The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

Shayne tried to call back but his throat muscles were queerly knotted and he couldn’t utter a sound.

He shambled down the alley to the street where he had left his car, and got in. He started the motor and drove away, made a circle back to Miami Avenue and drove to his apartment hotel. He didn’t feel like tackling the side stairway, so he went in through the lobby toward the elevator.

The clerk hurried out from behind the desk when he saw the detective’s condition. He exclaimed: “Good God, Mr. Shayne! What happened?... Here. Lean on me.”

Shayne put his arm around the clerk’s shoulders. He croaked: “It’s O.K., Dick. More blood than anything else.”

Dick helped him into the elevator and rode up to his room with him. Shayne was an old and privileged client in the apartment hotel and the clerk had seen him in bad shape before, but never quite in this condition. He took Shayne’s keyring and unlocked the door, then stared around in amazement when he turned on the light.

“Good Lord!” he ejaculated. “Did the fight start here in your room, Mr. Shayne?”

Shayne looked around the room with bleary eyes that refused to focus on any object. Things seemed to be in a sort of jumble but he didn’t see why the clerk was so excited. He pushed past him toward the center table and stared down stupidly at the drawer that was pulled all the way out. He knew he had left it closed — with the things he and Myrna had brought from Captain Samuels’ house. His fingers closed around the neck of the brandy bottle still sitting where he had left it, and he used both hands getting it up to his mouth. A long pull at it relaxed his throat muscles and cleared the film away from his eyes. He looked around the disordered room and then at the clerk.

“Have I had any visitors since I went out, Dick?”

“Just that tall man with Chief Gentry — he came back right after you went out. He didn’t stop at the desk, but went straight up. He came back almost immediately and went on out and I thought he’d come back hoping to catch you and found you’d already left.”

Shayne took another slow drink of cognac. It brought the warmth of life back to him. “Was he up here long enough to do this?” He waved his hand around the room.

Dick wrinkled his forehead. “I don’t think so, but I wouldn’t say for sure. You know how it is. It’s hard to judge time. It didn’t seem as if he were up here more than a few minutes.”

Shayne nodded. He said, “Thanks for coming up with me,” in a tone of dismissal. He stood with the bottle in his hands until Dick went out and closed the door. Then he held it to his lips and drained it. He went out to the kitchen and set the empty bottle carefully on the sink beside the two glasses Myrna had put there on her way out. He tried the back door and found it unlocked.

He remembered it had been locked and Myrna Hastings had had the key when he went away a little while before.

He went into the bedroom and stripped off his clothes, turned water into the tub as hot as his hand could stand it. His face was pretty much of a mess, with both his lips puffed and bluish, lacerated flesh on his cheekbone clotted with blood, and streaks of dried blood running down his chin.

He grimaced at his reflection in the mirror, cautiously testing the two teeth loosened by contact with the toe of Blackie’s shoe. They were wobbly but would probably grow back solid if left alone. All in all he was in pretty good shape, considering the way he’d been knocked around.

He got a soft washcloth steaming hot and held it gently against his face while he waited for the tub to fill, loosened the dried blood and cleaned it away carefully.

When he sank into the hot water to soak his long frame, he continued the ministrations with the washcloth. When he got out of the tub he swabbed his face freely with peroxide, then dusted it with antiseptic powder and plastered a bandage over the worst cut on his cheek. He vigorously toweled himself and put on clean clothes, then went to a wall cabinet in the living room and got out a bottle of Portuguese brandy guaranteed to be at least five years old.

During all this time he had methodically gone about the things he had to do, consciously refraining from thinking. He had a factual mind and he liked to use it in an orderly fashion.

He filled the wine glass on the table and got a fresh tumbler of ice water from the kitchen. He sank into a chair and lit a cigarette, letting it droop from an uninjured corner of his mouth, took a sip of brandy and began slowly and unhurriedly to go over the events of the evening, testing each incident as he came to it in the light of later occurrences.