Brett Halliday

The Homicidal Virgin

1

It was one of those beautiful, balmy, autumnal days in Miami when the tempo of life in the Magic City slackens perceptibly; a time for relaxation between the brutally humid days of summer and the frenzied activity of a new winter season when hordes of fun-and-sun-seekers from the north would descend upon the area.

The sidewalks were uncrowded and pedestrians took time to smile courteously at one another, waiting patiently and politely at corners for the light to change, then strolling across the intersection under the unwontedly benign gaze of traffic cops.

In his office above Flagler Street, with both windows wide open to bring in the sound of sluggish traffic borne on the wings of a somnolent breeze from Biscayne Bay, Michael Shayne was relaxed in a swivel chair with his feet resting on a bare, scarred desk. He wore a short-sleeved sport shirt open at the throat, his red hair was comfortably rumpled, he sucked lazily on a cigarette and was at peace with the world. He hadn’t had an interesting case for a month, and was glad of it. Right now he didn’t care whether he ever had another case or not. Right now the only thing on his mind was the question of whether it was worth while for him to stir himself sufficiently to coyer the three blocks to Joe’s Bar, where he would find kindred souls and his favorite brand of cognac.

He yawned widely as he debated the question without a great deal of interest. It was very pleasant here in the office. Through the open door on his left came the subdued and soothing sound of Lucy Hamilton’s typewriter keys gently striking against paper. On this afternoon even Lucy’s normally crisp clatter of typing was slowed to a lethargic pace. It perfectly fitted the day and his own mood, and he contentedly decided to pass up Joe’s Bar until Lucy finished whatever she was doing and was ready to close up the office and go out with him for a cocktail.

A familiar voice impinged from the outer office. It belonged to Timothy Rourke, and it was offensively cheery: “Hi, Lucy my love. Is the great man in? Busy?”

Lucy’s typing stopped. She said, “Michael’s in and he isn’t busy.” As though it were an afterthought, though Shayne knew it wasn’t, she added severely, “He hasn’t been busy for weeks, in fact.”

Rourke said breezily, “We’ll have to do something about that,” and came through the doorway.

Shayne kept his feet placidly on the desk and his shoulder blades pressed firmly against the back of the swivel chair. He raised ragged red eyebrows a quarter of an inch to acknowledge the reporter’s presence and said, “Hi, Tim.”

Rourke was as lean as a greyhound, with cadaverous features and an inexhaustible store of bouncing vitality that gave a spring to his step and a feverish intensity to his deep-set eyes. He drew a square white envelope from the sagging side pocket of a shabby corduroy jacket and dropped it on Shayne’s desk as he passed on his way to the filing cabinet against the wall behind the detective. “Look that over, Mike, while I pour you a drink of your own good liquor.”

Shayne lazily stretched a long arm for the envelope while Rourke opened the third drawer and extracted a bottle of cognac with the ease of long practice. The typewritten address on the envelope was:

Classified Advertisement Department,

The Daily News,

Miami, Florida.

It was postmarked the preceding day at Miami Beach.

Timothy Rourke set the bottle on a corner of the desk, turned to the water cooler and nested three sets of two paper cups together, filled one with water and put a very small amount in the bottom of another set. He placed the empty pair in front of the redhead with the full cup beside it, opened the cognac bottle and made a five-to-one mixture in his own cup.

Shayne opened the envelope and pulled out a folded square of paper. Doubled inside it was a five-dollar bill. He groped aside for the bottle and absently poured cognac in his empty cup while he read the typewritten message:

Please insert the following advertisement one time in your PERSONAL COLUMN:

MAN WANTED. Adult, red-blooded American. Must be sophisticated, soldier-of-fortune type willing to do anything-repeat, anything — if the price is right. Replies addressed to Miss Jane Smith, Suite 1114, 562 Flagler Street, Miami, will be considered in strict confidence.

The enclosed bill will more than cover the cost of a single insertion. Do not bother returning change.

The signature, Jane Smith, was also typewritten.

Shayne dropped the typed sheet and the folded bill on the desk in front of him and lazily sucked cognac from the paper cup. Rourke had pulled a chair close to the desk and leaned forward eagerly, both elbows resting on the wooden surface, his feverish eyes searching the detective’s gaunt face for a clue to his reaction.

Shayne quirked one eyebrow at his old friend and said, “So?”

“What do you make of it?”

“Some hot-pantsied housewife eager to get rid of a hubby who’s standing in her way.”

“Maybe,” Rourke conceded. “Probably. But wouldn’t you like to meet Jane Smith and get the whole sordid story… and maybe save Hubby’s life?”

“Get the story to spread over the front page of the News under your by-line,” Shayne amplified. “Go out and do your own legwork.” He took another sip of cognac, washed it down with a swallow of water.

“But it’s right up your alley, Mike.” Rourke made his voice lyrically enthusiastic. “You answer the ad, see? You’d be a lead-pipe cinch to land the job. Red-blooded and adult. Sophisticated as all get-out, and a soldier-of-fortune type from hell-and-gone. I don’t fit the part.”

Shayne yawned and let a faint grin curl the corners of his wide mouth. “It’s too hot, Tim. Your Jane Smith will get hundreds of applications to choose from. All the hungry guns in town plus a few dozen bums and a scattering of romantic young fools who fancy themselves in the role.”

“Not to this ad, she won’t,” Rourke told him positively.

“I don’t think you understand the male population of Miami very well.”

“Oh, I know there are plenty that’d jump at it if they had the chance. But you don’t think the News will run that ad, do you?”

“Why not? She sent the money to pay for it.”

“A matter of public policy. Hell, you ought to see that. Look, we get maybe half a dozen crackpot ads like this every week. There’s a standing rule that they get sent up to the front office for okay before insertion. Don’t you realize we could be sued if we did insert that ad and a murder resulted from it?”

A glint of interest came into Shayne’s gray eyes. He admitted, “I hadn’t considered that angle.”

“And if it is an invitation to murder as you suggested, don’t you have a moral duty to try and prevent it?”

Shayne now grinned openly at the reporter. “Nuts, Tim. Turn it over to the police and let them do their moral duty.”

“Sure. I can do that. But because of our long-time friendship I felt you deserved a crack at it first.”

Shayne’s grin widened. “And because you know I’m more amenable than Petey Painter to passing on a front-page story to the demon newshound, Timothy Rourke. It is postmarked from the Beach, isn’t it?”

“Yeh. And that makes it Painter’s baby. You know how he’d handle a thing like this. Go bulling in and grab the poor gal who may have nothing more vicious in mind than meeting a new man. No matter how innocent her intent may be, Petey would twist it into something nasty, and blatantly proclaim another personal triumph in his crusade against crime. Don’t you want to protect her from that?”

“How do we know Jane Smith needs protection? Most likely she’s a tough old biddy who’s grown tired of waiting for Uncle Horace to die so she can collect his fortune.”

“Then think about Horace for a moment,” urged Rourke. “Poor old guy with his life in jeopardy. His own niece advertising openly for a killer to gun him down.”

“But you’re not running the ad. So she won’t contact any killers and Uncle Horace will remain perfectly free to live to a ripe old age.”

“Not if I know our Jane Smith,” Rourke declared positively. “Failing in this attempt, she’ll try something else. But if she doesn’t fail in this attempt…” He paused significantly. “If she were to achieve contact with the perfect guy who is willing to do anything for the right price… then you’d be in a position to dissuade her from whatever she has in mind.”

Shayne yawned and drank more cognac. “Chase down your own headlines, Tim. She gives a mailing address. Take it from there.”

“I just came from five sixty-two Flagler,” grumbled Rourke. “Suite eleven-fourteen is just what you’d expect. A mail-drop to receive and forward letters. Presided over by an old battle-axe who wouldn’t give out the correct address of a client if you twisted her arm off. I suppose their clients are mostly extra-marital lovers who are willing to pay plenty for the assurance that their real identities will be protected.”

“So she certainly wouldn’t give out any information to a private op who comes snooping around.”

“Of course not. Only way to get Jane Smith’s address out of her is by a police order. And that brings us back to Peter Painter. You going to force me to go to him?”

“I don’t see how else…” Shayne began, but Timothy Rourke interrupted him with feverish intensity:

“Answer the ad yourself, Mike. Your reply will be the only one she receives. If she’s at all serious about this she’ll jump at the chance and set up a meeting. You go on from there.”

“But she’ll be watching the paper and see that her ad doesn’t appear. She’ll know damned well my reply to it is a phony.”

“I’ve thought that all out, Mike. It’s easy. You write her explaining why her ad wasn’t inserted. But say that your girl-friend works in the advertising department and the letter came to her desk to be opened. And instead of sending it on up to the front office for approval, she simply held it out and passed it on to you on account of you’re just the man to fill the bill and your gal would like to see you make a fast buck so she can quit her lousy job at the News and get married. Doesn’t that make sense?”

Shayne stretched and leaned back in the swivel chair, clasping the knobby fingers of both hands behind his neck and furrowing his forehead. There was a long moment of silence while he blinked reflectively up at the ceiling. From the open windows on his right there continued to drift in the muted sound of slow-moving traffic from the street below, and from the open door into the anteroom there came the persistently soothing cadence of Lucy’s typewriter.

He had no important case on hand, and he was bored. And the unknown Jane Smith did intrigue him. He was too seldom intrigued these days.

He kept his gaze fixed on the ceiling and said ruminatively, “If the set-up is anything like it looks from here, Jane Smith certainly won’t confide in a private detective. And if she’s got a brain in her head, she won’t jump into anything blindly without investigating my background. I’d have to set up a whole new identity…”

“Simplest thing in the world for a smart guy like you,” declared Rourke expansively. “On a News expense account, Mike. I’ve got a curious hunch about this. That it’s something big. Important enough to be worth following up. You know how it is, damn it. You get that feeling sometimes… in my business and in yours. Honest-to-God, don’t you feel it too?”

“Not exactly. But if your paper wants to foot the bill, I’ll try to establish contact with Jane Smith and see what comes of it.”

“Go to it,” said Rourke fervently. “All I ask is to have a crack at the story… when and if it breaks.”

Shayne sat erect and finished his drink, drained the paper cup of water. He smashed all four cups in his two big hands, swung out of the swivel chair and dropped them into a wastebasket beside the water cooler. Then he strode past Rourke into the outer office, and Lucy Hamilton broke the even rhythm of her typing to look over her machine at him inquiringly, competent fingers lying lax on motionless keys.

He paused beside the outer door, reaching for a Panama hat on a hook beside it. “Tim and I are drifting out for a drink,” he announced casually. “Close up shop whenever you’re in the mood, angel.”

Lucy Hamilton’s serious brown eyes held more than a hint of disappointment as she said, “This isn’t anything really important, Michael.” She allowed herself a brief downward glance at her watch. “In fact, I could close up right now…”

“Sure. Go right ahead,” Shayne said heartily as Rourke sauntered from the inner office to join him. “You know you can take off any time you like. See you in the morning.”

He opened the door onto the corridor and stepped out, held it open for Rourke to join him.

“Some day,” said Timothy Rourke, “you’re going to drop into your office on an otherwise fine morning, and there’s going to be no perfect secretary to greet you. I saw that warning in Lucy’s eyes just now. You can be just so casual just so long with a gal like that. Why push your luck?”

Shayne had stopped to push the Down button on the elevator. He said morosely, “This time it’s entirely your fault. If you hadn’t walked in when you did with this Jane Smith deal, Lucy and I would be hightailing it together to the nearest air-conditioned cocktail lounge right this minute. If I do have to break in a new secretary, that will go on the News expense account too.”

In his corner hotel suite on the north bank of the Miami River, Michael Shayne selected the smartest piece of luggage he possessed, a five-year-old grayish suitcase of lightweight material for airline travel, and opened it out on the bed to receive a careful selection of clothing to fit the move he intended to make.

He tossed in his most flamboyant pajamas and a silk dressing gown Lucy had given him for Christmas three years before, and two of his most garish sport shirts, laying aside one atrocity with pineapple trees and hula maidens outlined in red against a bilious yellow background to wear when he went out. He added underwear and socks, and a pair of creamy-white Italian silk slacks, toilet articles and clean handkerchiefs. From the bottom drawer of his bedroom dresser, he lifted out from underneath a pile of white shirts a short-barreled. 38 nestled in a worn leather holster strapped into an efficient shoulder harness which he hadn’t worn for many years. He placed this carefully inside the folds of the slacks at the bottom of the suitcase, spread the other clothes on top of it, and closed the bag.

Downstairs, he stopped at the desk with his bag and told the clerk, “I won’t be around during the nights for a few days, Pete. I may give you a phone number later where I can be reached if it’s important.”

With a suggestion of a leer, Pete let his knowing eyes rest on the hulaed sport shirt and the most aggressive jacket the detective owned, and said, “Sure, Mr. Shayne. Would a call from Miss Hamilton… would that be what you’d call important?”

Shayne said, “If I do give you a number… it’ll just be for your use… to pass on messages to me.”

Pete said, “Sure, I get it, Mr. Shayne,” and as the redhead turned away to cross the lobby, he called out in a low voice, “Have fun.”

Shayne grinned back over his shoulder and said, “This is strictly business, Pete.”

He had already parked his car in its stall in the private garage behind the apartment hotel, and he waved down a passing taxi outside the hotel and got in.

He gave the driver the name of an inconspicuous, middle-class hotel on a side street in the Northwest section between Miami Avenue and the Boulevard. It was a hotel he knew by reputation only as catering to low-income tourists and natives seeking hotel service at moderate weekly rates.

There was no doorman when he paid off the cab in front, and he carried his suitcase into a square lobby with a few wilted potted palms and half a dozen shabby lounging chairs. A bored bell-captain came out of his cubicle in the center to take his bag, and a prissy little man behind the desk looked at him incuriously as he signed a registration card: Mike Wayne, 1270 Riverview Avenue, Bayonne, N. J.

“I can let you have a nice room with eastern exposure for twelve dollars, Mr. Wayne?” The clerk looked at him expectantly.

“How much of the twelve is for the exposure?”

“Ah… nothing really. That is, if you’d like something cheaper, I have one on the third floor for ten. Or… “

Shayne made an expansive gesture. “Let’s shoot the works on your eastern exposure. Only be a few days.”

The clerk nodded and slid a key across to the waiting bellhop who had been summoned from the rear by the captain. “Take Mr. Wayne to eight-six.”

His guide was a short youth with chubby cheeks and a long, sharp nose. He took Shayne’s bag to double elevators at the rear where an attractive colored girl waited outside an open cage, and they went up to the eighth floor and to a clean and unexpectedly pleasant room with double windows on the east that just cleared the top of adjoining buildings so that a strip of the eastern part of Biscayne Bay and the shoreline of Miami Beach were visible from them.

