Free The Corpse Came Calling by Brett Halliday Page B

What do we do—flip to see which one of us stays?”
    Shayne said, “To hell with that. I know when I’m getting cold-shouldered.”
    “You’re all right,” Mace told him generously. “Yeh, you’re a right guy. I’m sorry I was jumpy when I walked in.”
    “I don’t blame you.” Shayne laughed. He went to the door, saying, “You don’t need to say anything about this to Helen if you don’t want to. I won’t horn in again.”
    He mopped sweat from his forehead as he went toward the stairs. It was a miracle that the escaped con hadn’t thrown lead first and then started asking questions.
    Outside the apartment he got in his car and started back across the causeway to the mainland. Phyllis would probably be in when he got back, he told himself. He’d give her hell for walking out on him like that.
    But he drove fast, with his eyes intent on the pavement, his thoughts puzzled by the connection between Leroy and Helen. What was the tie-up between them—between Gorstmann and Lacy? He knew that Lacy had never been choosy about the sort of cases he took—like the divorce racket Helen had worked with him—but it was difficult for Shayne to believe that Lacy would be mixed up in any subversive activities with his country at war. On the other hand, Lacy’s professional reputation was hardly the sort to tie him up with the FBI in combating such enemy activities.
    He hadn’t reached any conclusion by the time he reached the mainland and turned into Biscayne Boulevard. He couldn’t reach any conclusion until he learned more about the scrap of cardboard he had taken from Lacy. He was quite sure that Gorstmann had sent Leroy and Joe after Lacy that afternoon to secure the piece of cardboard, and the pair had muffed the assignment somehow when they stopped Lacy on the causeway. Perhaps they had trailed him to Shayne’s apartment, expecting him to die at any moment and Lacy had foiled them by making the superhuman effort that took him to his destination before he died.
    Shayne shrugged off all the questions that were bothering him as he reached his apartment hotel. The important thing right now was Phyllis’s safety.
    The clerk said he had not seen Mrs. Shayne come back, and handed him a telegram that had just been delivered. Shayne read it as he went up in the elevator. It was from Murphy in New York, and read:
    Lacy at Tropical Hotel Miami Beach registered as Albert James. On vacation as near as can learn.
    Shayne thrust the message into his pocket and unlocked his apartment. It was dark and empty. He went into the bedroom and got the Tropical Hotel on the telephone. He was informed that Albert James was registered in room 416, but he did not answer the telephone when the operator tried his room.
    Shayne went back into the living-room and moodily poured himself a drink. “You’d think,” he said aloud into the silence, “that Phyllis would have learned better last time.”
    The subdued sound of evening traffic coming in the open window was his only answer.
    He walked aimlessly around the room, sipping the glass of cognac. After a time he got the Danube dinner check from his pocket and smoothed it out on the table. He drew his eyebrows down as he read Phyllis’s note again. He stood frowning at the piece of paper for a long time, then rummaged in a drawer for an airmail envelope.
    He sat down with a clean sheet of paper and wrote:
    Dear John: You should be able to bring out three sets of prints on the enclosed slip. They are mine, my wife’s, and those of a third party. Disregard mine (which are on file) and the lady’s prints. Wire me collect, immediately, anything you have on the third set.
    He signed the letter Michael Shayne and addressed the airmail envelope to John Bascom, Dept. of Identification, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, D.C.
    He folded the dinner check carefully inside the letter and sealed them in the envelope, then finished his drink and went out
    He stopped at the desk and got a