One Night with Nora Read online

  “I won’t. Right away.” Her voice held a sensuous lilt.

  Shayne hung up, shaking his red head slowly. Women! He marveled. By God, they were wonderful. Talk about resiliency! Here was a dame, whose estranged husband and current lover had both died violent deaths, practically in her arms within the space of twelve hours, making a fast date with a new man whom she had encountered by accident.

  Picking up the two glasses in one hand and the cognac bottle in the other, he carried them to the kitchenette where he squeezed a cupful of lemon juice and poured it into a cocktail shaker. He then added an equal amount of Cointreau and two cups of cognac, filled the shaker almost to the top with ice cube, screwed the lid on, and went back to the living-room shaking it lazily.

  He set the shaker on the desk, got two champagne glasses to place beside it, frowned at the arrangement of chairs, and moved his own a little. He then pushed another comfortable chair so that Nora Carrol’s knees would be practically touching his when they were seated. He turned on a floor lamp with indirect lighting, switched off the bright desk lamp, and was giving the sidecars a few extra shakes when he heard high heels coming up the hall. He went to the door and opened it.

  Nora Carrol was bareheaded and wore a blue traveling-suit, simple in style, that revealed her curves. Her brown hair was brushed back from her flushed face, and she looked older than when he first saw her. Her dark eyes met his steadily and her lips parted in a diffident smile.

  Shayne knew he could kiss her if he wished. This fleeting moment was the one in which the tone of their meeting would be established.

  He put out one hand and touched her lightly between the shoulder blades, and a faint pressure brought her a step forward and into the curve of his arm. Her lips were cool and only slightly parted, but she made no attempt to withdraw them from the insistent and increasing pressure of his. She lifted her right hand and trailed finger tips across his cheek.

  He released her then, and she stepped away from the circle of his arm at once, lowering her lashes, and saying with sharply indrawn breath, “I didn’t mean that. I don’t know what you’ll think of me.”

  Shayne grinned and closed the door. “Exactly what I was thinking before you came,” he assured her. “That you’re pretty damned terrific.” He took her arm and led her to the chair facing his, unscrewed the cap from the frosted shaker, and poured the champagne glasses full. He handed one to her and held the other high. “Here’s to the wrong key,” he said buoyantly, “may you use it often.”

  Her color deepened slightly, but she drank to the toast.

  Nora glanced around the room, then studied her drink for a moment before saying, “That’s what I came to talk about,” in a low voice. “I keep thinking about last night—”

  “I keep thinking about that, too,” Shayne told her helpfully. “It’s due to be one of my pleasantest memories.”

  She lifted her glass, drained it, and held it out to him. “May I have another, please? I need several of these to make me stop feeling like a shameless wanton.”

  “Have all you want, of course, but don’t stop feeling that way on my account. Men like nothing better than shameless wantons, if you don’t already know it.”

  She took the glass and smiled fleetingly, drank half its contents, and accepted a cigarette and light from him. She settled back and said soberly, “I think I’d say it differently. That men like women who act like shameless wantons when they’re not.”

  “You should know better than I,” he told her agreeably. “I was told today that one night with Nora has been known to change strong men into infatuated weaklings.”

  “Who told you that?” she flared angrily.

  “Don’t jump at me,” he said with a slight shrug. “I consider it one of the greatest compliments I ever heard.”

  “Who said that about me?” she demanded.

  “Ann Margrave.”

  “Oh, her!” She made a gesture of dismissal and emptied her glass, and settled back again with her cigarette. “Ann is the perpetual adolescent. She chased after Ralph for years and she never did forgive me for marrying him.”

  Shayne took a long drink, then asked, “So, you’re going back to Wilmington tonight. Do you have to?”

  “Yes. I—Mr. Bates made the reservation. Of course, I have to go.” She smiled and added, “Which doesn’t leave us much time for those drinks.”

  Shayne filled her glass the third time. “You don’t have to stay in Wilmington, do you?”

