“Did you? Did you really?”
Shayne nodded. “We don’t have to pretend to each other, do we?”
“No. I guess we don’t, Michael.” Her voice was beginning to slur a trifle, caressing and sensuous. “So you won’t be shocked if I confess that I’ve been thinking, if I had the key to your room when I do come back, and, well, if — some night, when you were sound asleep, like last night, it would be something to anticipate — to look forward to and wonder when—”
“It would, indeed,” he said. “And I’m certainly not shocked, darling.” He half stood, reached across the desk to open the center drawer, took out the key she had left behind early that same morning, and held it up. “You really want to take this with you?”
“Oh, yes,” she exclaimed breathlessly. “I really do.”
Shayne drew it back, looking down at it broodingly. “I wondered,” he said flatly, “how long it would take you to realize your pretty neck was in danger as long as I have this key.”
“What do you mean?”
“I imagine you realized the danger in the beginning,” mused Shayne. “While Chief Gentry was here this morning. But you couldn’t very well ask for it then. It was some sort of evidence. You showed remarkable restraint by walking out and leaving it here as though it meant nothing to you.”
“What do you mean?” she demanded again, her voice rising shrilly on the last word.
“You’ve been pretty damned remarkable throughout this whole thing,” Shayne went on flatly. “What actually happened in your hotel room during the minute and a half you waited for me to reach your door? Did Ted Granger really shoot himself? Or did you grab the gun away from him, when I knocked, and then kill him?”