“Maybe.” Shayne was none too pleased. A private detective, unlike a TV star, is not pleased with a fame that makes his face known to too many people. But it took more than curtness to check Jarvis’ garrulity.
“I’m one of the writers,” he gabbled, “and, brother, is that a rugged assignment! Homer is Nero and Simon Legree rolled into one large, economy-sized package.”
He launched into an eloquent dissertation on the obnoxious professional character and obscene personal habits of his employer. Shayne listened fitfully, when he wasn’t almost dozing, until, without warning, something happened that caused him to forget Homer Wilde and his companion’s complaints alike.
A jet-plane came blasting out of a cloudbank, directly in front of them, less than a mile ahead. Shayne barely heard Jarvis stop in mid-sentence to utter a terrified, “Jesus Christ!”
With the planes approaching one another at a rate exceeding the speed of sound, there were but fractions of a second in which to prepare for the deadly collision that seemed inescapable. But somehow, in those fractions of splintered time, the jet slid downward, out of sight beneath them, and was gone.
Shayne slowly unclenched his fists and looked down at the red lines his nails had cut into his palms in so brief and deadly a moment. He again became conscious of Jarvis’ voice in his left ear.
“...people wonder why we have trouble putting together sensible material for TV. Well, that stupid jet’s the answer — just like this air-wagon we’re riding in. The unities have been kicked all to hell and gone.”
“What unities?” asked Shayne, wondering if Jarvis really had the faintest idea of how closely death had brushed them by.
“It goes back to the Greeks,” said Jarvis condescendingly. “The Ancient Greeks, you know. They devised the unities and made them work better than any dramatic formula since. The gist of them was that nothing could happen onstage that could not happen in real life in the same space or the same length of time that the play took. You see what I’m getting at?”
“And now they’re kicked all to hell and gone?” Shayne asked idly.
“You saw that jet-plane, didn’t you? Beyond the speed of sound! Time and space are telescoped like an accordion. Anything can happen anywhere, in any time,” the writer complained and paused to brood on the injustices of science toward art.
At La Guardia, Shayne bade him a brusque farewell as he was greeted by a liveried chauffeur. The redhead was frankly glad to have seen the last of Homer Wilde’s “zoo,” He was whisked into the city and up to an immense suite on the top floor of the Wallston Plaza Towers, where he was met by Harry Tyndale in the huge master bedroom.
“Thank God you’re here, Mike!” Tyndale was burly and grizzled, a deep-voiced bear of a man. At the moment, his heavy features showed unaccustomed lines of weariness and strain, and his voice throbbed with emotion and relief.
Shayne looked around the room and asked lightly, “What’s up, Harry — corpse under the bed?”
“Not quite, Mike,” Tyndale took him by the elbow and led him across the room to open a door leading into a bathroom — a silver-and-marble bathroom with a sunken tub big enough to float an outboard motorboat. Only there wasn’t a boat in the bathtub...
Instead, Shayne stood staring down at the fully-clothed body of a dead man. A small man, stretched out neatly in the tub with his left temple smashed. There was a livid bruise on his jaw, and a smear of blood on one of the silver fittings indicated that he might have been slugged on the chin and accidentally suffered the fatal wound in falling.
But what interested Shayne most at the moment was the dead man’s face. It was lined, well-worn by life, and his dead eyes stared up at the detective as though saying mockingly, “So you finally found me, eh? Even after turning down the job of looking for me.”
Shayne had found him. The dead man was Ben Felton, mysteriously missing from Miami.
Shayne straightened and backed out of the bathroom. Tyndale met him outside the doorway with a goblet half-full of Napoleon cognac.
Shayne drank half of it and demanded harshly, “How did he get there?”
Tyndale opened his manicured, muscular hands. “That’s the hell of it!” he said. “I don’t know.”
“Come off it, Harry,” Shayne told him. “You got me here. You know me. Now talk!” The last two words were a whiplash.
Harry Tyndale’s face reddened — he was not a man accustomed to taking orders from anyone. He said, “Goddam it, Mike, I don’t know! I’ve sunk a small mint in a new color photo-printing process that will revolutionize the field, but I’ve got other businesses to feed, and my hotels are in trouble. I need every bit of good will and publicity I can get. My public relations counsel said, ‘Toss a party... a big one.’
“So I did. Last night. I opened up the whole suite and had a hell of a mob milling around all night. In the middle of the morning I came in here and flopped on the bed and passed out. Never did such a thing before in my life. I have a good head for liquor. I woke with a lousy headache... just as if I’d had a Mickey Finn... and there he was. Some of the guests were still in the other rooms tanking up. I haven’t dared leave here after finding him. I phoned you, and I’ve been sweating it out every since.”
“What do you expect me to do, Harry?” Shayne asked quietly. He was convinced Harry Tyndale was telling the truth.
“I don’t know,” said Tyndale wearily, leaning against the foot of one of the twin beds. “If this gets out, and there’s a big smell, it will ruin me. I’m way overextended until this photo thing is launched. But get me out of this, and you can name your own ticket.”
“You should have called the cops and leveled,” the redhead told him somberly. “Now you’re in trouble anyway.”
“I’m not a complete idiot!” Tyndale’s nerves, close to the snapping point, caused him briefly to lose self-control. “Don’t you think I know that? But I didn’t dare. I thought, that is, I hoped...”
“You hoped a character named Shayne, who got a broad off your neck in Miami last winter, could get a corpse out of your bathtub today,” growled the detective. “Dammit, Harry, I wouldn’t even try to do a thing like this on my own home grounds. And here in New York...” He paused to tug at the lobe of his left ear. “Tell me something, Harry. Have there been any TV personalities here? Actors, actresses, anybody like that?”
“Not that I know of — I didn’t invite any,” said Tyndale, puzzled. “This was a business party. There are women, sure — what’s a party without ’em? You know the type — advertising girls, models, maybe an actress or two. This is a big wingding. But I wouldn’t know a TV personality if I saw one — unless it was a newscaster or sports commentator. They’re all I ever look at on TV.”
He was interrupted by the opening of the door that led to the rest of the suite. Sounds of music and laughter entered, as did a beautifully stacked blonde in a green suit that matched her eyes, a blonde who managed to be attractive even though she was obviously a bit unsteady on her feet.
“Hi, yuall,” she said in honeyed accents as Southern as fried chicken and hush-puppies.
“What do you want?” Tyndale snapped at her.
“Shugah, ah’m jus’ not sure.” Her green eyes ranged from Tyndale’s defiant bulk to the long lean, muscular detective. “It jus’ cood be, ah wan’ somethin’ lak him.” She pointed a vermillion-tipped forefinger directly at Shayne.
“Later, honey, I’ll buy you a dozen like him,” said Tyndale. Moving into action, he propelled her gallantly but firmly outside and closed the door behind her. Turning to the redhead, he mopped a suddenly streaming brow and said, “That’s about the sixth time she’s come barging in here since I found that — thing. You see why I don’t dare leave the room.”