  “Not forever, I hope.” She smiled quite gaily and sipped at her cocktail. “I wouldn’t call this really weak yet. A little more and I’ll be tight enough to tell you what I really came to say.”

  “Have a little more by all means,” he invited with a wide grin. “If you should happen to miss that plane?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “I really mustn’t do that. That’s why, well—” She fluttered her eyelids and took a deep drink, as though seeking courage to go on.

  Shayne didn’t help her. He crushed out his cigarette, sipped, and waited.

  “That’s the reason why I wanted to tell you I hope to come back to Miami in a few weeks,” she said breathlessly.

  “I hoped you were going to say that, Nora.”

  “Did you? Did you really?”

  Shayne nodded. “We don’t have to pretend to each other, do we?”

  “No. I guess we don’t, Michael.” Her voice was beginning to slur a trifle, caressing and sensuous. “So you won’t be shocked if I confess that I’ve been thinking, if I had the key to your room when I do come back, and, well, if—some night, when you were sound asleep, like last night, it would be something to anticipate—to look forward to and wonder when—”

  “It would, indeed,” he said. “And I’m certainly not shocked, darling.” He half stood, reached across the desk to open the center drawer, took out the key she had left behind early that same morning, and held it up. “You really want to take this with you?”

  “Oh, yes,” she exclaimed breathlessly. “I really do.”

  Shayne drew it back, looking down at it broodingly. “I wondered,” he said flatly, “how long it would take you to realize your pretty neck was in danger as long as I have this key.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I imagine you realized the danger in the beginning,” mused Shayne. “While Chief Gentry was here this morning. But you couldn’t very well ask for it then. It was some sort of evidence. You showed remarkable restraint by walking out and leaving it here as though it meant nothing to you.”

  “What do you mean?” she demanded again, her voice rising shrilly on the last word.

  “You’ve been pretty damned remarkable throughout this whole thing,” Shayne went on flatly. “What actually happened in your hotel room during the minute and a half you waited for me to reach your door? Did Ted Granger really shoot himself? Or did you grab the gun away from him, when I knocked, and then kill him?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Michael,” she moaned. “Tell me you’re joking.”

  “This key isn’t any joke,” he told her harshly. “It’s going to unlock the death chamber for you, and you know it. I’m afraid we can’t touch you for shooting Ted Granger. You’re the only one who can testify as to what happened in that locked room. But you’ll never talk yourself out of murdering your husband, Nora. It just isn’t in the books.”

  She slowly brought her emotions under control, sat back rigidly erect, and stared at him.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she told him calmly. “No matter what absurd theory you have about Ralph’s death, I couldn’t possibly have gotten into his room, if I’d tried. You know, yourself, that’s the wrong key.”

  Shayne said dispassionately, “You made one slip, Nora. One tiny slip in some of the neatest and fastest work to beat a murder rap I’ve ever run into. Why did you close my door on the night latch last night before coming to bed?”

  “Because I thought you were Ralph. I’d left the do
or open to have a little light to see to undress. You can’t be serious,” she pleaded. “You’re just joking, and I don’t think it’s funny at all.”

  “If I hadn’t been standing in the bedroom doorway, if I hadn’t seen you go to close the door, it might never have come to me. But I couldn’t get that picture of you out of my mind. You looked good,” he went on angrily. “So damned good that it kept coming back to me. And finally I realized the truth. You knew perfectly well you weren’t in Ralph’s apartment. Your whole story was a desperate lie to alibi yourself.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re trying to get at at all,” she told him, her voice still calm and cold.

  “Ludlow,” said Shayne grimly. “The photographer who was supposed to take a picture of you in bed with Ralph as clinching evidence to kill the divorce. We got it from Ludlow; and from Bill Nash, who was posing as Michael Shayne in the deal. You knew the setup. Everything was timed to the minute. They’ll testify you were to enter Ralph’s apartment at exactly two-ten. You were to leave the door ajar for Ludlow to follow ten minutes later, get undressed and into Ralph’s bed, and have the picture taken.

