Shayne had a long wait in the taxi. He had time to think things over, particularly with regard to his own unenviable position in the affair. Chief Painter would inevitably discover that he had ridden to the Hudson house in a taxi with Natalie Briggs. The doorman had ample opportunity to get a good look at him the preceding night, and the odd scene regarding the cab would cause him to remember vividly. As soon as the story and the dead girl’s picture appeared in the papers the taxi driver, too, would come forward with his story.
Shayne frowned and worried his left ear lobe. It looked now as though Natalie had walked around to the back of the house and met a waiting murderer at the moment Shayne was at the front door inquiring for Mrs. Hudson. The taxi driver had seen him follow the girl through the front gate, but couldn’t testify that she had hurried on to the rear while Shayne went up the front steps. The hibiscus hedge shut off his view. He would probably say that there had been sufficient time for Shayne to have done the job before he returned to the cab and was driven back to Miami.
There would be no point in catching the noon plane to New Orleans now, Shayne mused. Painter would jerk him back for questioning before he’d have time even to start investigating the Belton case. And it certainly wouldn’t do to make a clean breast of his part in the affair to Painter. There were too many implausible coincidences that couldn’t be explained. He was definitely behind the eight-ball, and the only way to get out was to turn up the real murderer in a hurry.
From his own predicament, his thoughts drifted to Christine. He realized he was more worried about that angle than about his own involvement. She hadn’t told him the truth. He recalled with a tinge of anger her reaction when he had tried to return the pearls to her. She had been very happy to get her IOU back until she learned he hadn’t hocked the necklace to pay off her debt What was it she had cried out just before her husband and Painter interrupted? He went over the scene in his mind. “Oh, God! You’ve ruined everything. Now I’ll never-”
How had he ruined everything? His anger mounted. Damn it, he had saved her ten grand at the very least. He had brought back a priceless heirloom, and saved her from having to reveal at some future date that the original necklace had been switched for a cheap duplicate. He had been rather proud of the way he had handled the affair up until that moment.
Sergeant Whatley and his partner came sauntering out the front gate and got into their sedan and drove away. That meant they were through taking fingerprints and checking the physical aspects of the girl’s room and the probable scene of the crime.
There was no doubt that Natalie Briggs was terribly frightened about something last night. He was sure she had recognized him as the man against whom Timothy Rourke leaned drunkenly as he played the roulette wheel. And there was something between her and Rourke. Perhaps, in her fright, she would have gone to the front door and rung for Mrs. Morgan to let her in if she hadn’t been running away from him. He winced as he recalled the frantic look she gave him over her shoulder, and her increased speed as though she sought to escape him.
Peter Painter came through the front gate and got in his car. That left only Leslie and Floyd Hudson at home. Shayne looked at his watch. It was a few minutes after ten o’clock. He wondered how long a busy executive would stay away from his office to comfort his wife. And he wondered whether Floyd would leave with his elder brother.
How did Floyd Hudson fit into the picture? Was it Barbizon who had called and asked to speak to Christine and caused her to faint from panic? It was easy enough to convince Leslie Hudson that his wife had fainted because she was pregnant, but Shayne didn’t believe it was true. Not with Christine married only a month. Unless, of course-
His musings were interrupted by the sight of the Hudson brothers coming out the gate and getting into Leslie’s roadster. It pulled away and disappeared around a corner.
Shayne opened the door and got out. He said to the driver, “Wait right here for me,” and walked rapidly away. He turned in the gate and went up the path to the door.
Mrs. Morgan opened it in answer to his ring. She showed no surprise, but said, “Mrs. Hudson asked me to bring you right upstairs as soon as you came back.” Shayne followed her down the hall to a stairway and they went up. There was a wide paneled hall at the head of the stairs. She turned to the right and tapped on the first door.
Christine’s voice called, “Come in.”
Mrs. Morgan opened the door and said, “It’s Mr. Shayne.” She stepped aside and Shayne went into a large pleasant living-room with a row of windows looking out on Biscayne Bay.
Mrs. Morgan went away and Shayne closed the door. His face was grimly purposeful as he stalked over and stood before Christine. He said curtly, “You’d better quit pretending and start telling me the truth.”
She looked up at him defiantly for a moment, then sighed and let her head loll back against the chair. She nodded and said meekly, “I know. I should have told you the truth yesterday.”
“Natalie Briggs might be alive if you had,” he told her, without a trace of pity.
Christine sat up abruptly, clutching the arms of her chair. “Why do you say that? What makes you think? — ” She broke off, terror glazing her eyes.
