The detective stepped aside reluctantly. Shayne picked up the receiver and barked, “Hello,” but all he heard was the buzz of the dial tone. He slammed the instrument down and turned to face the detective. “Next time you get in my way like that, I’ll give you a hell of a good excuse for putting me in a cell with my secretary.”
“You listen to me, shamus,” the man began belligerently, but Sturgis stopped him with a curt: “That’s plenty, Gene. A search warrant doesn’t give you the right to push anybody around. Get on with searching the files.”
Shayne turned back to the desk, fumbled with the buttons, found and pushed the one that sent calls directly into his private office, then went back to his own desk.
Len Sturgis was standing in front of the steel filing-cabinet with all the drawers pulled out. He said, “Don’t pay any attention to Gene. What does give on the Carrol murder, Mike? You holding out on the chief?”
“I’m not holding out a damned thing,” Shayne said bitterly. “You tell me about Carrol.”
“We got nothing,” Sturgis assured him. “The guy was found lying on his bed murdered, front and back doors locked tight. No visitors anybody knows about. No suspicious fingerprints in the joint. There’s his wife — the dame Will Gentry brought up to identify him. All I know is, the chief is plenty steamed up about catching Lucy Hamilton prowling Mrs. Carrol’s hotel room.”
Shayne took another drink and, avoiding Sturgis’s eyes, asked, “How do you know it was Mrs. Carrol’s room? The newspapers missed that item.”
“Yeh. But I was there when Gentry sent Mark Hagen to take her to her hotel. I heard him telling Hagen on the side to take a look around to see if he could find a letter from you in her room. So it’s easy to figure where Hagen found your secretary, and what she was looking for. Now there’s a gal for you!” he went on admiringly. “Damned if she’s not worth ten of the jerks, like Gene in there, that I got to work with. She sure took Hagen for a ride, and he don’t even know it yet. That story he gave the Herald!” Sturgis chuckled. “You mind too much if I lift a drink, Mike?”
“Help yourself,” Shayne said absently.
So, Gentry had caught it, too? Nora Carrol’s faint hesitancy before she declared she had destroyed her letter from Michael Shayne! Well, Gentry had been in the business as long, or longer, than he, himself. It wasn’t surprising that the police chief had been just as quick to check the possibility that she was lying about destroying the letter.