She Woke to Darkness (17 page)

“But that’s impossible! She didn’t go out to any barroom while I was with her. And I don’t believe she had time to do it before I got there.”

“I don’t believe it either,” said Recker nervously. “I’m just telling you what the police are saying.”

“Where could they have got hold of that idea?” The smooth baritone voice was lower now, with an ominous note concealed beneath the outward suavity. The visitor was moving forward into the room.

“How do I know?” burst out Recker defensively. “It’s the first I ever heard of it.”

“Are you sure of that, Lew? Sure
you
didn’t hand them that bit of gratuitous information?”

“How could I when I didn’t even know about it? Damn it, Dave! Are you suggesting she did make such a call?”

“I’m suggesting nothing.” Jensen’s voice was soft again. It came from a position near Recker, just beyond Shayne’s line of vision. “It occurred to me it was the sort of thing you might have dreamed up to save your own skin. After all, we know that you and I both perjured ourselves to save Elsie’s skin that night. We both know she had no idea in the world where she was or what happened after she left the party.”

Lew Recker wet his lips and cast an anxious, sidelong glance at Shayne beyond the door.

“I don’t know any such thing. No matter what you did, I didn’t perjure myself.”

“Come off it, Lew. Just between us girls, I know all about her turning up at Estelle’s place at four o’clock after being passed out cold for several hours. You didn’t tell the cops that.”

“N-no,” Recker stammered. “I didn’t see any reason to. I felt sorry for her.”

“Yeh?” David Jenson jeered. His voice cold and thick with jealous hatred. “It also gave you a hold over her, didn’t it? You know damn well she despised you after the first time you took advantage of her when she was tight, and that hurt your lousy ego. So you made a deal with her. You’d help alibi her for Green’s death if she’d let you into her bed when you demanded entry.”

“No! It wasn’t like that.” Beads of sweat were appearing on Lew Recker’s forehead. Close beside him, Michael Shayne felt Estelle trembling violently. His fingers tightened warningly on her arm. He wanted nothing to interrupt the conversation that was taking place in the other room.

Unfortunately, an interruption did occur at that moment. Lew Recker’s telephone began ringing, and with an apologetic, sidelong glance toward the redheaded detective, the writer moved forward to answer it.

Shayne heard him lift the receiver and say, “Hello?” and after a brief moment his voice came more loudly, “Michael Shayne? Wait just a moment. I don’t know… “

With an exclamation of angry impatience, Shayne released his grip on Estelle’s arm and strode forward into the living room. David Jenson whirled about in the center of the rug to stare at him in utter consternation, and Shayne had a momentary glimpse of a big blond man with a smoothly boyish face and light blue eyes that were round and big and seemed to stand out from the flesh.

Shayne tramped past him without a second glance, to Lew Recker who held the telephone out to him wordlessly. Shayne took it and snapped, “Yes?” into the instrument, heard Ed Radin’s voice come over clearly:

“Mike! We’re at the hospital and Brett will pull through. X-rays show no fracture. He won’t be conscious for twelve hours or so, but is otherwise okay.”

“Swell. You want to come down here for the windup?”

“You mean that, Mike?” Radin’s voice was eager. “Lieutenant Hogan is with me. He’s been wondering what the devil you’re up to?”

“Just tell the Lieutenant,” said Shayne happily, “that I’m about to make one of my famous passes and give him Elsie Murray’s murderer. After that, he can go home and get some sleep.”

“Yeh?” Ed Radin sounded doubtful. “You mean it, Mike?”

“I mean it. Come on down to Lew Recker’s place. You know the address?”

“On Madison. Sure. In about ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes will be fine.” Shayne replaced the receiver and turned slowly to survey the room.

Estelle Stevens had come in behind him, and she and Recker stood close together near the side door, their arms tightly around each other’s waist.

In front of them, standing solid and spread-legged on the rug with an angry scowl on his face was David Jenson. The man whom Elsie had called “Dirk” in her script. He wore fawn-colored slacks and a light tan sport jacket and looked like a sophomore football tackle.

He whirled about to face Michael Shayne and demanded, “What kind of hocus-pocus is this? Who are you to be eavesdropping on a private conversation?”

“The name is Shayne. Michael Shayne. A friend of Brett Halliday from Miami, if that’s news to you.”