The boy opened a window and checked the bathroom while Shayne waited patiently. Shayne got his wallet out of his hip pocket and asked, “Can I get a bottle from Room Service?”

“No liquor in the hotel, sir.” The boy paused, his pale blue predatory eyes on the bulging billfold from which Shayne was in the act of extracting a ten. “There’s a liquor store a few doors up the street. I’ll be glad to get what you want.”

Shayne slid the bill out and handed it to him. “A fifth of cognac. Monnet or Martel… or Courvoisier. And a pitcher of ice.”

The lad said, “Right away,” and went out.

Shayne hung his jacket in the closet and checked the desk to see if there was a supply of hotel stationery on hand. There was. He opened his suitcase and began transferring its contents to two bureau drawers, carefully putting the shoulder-holstered pistol on the bottom wrapped in an undershirt where it would certainly be found and reported the first time his room was cased after he went out… if he judged the hotel correctly.

The bellboy came back with a fifth of Martel, a pitcher of ice, and offered Shayne some dollar bills and silver in change. The redhead waved it aside casually said, “That’s okay.” He started to open the bottle and added, “Join me in a small drink?”

“I better not,” the boy said regretfully. “I don’t go off till six.” He started toward the door and Shayne stopped him with one big hand in the air. “What’s the chance getting some sort of action in this dump?”

The boy paused halfway to the door and considered the redhead carefully. “What sort of action? You want a woman…”

Shayne swept his hand downward in a disdainful gesture. “I’ll do my own hustling. Any games running? Friend of mine in New Jersey stayed here last month said he got a fair break.”

The lad’s eyelids shifted downward. “Whyn’t you talk to the night clerk? That’s Dick. Comes on at six. He might know something.”

Shayne said, “Thanks, I will.” The boy went out and Shayne got two glasses from the bathroom and poured a couple of fingers of cognac in one, put ice cubes in the other and filled it with water.

He set the two glasses side by side on the desk, sat down and composed a letter on hotel stationery:

Dear Miss Smith:

You will be surprised to receive this letter after you see that your ad didn’t appear in the Daily News. This is what happened.

The newspaper does not run ads like yours, but my girlfriend that works in the advertising department opened your letter and read it and instead of turning it over to her boss as she was supposed to, she put it in her bag instead and gave it to me at lunch. So I’m the only one that knows about it and you won’t get any other answer but this.

I think I can fill the bill if the price is right. You can reach me at this address any time after nine or ten p.m. Hoping to hear from you,

Very truly yours,

Mike Wayne.

He fortified himself with a long drink of cognac before reading over what he had written, and even at that he shuddered as he came to the end. But he folded it resolutely and sealed it inside a hotel envelope and addressed it to Jane Smith at her Miami mail drop, and then settled back in an easy chair with his feet up on the windowsill overlooking the Bay to take alternate sips of cognac and ice water while he waited for it to be six o’clock so he could go down and confer with the night clerk to start establishing the new identity of Mike Wayne from Bayonne, New Jersey.

2

By the evening of the third day Michael Shayne had established himself in the routine of the hotel as a regular who was casually accepted by the staff and the other regulars. He left his room promptly each morning and dropped his key at the desk, did not return until nine or ten in the evening when he would be greeted amiably by the night clerk and given the room number in which the game was running that night.

It was a cozy stud-poker set-up, presided over by three residents of the hotel who moved it from one of their rooms to another each night. They played for table stakes with an initial buy of a hundred dollars worth of chips required in order to sit in, and it was a smooth operation designed to milk moderate sums from a succession of suckers as painlessly as possible.

Shayne discovered that much about the game the first night he sat in-the first evening after he checked in. He quickly identified the three regulars as professional gamblers who knew their business, and the two other players who were being set up for the kill. He played his own cards carefully and aloofly while the fat man from New York on his left was efficiently relieved of almost two grand. From conversation around the table it developed that the fat man had been carefully set up for the kill during the preceding three or four evenings, having been allowed to win moderate amounts each evening until he was thoroughly convinced that the game was honest and that they were the suckers ripe to be taken.

And it was an honest game so far as Shayne could ascertain. Within the legal definition of honest poker, that is. They didn’t appear to be using marked cards or doing any manipulating. Such crude methods weren’t needed, of course, with three experienced men playing as a unit against one sucker. By one of them raising lavishly on nothing while one of his partners obviously had the winning hand, the outsider was whip-sawed time after time into losing large pots in which he had no business whatsoever.

It was a familiar enough pattern for such a game, and Shayne cynically won a succession of small pots and stayed put of the big ones, noting that it was the other floater’s third night for being allowed to win, and with a certain admiration for the finesse displayed by the three professionals.

The fat man wasn’t present the second night, but there were two new players to take his place, and all four of the outsiders were allowed to win moderately.

When Shayne sauntered up to the desk at nine-thirty on the third evening, Dick turned to a pigeonhole behind him and withdrew Shayne’s key and a large bulky white envelope. He leaned across the desk and spoke rapidly, “Funny thing this evening, Mr. Wayne. Along about seven a woman called to ask was you in. I told her you never was here before nine. About ten minutes later this chick comes in and asked for you. I can’t swear it was the same one that had just phoned, but I’m pretty sure it was the same voice. When I told her you wouldn’t be in till nine, she slid a ten-spot across to me and started askin’ all these questions. What you looked like, how long you been here, what do you do… all that. You never had told me not to answer questions, so I took her money and told her what she wanted to know. One thing in particular she pushed me hard on.”

Dick paused to snicker. “This’ll kill you. She wanted most special to know if you was a cop. That’s one thing I did tell her flat you wasn’t.” The clerk snickered again, and then added anxiously, “If I did anything wrong…”

“You did just right, Dick.” Shayne got a five from his wallet and flipped it across to avid fingers.

“Gee, thanks, Mr. Wayne. So she left this here envelope for you and made me promise you’d get it the moment you came in.” He passed the thick, sealed envelope across to Shayne.

Words were typed on the front and Shayne read them quizzically. MIKE WAYNE in capital letters, and the message: Don’t unseal this until you walk outside and stand under the light. Then tear it open and remain in plain sight while you read it.

Shayne grinned at the clerk who he was sure had read the curious message, and said, “That’s a dame for you. Always playing games.”

He turned back with the sealed envelope in his hand, went out to stand on the sidewalk under a bright overhead light. Several cars were parked nearby, any one of which might contain someone watching him.

Deliberately he tore off one end of the envelope and shook the contents out. There was a folded sheet of square paper similar to the one on which the original advertisement had been typed.

He unfolded it and read:

You are being observed every moment. Remain in plain sight while you read this. Then hail the first empty cab that comes along. Get in and have him drive to the Boulevard and out to 79th Street and across the Causeway. You will be followed all the way. Go to the corner of Lime Road and Beach Plaza Place and let the cab go. A blue and white Plymouth sedan is parked at the Northeast corner. Get in and get a further message and the car keys from above the left sun vizor.

Jane Smith

Shayne refolded the sheet of paper and stuffed it back into the white envelope. He slid it into his right coat pocket and looked up the street for an empty cab. He stood there impassively, his rangy figure outlined in the bright overhead light, for several minutes before a cruising cab pulled in to the curb in answer to his signal. He got in and directed the driver, “Over to Biscayne and across the Seventy-Ninth Street Causeway.”

He settled back sideways in the corner and watched the street behind him with interest as the cab pulled away. A car that had been parked just beyond the hotel entrance eased out from the curb behind them and followed eastward toward the Boulevard.

Shayne relaxed and lit a cigarette, a wry smile curving his lips as he went over the typed instructions in his mind.

Jane Smith was playing it cagey, all right. Up to this point she was taking no chances of being confronted and identified. By having him open the envelope while she watched from a parked car, she had eliminated any possibility of him communicating with a confederate by telephone or otherwise. It was pretty cute figuring and indicated a certain amount of experience at this sort of thing or a devious mind that had read a lot of E. Phillips Oppenheim.

He was comfortably conscious that another car was keeping a sedate and careful distance behind them as they sped up the Boulevard and east across the winding causeway. At the eastern end, he leaned forward and told the driver, “The corner of Lime Road and Beach Plaza Place. Know where it is?”

“Just about. I can find it okay.”

Shayne settled back with another cigarette and let the driver find the intersection. It was in a quiet, residential section of palm-lined streets and middle-income homes, devoid of traffic at this hour. As the driver pulled in to the curb and stopped, Shayne noted the headlights of another car pull in half a block behind them. He got out and paid the driver, waited under the corner streetlight until the cab disappeared, and then strode around the corner to a blue and white Plymouth.

He slid under the steering wheel and felt above the sun vizor for another folded sheet of paper and a set of car keys. He groped along the instrument panel until he found the map light and turned it on, and read Jane Smith’s second message.

You are still under constant observation. If you have followed instructions thus far, drive to Collins and proceed south to the Palms Terrace Hotel. Stop at the entrance and give your keys to the doorman. He will give you a parking ticket. Go straight through the lobby into the Crystal Room. Sit at an empty table and order a drink and drink it slowly. If I have not sat at your table and accosted you by the time you finish a second drink, you will know that I do not trust you on closer scrutiny and shall not approach you at all.

In that case, leave the Plymouth in the hotel parking lot and forget about me.

Jane Smith

P.S. It will be useless to try and trace me through the Plymouth. It is stolen.

Shayne grinned wryly as he put the key in the ignition and turned on the headlights. He was developing a very definite admiration for Jane Smith and her devious methods. She had coppered every bet thus far, setting the situation up with admirable efficiency so she could turn aside at any moment without the slightest chance of a finger being put on her.

As he drove southward on Collins followed by the car that had been behind him all the way from Miami, Shayne wondered what Jane Smith was like and whether she would come to his table in the Crystal Room. If it was she who was doing the tailing, she would be behind him at the hotel, and would enter the cocktail lounge after he did. On the other hand, she might already be there, waiting for him to appear, having turned the tailing job over to someone else. He hadn’t seen whether the driver of the car behind him was male or female. Perversely, he had tried not to see. It was a lot more fun this way, and as he drove southward through the languid warmth of the semi-tropical night Shayne suddenly admitted to himself that there hadn’t been near enough fun in his life in recent years. He had been letting himself grow old, by God. Maybe not old, but certainly stodgy. Going along in a routine groove, accepting mundane assignments and carrying them out competently.

And now all at once Jane Smith had made him feel young and adventurous again. He looked forward eagerly to sitting alone at a table in the Crystal Room, sizing up the females present and speculating whether this one or that was Jane Smith-and whether she would make herself known to him or not.

No matter how this affair turned out, Timothy Rourke had at least done this much for him-and Shayne was properly grateful.

He sat very erect and felt a tingle of anticipation travel down his spine as he turned off Collins and slowed in front of the brightly lighted entrance to the Palms Terrace.

A smartly uniformed doorman snapped the door open for him and asked deferentially, “May I have it parked for you, sir?”

Shayne said, “Please,” and handed him the keys, receiving a numbered parking ticket. He didn’t look behind him at an arriving car as he went into the hotel lobby and spotted the neon-lighted entrance to the Crystal Room across at his right.

3

The Crystal Room of the Palms Terrace Hotel was very like hundreds of other cocktail lounges in similar resort hotels throughout the area. Discreetly lighted to provide an atmosphere of intimacy conducive to assignations, with a lavish decor and soft-spoken, attentive waiters, with the best brands of liquor served at high prices, it was a congenial spot for hotel guests to spend the dull evening hours in the hope of meeting other bored guests-preferably of the opposite sex.

At this slack season the room was uncrowded as Shayne entered. Four separate couples occupied small tables along the wall, and a boisterous party of six was making merry at a big round table in the rear. Five men and three women sat on stools in front of the bar behind which two bartenders were not being kept very busy.

Shayne paused momentarily in the doorway, and then lounged over to the third empty table from the entrance and sat in the chair facing in that direction, drawn out for him by an eager, white-jacketed waiter.

Shayne said, “Cognac with ice water on the side. A drink, not a pony. Monnet if you have it.”

The waiter said, “Certainly,” and went to the bar. Shayne got out a cigarette and lit it, turned slightly in his chair with left shoulder against the wall, and studied the backs of the three women at the bar speculatively. The one at the far end he dismissed immediately. She was middle-aged and dumpy and giggly drunk. She swayed on her stool, pressing a bare shoulder against the dinner jacket of her younger male companion who looked sleek and competent. There was an empty stool between her and the next man, with the slender figure of a girl on the seat next to him.

She had nice shoulders that showed just enough above a conservative cocktail gown, and a slender straight neck surmounted by a gamin-like Italian hairdo of auburn hair.

Shayne’s gaze lingered on the pair of them as the waiter brought his drink. They both sat very straight and lifted their drinks purposefully and appeared unconscious of each other. From his position directly behind her, Shayne could not see the reflection of the girl’s face in the bar mirror, but long experience in many bars gave him the distinct impression that the two were not yet acquainted but were both hoping to be before the evening became much older.

There was another vacant stool beyond the girl, then a very fat man sitting alone with a bottle of Heineken’s beer in front of him engaged in a dreary dissertation on the past baseball season to one of the bartenders.

The front end of the bar was curved, with two stools at the end facing the room. The final occupant of the Crystal Room was seated on the last stool against the wall. Both her elbows were on the bar, and her chin was supported by the backs of the folded knuckles of both hands. She wore a low-necked ruby-red dress with a short-sleeved Angora jacket the same color that was very attractive. She appeared to be in her twenties, with strong, clean features that suggested fine bone structure. She wore tinted Harlequin glasses that effectively concealed her eyes, and had a wide, smooth forehead beneath an upswept hairdo of light brown curls that were in faint disarray.

Shayne sipped his Monnet reflectively and let his gaze rest on her face for a long, contemplative moment. She appeared to return his gaze steadily, though he couldn’t be sure because of the glasses. He let his gaze linger long enough on her face to indicate strong interest and polite invitation without being rudely aggressive. She held her posture without the outward movement of a muscle. An empty cocktail glass stood between her two elbows.

Jane Smith? Shayne wondered. She appeared to be the only possibility in the bar. If so, she was giving him a solid going-over and taking her time about it.

