The photographer blinked Watery eyes at him and said, “You’re Mike Shayne,” in a feeble, fearful voice. “What’s happened? What went wrong last night?” His teeth started chattering again.
Shayne poured the rest of the whisky in the glass and held it out to Ludlow, who shuddered and said, “God, no!” Then he dragged himself to a sitting position, took the glass, and drained it. After a period of gagging and screwing his thin face into a grimace of distaste, he asked, “How’d you find me here? What do you want with me now?”
“I want some information.” Shayne tossed the man’s clothes on the foot of the bed and sat down on the chair. “How did you recognize me just now?”
“Saw your picture in the papers often enough. I tried to phone you last night after I found Carrol dead. Somebody answered your phone but he didn’t sound like you.”
“Start back at the beginning,” Shayne ordered. “The whole Carrol deal. So that we won’t be at cross-purposes, I should explain that I never even heard of Carrol until after he was dead.”
“Hold on,” Ludlow protested. “When you called me yesterday—”
“I didn’t call you,” Shayne cut in sharply. “But I gather that somebody did — someone who claimed to be me.”
“Sure. Said it was Mike Shayne calling, and he had a job for last night.” He paused, squinted at the redhead, asked, “Is this straight? It wasn’t you?”
“No. That’s why I want to know all about it. From the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.”
“There isn’t much,” he mumbled. “I thought ’twas you, naturally. I didn’t ask any questions. He said there was fifty bucks in it for one picture — a bedroom picture in the dark — so I figured a divorce setup. Number two-sixteen at that hotel, he said, at exactly two-twenty in the morning. The door to the sitting-room was to be standing open, and I was to walk in and go straight back to the bedroom, as quiet as possible, and get my one shot and beat it.”