“I don’t know enough of the truth to do any thinking.” Shayne pulled up a small chintz-covered chair and sat down in front of her. “You hadn’t actually lost ten thousand dollars at the Play-Mor.”
“What-why do you say that?” Her tone was lifeless.
“Barbizon gave up the IOU too easily. He acted as though it didn’t make much difference to him one way or the other.”
She looked away from his hard gray eyes and admitted, “I didn’t-really. I’m not a gambler.”
Shayne lit a cigarette, looked around for an ash tray, went over and took one from a table and sat down again. “You’d better tell me everything. From the beginning.”
She hesitated, twining her fingers nervously. “You won’t believe me,” she said listlessly. “No one would-and I don’t see how I can bear to tell you.”
“You’re going to,” he told her grimly. “I’ve passed up a thousand-dollar retainer in New Orleans to stay here and help you.”
“I’ll make that up to you.”
“It isn’t that simple. I’m in this thing up to my neck.” He took a long drag on his cigarette and exhaled through flared nostrils. “Before many hours I’m going to be the principal suspect in the murder of your maid. I’ve got to find the murderer before Painter puts me in jail.”
She drew in a quick, sharp breath. “You? A suspect?”
He nodded. “By the merest chance I let Natalie share my cab when she left the Play-Mor last night. I followed her in and came to the front door while she went around to the rear-and was murdered.”
She was listening with awe-struck attention. “Mrs. Morgan said you called about eleven. That is, from her description I imagined it was you. But she didn’t say anything about you bringing Natalie home.”
“She didn’t know anything about it. From all indications, Natalie was being attacked while I was at the front door. As soon as they establish the exact time of her death-and the taxi driver puts the finger on me-I’ll be nominated for the hot seat. That’s why you’ve got to tell me the truth. All of it-in a hurry.”
Christine nodded slowly. “I see. Though I don’t know what connection it can possibly have with her death.”
“I’ll worry about that. You’re going to start at the beginning.”
“That was a little over a week ago,” she began softly. “One afternoon when I was in Miami shopping. Three men came to the door and asked for me. When Mrs. Morgan said I wasn’t at home, one of them showed her his police badge and demanded to search the house.”
“Cops?”
“I suppose so,” she nodded drearily. “At least one of them was. Mrs. Morgan was frightened and didn’t know what to do. She let them in and they snooped around downstairs a little, asked to see my writing desk, and then came up here. She followed them, protesting, but they didn’t pay any attention to her.
“They came in here, and then went into my bedroom.” She gestured toward a closed door in the upstairs living-room. “My bedroom is in there. That other door leads to Leslie’s room. They forced Mrs. Morgan to come in and witness that they didn’t take anything, and they searched my vanity and bureau drawers.
“They refused to tell Mrs. Morgan what they were looking for, but one of them suddenly found a packet of letters far back in the bottom drawer of my vanity, hidden under some of my things.
“If Mrs. Morgan hadn’t been watching every move, I would have sworn he just pretended to find them,” Christine went on. “But she swears they were there. That he couldn’t have put them there.”
“Was it the cop who found the letters?” Shayne interrupted.
“No. One of the others. From something that was said, Mrs. Morgan thinks he is a reporter. There were four letters-or rather notes. Just one page each. They were tied with a pink ribbon. They cut the ribbon and each man put his initials on the margin of each note, and they made Mrs. Morgan write her initials, too, so she could be forced to swear in court that they were the letters actually found in my room. They told her to keep quiet about it and went away.”
“What sort of letters were they?” Shayne asked.
“Wait a minute. I’ll come to that. Mrs. Morgan was terribly distressed when I came home. She was crying when she told me what had happened. I simply didn’t understand it. I kept telling her there must be some horrible mistake. You see, I didn’t have any letters hidden in my vanity. I simply couldn’t understand what it was all about.”
“Perhaps they were letters you’d put away and forgotten,” Shayne suggested.
Her eyes flared angrily. “Do you think I’d bring any silly love letters here when I married Leslie? How could I forget? Besides, I never had any letters such as Mrs. Morgan described.”
“How did she describe them?”
“Written in ink on one side of a sheet of folded note paper. When she initialed them,” Christine went on steadily, “she caught a glimpse of the superscriptions. They were addressed to ‘My sweetest love’ and things like that. I was bowled over. I didn’t know what to think. I never received any letters like that in my life.”
“So you told your husband about it when he got home?”
“N-o-o,” she confessed reluctantly. “Don’t you see? I didn’t know what to do. We’d been married only two weeks. It was all so strange and terrifying. I was afraid he wouldn’t believe me if I told him the truth. You have to admit it sounds utterly mad.”
