“Friend of yours?”
“Sort of. Daughter of a friend. He asked me to look her up when I hit town.”
“And your story is gonna be that you just walked in by chance and found her like this? Hell, you’d better think up a better one fast.”
Shayne nodded toward the Frenchwoman. “She’ll verify my story. I punched her bell by mistake when I was trying to rouse the girl. She came in with me.”
Denton took the cigar from his mouth and frowned at it. He turned from Shayne to face Madame Legrand and barked, “Well, what about it? What are you doing here?”
Madame Legrand’s black eyes flashed angrily. She shook a trembling finger at Shayne and burst into a wild babble of French. She stamped her foot and her eyes glittered with fear.
Denton yelled, “Hold it! Wait a minute. Don’t tell me you can’t speak English. I heard you a while ago.”
Shayne said, “Madame Legrand always has hysterics in French. She can go faster that way. If you wouldn’t scare the living daylights out of her you might find out something.”
“Shut up,” Denton barked. “I’m running this show.” He turned to the woman again. “Let’s have your story.”
“He made me stay,” she screamed. “He made me come in. I live in the next apartment and I know nothing about this. Only what I have told him.”