Free Framed in Blood by Brett Halliday Page B

caused the detective to wince involuntarily.
    What had they talked about, he wondered, these two young people caught up in a passion that could not be legalized. He raked blunt fingers through his hair as he compared Marie with Betty Jackson who vowed she was in love with her husband, and gave a forelock a savage jerk recalling Tim Rourke’s anomalous position in the situation. Tim, who had always preferred unattached blondes, had evidently beaten a triangle into a square, intentionally or not, and left Shayne with many unanswered questions, vague relationships, contradictions, and all because of a brunette.
    Shayne came to his feet impatiently. The first light of dawn was streaming through the triple windows. He didn’t want Gentry to find him here when the police chief got around to connecting the lone key in Bert Jackson’s wallet with the Las Felice apartments.
    Marie roused and stood up. In spite of her claim that she seldom drank, she was steady on her high heels after three stiff drinks of Scotch. She took a couple of steps and looked up at Shayne with a wan smile.
    “The police will be here to question you about Bert Jackson,” he said, placing a big hand lightly on each of her shoulders. He kept his voice even, neither pleading nor warning as he continued. “Tell them as much of the truth as you wish about Bert being here last night—and so forth. But thus far, they don’t know anything about his extortion plan. You don’t have to tell them about it if you don’t want to. Not right away. I’d rather work on it alone.”
    “Nothing matters very much to me now,” she murmured, lowering her lids.
    “Nonsense,” said Shayne cheerfully. He shook her shoulders gently and took his hands away. “You’re young, and tomorrow is another day. I’ll be in touch with you.” He picked up his hat from the floor where he had tossed it and went toward the door, jamming it down on his heavy hair and pulling the brim low over his forehead. He stopped suddenly, turned, and asked, “Do you know Bert’s home address?”
    “It’s not far from here,” she said, “on Sixtieth Street. I don’t know the house number. Only the telephone number.” She repeated the telephone number without hesitation.
    Shayne hid his surprise by pretending to admire the lamp on the Japanese table. None of the figures Marie gave him coincided with the number Rourke had asked for in his apartment when he called the Jackson home to find out whether Bert had returned last night. “Are you positive?” he asked.
    “Of course. I’ve called there often enough.”
    “But—you must be mistaken,” he protested. “That’s not the number—”
    “It is,” she interrupted loftily, “unless it has been changed in the last day or so. There’s the telephone book.”
    The telephone was on a small stand that just missed the front door when it was wide open. Shayne stalked to it, picked up the directory, and began leafing through it, positive that he could not be mistaken.
    He found Bert Jackson’s street address on Northwest Sixtieth Street in the directory, but a tingle crawled up his spine when he saw the telephone number. It was identical with the one Marie had given him. It was not the one Rourke had called.
    Shayne kept his back turned to Marie as he scowled at the stippled wall. He had heard that number before, and recently. Very recently. He had not consciously memorized it, but the peculiar circumstance under which he had heard it had impressed it upon his memory.
    Suddenly he knew.
    Bert Jackson’s number was the one that Dirkson, Rourke’s city editor, had reluctantly given him when Bert insisted that he get in touch with Tim yesterday afternoon. A private, secret number that was to be called only in emergencies; and the deep-throated voice who had answered that call was Betty Jackson. She was the woman Rourke was with.
    And Bert Jackson knew it!

 
Chapter Seven
    A CLICKING TELEPHONE
     
    SHAYNE SWORE UNDER HIS BREATH, and when