“I’ll accept it,” said Gentry, “unless further evidence turns up to disprove it. They didn’t get any fingerprints, but everything else reads the way you told it. If you did arrange the bullet hole and the blood on the cushion, it was a pretty damned elaborate setup, and I don’t know when you had time to do it and get up to Wilmington and back.”
“Thanks,” said Shayne gravely. “Then I guess you won’t throw me in jail if I tell you that a man using my name did fly to Wilmington and back early this morning.”
He held up a hand to cut off Gentry’s grunt of surprise. “The airline called my office right after you’d left,” he explained swiftly, changing the facts a little to soften what he had done. “You’d left my number for them to call, you know, and the clerk thought it was you on the phone and gave me the report before I realized what it was. A man who said he was Michael Shayne flew to Wilmington at four-twenty and returned at nine-ten, giving him just about enough time in Wilmington to burglarize Bates’s office and get back.”
“Damn it, Mike!” Gentry exploded. “You didn’t tell me.”
“Hold it a minute, Will. The thing was dumped into my lap without my asking for it, and you know the mood you were in about then. You would have had to arrest me while you investigated further. And I had already had the call from Margrave that sounded like an important lead. But I’m giving it to you for what it’s worth now.”
“Margrave,” rumbled Gentry. “He fits like a glove. He is familiar with Bates’s office, probably knows just where his files are kept.”
“Right. Now if you can get hold of the employee who sold the plane ticket, and the hostesses who flew up and back, and if any of them can identify Margrave, we’ll have a case.”
“But there’s still one thing that doesn’t make sense,” Gentry protested. “If Margrave had been impersonating you, aren’t you the last person in the world he’d call in to work on the case? He’d stay as far away from you as possible.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time a murderer called me in on a case, hoping I’d pin it on somebody else,” Shayne pointed out.
“We damn sure have some questions to ask him,” said Gentry firmly. “And right now I’d better get back to my office. Bates is due to fly in from Wilmington about now.”