What Really Happened

Chapter nineteen

WHEN SHAYNE ENTERED his office a little before four o’clock, Timothy Rourke was in the small outer room talking to Lucy.

“You just missed your friend Sylvia,” the reporter told him with a saturnine grin. “She tried to think up reasons for sticking around to see you, but Lucy took her money and shooed her out.”

“I did not,” Lucy protested. “Actually, I feel sorry for Sheila Martin. She only had nine hundred and forty dollars. Do you really want to take her last penny, Michael? It seems awfully close to blackmail. Just because of something she did a long time ago when she was hungry.”

Shayne said, “Don’t feel too sorry for Sheila.” He took the folded paper from under his arm, opened it, and took out the picture file. “If you weren’t such a nice girl, Lucy, I’d show you a picture. As it is, you’d better take my word for it that the sob story Sheila pulled last night was carefully designed to gain my sympathy. She offered me that money,” he went on angrily, “to avoid being the subject of a full-scale police investigation into her connection with Wanda Weatherby’s murder. I’m giving her value received. Has a recording-machine been delivered yet?”

“It’s on your desk,” she told him. “Tim and I have been wondering what on earth you’re going to do with it.”

“You’d be surprised. It’s a handy little gadget.” Shayne grinned and waved the booklet of instructions. “Right now I’m thinking of making a recording for that program we talked about this morning.”

“You mean the Michael Shayne story — for radio? Are you serious?” Lucy’s brown eyes shone with delight.

“Not particularly, but it may have other uses. Don’t you know some girl who has an apartment at the Courtland Arms?” he asked her.

“Why — yes. Marilyn Knowles.”

“What floor?”

“The third, I think.”

“See if you can get her on the phone. If she’s in, invite yourself up sometime this evening. About eight o’clock would be best.” He turned to Rourke and said, “Come on in and let’s try out the recorder. According to this booklet, it’ll do practically anything except mix drinks.”

“Then junk the damned thing,” Rourke advised as he followed the redhead with a gangling gait.

Shayne opened the folder from Purly’s office and laid it on his desk beside the wire recorder. He said, “Take a look at those two pictures, Tim, and help me figure out some legitimate way to blast our friend Henderson — if I can’t hook him for killing Wanda.”

The reporter looked at the photograph with burning eyes. He whistled shrilly and said, “I see what you mean. This gives both Henderson and Sheila a motive for murdering Wanda. Why — if his wife and her husband ever got a gander at this — and—”

“Take a look at the other one,” said Shayne.

“Our friend Ralph,” Rourke observed. “Is that the ineffable Wanda with him?”

Shayne nodded. “Snapped by a private detective, all right, just as she told Flannagan that night at the motel. But I seriously doubt the story she told him about the detective being retained by a jealous husband. It was much more likely that she framed the whole thing.”

“And the one of Henderson and Sheila, too?” he asked, studying the first picture again. “You think Wanda Weatherby stage-managed it?”

“It’s a reasonable inference,” Shayne said dryly. “It was snapped in the front bedroom of her house.”

“Wanda must have been quite a gal,” Rourke observed dryly. “These explain three of her letters. Have you figured out the Gurley angle?”

“I think so, though we may never prove it. I can’t waste any sympathy on Gurley, but it would be tough on his daughter to suddenly learn that she is actually Wanda Weatherby’s daughter, born out of wedlock. Especially now, when she’s about to be happily married to a stuffed shirt in Tennessee.”

The buzzer on the intercom sounded. Shayne pushed a button and said, “Yes?”

“I have Marilyn on the phone, Michael. She’ll be home all evening. What shall I tell her?”

“That we’d like to pay her a visit about eight. Tell her you’ll call back later if we have to change our plans.” He cut the connection and turned to Rourke.

“Call Ralph Flannagan and tell him we’re throwing a party at his place tonight to clean this case up. About eight o’clock, and there’ll be—” He paused to count aloud on his fingers, “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven guests. Counting you, if you want to be in on it, Tim.”

Rourke hesitated, puzzled, but he asked no questions. He lifted the phone, gave Lucy a number, and Shayne prowled around the room for a moment, then opened the recorder case while Rourke made the call.

He unwound the extension cord, plugged it into an outlet, opened the textbook to a diagram on the front page, and studied it. He then plugged in the microphone at the end of its long cord, and began testing the controls, referring to the booklet for each move.

Rourke hung up after a brief conversation. “It’s all set for eight o’clock, Mike. Ralph is on pins and needles wondering what’s up, but I told him I didn’t know any more about it than he did. What are you planning to do tonight? Who are the seven guests? And what has Lucy’s friend in the third-floor apartment got to do with it?”

