When Dorinda Dances

Chapter XVII

The four men and Lucy Hamilton flew to New York together the next day on a plane that arrived shortly after two o’clock. They passed up the airlines bus that was waiting to carry passengers to the 42nd Street terminal, and took a taxi instead directly to The Berkshire on 52nd and Madison Avenue.

The hotel had a small, comfortable lobby with an entrance on 52nd Street, with an unostentatious desk on their right as they entered, a bank of three elevators directly in front, a magazine stand and arched entry to the dining-room and cocktail lounge on the left of the elevators.

Shayne paused inside the double doors to look the lobby over casually while the others went to the desk to check their reservations made by telephone the preceding evening.

He noted a youngish man wearing a well-cut tweed suit, white shirt, and unobtrusive tie lounging negligently at the entrance to the magazine stand, and he sauntered over to tell him quietly, “I’m Shayne from Miami. Are you on Godfrey?”

The New York detective nodded and held out his hand, his eyes becoming alert and interested as he looked the rangy redhead up and down. “We’ve heard a lot about you up here, Shayne. My name is Bemish.”

They shook hands cordially and moved away to stand just inside the dining-room archway out of earshot of anyone.

“Is Godfrey in now?” Shayne asked.

“In his room on the tenth floor. My partner, Dixon, is staked out in the next room.”

“Give me a quick runover of his movements since he reached town.”

Bemish shrugged and shook his head wryly. “There’s damned little. He went straight to his room from the airport, ordered lunch from room service, and came down once for some cigarettes and magazines. One phone call to White Plains which I think you were given last evening. He ate dinner alone here in the Berkshire Room, and went upstairs about eight-thirty.

“Breakfast in his room at nine-fifteen, and he came out at ten-thirty and walked up the street one block to De Pinna’s on Fifth Avenue where he had himself fitted for a suit. He has no account there and isn’t known. He gave this hotel as his address. From the store he walked back on Fifty-Second to a restaurant across the street, the Chez Cardinal, where he had three Martinis and a leisurely lunch. Then directly back here and upstairs about half an hour ago.”

“It sounds,” said Shayne with satisfaction, “as though he’s lying low.”

“Or else a man on vacation without a care in the world — just killing time until his cocktail date with a dame at four o’clock. Do you want to pick him up now?”

“No,” said Shayne emphatically. “Let him keep that date by all means. You see, this is a matter of identification. We want to observe him while he’s acting naturally with no idea he’s being followed.” He turned and saw that the other members of his party had registered and were waiting for him at the desk, and he lifted a hand to say, “We’ll go up now and get settled. We’ll be in the bar from half past three on. If he is our man, we’ll try to take him quietly.”

Bemish nodded and strolled over to the desk with him. “Let’s make it as easy as we can,” he agreed. “The management is being very co-operative.”

Shayne found that he and Rourke had been assigned a suite together on the eighth floor, with Lucy installed in a single room next door. Henry Black had a single room farther down the corridor, and Elliott Gibson had insisted on a suite for himself which necessitated his taking one on the twelfth floor.

As soon as a boy had shown them their rooms and left, Lucy and Black joined the two others in the sitting-room of a large and pleasantly furnished suite, and Shayne called Gibson on the twelfth floor to invite him down for a drink while they waited until time to adjourn to the bar.

When the lawyer refused, saying he would join them downstairs later, Shayne gave him a brief resume of Bemish’s report, then called room service and ordered four double sidecars sent up.

It was five minutes after three when Shayne re-entered the sitting-room. Black and Rourke were seated on the sofa talking together in low tones, and Lucy sat in a deep chair near one of the windows overlooking Madison Avenue.

There was a strained look on Lucy’s face and her fingers were twined together tightly in her lap. She shuddered a little and glanced at her watch as Shayne pulled a chair closer to her.

“I’ve got wiggles in my stomach,” she confessed miserably as Shayne sat down near her. “I wish I knew why you insisted that I come along, Michael. And that you’d give me some idea what to expect in the bar at four o’clock.”

He shook his head decisively. “I want you to come at it without any preconceptions at all. It’s too easy for a person’s mind to twist things around and see what they expect to see — when it may be something else altogether. Just relax,” he urged her with a grin. “This is your first trip to the big city, so try to enjoy it. If we’re lucky we’ll have this whole thing over by four-thirty, and then you and Tim and I will go out on the town. There’s a joint down in the Village where I hung out more years ago than I like to admit—”

He broke off to answer a ring at the door, admitted a waiter with their drinks.

