The operator, an elderly Negro, had his hand on the control handle. Shayne closed his hand over the operator’s and pulled the handle over. The Negro was breathing shallowly, his eyes tightly closed. Shayne let him go after they passed the main floor.
“Two,” he said.
The old man looked around to see who was doing this to him. Shayne grinned, unsettling him to the point where he missed the floor by a foot.
“Close enough,” Shayne said.
Opening the door himself, he stepped up.
“Watch your step,” the operator said.
That was what Shayne intended to do. He went along the corridor, his footsteps echoing on the marble. Senator Redpath was waiting at the turn of the corridor, calmly smoking his cigar. He opened a door marked “No Admittance” as Shayne reached him.
“What kept you, Shayne?” he said.
CHAPTER 19
11:00 A.M.
They entered a lounge, furnished with leather armchairs and standing ashtrays and the usual array of oil portraits in heavy gilt frames. The Washington and New York papers and loose copies of the Congressional Record lay on a mahogany side table.
“How long a recess do you want?” Redpath said.
“Tell him ten minutes, not that I can do it in that.”
As Redpath opened a door Shayne heard a man’s voice, mechanically amplified, speaking against a confusion of background noises.
“-be happy to answer that question, Senator. Year by year the machinery of government has grown more complex. Before I undertook this assignment from Manners Aerosystems, I will be the first to admit that I knew nothing about the manufacture of military aircraft. And the fact of the matter is, gentlemen, that I know very little about it even now.”
Shayne had paused in the doorway. The big hearing room was flooded with unnaturally bright light, but it took him a moment to make any sense out of the scene. The walls were paneled in marble. There were two great crystal chandeliers. Only a stenotypist, a yard or so from Shayne, was paying any attention to the witness, who must be Sam Toby, Shayne supposed, finally spotting him at one of the crowded tables. He had a pleasure-loving face that probably rarely looked as serious as it did now. He was flanked by lawyers. As he leaned toward the microphone, he gestured with a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.
The members of the subcommittee, seated behind a curved table above him, made no pretense of listening to what he was saying. Senator Wall was reading his mail, making notes for his secretary at the bottom of each letter. Redpath bent over to whisper to Hitchcock. Hitchcock glanced at the doorway. Seeing Shayne, he frowned.
Shayne stepped back into the lounge and took the lists of names out of the thick envelope Henry Clark had given him. These were people who had rented safe-deposit boxes just before or just after the day Olga Szep stole Mrs. Red-path’s diary. They were arranged alphabetically, and it took him only a moment to find the name he was looking for. He permitted himself a quarter-smile. Sooner or later, according to the law of averages, the luck was bound to start running his way.
In the hearing room, Senator Hitchcock broke into what the witness was saying. “I’ll cut you off right there, Mr. Toby. We’ll resume after a ten minute recess.”
There was a surprised buzz from the crowd. Hitchcock bustled into the lounge.
“Mike Shayne,” he said, shaking hands. “I hope the cameras didn’t catch you in the doorway. This room’s reserved for members of the Senate. There are too many newspapermen out there for the amount of news we’re generating.”
“We may have a story for them,” Shayne said. “But I don’t like to repeat myself, so could we get Toby and a few others in to hear this?”
Hitchcock looked at him soberly. “How important is it, Mike?”
“Damn important. A man has been killed, and a few people ought to know about it before the papers start asking them for a statement. Another thing that’s happened is that a couple of Manners’ thugs tried to pick me up a few minutes ago in the Capitol.”
Shayne showed him the Texas police shield.
“Fletcher, Texas,” Hitchcock said grimly. “That’s Manners, all right. You mean they attempted to pull off a kidnapping in the Capitol?”
“It’s not a bad place for it. It damn near worked.”
Hitchcock said abruptly, “All right, who besides Toby?”
“Your daughter. Senator Wall, Senator Redpath, Maggie Smith.”
“Maggie? I haven’t seen her. I thought she said she had to go to New York.”
He went back to the hearing room. Senator Redpath came in a moment later with Sam Toby and Trina Hitchcock. Toby’s face now had a carefree expression that seemed more natural to it. He was delighted to meet Shayne. His pleasure seemed genuine, but Shayne was in hopes that it wouldn’t last.
“Can you reach Manners by phone?” Shayne said.
Toby’s eyes became more wary. “Under certain conditions. He’s a strange man.”
“I took a police buzzer off one of his boys. Another one, a big guy named Stevens, took a shot at me in the Senate subway. That’s going to be in the papers unless he can talk me out of it. He’s probably standing by in a parking lot, isn’t he, with a phone in his car?” He pointed out a phone on the side table. “Call him.”
After thinking about alternatives for a moment, the lobbyist consulted a little book and dialled a number.
Hitchcock came in. “Maggie doesn’t seem to be there, Mike.”
Trina cried, “Maggie! Again? I thought that was all taken care of.”
“She changed her mind,” Shayne said, feeling a spurt of apprehension. He had been sure she was not in danger, or he wouldn’t have sent her home to change her clothes.
He rubbed the harsh growth of stubble on his chin. Telling them he would return in a moment, he went out to the corridor and around the corner to the door of the hearing room. Maggie was there, arguing fiercely with one of the guards.
“Mike!” she cried, running to him. “I couldn’t get in!”
“That dress is a great improvement.”
She smiled at him gratefully, and hugged his arm.
“God, Mike, I hope this works. They’re going to be a tough audience.”
“It had better work,” Shayne said.
Senator Wall had joined the others in the lounge. They were all talking in low worried voices. They broke off at once when Shayne came in.
“Did you get Manners?” he asked Toby.
“I got him,” Toby replied. “He may or may not be here. He’s not too predictable.”
Shayne looked around. “If any of you people haven’t been told who I am, my name is Mike Shayne. I’ve been retained by National Aviation to see what I can do about quieting this thing down without offending anybody important.”
“National Aviation!” Trina exclaimed.
“Well, you fired me, didn’t you, Miss Hitchcock? I needed a client, and National didn’t seem to be satisfied with the service they were getting.”
Sam Toby gave an odd little giggle, which he swallowed when Shayne looked at him. Senator Hitchcock, from a position on the arm of the chair nearest the door to the hearing room, put in, “Mike, I only called a ten-minute recess. The networks are covering this live. If we’re going to be out much longer, the courteous thing to do-”
“Let’s not do the courteous thing,” Shayne said brusquely. “It’s going to be news to some of you that an investigator who used to work for this subcommittee was murdered last night. His name was Ronald Bixler. You knew him, didn’t you, Wall?”
Wall’s face was gray. He was moving about jerkily, unable to hold still. “Bixler? We all knew him. Emory, you remember that incompetent little pipsqueak? — Always just about to discover something that would shake Washington to its foundations. Bixler. He went with the Civil Service Commission.”