His thoughts were interrupted by Timothy Rourke’s sanguine voice saying, “Hi there, Gene. You taking over Miss Hamilton’s job?”
Then Shayne heard quick footsteps in the corridor. He shoved his chair back and stood up as Lucy Hamilton entered the outer office. She wore the light suit and yellow scarf, and looked trim and personable despite her incarceration.
Shayne stepped around the desk, took her in his arms, and held her tightly, pressing her face against his chest.
Timothy Rourke sauntered in. The hard-bitten reporter from the Daily News had a cynical smile on his cadaverous face. He stopped just inside the door and struck a melodramatic pose as he declaimed, “My kingdom for a camera! If only I could get a shot of this and print it with the caption, ‘All is Forgiven!’ I might get myself an extra, too.”
Rourke was an old and privileged friend. Shayne grinned at him briefly over Lucy’s head, then slipped his fingers under her chin and tilted her face upward. “Was it tough, angel?”
“Not so bad.” She was smiling now, and her eyes were luminous. “I wasn’t worried in jail. Not really. After all, Michael, it wasn’t the first time. Remember New Orleans?”
Shayne nodded somberly. He remembered New Orleans. They had been arrested together that time. That was when he first met Lucy Hamilton. She hadn’t known him at all, but she had trusted him from the very beginning.
He took his arm from around her waist and said, “Sturgis, here, and his pal out there, have a search warrant, angel. They’re looking for our file on the Carrol case. Can you help them find it?”
Lucy shook her head and looked at Sturgis with astonishment. “Carrol? Carrol who?”
“Ralph Carrol,” Sturgis supplied. “The guy who was bumped in the apartment right above Mike’s last night.”