“And who the hell is Brett Halliday?” blustered Jenson.

“I thought you were a member of the mystery writers too.”

“Oh? That Halliday? I’ve heard his name though I don’t believe I ever met him.”

“Perhaps not socially,” said Shayne. “Weren’t you at the banquet last night?”

“No.” Jensen’s voice was harsher than seemed necessary. “I never attend those affairs.”

Shayne shrugged. “Who told you Elsie Murray was taking Halliday home with her?”

“No one.” Jensen’s attitude became wary. “Not that I would have cared.”

“No? Not even if you’d known she intended to show him the unfinished manuscript she was writing?”

“Not even if I’d known that,” gibed Jenson. “Why should I have minded?”

“Because,” said Shayne savagely, “once any intelligent person read her script and tied it into the Elbert Green murder case and started checking back, you were definitely left out on a limb without the trace of an alibi.”

“Nuts! What makes you think I needed an alibi?”

“Elsie’s script made me think so.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t think you do either.”

“He doesn’t, Dave,” put in Lew Recker eagerly. “He’s just a private Shamus from Miami who’s horning in here in a last-ditch attempt to save Brett Halliday’s neck. Only God knows what he thinks he means by referring to a manuscript of Elsie’s. Personally, I don’t believe there ever was such a thing.”

“Don’t you, Lew?” Shayne asked the question quietly.

“No. She never talked to me about it. And I’m sure that if she’d had an unfinished script she needed advice on she would have shown it to me first of all.”

“What about Jenson?”

Recker looked surprised. “What about him? He writes a little, but no one would go to him for advice I should think.” He didn’t add, “not if I were available” but his tone and demeanor did.

“Yet I think it quite likely Elsie did just that. She was murdered,” Shayne added deliberately, “to prevent her from showing the manuscript to Halliday. And an attempt was made to murder him when the killer discovered he had gotten to her too late… that she had already passed on one copy of the incriminating document to Halliday.”

“I simply don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the big blond man with an air of honest bewilderment.

“Don’t you? It mostly revolves around a telephone call.” Shayne paused as a loud and authoritative knock sounded on Recker’s door. “And I think the man is just outside who can clear up the entire matter for us.”

He strode past David Jenson to the door, jerked it open but found Ed Radin and Lieutenant Hogan standing outside instead of Grady and the bartender whom he had expected.

He said, “Oh. It’s you,” without trying to hide his disappointment. “Come on in.” He held the door wide. “We’re not quite a quorum yet, but I hope we will be very soon.”

19.

Radin stood back to let the Homicide officer enter first, telling Shayne in a low voice, “Brett is absolutely okay. He’ll be conscious by five or six this afternoon and able to tell us what happened.”

Shayne nodded. “I almost know already.” He turned away from Radin, told Hogan, “I don’t know whether you’ve met any of these people or not. Detective Peters had a talk with Mr. Recker this morning, I think. Lew Recker,” he added sardonically with a wave of his hand. “An author, one of Elsie Murray’s lovers, and one of the persons who provided her with an alibi for the murder of a man named Elbert Green about three months ago.”

The Lieutenant nodded noncommittally. “We finally got onto that tieup and we’ve been checking all the testimony in that case.”

“Then,” said Shayne, “you’ll know all about Estelle Stevens and David Jenson.” He waved his hand again. “It was Jenson, you know, who backed up the alibi Recker gave Elsie.”

“I know,” said Hogan flatly. “According to Ed Radin, you’re trying to prove Miss Murray’s death last night sprang out of the Green murder.”

“I’m going to prove it,” said Shayne confidently. “In providing an alibi for her, one of the three parties involved also made an alibi for himself. Once I break hers down, his goes kaput too. That’s why Elsie was murdered.”

“Fair enough.” Lieutenant Hogan shrugged irritably. “Quit being cryptic about it and tell us something we don’t already know.”

“One thing you never found out while investigating the Green murder,” Shayne told him, “was that Elsie Murray reached her apartment house that midnight not only completely passed out, but also without her purse containing her keys and money. She couldn’t get in the front door, and she hadn’t even a dime with which to call a friend.”

“Wait a minute,” said David Jenson, stepping forward fast. “If you have been going over the testimony, Lieutenant, you’ll recall that point was mentioned. Elsie had given me her extra key at the party, and I followed Lew Recker’s car to her place. I was right behind them when he let her out, and I had her extra key which gave us entrance.”

