“Sure. He’s got the willies about the election. Every amateur politician gets that way. I’ve seen plenty of them ready to give up the day before the votes were counted.”
“It was more than that, Tim. Damn it, Marsh acted like a man who wanted to lose — who was afraid to win.” Shayne gave himself a hunch which brought his torso upright and he sat staring queerly as he continued.
“I don’t even know he sent the girl to me. He called me and said she was on her way. We don’t know but what he tried to prevent her from coming — that she insisted—” His voice trailed off. There was a faraway, questing look in his eyes.
Rourke swore angrily. “God, Mike, if you start suspecting Marsh where will you stop? Here’s something that knocks that theory into a cocked hat. The threatening note to Stallings, warning him to withdraw from the election. I suppose Marsh killed the girl so Stallings would win, then sent the note to force him to withdraw.” His voice was heavy with sarcasm.
Shayne shook his head stubbornly. “Someone else could have sent the note,” he pointed out. “Someone who knew Helen Stallings was on her way to my apartment.”
“It had to be the killer,” Rourke argued. “The note was sent to Stallings to hang a frame on you — by someone who knew the gal was dead and couldn’t testify that you hadn’t kidnaped her.”
“That’s right, too.” Shayne mopped his seamed forehead, then meditatively emptied his cognac glass. “Here’s what happened. Someone followed her here and waited until I started to the station with Phyllis, then came in and choked her with her own stocking. There was a struggle and she made an outcry, overheard by someone who pounded on the door and then called Gentry. I had left the door unlocked, and the murderer locked it. He was trapped in here, with the door locked on the inside. He had to unlock it in order to throw full suspicion on me. He escaped by the fire escape and hung around watching. He knew the body was undiscovered when I came back. Afterward, one of Bugler’s men followed me away, and as soon as the coast is clear the body is snatched before you can get back and take it away. Oh, hell! It’s not a simple equation. It’s got a dozen unknowns.” He poured another glass of cognac.
“And Arch Bugler is one of them,” Rourke reminded him. “He keeps popping up. He’s had enough practice in murder.”
“But he wouldn’t have killed a society girl who was pulling him up out of the gutter,” Shayne protested. “According to those newspaper accounts you gave me, he and Helen Stallings were practically engaged. And she’s due to come into a wad of money soon, isn’t she?”
“On her twenty-first birthday, I think. A couple of weeks from now. I think the whole story was printed in the paper when she started the suit against her stepfather and then dropped it.”