Shayne set his half-empty shot-glass down and took a sip of ice water. He turned squarely in his chair to face the entrance and dragged smoke into his lungs. A tall, svelte woman with a very dark complexion and startlingly white hair came through the doorway. The bartender glanced up from in front of the fat man and moved to his right, smiling a greeting that betokened recognition. She moved to the bar and put one hand on a vacant stool and said something in a husky voice, and then turned to survey the room carefully, her gaze going down the length of the bar to the rear of the room, returning to brush over Shayne’s face unhurriedly. Then she turned and said something else to the bartender, moved aside gracefully and sat at the empty front table directly facing Shayne with one empty table between them.

She was about forty, Shayne thought. With aquiline features that were classically beautiful, but marred by a discontented droop at the corners of too-thin lips. She opened a beaded evening bag and extracted a long ivory holder and a flat enameled cigarette case. Her brooding gaze rested directly on the detective while she fitted a cigarette into the holder and accepted a light from the waiter who set a champagne cocktail in front of her with a flourish.

Jane Smith? If so, it looked like adding up to an interesting evening. Shayne met her eyes steadily until she glanced aside, and then slid his own gaze back to the girl at the end of the bar. She appeared to be watching him intently, and suddenly she reached a decision.

She stood up and said something to the bartender, moved around the end of the bar just as another girl entered behind her.

This newest arrival was very young to be dropping into a cocktail lounge unaccompanied. Not yet twenty, Shayne thought, with a virginal and appealing look of timidity about her. She wore a plain black sheath dress tightly belted about her slender waist with a wide leather belt and glittering rhinestone buckle. She had piquant features and smooth black hair that framed her face and flowed to curled tips resting on her shoulders.

The girl with the Harlequin glasses moved toward Shayne, blocking out the newcomer from his sight. She paused pensively beside his table looking down at him, and he pushed back his chair and half rose with a smile which she could assume as welcoming if she chose.

In a light voice that held the faint trace of a foreign accent, she asked, “Are you expecting someone?”

Shayne said carefully, “Not exactly. More hopeful than expectant, shall we say?”

“I saw you were alone… and I am lonely. It always seems so foolish that strangers must follow the rules and drink alone.”

“So let’s break the rule,” said Shayne. “Will you join me?”

The waiter was hovering behind her and he drew out the chair opposite the detective as she inclined her head. She sat down and looked across the table at him through her blue-tinted glasses. “I would enjoy having a stinger.”

Shayne emptied his brandy glass and pushed it toward the waiter. “A stinger for the lady… and a refill.”

Glancing past his companion’s left shoulder, Shayne noted that the younger girl had seated herself at the corner stool where she faced their table. She was looking at him steadily with her lips half-parted, and jerked her gaze away with a faint flush when his eyes met hers. Keeping her face averted, she conferred with the bartender while the thin fingers of both hands nervously clutched and unclutched a black velvet bag on the bar in front of her.

Shayne dragged his attention back to the girl opposite him. Close up, she looked older than he had first guessed. There were tiny lines radiating from the outer corners of her eyes, and the flesh of her chin was not quite as firm as it must once have been.

To the redhead, she was the most intriguing and attractive of the three possible Jane Smiths, yet she was also the only one of the trio who had been waiting when he arrived, and therefore the least likely prospect.

He said conversationally, “I’ve often felt exactly as you do… that it’s stupid to drink alone just because a stupid convention insists that people must be properly introduced before they can speak to each other. So let’s circumvent that convention. My name is Mike Wayne.” He was studying her face carefully as he spoke. Did a trace of excitement cross her mobile features? He couldn’t be sure. Those damned glasses! He wished she would take them off.

The waiter deftly served their drinks. She toyed with the slender stem of her glass and said thoughtfully, “Must we use our correct names? My own is so commonplace.”

“Something like Smith?” hazarded Shayne. “Plain Jane Smith, maybe?”

A demure smile curved her lips. “Something like that, yes. What could be less alluring? What could be so disappointing as to meet a girl named Jane Smith?”

The trace of a foreign accent persisted in her voice. Slavic, Shayne guessed. Or possibly Hungarian.

He sensed movement beside him, and looked up to see the young girl standing very close to his table. She leaned forward from the hips slightly, and her dark, humid eyes were fixed on his face in a sort of desperate appeal. Her voice was light and fluttery and frightened:

“Pardon me, but aren’t you… I think I recognize you… aren’t you Mike Wayne?”

“Sure,” he said heartily, pushing back his chair and standing up, extending his hand to take her hot fingers in his. “I thought I recognized you, too, Jane, when you first walked in, but it’s been so long that I wasn’t sure. I was just sitting here waiting…”

Harlequin stood up with her stinger in her hand and said composedly, “You will pardon me for intruding. Now that you are no longer alone I will go back to my corner. I thank you for the drink.”

Shayne said, “It was a pleasure,” and she turned away and the girl slid into the chair she had vacated with a little frightened exhalation of relief.

“I didn’t know what to do when I saw her come over and sit down. I knew it was you and that if I didn’t break it up you’d most likely think she was me. And I didn’t know what you might say to her.”

She was trembling, and Shayne reassured her gently, “I didn’t give anything away. What will you drink?”

“Nothing. That is… well, nothing really. I hardly ever drink.” She fluttered incredibly long and incredibly black lashes over violet eyes, and asked in a small voice, “What are you drinking?”

“Cognac.” Shayne lifted his glass and swallowed half of it.

“That’s a kind of brandy, isn’t it? Imported from France?”

Shayne said, “That’s right,” with amusement in his voice.

“Well, wouldn’t you… wouldn’t it be more private up in my suite? I’m sure I can order a bottle of whatever you want from Room Service.”

“I think that’s an extremely good idea.” Shayne finished off his drink and took a sip of ice water. He looked around for the waiter and crooked a bony finger at him, got out his wallet and extracted a bill.

The waiter brought a bar-check face down on a silver dish and Shayne laid the bill on top of it without looking at the amount.

He left fifty cents when the waiter brought his change, then got up and moved behind the girl to draw her chair back. She stood beside him, the top of her glistening black hair barely coming above his shoulder, and Shayne tucked her arm in his and led her past the end of the bar, nodding politely to the woman with the tinted glasses who had resumed her contemplative posture at the bar with chin supported by the backs of her hands.

4

Jane Smith unlocked a door on the fourth floor and stood aside to allow Shayne to enter a pleasant sitting room that showed no sign whatsoever of human occupancy. Two floor lamps were lighted at opposite ends of the room, and two closed doors led off to what Shayne assumed would be bedroom and bath.

The girl closed the door tightly behind her while Shayne strolled across the room, and asked in a controlled voice, “Cognac, you said? Any particular brand?”

He stopped at curtained windows and turned with a reassuring smile. “I don’t really need a drink, Jane.”

“But I want you to have one,” she told him with quiet dignity, crossing to the telephone and putting her hand on it. “Please tell me what to order.”

“Just ask for a double shot of Monnet cognac… with a pitcher of ice. And whatever you want.”

She lifted the instrument and tilted her chin determinedly, said, “Room Service, please,” into the mouthpiece, and then: “This is number four twenty-six. Miss Smith speaking. I’d like a double cognac… Monnet, please. Yes, a double,” she repeated firmly. “And some ice if you don’t mind. And could you send a limeade or lemonade with it?” She paused, listening carefully, then nodded and said, “That’s correct. Room four twenty-six.”

She replaced the receiver and told Shayne, “It will be right up.”

He moved away from the window to a deep chair at the end of the room, and sank into it, stretched his long legs out in front of him and advised her, “Sit down and relax. You’re wound up as tight as a violin string. Smoke?” He got out a pack of cigarettes and started to get up.

She shook her head, crossed to the sofa close to him and dropped into it, curling her feet up under her. “I don’t really like to smoke. If I inhale it makes me dizzy… and it seems silly to smoke if you don’t.”

Shayne said gravely, “I guess that’s right. A waste of time and money.” He lit his own cigarette and inhaled blissfully. “Was it you tailing me tonight?”

“Yes. All the way from your hotel in Miami.” She drooped her lashes and caught her underlip between her teeth. “Who else do you think I could trust?”

Shayne said honestly, “I don’t know. In fact, I don’t know very much about anything. Except here we are… and I’m willing to listen.”

“You don’t know how awful I felt,” she burst out, “when the News didn’t run my advertisement in the Personal Column. I just felt like it was the end of the world. I had considered the possibility that they might refuse it,” she added honestly. “But I tried so darned hard to make it sound innocent and innocuous. I guess I didn’t succeed, did

I?”

“Not quite. If you hadn’t underlined ‘anything’ that second time…”

“But it seemed to me that if I didn’t, there wasn’t much point in the whole thing,” she pointed out defensively. “And I did so hope the right sort of man would see it and be intrigued.”

“Someone like me?”

“I… think so. That’s what we’re here to find out, isn’t it? When your reply did come, I just felt as though God had planned it that way. Instead of having to sift through dozens of answers, there was only yours. And it sounded, well… mature and serious.”

There was a knock on her door. She uncurled her legs and got up to admit a bellboy with a tray. He set the tray on a coffee table in front of the sofa and offered her a check and a pencil to sign it with.

Shayne got up lazily from his chair while she signed Jane Smith in round, schoolgirlish script, got a dollar from his wallet and dropped it on top of the signed slip when she put it down.

The boy thanked them both and went out, and she told Shayne defensively, “You didn’t have to pay the tip. I fully intended…”

Shayne grinned and waved a big hand. “That’s cheap for a double cognac.”

He dipped ice cubes into a water glass and turned to the two closed doors. “Which is the bathroom?”

“On your left.”

He went through a door into a bathroom as antiseptically neat and uncluttered as the living room, ran water on top of the ice and returned. She was curled up on the sofa again with a tall glass of yellowish liquid and ice cubes out of which she was sucking from two straws.

Shayne got his double cognac from the tray and carried it with the glass of ice water to his chair. He sank back and took a meditative sip, and then asked bluntly, “What’s all the cloak and dagger stuff about, Jane? Supposing the price is right… exactly what do you want from me?”

She said firmly, “I think I should know a great deal more about you before I go into that.” She hesitated, then asked timidly, “Are you a professional gunsel?”

Shayne grinned. “You’ve been reading imitators of Dashiell Hammett. They completely misinterpreted that word.”

“Well then, a hood? A… a trigger-man? Because you don’t act or sound like one,” she went on with painful honesty. “Or at least the way I always thought one would be.”

Shayne took a sip of his drink. “Disappointed?”

“No. I’m delighted that you’re so personable and… well, literate. It makes it a lot easier to talk to you. But… what do you do for a living?”

“Anything to pick up a fast buck. I’ve killed a few men, Jane, if that’s what you’re getting at. Rubbed them out, in the vernacular. I exist on the edge of the law,” he went on, choosing his words carefully, “and haven’t a great respect for the way justice is administered in this country.”

“The clerk at your hotel intimated that you are a gambler.”

“Not a professional. But I do like to eat… and drink good cognac.” He lifted his glass in a salute and drank from it.

“Tell me about your girl at the newspaper office. Are you in love with her?”

“We’ve got a thing about each other. How does she come into this?”

“She doesn’t, of course. Except to help me understand what motivates you. If you are in love with a nice girl you’re most likely to understand my problem and sympathize with me. And if you need a lot of money in a hurry to enable you to get married and change your way of life, that would be an important incentive, I should think.”

By her speech, her choice of words, Shayne thought, she exhibited the damnedest mixture of naivete and sophistication he had ever encountered. Her language had a quaintly bookish tinge, as though she had acquired her knowledge of words from reading rather than from the actual give-and-take of conversation with other human beings. All-in-all, Jane Smith intrigued hell out of him at this point, and he was comfortably pleased that she had turned out to be this one instead of either of the other two possibilities he had considered in the Crystal Room.

He said, “I came here to listen to a proposition, Jane. I’ve got a gun and it’s for hire… if the job appeals to me and the price is right.”

She said impulsively, “You’re absolutely wonderful, Mike Wayne. I don’t suppose that’s your real name, is it?”

“No.”

“I didn’t suppose it was… any more than Jane Smith is mine. If you knew how worried I’ve been… the sort of uncouth hoodlum I thought might answer my advertisement. But when I read your reply I thought you couldn’t be so terribly horrible. And you’re not at all. I’m not even embarrassed sitting here talking to you this way,” she ended wonderingly.

Keeping his face impassive, Shayne said, “I’m delighted that you find me couth enough for your purpose. But I still don’t know what that purpose is.”

“Are you enjoying your drink? Shall I order you another?”

“I’m enjoying it very much and I’m not trying to push you too fast, Jane. I can stay here all night if necessary.” He stretched out his long legs and lit another cigarette.

She laughed nervously. “That won’t be necessary. What would you tell your girl-friend?”

“A good, convincing lie.” Leaning back relaxed in his chair, Shayne’s gaze brooded on her face. “How old are you, Jane?”

“Nineteen.”

“At least, that’s past the age of consent in Florida.”

She blushed and averted her face from his, gave her entire attention to sucking lemonade from her glass.

“And I don’t believe this sort of hotel would ask any prying questions,” Shayne went on as though he were considering the matter seriously. “Haven’t you often found it’s easier to talk to a man in the dark while he’s lying in bed beside you than any other time?”

“Please don’t talk that way.” Anger burst from her lips. “Not even jokingly. You’re not a lecherous old man. Are you?”

“All men are lecherous to a certain extent. I suppose I even seem old to nineteen.”

“But you don’t! You’re just nice to talk to. Please don’t spoil it.”

“I won’t.” He made his voice very gentle. “Relax, child. I was just trying to find out something about you in my own inimitable way.”

“Did you?” she asked in a small voice.

“I think so.” Shayne took another sip of cognac and made his voice briskly businesslike again. “Take your own time about getting it off your chest.”

“Would you like to make fifty thousand dollars?”

“Sure. Who wouldn’t?”

“But… is that enough to… to induce you to kill a man?”

“Who do you want killed, Jane?”

“My stepfather.”

5

The two words lay harsh and ugly on the floor between them. Jane Smith gulped in her breath unevenly after she spoke, and closed her eyes tightly. Her body went lax and she lay huddled at one corner of the sofa like a limp rag doll. Two tears squeezed out from under her eyelids and coursed slowly down her cheeks.

Slowly her head bent forward as though the weight were too much for the slender column of her neck, and she lifted both hands, spread-fingered to cover her face in an attitude of utter despair. Her shining black hair fell forward to form a lacy curtain in front of her hands.

Shayne sat very still and watched her, his gaunt face deeply trenched, gray eyes narrowed to slits.

She spoke first without shaking back her hair or removing hands from her face. Her voice was tremulous and frightened:

“There. Now I’ve said it out loud. To someone else. I’ve said it to myself so many times. I thought it would sound ugly and nasty and vicious. But it doesn’t.” Her voice took on a wondering note. She slowly lifted her head and brushed back the hair on both sides of her face. Her cheeks were tear-wet, but her eyes were luminous and steady on Shayne.

