal who shows up at MWA without an escort carrying a sap. He wouldn’t get to first base with a girl like Elsie, but God how he would have tried. Seeing a perfect stranger like Brett walk off with her last night must have soured him plenty.”

“So he calls the cops quick when he hears about her,” agreed Shayne. “Where do I find him?”

“Some place in the Village, I think. I’ll call MWA headquarters and ask for his address.”

Radin turned to his telephone and dialed a number. He asked a question after identifying himself, and scribbled down the reply after waiting little over a minute. He handed the notation to Shayne, saying, “No telephone, but you’ll likely find him in this time of morning.”

Shayne pocketed it and they went out of the office together.