“I came here straight from your office. Called Mrs. Carrol from the desk and said I was on my way up. I knocked on her door and heard voices, and some sort of movement. Then Mrs. Carrol screamed, ‘No, Ted. My God! No.’” Shayne’s utter lack of inflection on the words gave them a dramatic impact that no emphasis could possibly have done.
“This was instantly followed by one shot inside the room. I was all ready to hit the door with my shoulder, but Mrs. Carrol jerked it open from inside. She was sobbing and hysterical, and this is what I saw.” He gestured toward the dead man and the gun. “A dead man with a gun lying beside him. She told me it was Ted Granger and that she had tried to stop him, but he had suddenly gone crazy. I phoned you and haven’t touched anything except the telephone.”
He paused, then added calmly, “That’s about the size of it, Will. I haven’t tried to question her. There’s one thing more you should know right now. Granger is the man who called me on the telephone a little before four o’clock and offered me ten grand to keep quiet about Mrs. Carrol. He is the man who shot me, as I parked my car on the bayfront, and left me for dead. It’s a fair guess that the gun on the floor is the same one he used on me.”
Will Gentry nodded gravely. “The hole in the roof of your car came from a forty-five slug. We found an ejected cartridge on the floor.” He turned to Nora and said, “Your turn now, Mrs. Carrol. Start at the beginning and tell us everything you know about this.”
She was sitting tensely erect beside Bates, her face strained and white.
“I was surprised when Ted came about half an hour ago. I thought he was still in Wilmington. He had called me from there early this morning, you see, excited and worried about something. He begged me not to admit I knew he was in Miami last night. He swore that he had nothing to do with Ralph’s death — that it was something entirely different. I didn’t exactly promise him, but I did say I wouldn’t tell unless I had to.” She paused, moistened her lips, and hesitated.
“Then he showed up here about half an hour ago,” Gentry prompted her.
“Yes. He begged me, again, to promise I wouldn’t give him away. I said I would unless he told me why. Then he got excited and finally blurted out wildly that he had killed a man in Miami early this morning and had flown back to Wilmington and fixed an alibi that would stand up if I didn’t ruin it for him.
“I was horrified at first because I thought he meant he had killed Ralph, but he swore he hadn’t done that. He said he was frightened when he heard about Ralph and was afraid I had done it, and so he had killed you to protect me.” She looked directly at Shayne as she spoke.
“I was terribly confused and didn’t know what to think. I hadn’t heard you were dead. Of course, I hadn’t seen you since — there at the hotel, and I didn’t know for sure what might have happened. And then there were the two of you, you know. You saying it wasn’t you who’d been working for Mr. Bates, and all that. So, I just didn’t know.