The sidecars were strong with good cognac, bittersweet with plenty of fresh lemon juice and a judicious amount of Cointreau, very cold in their separate serving-receptacles nestled in crushed ice.

Lucy drank sparingly, but she did relax a little as the three men enjoyed their cocktails and talked about anything except the affair that had brought them North. The time passed with surprising swiftness, and it was a little past three-thirty when the last drop of the four double sidecars had disappeared.

They went down in an elevator together, and found Bemish in the lobby, reading the afternoon paper with apparent avid interest. His alert gaze met Shayne’s over the top of the paper, however, and he got to his feet, to join the quartet as they moved toward the archway.

“Still upstairs in his room,” he reported. “Here in the Berkshire, we get a break on a thing like this,” he added, “because the manager of the Five Hundred Room just happens to be an ex-dick, Larry Dagger. Recently retired after twenty years with the Detective Bureau. I’ve told him about you, and—” He broke off abruptly as they moved through the archway and around a corridor, moved forward to greet a heavily built, pleasant-faced man lounging at the entrance to the cocktail bar.

He turned with him, explaining, “This is Mike Shayne from Miami, Larry.”

Shayne shook hands with the ex-New York detective, introduced the others, and briefly explained the setup. “He’s meeting a woman in the bar at four o’clock. We want to observe them both without being noticed.”

Larry Dagger nodded as Bemish returned to his post in the lobby, led them forward into an intimate and tastefully decorated cocktail lounge with a right-angled bar covering most of two sides, and comfortable padded benches around the other two sides with tables set far enough apart for comfort and ease.

“He’ll probably come in this way,” mused Dagger. “Why not take this large table in the corner at your right. Will he recognize any of you?”

“We’re not sure,” Shayne told him truthfully. “You and Black sit on that side facing toward this entrance,” he suggested to Rourke. “Lucy and I will sit here facing the bar, and when Gibson comes down, he can take a chair in front of us.”

He shook hands with the manager again as they seated themselves, and promised him, “We’ll see that everything is kept just as quiet as possible.”

Dagger said he appreciated that, and not to hesitate to call on him for anything further. He moved away quietly then, to circulate among the six guests that were the only other occupants of the room — a very young couple with their heads together at a table on one side, three middle-aged men standing in a group at the bar drinking Scotch, and a woman seated alone at the other end of the bar. She was in her sixties and fat, was slovenly dressed, and was drinking beer and talking loudly to the bartender whenever he looked in her direction.

Shayne ordered sidecars from a waiter, and they sat quietly together in the corner nook waiting for their quarry to appear.

The elderly woman finished her beer and stalked out of the double doors opening directly onto Madison Avenue with a slurring remark over her shoulder to the bartender about his lack of true gentlemanly hospitality, headed doubtless, for 3rd Avenue where the surroundings would be more congenial.

Three brisk young men entered from Madison soon afterward, a little overdressed and chattering together a little too obviously for the benefit of listeners about a radio rehearsal just concluded at CBS across the street.

At 3:42 a silvery-haired gentleman entered from the hotel and took a chair at a table near the quartette. He ordered a rum old-fashioned and gave the waiter explicit directions for its preparation.

Three minutes later, Bemish entered the lounge from the hotel. He strode directly across the room to a stool at the end of the bar nearest the Madison exit without as much as a glance around.

He had scarcely seated himself when another man came in behind him, pausing just inside for a casual but thorough look about the room, his gaze sliding swiftly over the few occupants as he assured himself there was no lone female waiting.

He was bareheaded, with blond hair parted smoothly in the middle and brushed back in slight waves. He had an alert, lean face well-tanned by the Miami sun, and wore fawn-colored gabardine slacks, an open-throated sport shirt, and a suede jacket a few shades lighter than the slacks.

Henry Black and Timothy Rourke sat with their eyes fixed on him as he moved with athletic grace to the bar and seated himself on a stool.

A curious expression came over Lucy’s face as she watched him approach the bar. Incredulity mingled with dawning comprehension and with complete dismay. She whispered a startled “But Michael—” and he shook his head at her violently, gripping her wrist with one big hand to enforce silence.

Another neatly and inconspicuously well-dressed young man, much like Bemish, followed him in and sat at the table nearest the hotel exit.

Timothy Rourke leaned forward to speak in a low voice to Shayne. “It’s Godfrey, all right. I’d recognize him anywhere from those photographs.”