  “And you did just that, Nora. The door was open for Ludlow at two-twenty. Ralph was there waiting for his picture, but you weren’t.”

  “Where was I, mastermind?” she asked scathingly.

  “You were in Ralph’s kitchen going out his back door onto the fire escape with his back-door key, which is just a common one that opens most ordinary doors. I tried my back-door key on his this afternoon and it fits, all right. You worked fast to get out of a hell of a spot after you stabbed him. You knew the photographer was due in that open doorway any moment. I imagine you ducked in the kitchen with your clothes in your arms about the time Ludlow walked in. Or did Ralph wake up before you were fully undressed, threaten to throw you out, and got you so angry you grabbed up the paper knife and let him have it, before you realized you were trapped there?”

  “You’re telling it,” she said, feigning indifference, but her voice was unsteady.

  “That’s right, I am,” he agreed pleasantly. “Anyhow, you did come out on the fire escape, bringing the backdoor key to two-sixteen with you, and down one flight to my landing. By that time, you’d had a moment to think. Ralph was dead, and the detective and photographer would place you in his room at the right time. If you could get into the apartment below, pretend you believed it was Ralph’s and that you had been given the wrong key by mistake; well, it was a crazy chance, but the only one you saw. And you took it, babe, with the aplomb of a seasoned murderess, may I say? I don’t know how much practice you’d had, but—”

  “You actually sound serious,” Nora broke in, bewildered and frightened. “How can you possibly believe all that nonsense? I had no way of getting into Ralph’s room. That key doesn’t fit his door. You and the chief tried it last night.”

  “No,” said Shayne grimly. “That was a big break for you. The merest chance, but it almost put you in the clear. The police had jammed the lock on Ralph’s door when they broke in, and we brought his key down here to try it on my door. It didn’t fit, of course. But we didn’t try this key on my door. You said you’d come in the front door and we assumed you had, and it didn’t occur to us to test it.

  “But after it was all over and you had Ted Granger conveniently dead and framed for the job, you realized that I still had the key. ‘One of these days,’ you must have thought, ‘he’ll absent-mindedly try to open his door with that key I left behind, and it won’t open.’

  “You knew that would be the payoff. I’d immediately know your entire story had been a lie. But if you could get hold of this key, and get rid of it before I happened to try it on my door, you’d be clear. And you tried, honey,” he went on, his voice suddenly sympathetic. “God knows you tried. That’s why I expected your call tonight. I knew you’d call.”

  Nora Carrol had been leaning back listlessly as he spoke, nervously toying with the suède purse in her lap. Her hand dived inside as he ended, and came out with a tiny .25 automatic. She sat up with teeth bared and her finger tight on the trigger.

  “All right, you smart bastard,” she grated. “Once that key is gone you’ll never prove a thing. Give it to me.”

  Shayne shrugged and tossed it into her lap. “You can have it. I didn’t mention that you forgot something else. Your fingerprints are on Ralph’s back doorknob and on mine. If you had wiped those off—”

  “I did wipe them off. You’re lying—”

  Shayne jerked his right foot, that had the toe of his shoe under the edge of her chair, just as she realized what she had said. She pulled the trigger of her automatic, and the small bullet went over his head into the ceiling. He had her in his arms, with one hand clamped over the gun, while his other reached for the telephone to call the police to take her away.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Mike Shayne Mysteries

  one

  It all began Thursday evening, April 23rd, 1953. I was spending a week in New York, seeing publishers and meeting old friends, and I had timed my visit to coincide with the annual Edgar Allan Poe Awards Dinner given by the Mystery Writers of America, of which I have been a member for many years.

  The dinner is held each year in the grand ballroom of the Henry Hudson Hotel in New York, bringing together several hundred mystery writers from all over the country who meet with distinguished fans and guests to honor the Father of the modern Detective Story. Ceramic busts of Poe (known as “Edgars”) are presented to winners of awards in the various mystery fields for the preceding year, and everyone has a few drinks and there’s much shop talk.

