The Corpse Came Calling by Brett Halliday

special-delivery stamp from the clerk, put it on the letter, and directed the clerk to send it out to the airport at once by messenger to catch the evening mail plane north.
    The clerk promised to attend to it, then asked Shayne, “Did I do all right when I brought the cops up to your apartment, Mr. Shayne? After that other man dying in your office this afternoon, I guess I was jumpy.”
    “You probably saved me from getting bumped off,” Shayne told him, and then asked curiously, “How about that dead man? You got me in plenty dutch when you told Painter he wasn’t wounded when he started upstairs.”
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Shayne. I swear I didn’t know. I didn’t notice a thing when he stopped here and asked for your office. That is, he was hunched over and hugging himself and he looked sick, but I sure didn’t know he was practically dead. If you’d told me what to say, you know I’d have done it for you.”
    “Sure, I know you would. You didn’t tell them I was in, eh?”
    “No, sir. I knew that much, anyway. They asked me when I’d seen you last and I pretended I didn’t remember.”
    “You didn’t tell them about the girl you had sent up to my living-apartment?”
    “No, sir.” The clerk was emphatic. “You know I never tell anyone anything about your affairs. I’ve been here long enough to realize how important it is to keep my mouth shut.”
    Shayne told him that was swell, and not to neglect getting the special-delivery letter off.
    The clerk was calling a messenger when he left the lobby. Shayne drove across the bay again, stopped at the Tropical Hotel just a block beyond the eastern terminus of the causeway. He strode through the lobby to the elevators and went up to 416.
    He hesitated in front of the door when he saw it standing ajar. There was no light in the room. He knocked lightly but there was no response. He inched the door open and stretched a long arm inside, finding the wall switch.
    When the lights came on he pushed the door inward all the way against the wall, then stepped inside and looked around the empty hotel bedroom carefully.
    The room had the normal appearance of having been occupied by a man for several days, one who had gone out expecting to return soon. There were toilet articles in the bathroom, a folded newspaper on the bed, and an open Gladstone in one corner.
    The newspaper was the previous Sunday’s New York Mirror. It was folded back at page fourteen, and a portion of the page had been cut out. A piece two columns wide and about eight inches long.
    Shayne picked up the paper and studied it, seeking to find whether any portion of the cut-out item had been left to give a clue to the nature of the clipping. There was nothing to help him identify the portion that was gone, and he was laying the paper down when he heard a noise at the door of the room.
    He turned his head slowly, making no other movement.
    The blued muzzle of a service automatic showed in the crack. Then a hand and an arm became visible. Finally the figure of a man wearing a neat gray suit. He had steady gray eyes that looked at Shayne from beneath the brim of a Panama hat, and pleasant, strong features. He held the automatic in a firm grip as he stepped toward Shayne. He spoke pleasantly enough, though his features were set in hard, uncompromising lines.
    “Turn around slowly and put both your hands flat on the wall above your head,” he commanded.
    Shayne turned around slowly and put both his hands flat against the wall above his head. He said, “I don’t know who you are but I have a hunch we might get together if you’ll let me do some talking.”
    The man behind him said, “You can talk all you want to, but don’t make a move away from that position.”
    Shayne complained, “I hate to introduce myself to a man when he’s holding a gun on me.”
    The telephone rang stridently from its stand on his left. He turned his head to see his captor step forward and pick up the instrument.
    He was not