The Corpse Came Calling

CHAPTER EIGHT

The man whirled as Shayne spoke, his breath whistling explosively through a gap in his upper teeth. He was short, muscular, and dark, with close-cropped black hair growing low on his forehead. He backed away from Shayne, crouching a little, and his right hand crept upward toward the unbuttoned top of his sack coat.

He asked, “What are you doing here?” in a hoarse voice that quavered a trifle.

Shayne laughed shortly. “I was about to ask you the same question. And I’d like to know how you come to be entering Helen’s apartment with a key of your own.”

He watched incredulity, dismay, then bewilderment succeed each other on Mace Morgan’s face. The last emotion changed to relief as the escaped convict slowly took in the implication of Shayne’s words and his first fear that he had been tracked down as a fugitive began to leave him. He straightened out of his crouch and glanced down at the flat key in his hand as though surprised to see it there.

“You see,” Shayne went on equably, “I thought I had the only extra key to this dump. I didn’t know that Helen passed them out in wholesale quantities. But hell! A man never knows about a woman. They’re all chippies at heart, and what they give to one man they’ll generally give to another. Am I right?”

The paralyzing glitter of fear was leaving Mace Morgan’s eyes. He eagerly followed the lead offered him by Shayne.

“Yeh,” he said. “Yeh, I guess you just about hit it on the head, pal. I’m like you. I thought I had the only extra key. It’s funny, huh? Ha-ha. We’re both suckers.”

“Looks that way.” Shayne stepped backward, getting out a pack of cigarettes. He shook one out and offered it to Mace, took one himself, and lit them both with the same match.

“I just got back to town,” Shayne explained. “Thought Helen would be glad to see me and I came right over. But I guess she hasn’t been lonely while I was gone.”

“I hope you don’t blame me, pal,” Mace defended himself. “I didn’t know I was cutting in on anybody else.”

“That’s all right.” Shayne waved his hand amiably. “I always say a man’s a damned fool to get sore when some floozie throws him over for another guy. Hell, there’s plenty more.”

“Yeh,” Mace chimed in eagerly. “That’s what I say, too. What’s one got that another can’t give you?”

Shayne said, “I’m not complaining.” He let smoke trail lazily from both nostrils. “Where is Helen? She might be embarrassed if she walked in right now and found both of us waiting for her.”

“Not Helen,” Mace Morgan chuckled. “That gal would take anything in her stride. What do we do-flip to see which one of us stays?”

Shayne said, “To hell with that. I know when I’m getting cold-shouldered.”

“You’re all right,” Mace told him generously. “Yeh, you’re a right guy. I’m sorry I was jumpy when I walked in.”

“I don’t blame you.” Shayne laughed. He went to the door, saying, “You don’t need to say anything about this to Helen if you don’t want to. I won’t horn in again.”

He mopped sweat from his forehead as he went toward the stairs. It was a miracle that the escaped con hadn’t thrown lead first and then started asking questions.

Outside the apartment he got in his car and started back across the causeway to the mainland. Phyllis would probably be in when he got back, he told himself. He’d give her hell for walking out on him like that.

But he drove fast, with his eyes intent on the pavement, his thoughts puzzled by the connection between Leroy and Helen. What was the tie-up between them-between Gorstmann and Lacy? He knew that Lacy had never been choosy about the sort of cases he took-like the divorce racket Helen had worked with him-but it was difficult for Shayne to believe that Lacy would be mixed up in any subversive activities with his country at war. On the other hand, Lacy’s professional reputation was hardly the sort to tie him up with the FBI in combating such enemy activities.

He hadn’t reached any conclusion by the time he reached the mainland and turned into Biscayne Boulevard. He couldn’t reach any conclusion until he learned more about the scrap of cardboard he had taken from Lacy. He was quite sure that Gorstmann had sent Leroy and Joe after Lacy that afternoon to secure the piece of cardboard, and the pair had muffed the assignment somehow when they stopped Lacy on the causeway. Perhaps they had trailed him to Shayne’s apartment, expecting him to die at any moment and Lacy had foiled them by making the superhuman effort that took him to his destination before he died.