Shayne nodded gravely. Looking into her pale face and distracted eyes he didn’t dare tell her how implausible it did sound.
“The next morning a special delivery letter came after Leslie had gone to the office. It contained photostats of four letters, each one with four sets of initials on the margin which Mrs. Morgan identified as the ones placed on the letters in her presence. That was all there was in the envelope. Just those photostatic copies.” She paused, biting her underlip and looking at Shayne imploringly. “Now comes the most awful part. You’ve got to believe me. I’ll die if you don’t.”
“I’ll do my best,” Shayne promised.
“None of the letters were dated. Just the day of the week. They each began with some mushy phrase. They were all signed “Vicky” and I recognized the handwriting, Michael.”
“Whose?”
“Victor Morrison’s, my former employer in New York. I recognized it at once. It’s quite distinctive and I’ve seen it often enough during the years I was his private secretary. The letters were the most awful things. And they sounded exactly as though they had been written to me during the month after I resigned and was getting ready to be married. They mentioned the terrible emptiness of the office since I’d left; they spoke of nights he’d spent in my apartment, with violent phrases of love. They begged me to reconsider and not do anything hasty while he arranged to get rid of his wife so we could be married.” When she stopped talking there were two red spots in her cheeks.
“And then-?” Shayne prompted her.
“I thought I was going crazy. I read the notes over several times, trying to see what they meant. The more I read them the more I realized how horribly I was trapped. No one would ever believe either Mr. Morrison or myself if we both swore he hadn’t written those letters to me. No one could ever think anything except that we’d been lovers. Don’t you see how fiendish the thing is? The position I would be in if Leslie ever saw those letters?”
“Forgeries?” Shayne muttered with a deep scowl.
She said hopelessly, “I thought of that at once. But I didn’t know why anyone would do a terrible thing like that. Nor who possibly could. They were his phrases. The way he thought and wrote. As I read them over and over I got the strangest feeling that they were written to me; that they couldn’t possibly have been written to anyone else. There were little intimate things about office routine; about the way he gave dictation-” She broke off with a shudder and covered her face with her hands. “I began to think nothing was real. That I was living in some sort of dream and had actually forgotten the truth.”
Shayne ground out his cigarette in the small ash tray he held in his left hand. “What happened next?”
She took her hands from her eyes and her slender body went lax in the chair. “A telephone call. A man whose voice sounded thick-and fuzzy-as though he might be drunk. He asked me if I had read the photostats and whether it was worth ten thousand dollars to me to keep the originals out of my husband’s hands. I told him I didn’t have any money, that it would take me some time to raise it. You see, I’d thought about the pearls and knew I needed time to have a duplicate made, and I also thought about somehow proving the letters were forgeries. So I asked him for a little time.
“He agreed as soon as I convinced him I didn’t have any large sum of cash. But he said, just to show my good faith and to put the transaction on more of a business basis, I should make out an IOU for ten thousand and mail it at once to Arnold Barbizon at the Play-Mor Club. Then, he said if I wanted to I could tell my husband I’d lost the money gambling and Leslie would pay it without realizing it was blackmail.”
Shayne’s jaw was set hard, the muscles in his lean jaw were quivering. “Smart,” he said angrily. “As soon as they had your IOU you could never prove it had been obtained by blackmail. And that’s also why Barbizon didn’t mind too much giving up the IOU last night. They still have the letters to fall back on. If I’d known the truth last night-”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I was ashamed to tell you. I thought no one would need to know. As soon as the money was paid I was to receive the original letters by special delivery.”
“You’d never have gotten them so easily,” Shayne told her. “A blackmailer is never satisfied with his first bite. You should know that. It would have gone on and on until you were drained absolutely dry.”
“I guess so,” she agreed tonelessly. “I didn’t think about it that way. I had no one I could turn to.”
“If you’re telling the whole truth,” said Shayne, “the letters are probably forgeries. We can prove that easily enough if we can get a sample of Morrison’s handwriting.”
“I’ve told you the truth,” she said, “but they aren’t forgeries.”
“How do you know?”
“I took them to a handwriting expert, a man named Bernard Holloway who is supposed to be very good. I had a note of Mr. Morrison’s for comparison. One he sent with a wedding present. Mr. Holloway made a long report listing a number of similarities, and concluded with a definite statement that there was no doubt that the letters were written by the same person.”
“Holloway is good,” he told her. “One of the best in the country. His testimony has a lot of weight in any court. Now why is your ex-employer trying to frame you? Would he be interested in ten grand?”
“Mr. Morrison? Why, he’s several times a millionaire.”
“Then why?”