“Thank you for not looking shocked,” she said softly. “I know it is shocking. But if you only knew… how I hate him. If you only understood how I loathe and despise the very thought of him. How often I’ve wished him dead, and planned to kill him in my thoughts. If you will only listen to me.”

Shayne said steadily, “I’m listening, Jane.”

“His name is Saul Henderson. He married my mother four years ago.” She spoke rapidly, as though she had carefully memorized the speech. “I liked him at first. He seemed gentle and kind, and mother needed him. Mother always needed a man. Someone to make a fuss over her and look after her. He didn’t have much money but that didn’t matter because mother had plenty. And he was good to her, and good for her. She positively bloomed the first few months. It was a marvelous transformation and it made me very happy. And then…” Her voice faltered. She continued to stare at him unblinking and he saw the humiliation and pain in her eyes.

“Oh, I can’t tell you, Mike Wayne. I simply can’t. I thought I could after I met you tonight, but now the words won’t come out. I can’t form them on my lips. I’ll die of shame. Oh my God! what shall I do?”

Like an uncoiling spring she came out of her crouching position on the sofa and flowed across the room to him. A paroxysm of weeping shook her slender body as she dropped to the floor in front of him and clutched his knees with both arms, burying her face between his thighs.

Shayne sat rigidly motionless while her tempest of emotion spent itself. Then, without lifting her head, her voice muffled and toneless, she began talking again.

“He debauched me when I was sixteen. He raped me in a bedroom beside the one where my mother lay dying of cancer. I couldn’t cry out and let her know. I couldn’t.”

Again her bowed shoulders shook with violent sobbing. “Even now I’m glad I didn’t. I’m proud that I submitted to him and she never knew. He was all she had to cling to. She adored him. And she died adoring him.”

She jerked her head up and stared at Shayne fiercely. “Do you understand that I’m glad and proud… even though he kept on using my body. Because my mother never knew or suspected. That’s why I hate him so. Because he turned me into the sort of creature who is proud of being used by a monster like that. Look at me!”

She drew herself erect, smoothing back her hair scornfully. “Tonight you thought I was a sweet young thing. I saw it in your eyes. But I’m debauched. Hideous. A monstrosity. Worse than any syphilitic whore who walks the streets of Miami. Because they let men use their bodies because they want to. To earn money. That’s clean compared to me.

“So now I have shocked you.” She turned away coldly. “I knew, of course, that it couldn’t be. In my wildest imaginings I knew deep down inside of me that I’d never find a man who could sympathize and understand. Why don’t you go, Mike Wayne? I know you can’t stand to even look at me any more.”

She stood rigidly at the window with her back to him. Slim and defiant and so woefully young.

Shayne said, “I’ll stick around awhile, Jane Smith. Why don’t you go back and sit down and tell me more about the situation?”

She turned and looked at him wonderingly. “You mean it, don’t you? You’re not utterly revolted by the sight of me?”

“I’m not revolted at all,” Shayne assured her flatly. “What I do wonder right now is what sort of hold your stepfather still has on you that makes his murder seem the only way out.”

The word seem to jar her queerly. “Murder?” she repeated. “I never once thought of that word. Call it an execution. Riddance. An extermination. Is it murder when you crush a loathsome cockroach underfoot? Don’t they hang men who rape young girls? You don’t call that murder, do you?”

Shayne said, “It’s a question of semantics. You feel so trapped that the only way out is to have Saul Henderson killed. Why? What sort of hold has he over you? You said your mother is dead.”

“Yes. She died two months ago.” Jane Smith returned composedly to the sofa. “Adoring my stepfather and believing him to be the finest man on earth. She left a will dividing her estate evenly between us, naming him as my legal guardian and placing my share of the money in trust to be administered by him as he sees fit until I’m twenty-one. Two years from now. Two years of being under his thumb… at his beck and call. Two more years during which I can’t call my soul my own. Living in the same house with him. Lying in my bed at night trembling with fear that he will walk in through the door and force himself upon me. Dying a thousand deaths each night he doesn’t come, and consumed with hatred and shame when he does.” Her voice died away listlessly.

Shayne said harshly, “Do you mean that you’re going on with the affair even after your mother’s death?”

“What else can I do? I have no money except what he doles out to me. Nothing. I’m utterly dependent on him for what I eat.”

“Defy him,” said Shayne savagely. “My God, this is the Twentieth Century. Slavery has gone out of style.”

She said, “You don’t know Saul Henderson.”

“You must have some money of your own. Walk away from him and use it. How much is your share of the estate worth?” he demanded abruptly.

“About a quarter of a million.”

“Which will come to you with no strings attached in two years. Go out and borrow on it if you need cash to break away from him. Hell, the town is full of money-lenders who’ll advance you whatever you need. They’ll charge exorbitant interest, of course, but what do you care? You can afford to pay twenty percent for a couple of years.”

“You don’t quite understand, Mike Wayne… or whatever your name is.” Jane crossed her arms across her breasts and squeezed them tightly. “There was an added provision in mother’s will. I told you she looked on Saul as a sort of God. I get my share only if I conduct myself like a devoted daughter and live in his house under his discipline until I’m of age. If I fail to do that… and he can prove it in court… my share reverts to him and I’ll be dependent on him for the rest of my life.”

“Your mother,” said Shayne bitterly, “was a fool.”

“Of course she was. Saul took her in completely. But that’s spilled milk now, isn’t it? These are the facts I have to live with.”

“What happens if Henderson dies before you’re twenty-one?”

“Then I get my half at once. Don’t you see? That’s what I’m banking on. He doesn’t deserve to live. And the moment he dies, I’m free. That’s why I mentioned fifty thousand dollars. I haven’t anything right now, but the moment Saul Henderson is dead I can pay anything. I’ll give you a demand note. I’ll sign any sort of legal document you want so you can collect after his death. It’s as simple as that. Will you or won’t you?”

“Kill your stepfather so you can collect your share of your mother’s estate immediately?” asked Shayne.

“So I can become a free woman,” she cried out wildly. “So I can rid myself of the incubus he has become. I can’t go on like I am. I’m going crazy.”

“Then walk away from him,” Shayne advised her evenly.

“He’ll follow me and bring me back. Legally, he’s my guardian.”

“Nuts. Prefer charges against him. Tell any judge in the country what you’ve just told me, and he’ll spend the rest of his life in jail while you enjoy your inheritance.”

“I’ve threatened him with that,” she cried out desperately, “and he laughs at me. He says to go ahead and try to make it stick. And even if I did succeed, think of the disgrace and scandal. It would be a Roman holiday for the newspapers. I can’t face that. I just can’t.”

“Almost anything is better than murder,” Shayne told her.

“I’m in love,” she told him in a choked voice. “For the first time in my life, I know what love is. With a nice clean innocent boy who would just die if he ever found out the truth. That’s one of the reasons I asked you if you loved your friend. I thought you’d understand better.”

“Just walk away from the whole set-up,” advised Shayne coldly. “Henderson can’t do one damned thing to stop you. Pay no attention to his threats. He doesn’t want publicity any more than you do.”

“What would I do for money?” wailed Jane. “The boy I’m in love with hasn’t any. He’s working hard on a salary to get established. He can’t afford to marry a poor girl.”

“Then the bastard isn’t worth marrying at all,” Shayne said angrily. “Look, kid.” He controlled his voice with an effort. “There are young couples all over the country no worse off than you two. You’re nineteen years old, perfectly healthy and reasonably intelligent. You say you’re in love with a boy who has a job and is working hard. So, marry the guy. Walk away from your stepfather and marry him. Get a job of your own if you have to in order to make ends meet.”

“What kind of job can I get? I haven’t any training…”

“You can clerk in a ten-cent store, goddamn it. Lots of girls do and survive.”

“And let that horrible Saul Henderson get away with a quarter million dollars that belongs to me?”

“In the first place,” Shayne gritted, “I don’t believe he’d ever manage to get away with it. Take my advice and get out from under, and I’ll get you the best legal advice in Miami to work on your case. But don’t come crying to me about being sexually misused when it’s your own damned choice that you are. I can sort of understand your going along with the situation while your mother was alive. But the moment she died, you should have walked out. Or put a knife in him yourself the first time he tried to take you after your mother’s death.”

“I wish to God I had,” she cried shrilly.

“But you didn’t,” Shayne pointed out. “You compromised instead… and felt sorry for yourself. And now you’re trying to hire me to commit a murder to get you out of a situation you won’t walk away from. To hell with it.” He drained his glass and set it down with finality.

“Then you won’t help me?”

“Certainly not. Get it through your head that you’re the only person who can help yourself at this point.”

Shayne got to his feet and walked across to stand over her as she huddled defensively away from him on the sofa, and he made his voice more gentle:

“This is a hell of a story you told me, Jane, and if it’s true, your stepfather deserves to be shot. But that’s neither here nor there. There are laws to take care of people like Saul Henderson. If you’ll come with me tonight, I’ll guarantee you’ll never have to see the son-of-a-bitch again. I can’t guarantee you’ll end up with your inheritance, but I think there’s a good chance you will.”

“But it would mean testifying against him, wouldn’t it? Standing up in court and admitting what I did… the sort of horrible person I am.”

“It would mean preferring charges against him,” said Shayne evenly. “I doubt it would come into open court. Judges are human, and there are ways of handling things like this.”

“But he would just deny everything,” she said tearfully. “I haven’t any proof. It would be my word against his. And everyone would believe him. I’d just be an hysterical teen-ager… because I’m only nineteen.”

Shayne controlled his exasperation and said, “Jane. I’m putting it to you straight. There’s only one answer… and that’s to never go back into his house again. Come with me tonight. I’ll take you to my girl-friend’s apartment. Give up this crazy idea of hiring someone to murder him. You’ll just end up in the electric chair yourself that way.”

She lay back on the sofa looking up at him like a wounded animal. She breathed fast and irregularly through widely parted lips and her eyes seared him.

“Get out,” she spat. “I hope I never see you again. Take your corny advice and stick it. Men are all alike and I should have known better than to think different. Get out.”

Shayne hesitated a long moment. The girl was clearly on the verge of hysteria, and his first impulse was to call the house detective and a doctor.

But he fought down that impulse, reminding himself that he hadn’t the right to do anything like that. Sure, she was plenty neurotic, maybe psychotic, but what high-strung girl wouldn’t be after what she had gone through?

He got out his wallet and took one of his own business cards from it, and scribbled his home telephone number on it before handing it to her.

He said, “This guy, Michael Shayne, is a close friend of mine. He’s legal, but he knows how to cut corners and I guarantee he can be trusted. He can help you if anybody in the world can. That’s his private number I’ve written down. Settle back and think over everything I’ve said. Forget this murder routine you’re hipped on. If you decide you want help, call Michael Shayne… any time of the night or day. And God help you, Jane Smith,” he ended under his breath as he turned away from her and walked out of the hotel suite.

6

Michael Shayne did not return to his newly rented hotel room that night. He took a taxi directly from the Beach to his own apartment hotel on the north bank of the Miami River, and strode into the empty lobby, surprising Pete who was dozing behind the desk.

The night clerk sat up with a jerk and said, “Gee, Mr. Shayne, it’s been sort of dull around here the last few days without you.”

Shayne said, “I’ve had it pretty dull myself. Any mail or messages?”

“I’ll bet you’ve had it dull.” Pete winked at him knowingly. “A few letters. And just about an hour ago Mr. Rourke called and wanted you to call him back. I tried that number you gave me but room eight-oh-six didn’t answer.”

Shayne nodded, absently riffling half a dozen unimportant letters. “Just cancel out that number for the future. I’ll call Rourke from upstairs.”

He went up to the familiar suite he had occupied for so many years, shrugged out of his jacket as he entered. He crossed the comfortably shabby living room in long strides, glad to be shucking off Mike Wayne’s identity and becoming himself again.

In the small kitchen he put ice cubes in a tall glass, ran water over them, and carried it and a four-ounce wine-glass to the center table in the living room. He got a bottle of cognac from a wall cupboard, filled the wine-glass to the brim, and settled back comfortably to try Tim at the newspaper office. The City Desk told him Rourke had checked out for the night, and Shayne called his home number.

“Mike! I’ve been wondering how the hell you made out with Jane Smith. I haven’t had a single damned word from you since we talked about her. Pete says you haven’t been home nights. You been shacked up with her?” Rourke’s voice was cheerfully expectant.

“I just made contact tonight. Left her in a hotel on the Beach half an hour ago.”

“And?”

“There’s no story, Tim.”

“Nuts! There must be some story.”

“It’s not for your youthful ears… nor for your rag to publish.” Shayne paused and took a sip of cognac. “But there’s a chance… a slim chance… that she may be calling in Mike Shayne, in person, to help her out of a spot. If she does that, I might have something for you eventually.”

“I’m coming around,” Rourke said eagerly. “You at home?”

“Sitting here with a drink and wondering whether Jane Smith will come to her senses and telephone me.”

Rourke said, “See you,” and hung up.

Shayne replaced the receiver slowly and lit a cigarette. Would Jane take his lecture to heart and telephone a private detective for help? He didn’t think so. Not really. He closed his eyes and her face appeared before him as it had been at the last when she spat, “Get out,” at him.

He hadn’t handled it well, he thought morosely. God in heaven! he had actually sat back and preached at her. What she needed was sympathy and understanding. And he had walked out on her leaving her alone and hysterical and hopeless.

Impulsively he reached for the telephone, half a mind to call her at the Palms Terrace. As Michael Shayne. Would she recognize his voice over the telephone? Probably not. He could tell her that his old friend, Mike Wayne, had asked him to get in touch with her. Then she wouldn’t feel so lost and alone. She’d realize that Wayne had been touched by her story… that he truly wanted to help her, and perhaps she would accept Shayne’s help.

But he paused with his hand on the instrument. No, damn it. The call must come from her. It wouldn’t be any good if it wasn’t her decision. She had to learn to stand on her own two feet and to fight her own way free. Certainly, he thought, after girding herself up to go through with meeting a strange man tonight and pleading with him to murder her stepfather… after the way that meeting ended… certainly she would give up her insane plan and begin considering the alternatives he had suggested.

He relaxed and swallowed an ounce of cognac, chasing it down with ice water. Now, he thought his telephone would ring. He began waiting for the sound hopefully.

His cognac glass was empty and he was still waiting, less hopefully, when Timothy Rourke entered the room.

