She Woke to Darkness (10 page)

The redhead nodded, his gray eyes narrowing slightly. “From Miami, Florida. Michael Shayne.”

The clerk had returned to his position behind the desk, and he leaned forward eagerly as Shayne gave his name. “I thought I recognized you from your last trip, Mr. Shayne.” He said to the New York detective: “You know… this is Michael Shayne. The detective…”

Grayson nodded. He said flatly, “I know. Want to come along up, Shayne?”

“Sure. But what the hell is this?” protested the redhead. “Is Brett in some kind of trouble?”

“They’ll tell you all about it upstairs.” Grayson led the way to a waiting elevator and they went up. They got out and went down the corridor to the open door of a hotel suite. Three men were in the sitting room. They all turned to look as Grayson said from the doorway, “Here’s a friend of Halliday’s just got in from Miami. Name of Michael Shayne.”

All three of the men were dressed conservatively in dark suits. “Dick” was stamped unmistakably on the faces of two of them. The third was a solidly built man. A pleased smile lighted his face as he hurried forward with outstretched hand. “Mike Shayne! You couldn’t have turned up at a better time. You any idea where Brett is?”

Shayne said, “My plane landed less than an hour ago. Halliday was expecting me to join him here this morning. Why are the cops interested?”

“We’ll do the talking, Ed,” the larger and older of the two plainclothesmen interposed. He had a lined face that was weary from lack of sleep. He introduced himself to Shayne without offering his hand. “I’m Peters, of the Precinct Squad. I’m carrying the case. This is Lieutenant Hogan from Homicide.”

“And I’m Ed Radin,” the first speaker interposed. “An old friend of Halliday trying to help out. I remember him telling me a couple of days ago that you were flying up for the weekend, and he promised to fix it for me to meet you.”

Shayne caught the nuance of anxiety in his tone and was instantly alerted to play along with the falsehood Radin had just told. He said, “You write too, don’t you? True crime stuff?”

“You and Ed can go into all that later on after you’ve answered a few questions,” said Peters impatiently. “Remember you’re sitting this one out on sufferance, Ed. Now, Shayne. Where’s Halliday hiding?” The three words came out like bullets.

Shayne looked astonished. “Hiding? What the hell from?”

“You claim you don’t know?”

“I don’t know one damned thing about any of this,” protested Shayne vehemently. “I flew up this morning to join Halliday for the weekend. He knew I was coming, and I expected him to be here waiting. That’s all I know. Now: What’s happened?”

“Not much,” said Peters pleasantly. “Looks as though he killed a dame last night and has taken it on the lam. You any ideas where he might try hiding?”

“Killed a dame?” echoed the redhead. “Brett Halliday? You must be crazy.”

“Maybe,” said Peters imperturbably. “We’ve got a dead woman and our only suspect is missing. You add it up.”

“I will,” said Shayne angrily. He turned to Ed Radin. “What’s the dope on all this?”

“It’s a long story,” Radin evaded. “Essentially, Brett’s the last person known to have seen the dead girl… and now he’s inexplicably missing when they come to question him. I’d like to give you the whole story,” he went on earnestly, “and see what you make of it. You must know him better than anyone else in the world, and we’re lucky you’re here to help out. Don’t you think so, Lieutenant?” he asked the tall officer from Homicide who hadn’t spoken yet.

“Oh, sure,” Hogan said sarcastically. “I’ve read some of those books about you, Shayne. Make one of your famous passes and give us Elsie Murray’s murderer, and we’ll all go home and get some sleep.”

A muscle twitched in Shayne’s jaw at the lieutenant’s sneering tone. He shrugged wide shoulders and deliberately walked across the room to a low table holding an almost empty bottle of cognac. “Anybody mind if I have a drink of Brett’s liquor?”

“Don’t touch the bottle or anything in the room,” said Peters sharply. “We haven’t fingerprinted anything yet.”

“Let’s get out some place where we can talk,” said Ed Radin wearily from behind him. “You don’t need us, do you?” he asked Peters.

“Hell no. You two smart lads go ahead and solve our case for us. In the meantime, if either of you are hiding Halliday, you’d better keep him damn well hid.”

“We’ll do that,” said Shayne angrily. He strode to the door and picked up his bag where he had dropped it, went out into the corridor followed by Radin.

Neither of them said anything until they reached the elevator. Then Radin removed his hat, rubbed his hand over his head wearily and said, “They’re not bad… for cops. They don’t know Brett personally, and damn it! he didn’t help matters by running out before they got to him.”

The elevator stopped and they got in. Downstairs, Shayne registered and gave his bag to a bellboy to take up to the room assigned to him while Radin waited silently. “Dining room’s through here,” the New York crime writer suggested. “How about food while we talk?”

“And drink,” said Shayne. He followed Radin through a small rear lobby into a cheerful dining room where a few early risers were at the white-covered tables. The captain led them to a secluded corner, but shook his head dolefully when Shayne told him, “I’ll start with a double slug of cognac. Monnet, if you’ve got it.”

“Sorry, sir, but that’s impossible. The bar is not open so early.”

“Wait a minute,” Shayne detained him as he started to turn away. “They must have something in the kitchen for a thirsty man. Cooking sherry, maybe?” He grinned widely. “In a coffee cup will be fine.”

