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mail it at once to Arnold Barbizon at the Play-Mor Club. Then, he said if I wanted to I could tell my husband I’d lost the money gambling and Leslie would pay it without realizing it was blackmail.”
    Shayne’s jaw was set hard, the muscles in his lean jaw were quivering. “Smart,” he said angrily. “As soon as they had your IOU you could never prove it had been obtained by blackmail. And that’s also why Barbizon didn’t mind too much giving up the IOU last night. They still have the letters to fall back on. If I’d known the truth last night—”
    “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I was ashamed to tell you. I thought no one would need to know. As soon as the money was paid I was to receive the original letters by special delivery.”
    “You’d never have gotten them so easily,” Shayne told her. “A blackmailer is never satisfied with his first bite. You should know that. It would have gone on and on until you were drained absolutely dry.”
    “I guess so,” she agreed tonelessly. “I didn’t think about it that way. I had no one I could turn to.”
    “If you’re telling the whole truth,” said Shayne, “the letters are probably forgeries. We can prove that easily enough if we can get a sample of Morrison’s handwriting.”
    “I’ve told you the truth,” she said, “but they aren’t forgeries.”
    “How do you know?”
    “I took them to a handwriting expert, a man named Bernard Holloway who is supposed to be very good. I had a note of Mr. Morrison’s for comparison. One he sent with a wedding present. Mr. Holloway made a long report listing a number of similarities, and concluded with a definite statement that there was no doubt that the letters were written by the same person.”
    “Holloway is good,” he told her. “One of the best in the country. His testimony has a lot of weight in any court. Now why is your ex-employer trying to frame you? Would he be interested in ten grand?”
    “Mr. Morrison? Why, he’s several times a millionaire.”
    “Then why?”
    “Do you think he—arranged it? On purpose?”
    “What else am I supposed to think?” Shayne asked angrily. “If he actually wrote the letters, though you claim there was nothing between you—”
    “There wasn’t,” she interrupted desperately. “Ever. He was kind and generous and quite friendly, but there was never anything like that. I swear there wasn’t.”
    Shayne was thoughtfully silent for a moment, then asked, “Could he have harbored a secret passion for you? Perhaps he wrote the letters to let off steam and someone got hold of them and realized how they could be used after you married a wealthy man.”
    “Oh no!” she exclaimed, her cheeks flaming again. “I’m very sure Mr. Morrison never had a single thought like that about me. He’s quite happily married.”
    “To a wife he’s planning to get rid of?” Shayne said sardonically. “All right—what do you make of it?”
    “I don’t. What can I think? It’s utterly incomprehensible.”
    “We’ll have to get in touch with him at once,” Shayne said with sudden decision. “With his denial, and with the testimony of people who knew you both that you weren’t having an affair, we should be able to tell your husband everything and squelch the blackmailer.”
    “I’ve tried to get in touch with Mr. Morrison,” Christine admitted through trembling lips. “I’ve called him twice and left my number both times. When he didn’t call back as I requested, I didn’t know what to think.”
    “Perhaps the long distance operator made a mistake.”
    “Not long distance,” she told him. “Mr. Morrison is here.”
    “In Miami? Wait a minute.” Shayne stared hard at her. “What’s he doing here?”
    “Why, he and Mrs. Morrison are down for the season. They have a winter home here, but they haven’t opened it for several years.”
    “How long have they been here?”
    “A couple of weeks,” she faltered.
    Shayne’s lean face hardened. “So,