“Do you think he-arranged it? On purpose?”
“What else am I supposed to think?” Shayne asked angrily. “If he actually wrote the letters, though you claim there was nothing between you-”
“There wasn’t,” she interrupted desperately. “Ever. He was kind and generous and quite friendly, but there was never anything like that. I swear there wasn’t.”
Shayne was thoughtfully silent for a moment, then asked, “Could he have harbored a secret passion for you? Perhaps he wrote the letters to let off steam and someone got hold of them and realized how they could be used after you married a wealthy man.”
“Oh no!” she exclaimed, her cheeks flaming again. “I’m very sure Mr. Morrison never had a single thought like that about me. He’s quite happily married.”
“To a wife he’s planning to get rid of?” Shayne said sardonically. “All right-what do you make of it?”
“I don’t. What can I think? It’s utterly incomprehensible.”
“We’ll have to get in touch with him at once,” Shayne said with sudden decision. “With his denial, and with the testimony of people who knew you both that you weren’t having an affair, we should be able to tell your husband everything and squelch the blackmailer.”
“I’ve tried to get in touch with Mr. Morrison,” Christine admitted through trembling lips. “I’ve called him twice and left my number both times. When he didn’t call back as I requested, I didn’t know what to think.”
“Perhaps the long distance operator made a mistake.”
“Not long distance,” she told him. “Mr. Morrison is here.”
“In Miami? Wait a minute.” Shayne stared hard at her. “What’s he doing here?”
“Why, he and Mrs. Morrison are down for the season. They have a winter home here, but they haven’t opened it for several years.”
“How long have they been here?”
“A couple of weeks,” she faltered.
Shayne’s lean face hardened. “So, he followed you down here a couple of weeks after your marriage.”
“No. It wasn’t that. I’m sure it wasn’t.”
“It may look like that to your husband,” Shayne said with disgust. “All we need to make things perfect is someone to testify that he was in the habit of visiting you in your apartment while those letters were supposedly being written.”
Christine looked frightened and forlorn as she breathed, “I was going to tell you about that. You see, he did take me out to dinner twice, and I asked him up for a drink afterward-once. He was just being kind to me,” she went on desperately. “It isn’t what you think. His wife knew about it. In fact, he told me that she urged him to keep me from being too lonely.”
“He told you she did,” Shayne raged. “If you’re telling the truth this begins to look like one of the goddamndest frame-ups I ever ran into.” He got up and began striding up and down the room, ruffling his bristly red hair. “He must have planned the whole thing,” he growled. “Arranged to have those notes planted here and then sent the men to find them. The new maid explains that very neatly. Natalie. She’d been with you only a couple of weeks. And it supplies a motive for her death. She knew too much and may have threatened to blab.”
“I can’t believe it. Mr. Morrison was always a perfect gentleman in my presence.”
Shayne disregarded her, continuing to stride up and down while he filled out his vague theory. “Morrison wouldn’t be interested in blackmail, but that’s unimportant. One of his stooges could have had the photostats made on the side for his own purposes. It’s likely Morrison knows nothing about that angle.”
“But if the man was going to return the originals-”
“What makes you think he was going to?”
She looked up at him, wide-eyed. “He promised. Just as soon as I paid the ten thousand dollars.”
Shayne made a derisive gesture and snorted, “So, he promised.” He stopped beside her chair and asked, “Do you have those photostats?”
“Yes.”
“Get them for me.”
She hesitated, then asked miserably, “Do you have to see them? They’re so-I hate to have anyone read them.”
“Get them,” he commanded. His eyes were bleak. “I’m in this deeper than you are already. And call Mrs. Morgan up here,” he added. “I want to know more about those three men who found the letters.”
Christine got up and walked across the room and pressed a button. Then she disappeared through the door into her bedroom.
Shayne lit another cigarette and stood in the center of the floor scowling meditatively. He didn’t know whether to believe Christine or not. He wanted to believe her. For her husband’s sake if for no other reason. There had been adoration in Leslie Hudson’s eyes while he was kneeling beside his wife trying to revive her from unconsciousness. And there was another angle he hadn’t covered, Shayne remembered.
As Christine re-entered the room with an envelope in her hand, he turned on her and asked, “That telephone call this morning-Was it the same man who called before?”
“I think so. He sounded as though he were still drunk. He said, ‘So you want the letters to go to your husband, eh? Okay.’ And that’s the last I remember,” she added simply. “Coming on top of the news of Natalie’s murder it was more than I could stand. My husband thinks-” She stopped and blushed, the faint crimson spreading to the edge of her dark hair which was brushed back from her face, and pinking her ear lobes.