The reporter grinned at him and crossed to the wall cabinet without an invitation and selected a bottle of bourbon that was already open. He carried it into the kitchen where he slugged a generous amount into a glass, added an ice cube and a moderate amount of water. He came back to sprawl his lean frame into a deep chair opposite Shayne and said, “Tell me about our Jane Smith. How’d it go?”

Shayne shrugged. “Pretty much according to schedule. She cased me as Mike Wayne this evening, and then went through a long rigmarole to make sure I didn’t call in the cops.” He grinned at the memory and added, “Damn well planned, too. Jane is no dumbbell. She fixed it so she could look me over in person before deciding whether to confide in me or not.”

While Rourke listened appreciatively, he outlined the events of the evening leading up to the meeting in the Crystal Room. “Then we went up to her suite for a quiet drink and a talk.”

“What’s she like? A tough old bag?”

Shayne said broodingly, “She’s nineteen and utterly charming, and in one of the toughest spots any nice girl has ever been in.”

“And so Mike Shayne turned down her proposition?” jeered Rourke. “Come off it, Mike. What did happen?”

“Mike Wayne turned down her proposition,” Shayne corrected him. “I told you over the phone that Shayne is standing by to help her out legally if that telephone rings.”

“Exactly what was her proposition?”

“She offered me fifty grand to murder a man for her.”

“Christ! And you say there’s no story in it? What more do you want for a headline?”

“There’s no headline in this one, Tim. I’ve given you all I’m going to unless she comes to me legitimately.”

“You can’t do that to me,” cried Rourke. “You’ve got my tongue hanging out a mile. You know it’ll be in strictest confidence if you say so,” he urged his old friend. “When have I ever jumped the gun on you?”

Shayne shook his red head adamantly. “No soap this time. She’s too nice a kid, and it’s too explosive to take the slightest chance with it. Look, Tim,” he went on wearily. “I know you and how your mind works. With all the best intentions in the world, you couldn’t lay off this if you tried. You’d start digging for background stuff… just on the chance it might break some time in the future so you’d be in a position to capitalize on it. And I can’t risk anything like that.”

He splashed more cognac in his glass, glaring at the silent telephone sitting close to his right hand.

“But I gave it to you on a silver platter. I stole it from Peter Painter and handed it to you for free. My paper is even paying your bills on the deal. Don’t I get some explanation?”

“No.”

“Do you want to force me to take it to Painter after all? He would really make headlines out of it.”

Shayne said, “You won’t take it to Painter.”

“How do you know I won’t?” Rourke was beginning to seethe with anger. “You set yourself up like a little tin god to decide what is proper for Tim Rourke to know and what isn’t. To hell with that attitude. Even Painter would be more co-operative.”

“But you’re not going to take it to him,” Shayne stated positively.

“And I ask you again… why shouldn’t I?”

“Because I’ve asked you not to.”

“Nuts! I’m telling you… oh, hell, Mike. I’m not going to try and blackmail you. But you might give me some hint…”

“Not even a hint, Tim.” Shayne’s voice was very firm. “This gal is sitting on the edge of a volcano with her feet dangling over the edge. The slightest nudge might destroy her.”

“She certainly seems to have impressed you,” grunted Rourke sourly.

“She did.”

There was a long period of silence between the two old friends who knew each other and each other’s moods so well. Timothy Rourke sucked contemplatively on his highball while Shayne stretched out his long legs and closed his eyes, willing the telephone to ring.

It didn’t.

Rourke’s voice came to his ears from a seemingly great distance.

“I gather you turned her down flatly. If she’s so desperate, won’t she go to someone else with the same proposition? Someone who isn’t quite so conscientious as you. Fifty thousand dollars is a nice round sum for a simple killing. Hundreds have been arranged for a hundredth of that.”

“I’m afraid she will. That’s why I’m waiting for the goddamned telephone to ring.”

“Hoping it will be Jane Smith calling on the great Michael Shayne for help?”

“Hoping she will take Mike Wayne’s advice and give up her silly idea of arranging a murder.”

“Why should she? She barely knows the guy. Only met him tonight.”

“And he let her down,” agreed Shayne tonelessly. “But they did establish a certain rapport. She trusted him utterly for a few minutes.”

“But suppose she doesn’t call you?” argued Rourke. “What then? Are you going to do nothing to prevent her from going ahead with her murderous ideas?”

“I don’t see why I should.” Shayne spoke slowly, evidently arguing with himself. “If her story is true, a simple killing is much too good for the guy. Who am I to sit in judgment?”

“Who, indeed?” agreed Rourke. “But isn’t that just what you did this evening?”

“Hell, no! I simply gave her some good advice.”

“According to your standards. But what about hers?”

Shayne sighed and said, “Stop needling me, Tim.” He morosely lifted his glass and drained it.

“Okay. Let’s change the subject. You got any hot cases on the fire?”

“Nor any cold ones either.”

“That’s what Lucy says. In fact, she told me in confidence just yesterday that if you kept on turning down cases offered to you, she was going to quit you cold.”

“She’s always threatening to quit.”

“One day she’s going to do it. You don’t know how that girl looks up to you, Mike. She feels you’re wasting your talents…”

The telephone shrilled between them.

Shayne’s big hand shot out to grasp it. He saw Rourke grinning at him, and controlled his impatience, lifting it slowly and saying, “Michael Shayne speaking,” in an impersonal tone.

A frown of disappointment furrowed his brow when Lucy Hamilton’s voice lilted over the wire, “I hope you weren’t asleep or busy, Michael.”

“I was neither. Tim Rourke is here sopping up my liquor.”

“Oh. Well, I called because something came up this afternoon after you left the office. A Mr. David Waring of the Southern Mutual Insurance Company came in to talk about putting you on an annual retainer. I told him you aren’t terribly tied up right now, and I ended up going out to dinner with him. He just dropped me off home, and I did a terrific selling job on you.”

“It was a long dinner,” said Shayne crossly.

“Michael!” Her amused voice made three distinct syllables out of his name. “I do believe you’re jealous.”

“Of course I’m not jealous.”

“Well, he’s fat and a lot of fun.”

“Good clean fun, I’ll bet. All right, angel. Put him on the phone and I’ll talk to him.”

“You are jealous,” she said wonderingly. “And you’re trying to trick me. He isn’t here, silly. I told you he dropped me off.”

“I know what you told me. Okay, Lucy. I’m waiting for an important telephone call. Get your beauty sleep and I’ll see you in the morning.”

He hung up and stared bleakly at Rourke, then sighed and dragged the telephone directory closer and looked up the number of the Palms Terrace hotel on Miami Beach.

He gave the number to Pete who also handled the switchboard at night, and when he got the hotel, he said, “Jane Smith, please. Suite four twenty-six.”

There was a moment of waiting, and then the girl said, “I will give you the desk.” A man’s brisk voice came over the wire a few seconds later. “The desk. May I help you?”

“I’m trying to reach Miss Jane Smith in four twenty-six.”

“I’m sorry, sir. Miss Smith checked out about an hour ago.”

“Did she leave a forwarding address?”

“No, sir. She left in quite a rush.”

Shayne said, “Thank you,” and hung up. He looked across at Rourke and said tonelessly, “She checked out of the hotel right after I left her.”

Rourke lifted his glass and said, “So that disposes of Jane Smith. If she keeps trying, she’ll find plenty of guys to do the job for her.” He emptied his glass with a flourish. “Okay, Mike. Send a bill to the News for your expenses. It was a good try.”

“There won’t be any bill,” Shayne told him harshly. “I won more money playing poker the last two nights than I spent on the project.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “Three hot-shots are sitting around a stud table right now, chewing their fingernails and wondering why in hell I haven’t shown up for the kill they had planned.”

Rourke stood up and yawned. “Well, if you don’t mind,” he said politely, “I guess I’ll drift along. Thanks for the drink.”

Very formally, Shayne said, “You’re always welcome.”

He waited until Rourke had his hand on the doorknob and then asked, “Does the name Saul Henderson mean anything to you, Tim?”

“Saul Henderson?” The reporter turned slowly, speculative interest in his eyes. “What about him?”

“That’s what I’m asking you,” said Shayne patiently. “Do you know anything about him?”

“Sure. What connection has a guy like Henderson got with Jane Smith or this thing tonight?”

“I didn’t say he had any connection.”

“I know you didn’t.” Rourke released the doorknob and turned back into the room. “All the same it made me wonder… in view of the fact that Henderson has a stepdaughter about nineteen years old. Utterly charming, I’d say, and what a guy like you might well call a ‘nice girl.’”

Shayne said, “So what? I didn’t ask you about Henderson’s stepdaughter.”

“I know you didn’t.” For a brief moment their glances interlocked. Rourke’s gaze, keen and challenging; Shayne’s, cool and unperturbed. Then Rourke sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “All right, Mike. Saul Henderson. A thumbnail sketch. He’s been a resident of the Beach for a few years, running a small brokerage house, I think. Dabbled in public affairs and been on a few committees. I think his wife died recently, and there’ve been rumors that he inherited a million or so. Whether that’s true or not, he’s being groomed to run for mayor of Miami Beach in the next election as the reform candidate. His candidacy isn’t official, but it’s pretty well in the bag, I guess.”

“What sort of man is he personally?”

“I met him once at some civic dinner. Bland, easygoing type. Pleasing personality.”

Shayne said harshly, “I’d like the opportunity to size him up for myself.”

“Easiest thing in the world. He’s been tossing some parties since his wife’s death. I’ll get you and Lucy an invite.”

“Why Lucy?” Despite himself, Shayne was unable to keep a note of venom out of his voice.

If Rourke detected it he gave no indication. “I’d say Saul Henderson has got a roving eye for a pretty gal. Lucy’s more likely to make time with him than you are.”

Shayne said, “All right. Maybe I can concentrate on the stepdaughter. Don’t forget it-the sooner the better.”

Rourke said, “I’ll ask around in the right places tomorrow.” He half turned back to the door, hesitated, and asked, “You still determined to clam up on Jane Smith?”

“I have to, Tim.”

The telephone rang and Shayne grabbed for it. Rourke paused to listen, halfway out the door.

The desk clerk’s voice said conspiratorially, “There’s a doll here to see you, Mr. Shayne. A real doll.”

He said, “Send her on up, Pete.”

“Sure. I would’ve, but I thought maybe you’d like a chance to get rid of that reporter first… for one like this here.”

Shayne said, “Tim Rourke is on his way out.” He hung up and stood up, moved toward the door telling Rourke pleasantly, “You are, you know. Down the stairs, Tim.”

He took his arm firmly and led him past the elevator. “You don’t need to give me the bum’s rush,” Rourke protested. “Is it Jane Smith?”

“I don’t know, but I’m hoping. Down the stairs with you, pal, and no peeking when I meet the elevator.” He heard it stopping behind him and gave the reporter a little shove down the stairs, then turned and strode back along the corridor as the elevator door opened.

A woman got out and paused uncertainly. She wore a low-necked ruby-red dress with a short-sleeved Angora jacket, and Harlequin glasses that were tinted a light blue.

7

She turned toward him as she heard his approaching footsteps, and smiled tentatively when she recognized him. Shayne stopped beside her and took her arm. She was taller than he had realized in the Crystal Room, the top of her head just level with his eyes. She said, “I am pleased to see you again, Mr. Shayne. I am in great trouble.”

Shayne said, “It’s an unexpected pleasure.” He turned her toward his open door and she walked beside him with a lithe, free-swinging stride, matching her steps exactly with his. Inside his sitting room, he closed the door while she moved across to the sofa against the wall and sat down. “I took the chance of coming directly to you without telephoning because I did not know what I could say over the telephone. How was I to explain that I… tried to pick you up in a bar earlier tonight and had you taken away from me by a prettier and younger girl?”

“Younger, certainly. I can probably whip up a better stinger than they gave you in the bar.”

“That would be nice.” She spoke with gravity and the same faint trace of a foreign accent which he had discerned in her voice earlier.

He picked up the cognac bottle from the center table, paused beyond the end of the sofa to reach for a squat bottle of white creme de menthe from a wall cabinet. In the small kitchen he half filled a quart measuring pitcher with ice cubes, poured in a brimming cup of cognac and a careful three ounces of the sweet liqueur. Stirring it leisurely with a tablespoon, he carried the pitcher back to the table and got two cocktail glasses from the cabinet. He filled both of them and crossed to hand her one, then returned to lounge into his chair by the table. She took a sip and nodded, “Yours is better, Mr. Shayne.”

He said, “You have the advantage of me.”

“My name is Hilda Gleason. Mrs. Harry Gleason. I was sure I recognized the famous private detective even when you said your name was Wayne and the pretty girl called you that.”

Shayne asked, “Is that why you came to my table tonight?”

“Yes. I sat at the bar, distraught and frightened and so alone. And I recognized you from pictures in the papers, and the thought came to me that Michael Shayne was the one person in the whole world who might be able to help me. So I got up my nerve to approach you, and then… pouf! You were otherwise occupied.”

“What sort of help do you need, Mrs. Gleason?”

“To find my husband before… before there comes a tragedy and it is too late to prevent it. He is in Miami and I cannot find him.” She was sitting very erect, taking short compulsive sips from her cocktail glass and staring at him over the rim from behind the blue-tinted glasses.

He said, “Relax and tell me about it. And for God’s sake, can’t you take off those glasses? I’ve got a hunch you’re hiding a pair of beautiful eyes behind them and it seems a silly thing to do.”

Dutifully she removed her Harlequin glasses. Her eyes were soft brown and luminous. Without her glasses, Shayne decided she must be in her late thirties.

“Harry came to Miami a week ago from our home in Illinois near Chicago. For some reason that he refused to tell me, but I sensed it had danger for him. Something to do with getting a large sum of money. He made big promises with hints about this and that, you understand, though I begged him to do nothing foolish. But he has become a changed man in the last two months. Silent and brooding much of the time, and with wild fits of anger against the unjustness of life that we have so little when others less deserving have so much. And it angered him when I said we were comfortable with his salary and mine, and that I could be happy with so little, and this thing grew and festered in his mind while he formed some plan for getting money which I think is dangerous.”

“This is all pretty ambiguous, Mrs. Gleason. Tell me more about your husband as a person. What does he do for a living?”

“He’s a bartender. He is a fine man,” she went on in a rush of words. “We have been married ten years with great happiness.”

“And now you’re afraid he’s embarked on some criminal enterprise in the hopes of getting a big wad of money fast?”

“That is what I fear, yes.”

“But you have no idea what sort of plan he has in mind?”

