Counterfeit Wife by Brett Halliday

to get some clothes on.
    Timothy Rourke expelled the long breath he had been holding, gently and noiselessly. He let the Gladstone close itself. His eyes burned more feverishly than before as he turned them on the grimly set face of the detective.
    Shayne moved his head negatively and his bleak gray eyes bored into Rourke’s. He pressed the Gladstone shut with a click and said, “Just to save Petey further embarrassment, I’ll go in the bedroom to dress.” He stood up with the Gladstone in his hand.
    Rourke sat on the floor and watched him speculatively. He didn’t say anything, and Painter didn’t turn around until Shayne reached the bedroom door and opened it.
    Shayne reached inside, turned on the light, and hesitated an almost imperceptible second before stepping in and pulling the door shut. He stood looking down with blank amazement at the bloody and battered face of a man he had never seen before.

 
Chapter Eight
    THE CORPSE IN THE BEDROOM
     
    THE MAN LAY on his back, half on and half off the bed. Both arms trailed on the floor, the stiff fingers of one hand just touching a heavy ornamental vase which had stood on a shelf just inside the front door of the apartment ever since Shayne could remember. The vase lay in a pool of blood.
    The man’s features were a pulp. He wore yellow silk pajamas which were blood-spattered. His face and the front portion of his head had been smashed by several heavy blows, and death must have come slowly and with great agony.
    “Slocum. He did come back to sleep in the apartment after all,” Shayne muttered to himself.
    The muscles in his gaunt cheeks quivered involuntarily. He was probably responsible for the man’s murder. He recalled the lie he had told Irvin and Perry about the source of the hundred-dollar bills they were interested in. It had seemed an innocent enough lie when he was desperately fighting for time, the best he could evolve on the spur of the moment. He hadn’t expected them to come to the hotel before morning, especially since the clerk had said Slocum hadn’t yet moved in. Even then, he thought they would only question the man, not murder him.
    Yet there was mute evidence all about the bedroom that it had been one of the senator’s crowd looking for more of the same kind of bank notes. There was an overturned Gladstone on the floor, and clothing and toilet articles were scattered all about the floor and on the bed. There was no doubt that it had been done by someone looking for the rest of the fifty grand mentioned by Bates over the telephone from the Fun Club.
    And Shayne suddenly realized that the money the murderer had been looking for was almost surely in the Gladstone he still held in his hand—the one the porter had given him at the airport. More precisely, Dawson’s Gladstone, for Shayne was convinced that the porter had got the two suitcases mixed up, somehow, while he was supposed to be changing one for the other at the last moment before Flight Sixty-two took off.
    Shayne turned, opened the door, and went out, carrying the closed suitcase. He set it down near the bathroom door. Rourke and Painter looked at his stony features and naked body with questioning interest.
    Shayne said, “One of you had better call the police.”
    “Police?” Painter bristled and strutted forward. “If you’ve anything to say to the police, you can talk to me.”
    Shayne gestured wearily, as though to brush the little man aside, and said to Rourke, “This is a job for the local boys. Homicide. And see if you can catch Will Gentry at his office.”
    Rourke whistled shrilly, studying Shayne’s face, then went obediently to the telephone to make the call.
    Painter echoed, “Homicide?” planting himself solidly on his small feet and thrusting out his chin.
    Shayne nodded. “There’s a dead man in the bedroom.” He went over to pour himself a stiff slug of cognac.
    Rourke was speaking rapidly into the telephone. Painter’s narrowed black eyes followed