Shayne grinned. “Let him keep on thinking for a while. And Painter, too,” he added cagily. “He’ll be easier on you that way.” He held out his hand and she silently handed him an envelope addressed to Mrs. Leslie Hudson on a typewriter and bearing a special delivery stamp.
She said, “No wonder Phyl was so happy with you, Michael. You understand everything,” and sank into her chair.
As Shayne opened the envelope a knock sounded on the door. Christine called, “Come,” and Mrs. Morgan entered.
Shayne drew four stiff photostats from the envelope. The first one was inscribed, to, “My own dearest one.” Four sets of initials were scribbled across the left-hand margin. He studied them intently. The first was “B. J. H.”; followed by “T. R” “A. B.”; and “M. M.” The first set of initials was in bold and flowing script; the second shaky and almost unintelligible; the A and B were in small, neat letters, and the last painstakingly formed.
He turned to Mrs. Morgan and asked, “Are these your initials on the bottom?”
She moved over beside him and glanced at the note, then her calm eyes glanced aside inquiringly at Christine before she said, “Yes, sir,” when Christine nodded her approval.
Christine said, “Tell Mr. Shayne everything he asks you, Maria. He’s going to help me.”
An expression of stern apprehension crossed her placid face. She said, “I was that frightened when they made me sign them. I didn’t know what to do. The police,” she ended almost in a whisper.
Shayne said, “Even if they were the police, Mrs. Morgan, they had no right at all to enter a private house without a search warrant. Remember that in the future. Now, I want you to describe the men to me as best you can. Do you remember which one signed his initials first?”
“I do,” she said in her soft though solid voice. “He was the big one, and the best-dressed of the three. He was about fifty, I’d say, with gray hair and what you might call a ruddy complexion. He had broad shoulders and a bit of a stomach.”
“And the second one-T. R.”
“He’s the one who found the letters. As I told Christine, if I hadn’t seen him with my own eyes I’d never have believed it. He was almost as tall as you, Mr. Shayne, but he looked lean and sickly and had dark eyes that were away back in his head. He had been drinking and his hands shook. From things he said, I took him for a reporter. He said something about what a swell story the letters would make when they were printed.”
Shayne nodded casually, but a smoldering fire ate at his tight belly muscles. As soon as he saw those initials he recognized them as Timothy Rourke’s, and Mrs. Morgan’s description confirmed the knowledge he had tried desperately to put away from him. He had known for many weeks that Tim was still very ill from the wounds he had received, but he could not believe Tim was mixed up in a blackmailing scheme. His gaunt face hardened. Tim had been one of the best friends Shayne had ever had in Miami. But there was no shadow of a doubt that Natalie Briggs had held an earnest, almost frantic conversation with Rourke at the Play-Mor Club last night.
“And the third man?” Shayne asked Mrs. Morgan flatly.
“He was the policeman-the one who showed me his badge and pushed in when I didn’t want them to come in the door. He was dressed very shabbily in a gray suit and a hat not fit for a fishing trip.”
Shayne glanced at all four of the photostats to check the same sets of initials on the margins of each. He didn’t read them carefully, but a cursory glance assured him they were all written in the mushy style Christine had described. Replacing them in the envelope, he said, “Mrs. Morgan, you were not asleep last night when Natalie came in. I’m afraid your alibi of sound sleeping won’t work if the autopsy proves she was killed near the time I rang the doorbell and you answered.”
Mrs. Morgan retained her calm, impassive manner. She said, “I heard nothing, Mr. Shayne, except the ringing of the doorbell. Natalie must have been murdered after I retired, or the commotion, if any, was far enough away so that I wouldn’t hear it.”
The woman turned away and left the room.
Christine gasped. “Surely you don’t think Mrs. Morgan-”
Shayne said harshly, “I think Mrs. Morgan would protect you against anything and everything if she could.”
“But murder-” Her eyes were filled with horror.
“I have a couple of leads,” he told her. “You’ll have to trust me, and try not to worry. If I’ve guessed this setup correctly you have no need to fear that the original letters will be shown to your husband. You’ll probably receive another call from the blackmailer. Stall him if you do. Tell him you’re trying to raise the money and try to arrange a rendezvous with him. In the meantime, I’ll be working on every angle.”
“But-Maria,” she wailed “You can’t think Mrs. Morgan had anything to do with Natalie’s-death.”
Shayne whirled toward her on his way to the door. He said, “Here, take these and keep them for the time being. If we have to raise money on them-then we’ll have to.” He caught one of her hands and poured the string of pearls into her palm, squeezed her fingers over it, and hurried from the room.