Shayne laughed harshly, but he laid a big hand gently on her covered shoulder. “You’re learning.”
“You don’t mean that Denton had me doped — and had you knocked out?”
“Yeh, that’s right,” Shayne told her. “Then when he learned that you were a witness in the Little case — against Henri — he was still more worried. It’s my guess that Denton owns a piece of the Daphne Club. When something like that gets tangled up in a murder investigation a lot of dirty linen is likely to get washed out.”
“Why did he — think up such an awful thing?”
“Because it was the smart thing to do,” Shayne told her with a scowl. “It cuts all the ground out from under us. In the first place, he’ll hold that picture as a whip to keep me in line. If I should choose to disregard it, let him publish it and let your reputation be damned, I’d still not be much better off. It would knock your testimony against Henri into a cocked hat. No one would believe a woman like that, and there’d be the added suspicion that I had connived with you to get you to testify that way. That’s why Denton had us caught in that raid together — that’s why he checked up and forced you to give your right name.”
Lucile said, “It must be terribly funny to you — remembering that I told you I learned the facts of life a long time ago.”
Shayne said softly, “No. It isn’t funny. I knew what you meant.”
Wriggling to a sitting position, she said, “You can forget about me and my reputation — if that will help.”
“It won’t,” Shayne muttered. “With Evalyn dead, there’s no one to corroborate your story. And even if it should be believed, what of it? It points to Evalyn as well as to Henri, and Evalyn has confessed.”
“Do you think she did it? I can’t believe it.”