  The bar was already well crowded when I went in. Since I had been away from New York for many years, most of the people were strangers, with here and there the familiar face of a friend I had known in MWA from years ago. There were Ed Radin, Bruno Fischer, Clayton Rawson, and Veronica Parker Johns, also Helen Reilly, the Grande Dame of the mystery field, who had just been elected the president of the Mystery Writers, and her four charming daughters (two already successful mystery authors on their own); there were editors like Frank Taylor of Dell, Cecil Goldbeck of Coward-McCann, Harry Maule of Random House, and many others, none of whom are important to this story.

  I went up to the bar for a brandy, and looked down the seating list for my own name. I had been placed at table seven, with my old friend David Raffelock from Denver, Robert Arthur, who was slated to receive an Edgar for his radio program, and Dorothy Cecil, whose novels I had long admired and whom I had always wished to meet.

  When I reached the dining-room, they and their wives were all circulating around the table, introducing themselves to each other. I said, “Hi,” to the Raffelocks, congratulated Bob Arthur on the Edgar he was receiving, and then began looking around for Dorothy Cecil.

  She had already seated herself quietly at the table.

  As soon as I saw her sitting alone, with her head slightly tilted and a faint smile on her lips, I knew she had to be the author of Sergeant Death and Treason for Two—both favorites of mine. She had intelligent gray eyes, a wide, smooth forehead, and soft brown hair brushed down over the temples. I suppose she was in her early thirties but there was a glint of gray in the brown hair, and it pleased me greatly to notice that she made no effort at all to brush it so the gray would be concealed.

  All this is unimportant except that it leads up inevitably to what happened later. I might not have gone out with Elsie Murray later if I had not sat beside Dorothy Cecil at dinner.

  I don’t know. That’s probably beclouding the issue. I did sit beside Miss Cecil, and I did go out with Elsie.

  Dorothy Cecil was looking at me as I stood there. I went to her at once. “I’m Brett Halliday. Do you mind if I sit here?”

  She smiled and said, “I recognized that black eyepatch from pictures I’ve seen. I’d love to have you sit beside me.”

  She had a low, vibrant voice. I looked at her squarely and said, “My God! ‘Sergeant
Death!’ Soporific candles made from the rendered fat of newborn babies.”

  Her face lit up and her eyes twinkled happily. “Don’t tell me you’ve actually read my books?”

  “Every one I could get hold of. Which I’ll bet is more than you can say of mine.”

  She cupped her chin in her left palm and looked thoughtful. “‘The Private Practice of Michael Shayne.’ Was that the first?”

  So, then we were off. On the favorite topic of all authors—our own books. She had read most of the Shaynes, and discussed them intelligently. But Bob Arthur sat on her right and he talked to her for a time while dinner was being served. I discussed old Denver friends with Raffelock. But all the time I was acutely conscious of Dorothy Cecil on the other side of me. I was alone in New York, and the night lay ahead. So far as I could judge she was alone at the Poe dinner, also.

  There was no more than that. Just the delightful possibility of further acquaintance with a charming woman. Nothing one would try to force. Something that might happen if the gods were good.

  The conversation became general and we were waiting for dessert when I was able to talk with Dorothy privately again. I saw waiters serving drinks to diners at other tables and tried to catch the eye of one but failed. Somehow I never have achieved the technique of catching a busy waiter’s eye. So I pushed back my chair and told Dorothy I was going out to the bar to fetch a drink and would she like one?

  She said, “Bring me a cognac in honor of Mike,” and my hunch grew stronger that the gods were going to be kind.

  But by the time I returned with my drinks, table-hopping had begun. Dorothy’s seat was vacant when I set her glass down, and I’d hardly seated myself when Dick Carroll of Gold Medal came by and dragged me over to his table to meet a couple of girls in the editorial department. While I was there I saw Dorothy come back to her chair and take one sip of the cognac I’d brought her, and then she was up enthusiastically talking to some man I didn’t know and going away with him to meet someone at his table. And that’s the way it went on for the next couple of hours while the Edgar winners got their trophies.