Shayne shrugged off all the questions that were bothering him as he reached his apartment hotel. The important thing right now was Phyllis’s safety.

The clerk said he had not seen Mrs. Shayne come back, and handed him a telegram that had just been delivered. Shayne read it as he went up in the elevator. It was from Murphy in New York, and read:

Lacy at Tropical Hotel Miami Beach registered as Albert James. On vacation as near as can learn.

Shayne thrust the message into his pocket and unlocked his apartment. It was dark and empty. He went into the bedroom and got the Tropical Hotel on the telephone. He was informed that Albert James was registered in room 416, but he did not answer the telephone when the operator tried his room.

Shayne went back into the living-room and moodily poured himself a drink. “You’d think,” he said aloud into the silence, “that Phyllis would have learned better last time.”

The subdued sound of evening traffic coming in the open window was his only answer.

He walked aimlessly around the room, sipping the glass of cognac. After a time he got the Danube dinner check from his pocket and smoothed it out on the table. He drew his eyebrows down as he read Phyllis’s note again. He stood frowning at the piece of paper for a long time, then rummaged in a drawer for an airmail envelope.

He sat down with a clean sheet of paper and wrote:

Dear John: You should be able to bring out three sets of prints on the enclosed slip. They are mine, my wife’s, and those of a third party. Disregard mine (which are on file) and the lady’s prints. Wire me collect, immediately, anything you have on the third set.

He signed the letter Michael Shayne and addressed the airmail envelope to John Bascom, Dept. of Identification, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, D.C.

He folded the dinner check carefully inside the letter and sealed them in the envelope, then finished his drink and went out

He stopped at the desk and got a special-delivery stamp from the clerk, put it on the letter, and directed the clerk to send it out to the airport at once by messenger to catch the evening mail plane north.

The clerk promised to attend to it, then asked Shayne, “Did I do all right when I brought the cops up to your apartment, Mr. Shayne? After that other man dying in your office this afternoon, I guess I was jumpy.”

“You probably saved me from getting bumped off,” Shayne told him, and then asked curiously, “How about that dead man? You got me in plenty dutch when you told Painter he wasn’t wounded when he started upstairs.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Shayne. I swear I didn’t know. I didn’t notice a thing when he stopped here and asked for your office. That is, he was hunched over and hugging himself and he looked sick, but I sure didn’t know he was practically dead. If you’d told me what to say, you know I’d have done it for you.”

“Sure, I know you would. You didn’t tell them I was in, eh?”

“No, sir. I knew that much, anyway. They asked me when I’d seen you last and I pretended I didn’t remember.”

“You didn’t tell them about the girl you had sent up to my living-apartment?”

“No, sir.” The clerk was emphatic. “You know I never tell anyone anything about your affairs. I’ve been here long enough to realize how important it is to keep my mouth shut.”

Shayne told him that was swell, and not to neglect getting the special-delivery letter off.

The clerk was calling a messenger when he left the lobby. Shayne drove across the bay again, stopped at the Tropical Hotel just a block beyond the eastern terminus of the causeway. He strode through the lobby to the elevators and went up to 416.

He hesitated in front of the door when he saw it standing ajar. There was no light in the room. He knocked lightly but there was no response. He inched the door open and stretched a long arm inside, finding the wall switch.

When the lights came on he pushed the door inward all the way against the wall, then stepped inside and looked around the empty hotel bedroom carefully.

The room had the normal appearance of having been occupied by a man for several days, one who had gone out expecting to return soon. There were toilet articles in the bathroom, a folded newspaper on the bed, and an open Gladstone in one corner.

The newspaper was the previous Sunday’s New York Mirror. It was folded back at page fourteen, and a portion of the page had been cut out. A piece two columns wide and about eight inches long.

