The Negro operator rolled the whites of his eyes at Shayne and sent the cage up fast. Shayne asked, “Which way is two-sixteen?” and the Negro pointed a shaking finger to the left as he opened the door.
Shayne sprinted down the hall and stopped at 216. The door was locked. He pounded on it without getting any response.
The elevator went down and brought up a white-faced clerk. His tightly compressed lips expressed his disapproval of Shayne and his aspersions against a guest, but he had an extra key which he reluctantly inserted in the lock.
Shayne rushed into the room and to the open window. He nodded grimly as he looked out and across to the bedroom window of his apartment. Turning back, he looked searchingly around the room, stooped and picked up a brass shell from the carpet. After studying it for a moment he held it out to the clerk, saying, “An automatic rifle. The slug out of that shell missed my head by a couple of inches.”
The clerk stared and his body shook with fright. He stammered, “I don’t understand. I didn’t hear anything. I simply don’t understand it… unless the man was, perhaps, an enemy of yours.” He glared through his glasses with suspicion at Shayne’s set face and hot gray eyes and backed away.
“You’re going to stay and witness this,” Shayne said harshly. He was examining an unlocked Gladstone containing a wadded collection of old newspapers. He bent to examine them, sniffed, and pointed to an oily spot on one of the papers. “He brought the rifle in that bag, taken down, so it would fit easily.” He stood on widespread legs and glowered at the clerk.
“But… but… all our guests bring luggage,” he stuttered, his bespectacled eyes blinking nervously.
“Stop having the hissies and tell me all about the guy that rented this room,” Shayne demanded, his fists doubled.
“He… he seemed quite a gentleman,” the clerk insisted. “He arrived in a taxi with that one bag about half an hour ago. He was tall and slender and very well dressed. He insisted that he must have a room with a southern exposure and on the second floor. I showed him the floor diagram with a few vacancies on this side, and he… selected this room. That’s all I can tell you about him. But,” he went on with rising agitation, “where is he? He hasn’t gone out… I’m sure of that.”
“You’ve got a back stairway, haven’t you?”
“Of course… the one leading to the service entrance, but our guests…”
“He wouldn’t stick around here very long,” Shayne mused. “I don’t believe he knows whether he got me or not. Don’t touch a thing in here. I’ll get the police up to look for fingerprints. What name did he sign?”
“I’m not sure.” The subdued clerk followed Shayne out. “We can look in the file.”
The file was not very helpful. It supplied the name of B. Antrim, New York City. Shayne pocketed the card over a protest from the clerk and after showing his badge. He called Will Gentry and told him what had happened and suggested locating the taxi driver as a possible means of tracing the would-be assassin.
The early edition of the Herald was delivered to the hotel while Shayne was phoning Gentry. It had already been on the streets for more than an hour.
Shayne bought a copy and went back to his apartment.
CHAPTER 5
Tommy had a copy of The Herald spread out on the desk when Shayne went into the lobby. He looked up from the headline which read: MIKE SHAYNE REFUSES TO REVEAL RATION RACKET, and his face was clouded. “Gee, they sure make it look bad for you here in the paper.”
“Do they?”
Tommy said angrily, “Looks like the newspapers and the cops’d learn to lay off when you’re working on a murder case. Don’t you always get your man, Mr. Shayne?”
Shayne grinned. “Newspapers have to have headlines and the cops have to hold their jobs. By the way, you’ll have to get a new pane put in my bedroom window right away.”
“Did something happen? What’d you go running out for just now?” the young clerk asked eagerly.
“Chasing a clue,” Shayne called on his way to the elevator.
A stench filled his apartment when he opened the door. Shayne swore under his breath and longlegged to the kitchenette. The water had boiled out of the percolator and the vile odor of burning coffee was stifling. He snatched it from the fire, turned off the heat, and went back to the living room to spread out the front page of the morning Herald.
There was a photograph of himself beside a picture of Herbert P. Carlton. Below them was a faded likeness of Clem Wilson and an exterior shot of the filling station on the Tamiami Trail.
Shayne shucked off his coat and sat down; he tugged at his earlobe as he glanced over the newspaper story. The facts were, as a whole, correct, but they were presented in a manner to intimate that the detective had a sinister personal motive in suppressing what Wilson had told him over the telephone. His supposed association with criminal elements in the city was recalled to readers, and the entire story was couched in phrases to make it appear that Shayne was circumventing justice by refusing to turn his information over to the authorities.
Chief Will Gentry came in for his share of castigation for not taking more effective measures to force Shayne to reveal the facts in his possession.
Shayne grinned as he finished reading the story. The Herald had been after his scalp for a long time because he had let Timothy Rourke scoop them on the News. This was too good a chance to pass up.
At that, he reflected grimly, it wasn’t a bad angle to consider. If the gang could be led to believe that he was holding out for a pay-off, they might decide to make him an offer rather than waste time and bullets trying to kill him.
Brushing the sheet aside, he went into the bedroom and put on a clean shirt, adjusted a belt about his lean hips inside his trousers to permit a holster to lie flat against the front of his right thigh. After buckling his pants over the holster he went to the bathroom, found a used razor blade, and cut the right pocket out of his pants. He slid the. 38 through the opening into the holster, pressing it down and out of sight to a point of instant availability. He knotted his tie before the bathroom mirror, put on his coat and hat and went out.
Shayne scowled heavily when he saw Detective Sergeant Grayson at the desk in the lobby. Grayson was leaning negligently against the desk, facing the elevator. He gave Shayne a thin smile and said, “Let’s go down to headquarters.”
“Is it a pinch?”
“Not unless you make it one.”
Shayne sighed. “We’ll keep it friendly, then. Where’s your car?”
“I’m walking,” Grayson told him. They went out together and turned toward Flagler Street.
Chief Gentry was alone in his office when Grayson and Shayne entered the room. Gentry said, “That’s all, Sergeant,” and waited until the door closed before barking at Shayne, “Well, are you ready to start talking?”
Shayne pulled up a chair in front of the battered oak desk and asked, “What about?”
Gentry choked over a soggy cigar butt. He flung it toward a cuspidor and said, “I thought maybe that bullet would scare some sense into your thick head.”
“It wasn’t even close,” Shayne scoffed.
Gentry folded his massive arms on the desk and implored, “Mother of God, Mike, get wise to yourself. Those boys aren’t fooling. That hood checked into the room opposite yours at six twenty-two, just twenty-two minutes after the first edition of the Herald hit the streets. They didn’t lose any time.”
“That’s what I hoped they’d do,” Shayne protested.
“It’s your own neck,” Gentry growled. “I’m damned if I care whether you get it chopped off or not. But give me something to go on after they get you. That’s all I ask.”
Shayne lit a cigarette and said blandly, “You’ll never learn, Will.”
“We’ve worked together,” Gentry argued evenly, “and you know I can keep it under my hat till it’s time to go.”