He lifted his cupped hands from the table and a wadded bill lay on the white cloth. It disappeared and the captain turned away, saying briskly, “I will send a waiter for your order.”

Shayne settled back and lighted a cigarette, said quietly, “It’s sort of funny about Brett telling you two days ago that he expected me today.”

“It would be funnier,” said Radin morosely, “if he had told me that. I keep getting in deeper and deeper covering up for him,” he burst out. “If they ever learn the truth, I’ll be sunk in New York so far as any inside tracks are concerned.”

Shayne studied his face for a long moment, and knew he liked and trusted the man. He said, “We’ll have to see they don’t learn the truth. You know that Brett phoned me last night?”

Radin nodded. “He called me first. Later, he told me he’d called you and that you were flying up. He and I should have come clean right in the beginning,” he went on moodily. “It would have been much better if we hadn’t started covering up. But we didn’t know how bad it was at first… and he had that damned manuscript he wanted a chance to read before the cops grabbed it as possible evidence. I was fool enough to play along in the beginning, and now I’m in so deep I can’t get out from under.”

A waiter came to the table with a tray bearing a single coffee cup on a saucer. He deftly set it in front of Shayne, opened a sugar bowl and offered a pitcher of cream to the detective, his face blandly expressionless. Shayne lowered his head and sniffed the contents of the cup, told the man, “I’ll take it black, thanks,” and then he and Radin gave their breakfast orders. Shayne gulped half the contents of the cup as the waiter turned away, breathed a deep sigh of satisfaction and settled back to light a cigarette.

“Brett didn’t tell me much on the telephone. Just that he’d been with some girl, and she was murdered after he left her place. Fill me in.”

Ed Radin nodded and began at the beginning when he had been wakened from sound sleep by a telephone call from Brett Halliday asking him to check what had happened at Elsie Murray’s apartment.

He continued with a factual account of going there to observe the police investigation into her death, his subsequent brief visit with Halliday in the upstairs hotel suite, and how he had left him there to finish reading Elsie’s manuscript before taking it to be duplicated.

“And I don’t know whether he got the script to them for duplication or not,” he ended uneasily while the waiter placed their breakfast orders before them.

“I went home from the precinct about four-thirty to catch a few winks, and was back before eight when they got a telephone call from a man named Avery Birk who had read the early paper and reported that he had seen the dead girl leave the Henry Hudson Hotel about midnight with a mystery writer named Brett Halliday who was visiting in New York from Miami.

“I had to play that up to the hilt, of course, by telling them at once that I knew Brett quite well, and even knew the hotel he was staying at in the city. They let me come along… and there was no Brett when we got here. Door was locked. Bed was mussed as though he’d lain on it. Not a trace of Elsie’s manuscript in the room. Best information they could get from the clerk and elevator operator is that Brett went out quite openly about five o’clock. None of them noticed, though whether he was carrying a script or not. The operator thinks he came back about an hour later, but can’t swear to it. No one saw him after that. If he did come back, why did he go out again? Where to? I had impressed on him that it was vitally important he make absolutely no move to indicate to the police that he knew anything was wrong. That he wait calmly for them to find him… or for him to read about Elsie himself and volunteer to call them.”

“Isn’t it possible he’s still downtown waiting to get the script duplicated?”

“I hope not,” groaned Radin. “If he is and they find it out, it’ll throw everything haywire. I told him to use my name at the duplicators.”

“Why not telephone them now?” suggested Shayne.

“Sure. I’d better. I was wanting an excuse to get to a phone when you showed up.” Radin got up hastily and crossed the dining room to the telephone booths outside.

He returned in a few minutes and nodded as he reseated himself opposite Shayne. “I don’t know whether it’s good or bad. He did bring the script in a little after five o’clock. He picked it up half an hour later, leaving the duplicate copy for me. It’s there now. Where the devil did he vanish to at six o’clock in the morning? If he did come back to the hotel as the elevator operator thinks…” Radin paused uncertainly, shaking his head.

Shayne finished wolfing down his breakfast and poured himself a second cup of coffee. “Not being a writer myself, I’m afraid I don’t fully understand the significance you and Brett seem to place on the girl’s manuscript. Didn’t you say it was just a story she was writing?”

“This thing of Elsie Murray’s was much more. She told Brett that everything in it was actually true, that it had happened to her, and she had just changed the names and descriptions of the characters involved. And the carbon
was
missing from her apartment when the police got there, you know. It’s a funny damned thing for a murderer to steal… an unfinished manuscript. And there was the phone call just before Brett left her in which she told someone she planned to show it to him today. None of that is conclusive, but it could be the motive behind her death.”

“Brett probably decided he had spotted the clue in the manuscript,” Shayne said. “And like the damned impulsive fool he is, rushed out to grab the murderer himself before I got here to help him.”

“If he did spot the clue correctly…?” said Ed Radin.

“Then we may well have another murder on our hands already,” said Michael Shayne grimly. “Brett’s a nice guy and a hell of a competent writer, but he isn’t exactly the type I’d choose to confront a killer single-handed. Finish your breakfast and let’s take a look at the manuscript. If we can find what Brett thought he found, we may know where to start looking for him.”

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.