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only thing that old Eli couldn’t get through his thick head is that this department has other things to occupy its time and attention. I’m treating it exactly as though Mrs. John Smith had died last night, and that Eli didn’t like one little bit.”
    “Then you’ll give me whatever you’ve got?”
    “Sure I’ll give you everything we’ve got. Haven’t I always cooperated, Mike? But the truth is, you know more about it right now than I do. You saw the couple in that room. Read the suicide notes, didn’t you? I wasn’t visiting my pretty secretary on the floor below when it happened.”
    “I got out as fast as I could,” Shayne soothed him, “and only know what I saw when I broke the door down.”
    “That was enough, wasn’t it?”
    “For me, yes. Until I got a sizable check from Eli this morning. Now I’ve got a job to do. What about fingerprints in the apartment?”
    Gentry shuffled papers on his desk, picked one up to glance at it. “Pretty clean. The woman’s were on the empty cocktail glass beside her, Lambert’s on the other one. His were on the shotgun barrel in the right position for holding it up to put the muzzle in his mouth with his bare toe on the trigger.”
    He paused and Shayne asked, “No other fingerprints turn up in the entire place?”
    “Nothing mentioned here. Hell, I don’t suppose Deitch dusted the whole goddamn place. Why should he?”
    “No reason,” agreed Shayne lightly. “Except maybe to prove that no one else had been around.”
    “I know. Eli tried to feed me that theory too. That Paul Nathan was there at the time and engineered the whole thing and ducked down the fire escape while you were busting in. For God’s sake, Mike. You can’t buy that?”
    “I’m not buying anything. Mind if I borrow Deitch on his time off to give it a real going-over? He’s a good man.”
    “I don’t care what he does in his spare time. Look, Mike, I’m not putting any roadblocks in your way. Go ahead and earn your fee. But I’m warning you right now, Eli Armbruster isn’t going to be satisfied with anything less than a murder rap against Paul Nathan. He hates that guy who married his only daughter.”
    “I gathered that much,” Shayne agreed equably. “But I don’t hate him, Will.” He met the chief’s cold stare with equal coldness, and then relaxed with a shrug. “Know what killed her?”
    “They did a simple stomach analysis. Potassium ferricyanide. Enough of it mixed with rum and crème de menthe to kill a couple of mules.”
    “Potassium ferricyanide?”
    “One of the fastest acting cyanides known,” Gentry informed him, “and one of the easiest to get hold of. Photographers use it for something.”
    Shayne asked, “Was Lambert a photographer?”
    “We don’t know what Lambert was.”
    “Or Paul Nathan?” pursued Shayne.
    Chief Gentry snorted eloquently.
    “What do we know about Lambert?” persisted Shayne. “You say he gave a phony address in Jax when he rented the apartment?”
    Gentry nodded, shuffling the papers and looking down. “A little less than a month ago. He came directly to the manager of the building in answer to a newspaper ad. Took a quick look at the apartment and rented it for a month. Cash in advance. Hundred forty bucks.” He read slowly from a typed report in front of him. “Quiet, pleasant type. Medium height. Medium weight. Medium everything. Small dark mustache and lightly tinted blue glasses. Left-handed, the manager recalls, but that’s about all he does recall. When he signed the lease.”
    “Those suicide notes?”
    Gentry looked up and nodded. “Written by a left-handed man according to our expert.”
    “Did you compare the signatures with the lease?”
    Gentry scowled and studied the report in front of him. “I guess not. Why in hell would they? It was open and shut. You saw it yourself.”
    “That’s what Eli pointed out,” Shayne muttered, staring across the room. He turned his head to smile placatingly at