“No. He does not tell me this. Only in a note, that he is leaving for Miami and when he returns in a week or two we will have much money. I must find him in this city, but I do not know where to look. So when I see you in the bar tonight I think this is Providence. Michael Shayne is the man who will know. And now you sit so far across the room from me, and so cold. It is difficult to say things.” She smiled tremulously and, Shayne thought, seductively.

He emptied his glass and crossed to the sofa to sit close beside her. “How do you think I can find your husband? Do you have any ideas? Does he have any friends here?”

“Nothing. There is no one.” Her right hand, lying on the sofa between them, lifted to grip his forearm, softly at first and then with surprising strength. “I am a woman alone, Mr. Shayne. I must find Harry soon. If I can talk to him, I know I can make him see he must not do this thing he plans. I have not much money, but… I beg you will find him for me.” She was leaning close to him and her moist red lips were parted, her eyes humidly brilliant and imploring.

He said, “I don’t know what I can do.”

“But they say this is your city, Mr. Shayne. That you know the secret places and have ways of getting information that is not known even to the police. Without your help it is hopeless.”

“Unless you can give me some sort of lead it’s still hopeless. If you had any idea what he’s up to… what sort of contacts he has here…”

“There is that girl,” she said convulsively. “I know she is evil. That she has led Harry to this.” Her brown eyes became round and more luminous, staring into his. Her fingers hurt the hard flesh of his arm.

“What girl?”

“The one who spoke to you tonight. Who called you ‘Mike Wayne’ at the table. Whom you walked out with and went up in the elevator with. What did she tell you? What did she want of you? Did she say the name of Harry Gleason?”

“Jane Smith?” ejaculated Shayne in complete surprise. “What do you know about her?”

“That she is young and beautiful. That she can twist men around her little finger to do her bidding. As she twisted Harry and, as I have no doubt, she tried to twist you tonight. For what purpose, Mr. Shayne? Why did she take you to her room? To offer her young body in exchange for what?” She was against him suddenly, the cocktail glass dropping to the floor, sobbing in terrible anguish, burying her face against his shoulder, and he felt the seeping warmth of saliva from her open mouth and the wetness of tears through his shirt.

He put his arm tightly about her shoulders and held her until the paroxysm of weeping subsided, then released her gently and pressed her back against the cushion. He stooped to pick up her glass and carried it across the table for a refill. He said cheerfully, “Drink that and then tell me about the girl. Everything you know about her.”

She took the glass from him, touching her eyes with a handkerchief. He deliberately turned his back on her while he poured another drink for himself and drank it, and then sank back into his chair and grinned across at her. “I’ll be able to listen better with a little distance between us.”

She said formally, “I am sorry that I gave way to emotion.”

“I’m not. It was damned pleasant while it lasted. Now, this Jane Smith. What do you know about her?”

“That is her name? Jane Smith?”

“That’s the name she gave me.”

“I did not know.” Hilda sipped her drink reflectively. “She came once to the town of Algonquin where we live. It was a week or two weeks after Harry first started to change and be angry about life and money. There was a long-distance call from a town near Chicago, fifty miles south from us. Denton, Illinois. It was for Harry and he listened and grunted yes and no, and I went to the kitchen, and at the end he said in a low voice, ‘I quit work at twelve at the Elite Bar. I’ll talk to you then.’ And he hung up and did not mention the conversation to me afterward.

“And a little before midnight I went to the bar where Harry worked and looked in the window. She was there on a stool. I did not know her, but I knew she was the one. I waited in the street shadow until midnight when the bar closed, and Harry came out with her. They got in a parked car and she drove away. Harry did not come home for two hours.”

Hilda emptied her glass and pursed her lips, looking down at it and continuing her recital in a monotone:

“There were no more calls and I did not see her after that. But Harry got worse. His irritation and his threatening of what he would do. I knew it was that girl. I knew she preyed on his mind and he was planning something bad, but I didn’t know what it was.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Four or five weeks ago.”

“Did Harry say anything about her to you?”

“Never a word. And I didn’t ask. I always believed a man had a right to his own secrets.”

“And he left home without telling you what he planned to do in Miami?”

“That’s right. With just a note for me when I got home from work.”

“How did you locate Jane Smith here?”

“That was purely fate. It was this afternoon on the street. I saw her getting on a Miami Beach bus and I knew her at once. So I suspected Harry had come here to meet her, and I got on the same bus and got off when she did and followed her to that expensive hotel. I stayed around the lobby a long time thinking maybe I’d see Harry, and went back this evening to wait some more. And when you came in the bar I recognized you right away and decided I’d ask you to help me. Then she came in and walked over and took you away from me. Who is she and what has she got to do with Harry?”

Shayne said, “I don’t know,” with real perplexity. “I met her for the first time tonight. In fact when you came over and sat at my table I thought you were Jane Smith.”

“Is it a detective case you’re working on?”

“Sort of.”

“Make her tell you where Harry is, Mr. Shayne. All I want is to see him and talk to him before he does something dreadful. I know I can persuade him to come back home with me. I don’t care what he’s done with her. I love him and I want him back.”

“I don’t even know that I’ll see Jane Smith again,” he told her cautiously.

“How else will I ever find him?”

Shayne shook his head slowly, tugging at his earlobe. What on earth had a girl from Miami Beach been doing out in a small town in Illinois a month ago meeting a married bartender after working hours? Had she already been started on her quest for a man to murder her stepfather? Had a certain Harry Gleason of Algonquin, Illinois, been suggested to her by someone as a likely prospect for the job? If she had made such an offer and he accepted, why had she sent that ad to the newspaper?

He said slowly, “One thing I think I can reassure you about, Mrs. Gleason. From things the girl told me this evening, I don’t believe your husband is having an affair with her.”

“Do you think I care about that?” she cried out scornfully. “He can have all the other women he wants if he just comes home to me afterward.”

“He’s a lucky man to be married to you. Describe him to me.”

“He’s tall and has blue eyes. Going a little bald in front, but not bad for a man of forty-six. Thin-faced, I think you would say. He’s been a good husband to me for ten years and I would do anything to get things back the way they were before.”

“Did you ask at the Palms Terrace Hotel if he is registered there?”

“At a high-class place like that?” she asked incredulously. “He wouldn’t be. He didn’t have more than a hundred dollars in cash when he left home. Even if he took a bus as I did he would not have money to afford a hotel like that.”

Shayne said, “It never pays to take anything for granted. Maybe he’s got hold of some extra money.” He reached for the telephone and gave Pete the number of the Beach hotel which he had called previously. He asked the girl if they had a Mr. Gleason registered, and shook his head at Hilda when he hung up. “Not there.” He sat back and drummed his fingertips on the table; “I wish you’d think back very carefully and try to remember any hints Harry dropped that might indicate how he hoped to get a lot of money in Miami. By a holdup, perhaps? Blackmail?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Shayne. I’ve thought and thought, and there was never anything I could put my finger on. I just know it was something crooked and dangerous. Else why wouldn’t he tell me? You must help me find him.”

Shayne said, “I’ll try, Mrs. Gleason. There’s another stinger, but I’m afraid it’ll be pretty weak.”

“No, I thank you. I don’t really drink very much. Bartenders and their wives don’t, you know. And it is terribly late to be here like this.”

“Where can I reach you?”

She gave him a street address in the downtown Northeast section of the city. “It’s room number five, up one flight. It isn’t fancy, but I don’t want to waste my money. And that reminds me, Mr. Shayne. What about paying you a retainer to look for Harry?”

Shayne said, “Let that go until I find him.” He stood up as she did, and again was pleased with her long free stride as they went out of the door and down the corridor together.

He took both her hands in his and faced her as they waited for the car to come up. “Keep on hoping, and I’ll do my level best to find your husband for you.”

She squeezed his fingers and told him, “I feel better right this minute than I have for a long time.” She hadn’t put her glasses back on and she looked up into his eyes with a look of honest gratitude that told him he could kiss her good night if he wished.

He decided he didn’t. He smiled down at her and continued to hold her hands until the elevator door opened behind her. Then he said gently, “Good night, Hilda,” and stepped back while the door shut. He frowned wryly as he walked back to his sitting room. This had certainly been an evening to try a man’s credulity. First, Jane Smith with her harrowing tale of sexual depravity, and then Mrs. Gleason with her even more difficult-to-believe story of a missing husband.

Right at the moment Shayne didn’t know which woman he had the more faith in. Connected as they both were with utter improbabilities, it was almost impossible to believe that both of them had been speaking the whole truth and nothing but the truth all the way through.

8

When Shayne entered his office the next morning, the anteroom was empty and Lucy Hamilton was not at her desk beyond the railing. But the door to the redhead’s inner office stood open, and through it he heard the lilting sound of Lucy’s laughter.

He tossed his hat on a hook near the door and crossed toward the sound, halting on the threshold and lifting red eyebrows at the couple in his office.

Neither of them noticed him for a long moment. Lucy was perched on one corner of the big desk in the center of the room, with one knee drawn up, leaning forward and hugging it with both forearms. She looked awfully young and vibrantly interested, Shayne thought, as she laughed delightedly again and said, “I don’t believe a single word of it.”

“I swear it’s just the way it happened.” The man who was slouched back comfortably in one of the client’s chairs beside the desk had a pleasantly deep-timbered voice with more than a trace of a southern drawl in it. He was smooth-faced, with strong features, and had a well-padded figure that was artfully concealed by an extremely well-tailored suit of light gray. He looked very much at home in the detective’s office as he smiled up at Lucy, gesturing with a straight-stemmed pipe that gave off an aromatic fragrance.

“I’ll tell you another thing, too, Miss Lucy.” He leaned closer, and as he did so he caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of Shayne standing in the doorway. He straightened back slowly in the chair, turning full toward the detective, and Lucy turned her own head, following his gaze.

Unaccountably, she blushed. She dropped her knee and slid off the corner of the desk and said in some confusion, “Here’s Mr. Shayne now. I didn’t hear you come in, Michael.”

He said, “In the future I’ll knock before entering.”

“Don’t be silly.” Lucy smoothed down her dress self-consciously. “This is Mr. Waring of Southern Mutual. Remember, I told you last night…?”

Shayne said, “I remember.” He moved forward and the insurance executive stood up and held out a well-fleshed hand that gripped Shayne’s firmly. “Glad to meet you, Shayne. Though I must say your charming secretary makes waiting a pleasure.”

Shayne said, “I’m glad to hear that,” though he didn’t sound glad at all and was faintly irritated because he realized he didn’t.

Lucy hesitated demurely as he moved around to the swivel chair behind his desk, and said, “When you talk to Mr. Waring, Michael, remember what I told you the other day. If you don’t get something for me to do around here…”

She let her voice trail off warningly, and then turned and marched out of the office with her head held high. Waring turned in his chair and his admiring gaze followed her supple, slender figure out.

“A real jewel you’ve got there, Shayne. If she ever does decide to look for another job, I’ve told her where to come.”

Shayne said, “That’s real big of you,” and knew that he sounded stiff and sarcastic.

But Waring settled back and threw him a cheery smile and said briskly, “All a lot of nonsense of course. The way she went on about you last night I’m sure she’s absolutely devoted to her work.”

Shayne got out a cigarette. He asked, “Did you come here to discuss my secretary or a business proposition?” He struck a match and drew in a deep breath of smoke, exhaled it slowly and avoided looking at the other man.

Waring picked up his mood instantly and said, “My company would like to have you represent us throughout the south, Mr. Shayne. In a consultant capacity on a retainer basis. Miss Hamilton gave me to understand last night that you have sufficient free time that it shouldn’t interfere with your private practice.”

Shayne drummed blunt fingertips on his desk and made no further effort to conceal his irritation. “Since you and Miss Hamilton are agreed that it’s a good idea, I suggest you settle the details directly with her.”

He settled back in his chair and glared down at the burning cigarette between the first two fingers of his right hand.

There followed a dozen seconds of awkward silence, and then Waring said genially, “That’s fine. Just fine. My company will be proud to have you associated with us, Mr. Shayne.”

Shayne kept his brooding gaze lowered and didn’t say anything. He knew he was acting like an adolescent, and somehow was obscurely pleased by the knowledge. He was aware that Waring was getting up, and he forced himself to rise also and offer his hand a second time.

Waring hesitated and then nodded briefly, turned and walked purposefully out without speaking further. Shayne stood very still behind his desk and watched the door close firmly behind him. Then he sat down and angrily mashed out the cigarette butt in a clean ash tray. His anger evaporated as swiftly as it had come, and he grinned ruefully across the room. Why shouldn’t Lucy use her wiles to drum up business for him? He had no doubt that she would extract a higher retainer from the insurance company than he would have asked. What he should do, he told himself, was to give Lucy a percentage of the take. Hell! if she was going to prostitute herself to entice clients into his office, she deserved a fair cut. Like any streetwalker bringing her earnings back to her pimp.

He shook his red head suddenly and hated himself for his thoughts. Just because the girl had accepted a perfectly innocuous dinner invitation last night and had proved an enjoyable companion was no reason for him to get into a tizzy about it.

He knew, of course, that his anger wasn’t really directed at Lucy. He was striking out at her because he hated himself this morning. Lucy was just a symbol. It was Jane Smith who was really in his thoughts. Lucy could take care of herself. Jane Smith couldn’t. If ever a man had been offered an opportunity to help a fellow human being, he had been given that chance last night. And he had muffed it completely. How goddamned self-righteous he must have sounded to the frightened girl when he spouted off to her. How utterly alone she must have felt when he walked out of the room leaving her with her problem!

A frightened kid who wasn’t yet twenty and had never faced the realities of life before. She had bared her heart and her soul to him, and what had he given her in return? A lecture, by God!

He shoved back his chair and stood up, strode to the window overlooking Flagler Street. He’d been a fool to hope she would take the fatuous advice of Mike Wayne and turn to a private detective for help. Instead, he had done exactly what Timothy Rourke accused him of doing. He had driven her on in the quest for some other killer to do the job he had refused to do.

What would be his position, he asked himself now angrily, if Saul Henderson did turn up murdered in the near future? He, Mike Shayne, would be the only one to know the truth. Would he remain silent, or would he speak out against Henderson’s already pitiably ruined stepdaughter?

He could warn Henderson in advance of course. But every decent instinct inside him rose up and shouted that he couldn’t do that. God knew the man deserved no warning, no mercy.

If he could only get hold of the girl-talk to her again before it was too late. Before she put murderous forces in motion that could not be halted. But he didn’t even know Jane Smith’s real name. True, he could find out easily enough. The stepdaughter of a prominent man like Saul Henderson shouldn’t be difficult to trace.

