“I keep it all at home. I’ve got a little laboratory fixed up there…”
“Which way is home?”
“Just a couple of blocks. Turn to your right at the second corner. Matter of fact, I was going home for a snack. Then I have to go back on duty at headquarters at one. What kind of job, Mr. Rourke?”
Rourke said, “I’ll show you when we get there.” He turned at the indicated corner and Leroy pointed out a neat stucco house in the middle of the block. “Turn in the driveway and stop. We can go in the side entrance.”
The reporter followed him into a small, neat room with a bare porcelain table in the middle of it, a sink with running water, and shelves along one wall holding an array of neatly-labeled jars and bottles.
“I know it doesn’t look like very much,” Leroy said hesitantly, “but I’ve got all my reference books here, and all the equipment I’ve gathered together ever since I studied chemistry in high school. What was it you wanted?” Rourke pulled the paper sack out of the baggy side pocket of his coat and laid it on the table. He took hold of the end of it with the pint inside and lifted it, and the shot-glass rolled out on the porcelain surface.
“I want you to dust that for fingerprints,” he told the young policeman, “and then get your magnifying glass out and we’ll compare what you find with the prints you lifted off that highball glass in the Blake house this morning. A person doesn’t have to be an expert to make that sort of comparison.”
Leroy Smith’s jaw drooped incredulously. “Do you mean you’ve found out who was there last night and had a drink with her?”
“Get out your powder and duster and we’ll see. And be sure you keep it damn well under your hat if I turn out to be right,” grated Rourke. “Just because a man had a drink with her doesn’t mean he strangled her.”
11
At three o’clock that afternoon Harry Wilsson’s secretary entered the private office at the rear of his insurance agency and informed her employer that a Mr. Shayne was in the outer office and wanted to see him.
The name meant nothing to Wilsson, and he asked somewhat irritably, “Is he selling something?”
Miss Andrews said she didn’t think so. “He doesn’t look like a salesman, and he said it’s a personal matter of some importance.”
Wilsson nodded and said, “All right,” and she went out, and he picked up one of the papers scattered on the desk in front of him and was pretending to read it when a tall, wide-shouldered man with rumpled, red hair and cold, gray eyes came quietly through the door and closed it behind him. Wilsson put the paper down and looked at his visitor with a questioning frown. He was certain he had never seen the man before, and he said somewhat brusquely, “Shayne, is it? What can I do for you?”
“Just answer a few questions,” Shayne told him, pulling a chair close to the desk and sitting down without waiting for an invitation. “I’m a private investigator from Miami helping your local police on the Blake murder case.”
“Oh, you’re that Shayne? Michael Shayne. Well, I’ve heard about you, all right. I didn’t know Ollie would have the gumption to call someone like you in, but I’m mighty glad he did. Maybe we’ll get somewhere now.”
Shayne said briskly, “I hope so. Right now I’m gathering a little background, and I understand you may have been the last person to see the victim alive.”
“That’s possible. My wife and I, that is. Ellie Blake stopped by our house about four o’clock yesterday afternoon.”
“And that’s the last time you saw her?”
Wilsson nodded. “She stayed fifteen or twenty minutes, I guess.”
“Did you notice anything unusual about her, Mr. Wilsson? Was she nervous or upset? Anything at all to indicate that she had any reason to expect anything out of the ordinary to occur last night?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not sure I know just what you’re getting at.”
“I’m wondering,” said Shayne blandly, “if she might have had a date for later on in the evening. With some man, perhaps. I understand it was the last night her husband planned to be away from home and that Mrs. Blake was, well…” Shayne spread out his hands and shrugged. “An attractive woman to say the least.”
“There wouldn’t be anything like that.” Wilsson looked properly shocked. “Not with Ellie Blake. No. I think you’re barking up the wrong tree there, Mr. Shayne. It was some stranger in town. Some sex maniac.”
Shayne said, “You’re probably right, and that’s going to make it the most difficult sort of case there is. What did you do last evening?”
“Me? Do you mean you want me to give you an alibi?”
“It wouldn’t do any harm,” Shayne told him cheerfully. “What I would like to do is get a picture of what the people closest to Ellie Blake were doing last night. Every alibi I can clinch eliminates one more possibility. Nothing personal about it. Just tell me where you were.”
“Well, let’s see. As a matter of fact I drove over to Turner’s Junction right after dinner, to try and see a man and sign him up for life insurance. That’s about forty miles each way on a back country road. I got home around eleven, I guess. I remember it was just after eleven. Minerva, that’s my wife, was sitting up watching the eleven o’clock news, and we went to bed right after it ended.”
“Did you sell the policy?”
“As a matter of fact, he wasn’t home when I got there,” Wilsson said disgustedly. “Jed Turner. He’s got a farm the other side of the Junction and I telephoned when I got there. No answer. I was pretty sore after making that long drive out to see him, and I hung around for about an hour and called twice more. Then I gave it up as a bad job and came home. I remember telling Minerva when I got back that that was a wasted evening if there ever was one. But that’s the way it goes in the insurance business.”
“Did you see anyone you know while you were waiting in Turner’s Junction?”
“No. It’s hardly more than a crossroads. There’s a beer joint and poolhall, but I didn’t feel like going in. I just sat in my car and smoked. Made my calls from a public telephone booth beside the road.”
“Then you actually have no proof you were there last night?”
“Good Lord, man! Do I have to prove where I was? I remember telling Minerva when I left that I was going over to see Jed Turner.”
Michael Shayne settled back in his chair and said bleakly, “You’re lying, Wilsson.”
“Now see here,” sputtered the insurance broker. “You can’t come in here and start saying…”
“I am in here and I am saying,” Shayne interrupted him calmly. “Do you want to talk to me here in the privacy of your own office, or shall we go down to police headquarters? You see, Wilsson, right now my friend Tim Rourke, and I are the only ones who know you dropped in at the Blake house last evening and had a drink with your best friend’s wife while he was in Miami. I don’t want to pillory any man unnecessarily, but I’m working on a murder case and we’ll spread it all over town if you want it that way.” His voice was even and cold and utterly uncompromising.
“But you’re all wrong.” Wilsson stared across the desk at him aghast. “I wasn’t near Ellie Blake last night. It’s a made-up lie if anybody says different.”
“You left your fingerprints on a highball glass sitting in her living room beside the glass she drank out of. The police have those prints on file, but they haven’t got around yet to checking them against yours. When they do, everyone in town will know where you were last night.”
Harry Wilsson crumpled up in front of his cold gaze and put his hands over his face and moaned softly.
Shayne got out a cigarette and lighted it and smoked thoughtfully. When Wilsson took his hands away from his face it was a sick, gray color and he kept wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue as he poured out his story in a low, hoarse voice that trembled with self-pity.