“That may be the testimony,” said Shayne savagely, “but it isn’t the truth. Miss Murray was left on her own doorstep without a key, Lieutenant. She hesitated to waken the superintendent in her condition, and went down the street instead to the nearest bar where she was known to make a telephone call.”

He paused dramatically, then added, “She did make her call. To a man named Elbert Green. Asking him to come by and pick her up in front of the place.”

“Prove that statement.” Lew Recker was breathing heavily. “I challenge you to do so.”

“I intend to. My proof will be here in a moment. Green picked her up and they drove to the Beloit Hotel and registered as man and wife,” he went on conversationally to Lieutenant Hogan. “You can take it from there. It’s my theory that she was followed to the Beloit by a jealous suitor who later got into their room and killed Green. He then made himself an alibi for the night by pretending to alibi her.

“And here comes the proof I promised you,” he added with a sigh of relief as another knock sounded on the door. “Open it up, Ed.”

Ed Radin, who had remained standing close to the door did as Shayne requested. This time it was uniformed officer, Grady, and Jack, the bald-headed bartender from the Durbin.

Grady drew himself up and saluted smartly when he saw the Homicide Lieutenant, and Shayne introduced them: “This is one of your smarter harness bulls, Lieutenant. If anyone gets a promotion out of this, I think it should be Grady. Now Jack,” he went on sharply to the bartender. “You can see the jig is up. Lying won’t get you anywhere now. Point out which person in this room paid you to say, if you were asked, that Elsie Murray did not come in your place and borrow a dime from you to make a phone call the night Elbert Green was murdered.”

“He did.” The bald-headed bartender’s face was pale and he stood stiffly erect with a long forefinger pointed accusingly at David Jenson. “The next day after it happened, he came in and beat around the bush some and ended up by offering me a thousand dollars if I’d promise I wouldn’t tell the police that Miss Murray had made a call from our place the night before.”

“You knew it was in connection with a murder,” said Lieutenant Hogan sternly.

“I realized that, yes sir.”

“And you must know that withholding evidence is a crime in New York.”

“I suppose it is, yes, sir.”

“Then why did you agree to do it?” roared the Lieutenant. “You’ll be lucky, by God, if we don’t pull your license for this.”

“I don’t think so, sir.” The bartender was respectful but unfrightened.

“Why not?” thundered Hogan. “You admit you took a bribe to suppress relevant evidence in a murder investigation.”

“I admitted nothing of the kind, sir.” Jack retained his calm. “I admitted I took a thousand dollars from this gentleman…” Again he pointed directly at David Jenson. “…at his insistence, sir. To not tell the police if I was asked that Miss Murray had made a phone call from our place the preceding midnight.”

“What sort of quibbling is that? Suppression of evidence…!”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Jack smugly. “I saw nothing wrong in what I did. Suppose, sir,” he went on before the Lieutenant could explode again, “right here and now I was to offer you a thousand dollars if you’d promise me faithfully you wouldn’t tell my wife you’d caught me in bed with another woman this afternoon. Would it be a crime for you to accept the money?”

“Not necessarily. Because I
haven’t
caught you doing that.”

“Exactly, sir. And Miss Murray didn’t make any such telephone call as this gentleman paid me not to tell the police about.” Jack paused and shrugged elaborately. “He offered me the money, you see, to simply tell the truth. Why shouldn’t I have taken it? Was that a crime?”

“Wait a minute,” said Shayne harshly. “Are you trying to tell us Miss Murray didn’t come in at midnight and borrow a dime from you to make her call to the man who was subsequently murdered?”

“I don’t know how I could say it any plainer, sir,” sighed Jack. “I not only say that’s the truth, but I’ll swear to it on a stack of Bibles ten feet high.”

“Then why,” demanded Shayne, “did you tell Mr. Recker here,” he turned to point to Lew Recker, “just before you closed up that morning, that Miss Murray had made such a call?”

“I didn’t do no such thing,” said Jack earnestly. “I never saw this one before, so help me God.” He paused to draw in a deep breath and then addressed himself plaintively to Lieutenant Hogan: “God knows, Commissioner, I’m sorry if what I did was wrong. But it seemed all right to me. I was just getting paid to tell the truth, and I couldn’t see anything wrong in that.”