Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 6, May 1963

“Someone in the lobby crowd may have reported my interest in the case to the police. They may have decided it was time to provide press and public with a scapegoat. So your brother was arrested.”

Her face twitched. “You mean they’re just going to... to railroad him?”

“They’re going to try.”

“Oh, God!” The exclamation was a prayer. “As long as they believed him guilty, all we had to do was to prove him innocent. But if they don’t care whether he’s guilty or not, what can be done?”

“Appeal to public opinion. If the Syndicated Press publicized evidence of his innocence throughout the country the police here couldn’t railroad him.”

“You’re right.” Her expression changed. “I’m going to take you on trust!” she cried impulsively. “I have nobody in the world but Marty and Uncle Kim and Uncle Kim’s too old to handle this.”

“Uncle Kim?”

“Clement Kimball, Marty’s senior partner. We call him uncle and we call his wife Aunt Margaret. Our real parents died when we were in our teens. What can I do?”

“First, answer some questions,” he said. “What were you looking for early this morning when I discovered you in Diana Clark’s suite?”

“The papers said there were signs of a struggle when the body was found and the rug was rolled back as if the murderer had searched the floor for something after the murder. Little things do come loose in a struggle — buttons, ear-rings, things like that.

“I hoped there might be something the police had overlooked, some little thing that would point to the real murderer and clear Marty. I never dreamed the room would be rented to anyone else so soon after the murder. So I bribed the night chambermaid to let me use her passkey.”

“That was taking a big risk.”

Her eyes looked enormous as she went on, speaking rapidly: “I was frantic. The police took Marty away yesterday evening at nine o’clock. They wouldn’t let me or Uncle Kim see him all night long. We knew they must be giving him a third degree, because they had no warrant for his arrest. I just couldn’t sit still and think about it. I had to do something. But, of course, it was silly to do what I did. The police don’t overlook things.”

“They did this time.” Norton brought out the black disc.

Jean Stacy was puzzled. She turned it over with one long, pink varnished nail as it lay on the palm of his hand. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me. I found it on the floor in Clark’s suite behind the radiator. The chambermaid said it wasn’t there before the murder. Someone else besides you tried to search the suite last night — a man who looked like a crook. He paid particular attention to the floor.

“I couldn’t question him because he was a mute. He outwitted me and got away, but he may have been looking for this.”

“Then we’ve got to find out what it is!”

“We can begin by finding out what it’s made of. Do you know any industrial chemists?”

“There’s one on Water Street!” Jean sprang to her feet, eyes shining. “I’ll drive you back to town. Just wait till I get my coat.”

It was an exhilarating drive in a little car open to the burning chill of the January evening. Jean didn’t seem to feel the cold in her fleecy tweed coat. Her light brown head was bare to the wind. Her shapely hands were ungloved as they rested on the wheel. A nice girl, thought Norton.

The chemist received them in a musty little anteroom. He seemed more anxious to get home to his dinner than to collect a fee for analysis. He took the black disc to a strong light and studied it under a magnifying glass. “Good Lord! You don’t want me to analyze this, do you?”

“Why not?”

“It’s nothing but cardboard!”

“Are you sure?” cried Alec. “It looks harder and smoother than cardboard!”

“Ordinary pasteboard is soft, pulpy stuff,” said the chemist. “But there are better grades of cardboard almost as hard as vulcanite. This is one of them. Any paper manufacturer can tell you which. I don’t know the commercial name for it.”

“And the black color?” asked Norton.

“Some dye, probably tar.”

“Can you tell us what purpose this disc is used for?” Jean asked.

The chemist looked at her and thawed a little. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I can’t. It looks as if it were a small part of some larger object. By itself, it’s hard to identify. If you saw the inside of a golf ball without the rest of the ball you wouldn’t be likely to recognize it People always identify a part by its relation to the whole.”

“Then this disc may be part of something we see every day of our lives?”

“Quite possibly.”

Alec Norton and Jean went outside. They had left the street in twilight; they returned to find it night. Jean slid under the steering wheel. Norton stood on the sidewalk. She said, “What now?”

“I’d like to meet the other people involved in this case — your brother and his lawyer, and Diana Clark’s divorced husband, Daniel Forbes. Could it be managed?”

“Of course. Uncle Kim will do everything he can to help us. You can meet him at his office tomorrow morning at ten.”