Shayne turned decisively away from the window, strode to the door and pulled it open. David Waring had pulled a straight chair across the anteroom and was seated in it close to the low railing and was in an animated huddle with Lucy Hamilton, who sat at her desk with paper in her typewriter taking direct dictation from him with her fingers flying over the keys. Both his voice and her typing stopped abruptly when Shayne opened the door. Her brown eyes looking past Waring implored him to be sensible as she said, “We’re working out the rough draft of an agreement, Michael. Have you time to check a couple of points?”

Shayne went on toward the outer door, reaching for his hat. “I told Waring you had full authority to set it up any way you want. I’ll sign whatever you have typed when I get back.” He went out and pulled the door shut with unnecessary violence behind him.

Downstairs, he went to the Herald morgue for the information he wanted, instead of the News. He might run into Rourke at the latter newspaper office, and he wasn’t ready to explain to Tim the reason for his sudden interest in Henderson. Knowing Shayne as well as he did, the reporter had a disconcerting habit of reading the redhead’s mind before Shayne himself knew what was in it. Like last night. His casual, parting reference to Henderson’s stepdaughter as “utterly charming” and a “nice” girl-quoting Shayne’s own descriptive words for Jane Smith right back at him-were indication enough that the reporter suspected the truth.

In the back files of the Herald, Shayne found everything he needed. The folder on Saul Henderson was thin, but it went back three years when Mr. and Mrs. Saul Henderson of New York purchased a $60,000 home on Miami Beach and announced their intention of settling in as year-round residents. There wasn’t much background on the couple, just that Mr. Henderson was “well-known in New York financial circles” and Mrs. Henderson was identified as the former socialite wife of Ralph Graham. A daughter of her first marriage was mentioned. Muriel Graham, who will attend the exclusive finishing school on Miami Beach conducted by Miss Overholzer.

Next, a few months later, was the announcement that Saul Henderson had purchased a partnership in the local brokerage firm of Wallach amp; Dutton, and a few brief items following which indicated that Mr. Henderson was establishing himself solidly as a progressive and civic-minded citizen of Miami Beach, first as a member of various committees and local charity drives, and then as chairman of other, more important committees.

There was quite a long obituary for Mrs. Henderson when she died in her home several months before. She was described as an invalid and as having succumbed to a lingering illness, though cancer was not specifically mentioned. Her daughter by a former marriage, Muriel Graham, was listed as the only survivor along with her husband.

That was the last item in the newspaper file on the Hendersons before the final news story dated some weeks previously. This was a front-page feature story covering a banquet at one of the most exclusive and expensive hotels on the Beach which had been televised on a national network because one of the country’s top television personalities had been honored as the “Beach Booster of the Year” and presented with a key to the city by Mr. Saul Henderson, President of the Miami Beach 100-Club and prominently mentioned in local political circles as the Reform Candidate for mayor of Miami Beach in the forthcoming election.

There was a picture of Saul Henderson beamingly presenting the key to the television comedian while three cameras recorded the event for the edification of viewers throughout the country, and Shayne studied the photograph carefully and with increasing aversion as he recalled the story the man’s stepdaughter had told him the preceding evening.

Without that knowledge of the man’s true character, Shayne was honest enough to admit to himself that in the picture Henderson looked very much like a right guy. In his mid-forties, with lean features that appeared almost ascetic, yet with a certain air of boyish bravado, Shayne could see how the man might easily capture the imagination of enough voters to become the next mayor of the beach city.

Yet, with what he knew about the man, Shayne was able to see that the piercing black eyes were a little too close together so that there was something predatory about them, the lips were too thin and too tightly compressed, the chin was pointed rather than prominent, the little tight curls of hair on each side of his high forehead resembled horns rather than carrying out the slightly boyish effect they gave at first glance.

After passing on from the photograph, Shayne glanced through the story which contained nothing new about Henderson, and then closed the file and returned it to the Herald librarian.

Lucy Hamilton was alone in the office when he returned. She stood up determinedly from her typewriter when he breezed in, and said, “Michael. I want to talk to you.”

He said, “Sure, angel. Any time. But first, look up the phone number for Saul Henderson on the Beach. Call it and try to find out how to contact a stepdaughter named Muriel Graham. She’s nineteen years old,” he went on, “and been living on the beach about three years going to Miss Overholzer’s School. Her mother died of cancer a few months ago. Take it from there and think of some good reason for getting her present address if you can’t reach her at home.”

Lucy bit her underlip hard, and then released it. In a taut voice, she asked, “You mean I’m not to mention your name?”

“That’s right, angel.” Shayne seemed completely unaware of the tension gripping his secretary. “Be an old school-friend or something. Maybe you knew Muriel in New York before her mother married Henderson and they moved down here. Use your imagination.”

He stalked into his own office, blandly disregarding the fact that Lucy was blinking violently to hold back angry tears, and there he crossed directly to a filing cabinet behind his desk and took a bottle of cognac from the second drawer. He uncorked it and turned to the water cooler where he nested two paper cups together and filled the inner one nearly to the brim with cognac. With a companion cup of water for a chaser, he settled himself at his desk and took an appreciative sip of liquor just as Lucy came in.

She said with heightened color and dangerous calm, “Maybe I don’t possess enough imagination to do this job right. After that outrageous scene of yours earlier, I guess maybe you’ve got a monopoly on the imagination around here.”

Shayne grinned irritatingly and raised ragged red eyebrows. “Is that a prelude to admitting you failed to get Miss Graham’s address?”

“I talked to a housekeeper,” said Lucy flatly. “She says that Muriel is visiting friends in New York. She doesn’t know how she can be reached there… or simply isn’t telling. But now I’m telling you something, Mr. Michael Shayne,” she went on fiercely. “If you ever… if you ever… act the way you did this morning again, I’m through. Do you hear me? That’s spelled t-h-r-o-u-g-h period. Get yourself another secretary. In fact, get another one right now so far as I’m concerned.”

“Why should I?” asked Shayne amiably. “You’re doing all right. Beating the bushes for new business all over the place. Who else would show the same sort of initiative? Did you work out a profitable deal with the insurance guy… fix it so you can have dates with him every night in the week?”

Her eyes widened and then tears started streaming out of them. She walked directly to his desk, disregarding the liquid flow down her cheeks, leaned forward and said distinctly, “Damn you, Michael Shayne. You disappear somewhere on your own every night for a week leaving me around twiddling my thumbs. And then when a nice man comes along and invites me out to dinner and I spend the entire evening dutifully laughing at his corny jokes while I impress on him what a wonderful detective my boss is and get him to come up with a whopping retainer… when I do all that just for you… what do you do? Well, tell me,” she insisted fiercely. “What do you do?”

Shayne got up swiftly with his cognac in one hand, circled the desk and put his left arm tightly about her slim waist. He tilted her tear-streaked face back and held the paper cup to her lips while she sipped convulsively. He tossed off the rest of the drink when she stopped swallowing, tossed the empty cup on the floor and kissed each of her wet eyes lingeringly.

Then he said coaxingly, “Tell me about the contract you wangled out of Waring, angel, and I’ll tell you why I’ve been staked out the last few nights. And you’ve got a dinner date with me tonight, no matter what you fixed up with Waring.”

9

A little before noon Shayne dropped by the hotel where he had a room under the name of Wayne to get his things and check out. With his key, the clerk handed him a telephone message. It was stamped ten o’clock that morning and said, Call Mr. Paul Winterbottom at once, and a telephone number followed.

Shayne went up to his room with a frown of perplexity on his face. He didn’t know anyone named Winterbottom, and besides, who could be calling Mike Wayne at this hotel? The only person who knew that a Mike Wayne was registered there was the Jane Smith of the preceding night.

In his room he went directly to the telephone and asked for the number on the telephone message. A diffident and young-sounding masculine voice answered.

Shayne asked, “Paul Winterbottom?” and the young man answered, “Oh? Would that be… is this Mike Wayne?”

“Yes.”

“Could I see you right away, Mr. Wayne? It’s terribly important and I can take my lunch hour now.”

“What about?”

“It’s a personal matter.” Paul Winterbottom cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “Pertaining to… a young lady whom you met on the Beach last night.”

Shayne said, “Okay. Where?”

“There’s a quiet little bar on Eighth Street, just east of Miami Avenue. The Dolphin. Could you meet me there in about ten minutes?”

“Okay. How will I know you?”

“I’ll know you, I’m sure,” the young man told him earnestly. “I’ll try to be in a booth near the back.”

Shayne said, “Okay,” again and hung up. He opened his suitcase and threw into it the few things he had brought to the hotel, recalling now that Jane Smith had told him she was engaged to a man named Paul to whom she didn’t dare tell the truth about Henderson.

Had she changed her mind after talking to Shayne last night? If so, maybe he hadn’t handled the situation so badly after all. He felt a lot better about the whole thing as he went down and checked out and drove to the Dolphin bar.

There were a few men at the bar, and only the rear booth was occupied. A young man sat facing the front with a glass of beer in front of him, and he got to his feet with a nervous smile as Shayne walked back toward him. “Mr. Wayne?” He held out a limp hand. “I’m so glad you could come. Let me bring you a drink from the bar. Then we won’t be disturbed.”

Shayne said, “Cognac with a glass of ice water on the side.” He sat down across from the glass of beer. Paul Winterbottom seemed pleasant enough. In his early twenties, sandy-haired and slender. Wearing a well-pressed but cheap cord suit and a white shirt with a dark bow tie. His mouth and chin weren’t strong, but his light gray eyes had met Shayne’s steadily enough, and it was perfectly natural that he would be under a lot of strain if Shayne’s hunch was correct.

He came back with a pony of cognac and a glass of ice water which he set in front of the detective. Then he reseated himself and began turning his glass round and round in a little pool of beer on the table while he stared down at it, and said in a low voice, “I know you must think that Muriel… she told you her name was Jane Smith… was absolutely insane last night. Well, she isn’t. Not really.” He lifted his head to gaze at the detective soberly. “She didn’t mean it, Mr. Wayne. Not actually. She was just on the verge of hysteria. My God, I was appalled when she told me her crazy plan. About sending the advertisement to the newspaper and all. I didn’t have the slightest idea. I thought she was in New York all last week when she was right here in a hotel cooking up that crazy thing about hiring someone to kill her stepfather. Not that the old goat doesn’t deserve killing. He does. But my God, you can’t take the law in your own hands, I told her. And I also told her how damned lucky she was that it was a man like you who got hold of her idiotic ad, and not some hoodlum who would have jumped at the chance of earning fifty thousand dollars.”

Shayne asked, “Did she tell you the whole story?”

“Yes. She telephoned me right after you gave her some good advice and walked out on her. I didn’t even know she was in town, like I say. She was practically hysterical and I couldn’t understand her at first. What hurt most, of course, was that she hadn’t come to me with her problem. Kept it bottled up inside her all this time.” He drew in a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Now that I know about it, she’ll never go back to that house again, I can promise you that. I put her on a plane to New York at six o’clock this morning and she’s not coming back.”

“She told you why she wants Henderson dead?” Shayne persisted relentlessly.

“Yes. The whole sordid truth tumbled out in a torrent. Imagine a man like that. Trying to seduce his own stepdaughter with her mother scarcely settled in her grave. Her cooped up in that house with him and so frightened that she has to lock her door every night. It’s vile and nasty and makes me want to puke every time I think of it. No wonder she got all worked up to the point of doing what she did. I’m not passing judgment on her for it,” he went on fiercely. “If she had only come to me the first time he made a pass at her. I blame myself because she didn’t. She should have known I’d understand and wouldn’t think it was her fault. Well, she knows now, and there’s never going to be any more secrets between us.”

Shayne said gently, “That’s the way it should be if you’re in love.”

“She said you were a nice guy,” the youth burst out impulsively. “And I can see you are, too. But I just had to find out for myself and that’s why I telephoned you this morning. It frightened me, sort of, when she showed me that card you gave her with the private detective’s number on it. I thought what if you called him and told him. You didn’t, did you?”

“I didn’t tell anyone anything about it,” Shayne assured him. “You needn’t worry on that score.”

“I certainly am relieved to hear that. I got all kinds of crazy ideas when I got to thinking about it after telling her good-by this morning. Like if you had told your friend Mr. Shayne, maybe he’d think it was his duty to warn Henderson or even tell the police. And what if something did happen to Henderson? You know, if he should get bumped off. Well, you’d probably think sure as shooting that she had gone on and got someone else to do the job after you turned her down. And I wanted you to know she hadn’t. She promised me she’d never even think of such a thing again, and we’re going to fix it up somehow so she won’t have to go back and live with him until she inherits her money.”

“I’m damned glad to hear it,” Shayne told him sincerely. “I confess I was plenty worried when I walked out of her room last night.”

“God, what a narrow escape she had,” breathed Paul feelingly. “Believe me, I read the riot act to her after she told me what she had done.”

“Marry her right away,” Shayne advised him. “She’s past eighteen and doesn’t need her guardian’s consent. Whether you think you’ve got enough money or not. You’ll get by somehow.”

“That’s exactly what we’re going to do. That’s what I told her. My God, we can live in a single room if we have to. Money isn’t everything, I told her. In just a couple of years you’ll get yours anyhow. Henderson can’t stop that. Just stay away from the bastard, I told her, and forget your crazy plan for hiring someone to kill him.”

Shayne felt vastly relieved when he strode out of the Dolphin bar a few minutes later. The girl had used good sense, he thought, in not telling her young man the full truth about Henderson and her sexual involvement. Paul Winterbottom didn’t appear to have the broadest shoulders in the world, but he seemed a nice enough fellow and genuinely in love with the girl. It was too bad, of course, that something couldn’t be done about Henderson, but he didn’t see how it could be accomplished without involving the girl.

There were lots of Hendersons in the world, though most of them weren’t on the verge of being elected mayor of an important city like Miami Beach. That, too, wasn’t any affair of Shayne’s, but he knew that if he could find a way to throw a monkey-wrench into the political pot, he would do so gladly. For that reason he decided to say nothing to Tim Rourke about no longer wanting to meet the man.

10

It was the next day when Timothy Rourke called to say that Shayne and Lucy were invited to cocktails at the Henderson house that afternoon. When Shayne asked if he’d had any trouble wangling the invitation, Rourke laughed shortly and said, “It was the other way around. In fact, it was Henderson himself who brought your name up while I was casting about for some way to get you together.”

Shayne said wonderingly, “Henderson mentioned my name out of a clear sky?”

“That’s right. I called to suggest I might interview him on his political prospects, and we made an appointment. Then, before I could say anything else he sort of gushed, ‘By the way, you’re quite friendly with Michael Shayne, aren’t you? The private detective.’ When I coyly confessed that we were practically on a first-name basis, he said he admired hell out of you and always had wanted to meet you. I told him it wasn’t difficult if he had the price of a drink on him, and he wondered out loud if you’d like to drop in for cocktails this evening, and I accepted for both of us.”

