Again he listened, then sent a sardonic glance toward Shayne as he said, “Shayne, eh? Michael Shayne. Yes. I do know him personally. That confirms Mrs. Carrol’s story, vehemently denied by Shayne.”
The redhead came to his feet, reached for the phone, and demanded angrily, “Let me talk to him, Will. I’ll cram that lie down his throat.”
Gentry fended him off with a curt gesture and a stony look. “That’s right,” he continued. “Shayne is here with me, too, and denies categorically ever hearing of you or the Carrols before tonight.”
He was listening again and shaking his head at Shayne’s impatient attempt to get hold of the phone. “I agree that it doesn’t seem to make sense either way, Mr. Bates.”
“Ask him,” Shayne demanded hoarsely, “how he claims to have contacted me. How, and to what extent he is supposed to have communicated with me and me with him.”
Gentry nodded and relayed the questions to the Wilmington lawyer. After a moment he covered the mouthpiece with his palm and said to Shayne, “He wrote to you a couple of weeks ago, briefly outlining what Mrs. Carrol planned, and you replied promptly offering to do the job for five hundred in cash, if he could fix it to get Carrol registered in this particular hotel. You claimed to know the layout of the apartments and the management here, and said you wouldn’t have too much trouble getting a key. As Carrol’s lawyer, Bates was in touch with him all the time, and he suggested that Carrol come here, giving some excuse that Carrol accepted.”
“Nice ethical lawyer,” Shayne grated, “setting his own client up for the kill.”
“That’s not true,” Nora protested. “Mr. Bates is nice. He was doing it for me — for both of us, really, because he felt that Ralph would regret the divorce later.”
Gentry gave not the slightest evidence that he had heard the woman. His rumpled lids were lowered at half-mast. “Bates’s story is that Michael Shayne steered Carrol to this hotel, got his five hundred cash in advance, then telephoned Bates two days ago to say that the key was ready for Mrs. Carrol when she arrived,” he reported solemnly, ruefully. “Also, he wired Michael Shayne to expect her at the Commodore yesterday and to take over from there. He sounds factual as hell, Mike, with all the data at his finger tips.”
“Every word of it is a goddamned lie,” Shayne burst out. “Good Lord, Will! You can go through my office files. Ask Lucy. I can prove I never wrote those letters or sent any wires. Lucy will verify that. Everything goes through her, as you know.”