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it’s Painter’s hair you’re getting into instead of mine.”
    Shayne grinned, then sobered, and asked, “How’s Tim?”
    “I just checked with Dr. Fairweather at the Flagler Hospital. Tim’s holding his own, Mike.”
    “Bad?” Shayne lowered one hip to the desk corner and lit a cigarette.
    “Plenty bad.” Gentry sank back in his swivel chair and purled on his cigar. “A thirty-two slug struck close to his heart and another one drilled a lung. Anybody but a black Irishman would be dead.”
    “What’s being done for him?”
    “Transfusions and injections. He’s in a coma—hasn’t regained consciousness at all. Dr. Fairweather assured me everything was being done, but he didn’t offer much hope, Mike,” Gentry ended solemnly.
    Shayne got up and paced the length of the office, came back, and pulled up a chair to face Gentry across the desk. Dropping his rangy body into it he asked, “What did you get from Painter?”
    “Had a talk with him yesterday morning and got everything I could without telling him who it was for.”
    Shayne grinned briefly in acknowledgment of the chief’s tact. “He won’t like me popping up.”
    “He won’t like it,” the chief agreed drily. “Particularly if you crack it while he’s running around in circles. He’s had it kind of quiet and easy with you in New Orleans.”
    “Let’s have what you’ve got,” Shayne said. Gentry took some scribbled notations from a drawer, glanced at them, and explained, “I’ll give you the bare facts first. A woman called the Beach police at ten-forty Tuesday night and told them to go to number 2-D at the Blackstone Apartment House in a hurry. She sounded frightened and hung up. When Painter’s men got there Tim was lying on the floor a couple of feet inside the door with two slugs in him. The place had been ransacked as though someone had searched for something. A woman had been there—fresh powder spilled on the lavatory and a piece of tissue with rouge where she’d wiped the excess off her lips.
    “Half-empty whisky bottle on the floor beside the sofa with the cork out. Two water glasses that had been used for whisky. Dishes in the sink showing one person had eaten bacon and eggs for dinner, and two people had drunk coffee. Woman’s fingerprints on the extra cup and on the dishes along with Rourke’s—as though he’d eaten and she cleaned up. Same prints on the extra glass in the living-room.
    “But they found another set of women’s prints all over the place. Looks as if the second one turned the place inside out. The gun was a Colt automatic, two empty shells found on the floor where they’d been ejected. And—that’s about it.” Gentry pushed the notations aside and spread out his pudgy hands.
    “Shot from close up?”
    “Close enough for powder burns.”
    “What about the position of the body and direction of the bullets? Was he shot by someone coming through the door or in the room with him?”
    “That’s hard to say. The medical examiner thinks he may have twisted and dragged himself a couple of feet. There was a lot of blood smeared around and there wasn’t a rug near the door. They couldn’t determine whether he moved toward the door or away from it. Knowing Tim, I’d say he’d thresh around trying to do something as long as he was conscious.”
    “What about prints on the door?”
    “Both knobs were wiped clean of prints,” Gentry said with a deep sigh.
    “How close do they set the time?”
    “Around ten-thirty. Not more than ten minutes either way.”
    “Any witnesses who heard the shots?”
    “Painter hasn’t found anybody, yet,” Gentry rumbled.
    “What sort of apartment is the Blackstone? Tim wasn’t living there when I left.”
    “Two stories. No elevator. A back stairway leading up from the alley, and front stairs leading off the lobby. One man for manager, switchboard operator, and janitor. He was behind the switchboard when Rourke came in about four o’clock. Tim had been beaten