“It doesn’t add up to anything,” Rourke insisted. “He had you where the hair was short with the girl’s body in your room. Yet he conveniently carries the body away, then changes his mind and gives the gal back to you. It’s crazy, Mike.”
“Sure it is.” Shayne picked up his cognac glass and looked longingly at its contents, set it down, and took a long drink of ice water instead. “Trouble is, we’ve got a wrong slant somewhere. We can’t see any motive behind any of it. Our unknown factor is why. We’ve got a string of seemingly senseless events that won’t add up until we know the value of X. A simple algebraic equation.”
Rourke yawned and rattled the ice cubes in his tilted glass. He reached out waveringly for the bottle of Scotch and tipped it up, let the liquid gurgle into his glass.
Shayne frowned at him and warned, “You’re taking on a heavy load, Tim.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” He shuddered complacently. “I’m just beginning to feel human again after dealing corpses off the bottom of the deck.” He squinted at Shayne over the top of his glass. “Let’s solve for X since it’s a simple equation. How many people knew Helen Stallings was coming here to give you some dope against Stallings?”
“That would be guesswork. Jim Marsh for one — That is, he sent a girl to see me after talking with her on the phone. He claims he didn’t know who she was at the time—” He broke off, staring past Rourke, his features tightening.
“Then Jim Marsh is one man we can leave out. He sent her to you. If she had some low-down on Stallings that would give him the election he’d be the last man in the world to shut her mouth before she gabbed.”
Shayne said, “I wonder.” He cocked his head as if listening for a sound which eluded his big ears. He drummed finger tips on the arm of his chair.
Rourke stared at him in blank amazement. “You’re determined to complicate things,” he complained. “Seems to me Marsh is the one man we can eliminate.”
“I told you how he acted tonight.”