Shayne raised his eyebrows with a slight nod. “Godfrey or a twin brother,” he agreed. “But pictures are never conclusive. How about it, Hank?” he asked the other detective whose gaze hadn’t left their quarry for a single instant.

Without looking at him, Black said, “Give me one more minute. He’s ordering a drink. I sat and watched my man drink four cocktails at dinner night before last.”

Shayne’s hand remained tightly and warningly on Lucy’s wrist. They waited tensely while a drink was set before the man and he idly twirled it between his fingers for a moment before lifting it to his lips.

Then Henry Black nodded quietly, “That does it, Mike. I’m sorry as hell to throw a monkey wrench in anything, but that’s the same man I tailed in Miami. I’ll have to swear to that in any court.”

Instead of disappointment, a slow grin of satisfaction spread over Michael Shayne’s face. “But he still isn’t positively identified as Godfrey. Where in hell is Gibson?” he went on angrily. “That’s what we need him for. If this guy isn’t Hiram Godfrey in person—”

Lucy Hamilton interrupted him by starting violently. “There’s Mrs. Davis, Michael. Coming through the glass door.”

Shayne nodded with satisfaction at sight of the poised body and exquisite beauty of the woman who was entering alone from the Avenue. She wore a black velvet afternoon dress this time that fell in swirling folds to her ankles, but the same wide-brimmed black hat she had worn in his office and there was no possibility of mistaking her.

He said, “Shh,” gently to Lucy. “Of course, it’s Mrs. Davis. Weren’t you expecting her?”

Lucy didn’t reply. Her eyes were wide with startled amazement as the man at the bar looked up with a smile of pleasure and slid off his stool to hurry toward the woman who had just entered.

Her face lit up with happiness at sight of him, and she came into his arms gracefully and thankfully.

“Mrs. Davis, eh?” muttered Timothy Rourke, watching the tableau with slack-jawed amazement. “Your missing client, Mike? What gives? Mrs. Davis and Hiram Godfrey?”

“But it isn’t Godfrey, Tim,” Lucy exclaimed vehemently, unable to contain her excitement longer. “That’s Mr. Brewer. With the dye washed out of his hair and his glasses off and dressed entirely differently. But it is Mr. Brewer, isn’t it, Michael?”

Shayne’s eyes were twinkling as he nodded in response. “Lucy’s right, Tim. That’s one reason I brought her along — to verify a crazy hunch I had.”

“But if that’s Brewer,” said Tim helplessly, “who the devil is the corpse that’s been identified as Brewer?”

“That’s what we need Gibson for. He’s the only one who knows both Brewer and Godfrey. He promised to come down—”

While they were speaking, the couple under observation had drawn back from each other’s arms and were turning toward the bar.

Elliott Gibson’s voice, excited and loud from the entrance, halted them abruptly. “Hiram! And Mrs. Brewer. What a touching scene indeed.”

He moved toward the stricken couple arrogantly, nodding to the New York plain-clothes men. “You can arrest them both now, for the murder of this woman’s husband.”

“You’re out of your mind, Gibson.” Godfrey recovered himself swiftly and thrust the woman aside to confront the lawyer. “You can’t touch me for Brewer’s death. I have a perfect alibi.”

“I know you arranged to have one,” sneered Gibson, “but it didn’t work out that way. Take a look behind you over in that corner. There’s the detective who was supposed to alibi you. Let’s hear what he has to say.”

Hiram Godfrey turned slowly, and his face became pinched and hard as he saw the group from Miami. The two New York detectives had closed in quietly on either side of him and his body sagged suddenly as the strength and self-assurance went out of it.

Michael Shayne pushed back the table deliberately and got up. He moved slowly toward Gibson, asked him, “Can you swear this man is Hiram Godfrey?”

“Of course, I can,” said the lawyer impatiently.

“Then you’re not going to like this,” Shayne told him, “because Henry Black is ready to swear that this is the man he trailed from the West Flagler packing-plant and followed all night until he caught the New York plane next morning.”

It was Gibson’s turn to look incredulous and stricken. He opened and shut his mouth twice before asking Black lamely, “Is that correct?”

Black sauntered up to join Shayne. “I’m afraid it is,” he told the lawyer cheerfully.

“On the other hand,” Shayne told Detective Bemish casually, “go ahead and make your arrest. I’ll sign the murder charge myself.”