Gentry parried them, giving her no more information than he had given Shayne. Ralph Carrol had been murdered and the police were in his apartment one floor up, investigating the affair, at the time the substitute clerk reported Shayne’s inquiry about the dead man.
In the bedroom, Shayne stripped off his pajamas and began dressing. Through the open door he heard the girl give Gentry the same story she had told him, with only minor and unimportant variations. Her voice broke several times when she spoke of her relationship with the dead man.
He finished dressing and strolled into the living-room buttoning the sleeves of a fresh white shirt as she completed her recital. He grinned briefly at the expression of open disbelief on Chief Gentry’s broad, florid face.
Circling the pair, he sat down in the swivel chair and refilled his cognac glass. He rocked back and listened with interest as Gentry asked the same question he himself had asked upon learning that Ralph Carrol was occupying the suite directly above.
“Could you have mistaken the number, Mrs. Carrol?” Chief Gentry asked. “Are you sure you were told to come to one-sixteen instead of two -sixteen?”
“I’m positive.” Nora Carrol was composed now, dry-eyed and tight-lipped. “It was written out in the instructions that were waiting for me at the hotel when I arrived yesterday; and distinctly repeated again over the telephone tonight.”
“I suggested some such mix-up, too,” Shayne told Gentry moodily. “A sure way to check would be to try the key Mrs. Carrol has on her husband’s door. That’s it right there on the desk. I’m interested in finding out if a key made for two-sixteen also fits my lock.”
Gentry picked up the shiny new key and studied it. “All these Yale keys look alike to me,” he rumbled. “But we’ll have to leave the test to an expert, Mike. The first men who arrived here, after getting the report on Carrol, couldn’t get a duplicate key from the new man on the desk. He couldn’t find a master key, either. So they forced the lock of two-sixteen to get in, and it’s jammed. It would be impossible to make the test right now.”
Shayne thought for a moment, then said, “Look, Will, I’m damned anxious to know whether this is just a crazy mistake, or whether this woman was given a key to my room, and sent here for some definite purpose, while her husband was being murdered. Seems to me a lot depends on that. Let’s do this. Call upstairs and have the key to number two-sixteen brought down. If it doesn’t unlock my door, then we’ll know that this key couldn’t possibly unlock his.”
“Good enough.” Gentry reached for the phone and spoke into it briefly.