Preoccupied with the instrument, Shayne turned another switch, but nothing happened. He looked up at Rourke and asked, “Do you know anything about working these things?”

“Not a damned thing,” the reporter confessed. He narrowed his slaty eyes at the detective and asked, “You don’t think you can make a recording from another apartment on the floor above, do you? Won’t you have to bore holes and connect up a mike?”

“I don’t know,” said Shayne absently. “The salesman said this particular model — Wait a minute!” he exclaimed as the cylinders began to turn and the shining wire wound smoothly from a small spool to the larger drum. “That’s the gadget that does it. It should be recording our voices right now. See this little light,” he went on, “that flashes on and off when I speak? And here’s the volume control, Tim. You’re supposed to keep that turned just high enough while you’re recording so the light flashes on and off, but doesn’t stay on steadily. Let’s see if the salesman was right.”

He picked up the microphone and set it on the floor near the door and directed Rourke, “Leave it there, and you watch the volume control. I’ll go out and close the door and talk to Lucy. Damned if I believe any mike is powerful enough to pick that up, but the guy swore this one would.”

He went out and closed the door firmly. He said to Lucy, “Make a note of these names. I want you to call each one of them and insist that they meet me at Ralph Flannagan’s apartment in the Courtland Arms at a quarter of eight tonight.”

He paused while she got a memo pad and pencil. “Donald J. Henderson — Mrs. Sheila Martin — and a guy named Prentiss.” He stopped abruptly and said, “No, I’ll call Prentiss myself. He knows all about these recording-machines, and I’ll need expert advice. You call those two, Lucy. If they give you any argument, tell them they can come willingly, or with a police escort. And I’ll pick you up about seven-thirty. On the way to Marilyn’s apartment I’ll explain exactly what I want you to do.”

He opened the door and went into the other room where Rourke was leaning over the machine, watching it anxiously.

“I didn’t hear a sound through the door, Mike, but the light kept flashing on and off.”

“Good.” Shayne turned a knob from Record, to Rewind, and the machine reversed itself, spinning the wire backward onto the original spool with tremendous speed while the hand of the timer moved backward from three minutes toward zero.

He turned the knob to Play when the timer was almost at zero, and again the wire reversed and wound slowly onto the drum. They waited expectantly, but nothing happened. No sound came from the machine. Shayne frowned and twisted the volume control to Full. Still, the machine remained silent.

Shayne studied the textbook again, frowning in deep concentration. “Look, Tim,” he exclaimed, “turn that other knob from ‘Record’ to ‘Wire.’ It says that if you run it on ‘Play’ with the knob on ‘Record’ it will wipe off whatever is on the wire.”

Rourke hesitated, and Shayne reached over and turned the correct knob to Wire position and the other to Play. Immediately there was a blast of sound. Both men jumped and stared at the machine in dismay. Swiftly, Shayne remembered to turn the volume down. Modulated, the voice became his own.

“… so the light flashes on and off but doesn’t stay on steadily.” There was a momentary pause, then: “Leave it there, and you watch the volume control. I’ll go out and close the door and talk to Lucy.”

His recorded voice faded as he continued, “Damned if I believe any mike is powerful enough to pick that up, but the guy swore this one would.” The final words were scarcely audible, and again the machine was silent. A moment later another faraway sound came, faint and indistinguishable.

Shayne scowled, reached for the volume control and turned it higher. Instantly the words he had spoken in the outer office, with the door closed, came through clearly:

“… insist that they meet me at Ralph Flannagan’s apartment in the Courtland Arms at a quarter of eight tonight.” They both listened tensely until the recording was finished. Shayne nodded triumphantly and turned it off, exclaiming, “Hell, this gadget is going to revolutionize the detecting business. Why hasn’t someone told me about it before?”

“You’re just away behind the times,” Rourke told him. “These machines have been on the market for years. But what about this party at Ralph’s tonight? Who’s going to be there?”

“Henderson, Sheila Martin, Jack Gurley, Prentiss, Will Gentry, and you and me.”

“How does Prentiss fit in?”

“He may get an idea for a Michael Shayne radio program,” Shayne told him with a grin. “Also, he’s the last man we’ve found thus far who saw Helen Taylor alive.” He answered the intercom buzzer, and Lucy Hamilton said, “I got Mrs. Martin and Mr. Henderson. They both agreed to come — Mr. Henderson under protest.”

“Good. One more thing, Lucy, then you can go home. Wait — Hold it just a minute.” He picked up the folded copy of the Nashville newspaper and consulted the radio page.

“Get me radio station WMAK in Nashville, Tennessee. I want to talk to the manager or program director, or someone else in authority.” He closed the connection and said cheerfully, “You can beat it before I make that call, Tim. The less you know about what’s in the book for tonight, the better you’ll play up when it happens.”