Shayne picked up the paper and studied it, seeking to find whether any portion of the cut-out item had been left to give a clue to the nature of the clipping. There was nothing to help him identify the portion that was gone, and he was laying the paper down when he heard a noise at the door of the room.

He turned his head slowly, making no other movement.

The blued muzzle of a service automatic showed in the crack. Then a hand and an arm became visible. Finally the figure of a man wearing a neat gray suit. He had steady gray eyes that looked at Shayne from beneath the brim of a Panama hat, and pleasant, strong features. He held the automatic in a firm grip as he stepped toward Shayne. He spoke pleasantly enough, though his features were set in hard, uncompromising lines.

“Turn around slowly and put both your hands flat on the wall above your head,” he commanded.

Shayne turned around slowly and put both his hands flat against the wall above his head. He said, “I don’t know who you are but I have a hunch we might get together if you’ll let me do some talking.”

The man behind him said, “You can talk all you want to, but don’t make a move away from that position.”

Shayne complained, “I hate to introduce myself to a man when he’s holding a gun on me.”

The telephone rang stridently from its stand on his left. He turned his head to see his captor step forward and pick up the instrument.

He was not more than two feet from Shayne, but he watched the detective coldly, the heavy-caliber automatic steady in his right hand. He said a crisp “Hello” into the mouthpiece, listened a moment, then said incisively:

“Pearson talking. I’ve been watching Lacy’s room from across the hall and just caught a man ransacking it. I suggest that you send a man-”

Shayne dropped his body low and to the left. His shoulder struck the speaker’s hips. The automatic went off once as Shayne’s big hand closed over it and prevented the recoil mechanism from closing. The two men went to the floor together and the telephone bounced off to one side.

Shayne drove his left fist to the point of the man’s jaw. He got up with the automatic in his hand, and Pearson lay on the floor motionless.

Shayne picked up the telephone and said, “Hello,” simulating Pearson’s curt tone as well as he could.

He stiffened with surprise when Peter Painter’s voice nagged at him over the wire. “What the devil’s going on up there? Everything under control?”

Shayne said, “Perfectly,” and waited to hear more.

“It sounded like a struggle,” Painter’s voice was reproving, as though he didn’t care for struggles. “What were you saying about catching a man in Lacy’s room?”

“Your stooge caught the wrong man,” said Shayne in disgust, resuming his normal voice. “Those dumb clucks of yours ought to know me by this time. He’s out cold, and I’ve got his gat.”

“My-stooge?” There was horror in Painter’s tone. “My God! Is that you, Shayne? Have you knocked Pearson out?”

“Why not? He walked in here and stuck a gun in my face without giving me a chance to explain.”

“You fool,” panted Painter. “Now you have stuck your neck out, Shayne. That isn’t one of my men. That’s Mr. Pearson, special agent from Washington. You can’t knock the FBI around.”

Shayne laughed angrily. He said, “This is a hell of a time to be telling me that.” He dropped the receiver onto its prongs and stood on wide-spread feet looking down at Pearson with a frown.

He shook his head, worrying the lobe of his left ear. He glanced down at the automatic still gripped in his hand, then slid the clip out and ejected the loaded cartridge from the firing-chamber. He tossed the unloaded weapon on the bed, walked over to Jim Lacy’s suitcase in the corner, knelt down, and began pawing through it.

Heavy feet trotted up to the door and stopped outside. Shayne straightened warily, then grinned at the worried face of the Tropical Hotel’s house detective.

He said, “Hello, Bowman. Come in and join the party.”

Bowman opened and closed his mouth twice before he was able to stammer, “Sounded like a shot from up here.”

Shayne said, “It sounded like what it was.” He jerked his head toward the supine figure of Pearson. “That bird took a shot at me and I had to cool him off.” He turned the Gladstone upside down and shook its contents out on the floor.

Over his shoulder, he suggested, “You might start pouring some water over him. But don’t try too hard to bring him to because I want to get finished here first.”