Shayne was beside her with an arm around her. He looked somberly down at the body of the man who had tried to kill him, in the front seat of his car, some nine hours earlier. Blood was gushing from a hole at the base of his throat, just beneath his chin.
Heeling the door shut, he half carried and half dragged the distraught widow to the bed. He let her down gently. “Cry it out while I call the police. But first tell me one thing. Is it Ted Granger?”
“Yes. He— he—” Her voice choked and she turned on her side, covered her face with both hands, and sobbed wildly.
Shayne picked up the telephone on the bedside table, asked for an outside line, and gave Will Gentry’s private number at police headquarters.
When the chief answered, he said, “Shayne, Will. I’m with Mrs. Carrol in three-sixty at the Commodore, and Ted Granger is lying here on the floor — dead.”
He listened a moment, then said impatiently, “It looks that way. I’ll try to calm Mrs. Carrol down and have her ready to answer questions when you get here. Better bring Bates along if he’s still around.”
He hung up and stood with his back to the corpse and the hysterical widow on the bed. His wound throbbed like a dull, steady rhythm on a drum, but he scarcely felt it as he turned slowly to make a careful survey of the room.
The dead man was in his shirt sleeves. His hat and jacket lay on a chair near the door. Everything was neat and tidy, and there was no indication of a struggle of any sort.
Shayne lit a cigarette, walked around to the other side of the bed from where Nora lay, and sat down. He studied her moodily, listening to her choking sobs. He took long drags on his cigarette, remembering the first time he had seen her, completely nude, and outlined in the faint light from the open door of his apartment, as she moved toward it to close it on the night latch before getting into his bed.
Suddenly he caught her shaking shoulder in a firm grasp and said curtly, “That’s about enough histrionics. So the guy is dead, and that makes two of your men rubbed out in twelve hours. But there’s still Margrave left.”