“No. But we’d be delighted to have someone like you take it out for a free trial — and no obligation to buy,” the young man assured him. “Use it for a week with our compliments, and then decide.”
Shayne said, “Thanks,” and asked if it could be delivered to his office that afternoon.
“Certainly, Mr. Shayne. In a couple of hours.”
Shayne thanked him and went out with the instruction book in his pocket and Jed Purly’s folder under his arm.
He stopped at the nearest bar for a drink and to lay careful plans for the remainder of the afternoon and evening.
He was sipping his second drink when he decided upon a tentative line of action. He got up abruptly, left his glass on the table, caught the bartender’s eye and indicated that he would be back, went out and down the street to a newsstand that specialized in out-of-town newspapers.
There was one Nashville paper in stock, dated that morning, and the front page carried a brief wire service story on the death of Wanda Weatherby.
Shayne carried it back to the barroom, sat down, and glanced through the item which gave only the bare outlines of the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death.
This was the same paper from which Wanda’s clipping about Mrs. Gurley and Janet had been taken. Shayne turned the pages, scanning each one carefully, until he reached the back page which carried theatrical notices and a listing of television and radio programs for the day.
When he left the bar he slipped the file containing the two photographs into the folded paper, tucked it firmly under his arm, and went to his car.
Chapter nineteen
WHEN SHAYNE ENTERED his office a little before four o’clock, Timothy Rourke was in the small outer room talking to Lucy.
“You just missed your friend Sylvia,” the reporter told him with a saturnine grin. “She tried to think up reasons for sticking around to see you, but Lucy took her money and shooed her out.”
“I did not,” Lucy protested. “Actually, I feel sorry for Sheila Martin. She only had nine hundred and forty dollars. Do you really want to take her last penny, Michael? It seems awfully close to blackmail. Just because of something she did a long time ago when she was hungry.”
Shayne said, “Don’t feel too sorry for Sheila.” He took the folded paper from under his arm, opened it, and took out the picture file. “If you weren’t such a nice girl, Lucy, I’d show you a picture. As it is, you’d better take my word for it that the sob story Sheila pulled last night was carefully designed to gain my sympathy. She offered me that money,” he went on angrily, “to avoid being the subject of a full-scale police investigation into her connection with Wanda Weatherby’s murder. I’m giving her value received. Has a recording-machine been delivered yet?”
“It’s on your desk,” she told him. “Tim and I have been wondering what on earth you’re going to do with it.”
“You’d be surprised. It’s a handy little gadget.” Shayne grinned and waved the booklet of instructions. “Right now I’m thinking of making a recording for that program we talked about this morning.”
“You mean the Michael Shayne story — for radio? Are you serious?” Lucy’s brown eyes shone with delight.
“Not particularly, but it may have other uses. Don’t you know some girl who has an apartment at the Courtland Arms?” he asked her.
“Why — yes. Marilyn Knowles.”
“What floor?”
“The third, I think.”
“See if you can get her on the phone. If she’s in, invite yourself up sometime this evening. About eight o’clock would be best.” He turned to Rourke and said, “Come on in and let’s try out the recorder. According to this booklet, it’ll do practically anything except mix drinks.”
“Then junk the damned thing,” Rourke advised as he followed the redhead with a gangling gait.
Shayne opened the folder from Purly’s office and laid it on his desk beside the wire recorder. He said, “Take a look at those two pictures, Tim, and help me figure out some legitimate way to blast our friend Henderson — if I can’t hook him for killing Wanda.”
The reporter looked at the photograph with burning eyes. He whistled shrilly and said, “I see what you mean. This gives both Henderson and Sheila a motive for murdering Wanda. Why — if his wife and her husband ever got a gander at this — and—”
“Take a look at the other one,” said Shayne.
“Our friend Ralph,” Rourke observed. “Is that the ineffable Wanda with him?”
Shayne nodded. “Snapped by a private detective, all right, just as she told Flannagan that night at the motel. But I seriously doubt the story she told him about the detective being retained by a jealous husband. It was much more likely that she framed the whole thing.”
“And the one of Henderson and Sheila, too?” he asked, studying the first picture again. “You think Wanda Weatherby stage-managed it?”
“It’s a reasonable inference,” Shayne said dryly. “It was snapped in the front bedroom of her house.”
“Wanda must have been quite a gal,” Rourke observed dryly. “These explain three of her letters. Have you figured out the Gurley angle?”
“I think so, though we may never prove it. I can’t waste any sympathy on Gurley, but it would be tough on his daughter to suddenly learn that she is actually Wanda Weatherby’s daughter, born out of wedlock. Especially now, when she’s about to be happily married to a stuffed shirt in Tennessee.”
The buzzer on the intercom sounded. Shayne pushed a button and said, “Yes?”
“I have Marilyn on the phone, Michael. She’ll be home all evening. What shall I tell her?”
“That we’d like to pay her a visit about eight. Tell her you’ll call back later if we have to change our plans.” He cut the connection and turned to Rourke.
“Call Ralph Flannagan and tell him we’re throwing a party at his place tonight to clean this case up. About eight o’clock, and there’ll be—” He paused to count aloud on his fingers, “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven guests. Counting you, if you want to be in on it, Tim.”
Rourke hesitated, puzzled, but he asked no questions. He lifted the phone, gave Lucy a number, and Shayne prowled around the room for a moment, then opened the recorder case while Rourke made the call.
He unwound the extension cord, plugged it into an outlet, opened the textbook to a diagram on the front page, and studied it. He then plugged in the microphone at the end of its long cord, and began testing the controls, referring to the booklet for each move.
Rourke hung up after a brief conversation. “It’s all set for eight o’clock, Mike. Ralph is on pins and needles wondering what’s up, but I told him I didn’t know any more about it than he did. What are you planning to do tonight? Who are the seven guests? And what has Lucy’s friend in the third-floor apartment got to do with it?”
Preoccupied with the instrument, Shayne turned another switch, but nothing happened. He looked up at Rourke and asked, “Do you know anything about working these things?”
“Not a damned thing,” the reporter confessed. He narrowed his slaty eyes at the detective and asked, “You don’t think you can make a recording from another apartment on the floor above, do you? Won’t you have to bore holes and connect up a mike?”
“I don’t know,” said Shayne absently. “The salesman said this particular model — Wait a minute!” he exclaimed as the cylinders began to turn and the shining wire wound smoothly from a small spool to the larger drum. “That’s the gadget that does it. It should be recording our voices right now. See this little light,” he went on, “that flashes on and off when I speak? And here’s the volume control, Tim. You’re supposed to keep that turned just high enough while you’re recording so the light flashes on and off, but doesn’t stay on steadily. Let’s see if the salesman was right.”