“And Lucy?”

“And Lucy. He said there isn’t any Mrs. Shayne, is there, and I told him no but you had a beautiful secretary with two hollow legs. He thought that was very funny indeed and insisted that you must bring her. Pick me up at my place a little before six?”

Shayne said, “Sure,” and hung up reflectively. Why would a man like Saul Henderson be anxious to meet him? Did he know about his stepdaughter’s meeting with Shayne? And would she be there? It looked like an interesting evening, and he went out to tell Lucy to leave the office early enough to be ready to be picked up at half past five.

The Henderson house was a modern one-story structure directly on the ocean at the far northern end of Miami Beach. There were already half a dozen cars parked in the circular drive in front of the ranch house when Shayne turned in at six-thirty. Sitting between the two men in the front seat, Lucy said, “You didn’t say it was going to be a party, Tim. If I’d known that…”

“I didn’t know myself, and what would you have worn different if you had known?” Rourke’s amused glance took in her neat tailored suit of blue silk with a fresh organdy blouse which she had changed into after leaving the office.

“But this isn’t a party dress.”

Shayne stopped and switched off the motor and said gruffly, “You look good enough to eat, angel. Next time I bring you to meet a wolf like Henderson remind me to make you wear that gunnysack that makes you look like Old Mother Hubbard.”

“You don’t even know the man, Michael. Yet you keep on making veiled remarks about him,” Lucy protested as they got out and circled the parked cars toward the front door.

“That’s right,” Tim Rourke averred with a curious glance at him over Lucy’s head. “What does give between you and Henderson, Mike? You asked me to set up this meeting…”

Shayne said, “Just don’t let him get you into a bedroom alone with him, Lucy.” He squeezed her arm and grinned to make the warning lighter than it sounded, but she stopped on the steps to glare at him and said furiously:

“You sound as though I make a practice of going into bedrooms with strange men.”

Shayne pulled her on up to the front door and said grimly, “Just don’t.” He put his finger on the button and the door was opened almost instantly by a maid in a neat white uniform.

There was a small entry hall behind her, and from an archway on the right flowed a loud babble of voices and laughter and the welcoming click of ice in glasses.

The maid smilingly took the men’s hats and they passed her to enter a large square room that held twelve or fifteen people in three groups, all with glasses in their hands and seemingly all talking at once.

Saul Henderson detached himself from the group nearest the entrance as they hesitated there. Shayne recognized him at once from his newspaper picture, and immediately disliked him more in the flesh than he had in his thoughts. He was of medium height with thinning dark hair, and he carried his forty-odd years with a youthful bounce that somehow managed to be irritating to the redhead. He had an ingratiating, smile that was almost effusive as he advanced with outstretched hand and exclaimed, “Mr. Rourke. How delightful that you could come. And in such charming company.”

He pumped Rourke’s hand and beamed at Lucy as the reporter introduced her, and then took Shayne’s hand firmly and squeezed it a little harder than was necessary and looked him steadily in the eye in a man-to-man way and made his voice very serious as he declared, “I’m one of your great admirers, Mr. Shayne. I’ve read everything Mr. Rourke has written about you in the papers, and I want to say quite frankly that I feel Miami is a better city for having you as a citizen.”

Shayne took his hand away from his effusive host and thrust it into his pocket for safekeeping. He said dryly, “One of your prominent law enforcement officers here on the beach wouldn’t go along with that.”

“You mean Detective Chief Painter?” Henderson threw back his head and chuckled delightedly, showing a double row of even, white teeth. “How right you are. But I mustn’t monopolize you. Come and get a drink, all three of you, and then meet my guests, who are all anxious to shake your hand.”

He took Lucy’s arm and led them to a small bar set up at the rear of the room that was presided over by a colored man in a white jacket and said hopefully,

“A sidecar, Miss Hamilton? Or don’t you go along with your employer’s choice of cocktails?”

She said, “Oh, but I do. Michael would fire me if I dared order anything else,” and Shayne stood by sardonically while the waiter efficiently mixed a shaker of excellent sidecars and filled two tall-stemmed glasses.

While Rourke lagged behind to get a bourbon and water, Henderson took them around to the various groups in the room, introducing them in the prideful manner of a man who has snagged a celebrity and insists upon everyone recognizing the fact.

Faces and names were a meaningless blur to the detective. “Jane Smith” was not among those present. Nor did he recognize anyone else whom he met. They all seemed to recognize him by reputation and he tolerantly fenced with gushing females while Lucy clung to his arm and glowed happily.

After he had dutifully made the rounds, including another foursome who arrived after them, Shayne left Lucy in the company of three young men who surrounded her admiringly, and looked around for Timothy Rourke.

The reporter, he discovered without a lot of surprise, had expertly corralled the prettiest female at the party (if you excluded Lucy) and had her blocked off in a corner of the room where he was leering at her happily and working on his third highball while he heartily agreed with her that newspaper reporters were, indeed, a daredevil and fascinating lot.

Bored by it all, and again wondering why Henderson had so obviously wanted to meet him, Shayne wandered back to the bar and secured another sidecar, then found a comfortable chair in a deserted corner of the room and sank into it gratefully, lighting a cigarette and half-closing his eyes, making his mind as blank as possible so that the waves of sound from the throats of the score or more of people in the room flowed over and through him without making direct contact.

He had been sitting like that for a few minutes when he straightened in his chair with a tingle in his spine as he saw a lone late-comer being ushered through the archway by the maid.

It was Hilda Gleason. She was dressed exactly as he had seen her before, wearing the tinted Harlequin glasses that made her look younger and less sophisticated than she was without them.

Shayne took a deep, disbelieving drag on his cigarette and held his hand up to hide the lower portion of his face while she stood just inside the archway and her gaze moved around from one group to another in the room. It moved over him without recognition, he thought, though it was difficult to tell with those glasses on, and then she smiled and moved forward gracefully as Saul Henderson went hurriedly to greet her with outstretched hand.

From his position across the room, Shayne could hear nothing they said as they stood together for a moment chatting like old friends. Then Henderson took her arm and led her toward the bar and Shayne wondered if she would ask for a stinger.

What was Hilda Gleason doing here at Henderson’s party? It made absolutely no sense if you believed the story she had told him a few evenings ago. True, there was the inexplicable connection between Muriel Graham and her missing husband. Could she possibly have managed to identify Jane Smith as Henderson’s stepdaughter, and thus come here to try and find out something about her husband?

Shayne didn’t see how she could have managed that. The girl had checked out of the hotel before Hilda came to him, and left for New York the next morning.

He kept his hand up in front of his face, broodingly sucking on his cigarette while he watched Henderson get her a cocktail at the bar (a stinger, no less, if the liqueur in the squat bottle was creme de menthe as Shayne suspected) and lead her to a group nearby and start introducing her to other guests.

At this point, Shayne found himself heartily inclined to disbelieve every word that had been said to him by both Jane Smith and Hilda Gleason. Since meeting Henderson in person he had been having more and more difficulty casting him in the role of a black-hearted seducer of his virginal stepdaughter while the mother lay dying in the adjoining bedroom. It wasn’t that he liked the man. He didn’t. He was irritated by his effusiveness and his surface charm, but he didn’t feel the really deep-rooted loathing for the man that he wanted to feel for one who had done what Jane Smith so feelingly and graphically described.

And now Hilda walked in on the party calmly, and acted perfectly at home with her host whom she certainly had not mentioned to Shayne while imploring him to locate her husband, supposedly in Miami on some secret and dangerous errand of his own.

He stayed in his chair removed from the others, watching Henderson take Hilda from group to group, getting the distinct impression that she was a stranger to the others and meeting all of them for the first time.

When they finally turned toward his corner of the room, Shayne mashed his cigarette out and got to his feet, grimly studying Hilda’s face as she was led nearer by Henderson, striving to guess whether she was as surprised by his presence as he was by hers.

Those damned glasses made it difficult. He had never before realized just how important a woman’s eyes were in helping a man judge her inner feelings. Certainly she dissembled well if she was surprised and disconcerted to see him.

There was an interested smile on her full lips and the bluish blankness of her glasses to conceal what she really felt when Henderson said, “Mrs. Moran. It’s an honor to present Mr. Shayne. Michael Shayne. One of the most famous private detectives in the country, if you don’t already know.”

“But, of course, I have heard of Michael Shayne.” She extended her hand and gripped his firmly, held it for an extra squeeze which he interpreted as a signal for him to pretend not to recognize her.

Shayne said very formally, “I’m delighted to meet you. I was just sitting here waiting for you to show up.”

“So?” She wrinkled her forehead charmingly. “How could that be?”

“Very simple. You are an extremely beautiful woman without an escort, and my date has deserted me. Do you mind being the perfect host, Henderson, and leaving us alone to get better acquainted?”

He reached for the arm that Henderson was clutching, and deliberately pulled her away and stepped aside so she could sit in the chair he had been occupying.

Henderson was unable to conceal a flicker of irritation that crossed his face, and Shayne wondered if it went deeper than mere irritation, but his voice was bland as he bowed slightly and said, “I don’t blame you for one minute, Shayne, but I warn you that you’ll have to work fast. About five minutes is all I’m going to allow you. Then I have an important matter I want to discuss.”

Shayne stood with his back to the room, facing the chair and Hilda as Henderson went away. She leaned back with her head against the cushion, looking up at him with parted lips and heaving breasts that showed inner tension.

In a low, harsh voice, Shayne said, “Take your glasses off, Hilda.”

The tip of her tongue came out to wet her lips. She reached up obediently and removed her Harlequin glasses. There was animal fright in her luminous brown eyes. “Why are you here, Michael Shayne?”

“I was invited. Why are you here?”

“I, too, was invited.” She lifted one hand appealingly toward him as he stood over her, blocking her off from the rest of the room. “Later, I will explain everything. Come to my room, yes? We cannot talk here.”

“Why not?” He kept his voice low and harsh. “After the run-around you gave me the other night I think I deserve an explanation.”

“It was no run-around as you call it, Michael. Please believe me it was not.”

“Do you want me to believe it’s sheer coincidence that you turned up here today using another name?”

“Perhaps as much coincidence as you being here,” she answered composedly. “Am I to believe that is true?”

“I had my own reasons for coming.”

“I, too, had my reasons. Have you… found any trace of Harry in the city?”

“No. Have you?”

Pain clouded her eyes as she moved her head slowly from side to side. “Nothing. But I am a stranger here and I do not know how to proceed.”

“You don’t appear to be a complete stranger to Henderson.”

“I have said I will explain that later.” She looked past him and sat up straight in her chair, taking a sip from her cocktail. In a fuller-bodied voice, she declared, “I think that would be most pleasant, Mr. Shayne. After the party is over, then?”

Henderson’s voice intruded just behind Shayne. “Just the sort of thing I’ve always heard about you private eyes. Leave you alone for one minute with a beautiful woman and you end up with an assignation.”

Shayne said, “Do you mind?”

“Of course I mind. But I don’t see what I can do about it. Now that you’ve got that settled, Shayne, would you mind stepping inside my office with me? I’ve a matter of extreme importance to discuss with you.”

“You will excuse me?” Hilda was on her feet and moving away from them before Shayne could reply.

Then he said flatly, “My office hours are nine to five. Make an appointment with Miss Hamilton.”

“This is off the record, Shayne. I need professional advice.”

“Do you invite your doctor to a party to get a free prescription from him?” Shayne’s face remained expressionless, but his voice was intentionally insolent.

“See here, Shayne.” Henderson stopped and controlled himself with obvious effort. He smiled thinly and his voice became placating. “I understand, of course, and I’ll be happy to pay your fee for any professional advice you give me. What is your regular charge for a consultation?”

Shayne drained his glass and said, “I think another sidecar will cover it.” He stood up and Henderson stepped aside, followed close behind him to the bar where the waiter smilingly emptied the contents of the shaker into Shayne’s outheld glass.

Saul Henderson murmured, “This way, if you don’t mind,” and went to a closed door beyond the bar which he opened and held for the detective to walk past him.

Beyond the door was a small den, efficiently equipped with a desk, portable typewriter on a wheeled stand, and filing cabinets.

Shayne went in and set his cocktail glass on the desk. He got out a cigarette and lit it while his host closed the door and sat down in front of the desk with a deep sigh. Shayne looked down at him quizzically, then pulled up a straight chair and also sat down.

“Let me say first, Mr. Shayne, that it’s like providence, having you here to talk to. I had a curious feeling that fate was taking a hand when your reporter friend called me out of the blue this morning. It came to me like a flash that you were exactly the man for me to confide in.”

Shayne took a deep drag on his cigarette and waited.

“I have to talk to someone. I don’t know why I didn’t think of you earlier. I did consider going to a private detective, but I hesitated because… well, the feeling one has about private detectives.”

“What sort of feeling does one have about private detectives?”

“I’m saying it badly. You’re not in that general category at all, of course. Now that I’ve met you socially I have no hesitancy to… to coin a phrase…” He laughed deprecatingly. “… to bare my soul to you. Everything about you bears out the impression I’ve got from reading newspaper accounts of your exploits.”

Shayne said placidly, “I’m glad I passed inspection.” He drank half his sidecar and set the glass down. “Shall we skip the pleasantries and get down to business?”

“It’s just that I… it’s so difficult to know where to begin.”

“Try the beginning.”

“Yes… well… I’m frightened, Mr. Shayne. In deathly fear for my life. Two attempts have been made to murder me in the last few days.” His voice quavered. “I need… protection.”

“Go to the police. That’s their job.”

“Naturally, I have been to the police. I reported each attempt on my life immediately. They made a cursory investigation of course, and then came up with the bright idea that they could have both been accidents. Wholly coincidental, of course, that the two attempts occurred within three days of each other.”

“Could they have been accidents?”

“Either one of them could, yes.”

Shayne emptied his glass and twirled it about reflectively by its long stem. “Tell me about them.”

“The first was last Monday. At dusk when I was driving home for dinner. I was just turning in my driveway when I heard the crack of a shot and a bullet embedded itself in the seat upholstery not more than an inch from my right shoulder.”

“You didn’t see anyone?”

“Naturally not. It was beginning dusk and I simply stepped on the gas and roared up the drive. I hurried inside and called the police to report it. A couple of stupid detectives came around eventually. They dug the bullet out and made some wild guesses about distance and muzzle velocity and so forth, and then said probably it was just some juvenile delinquent firing a rifle wildly into the air.”

“And the second one?”

“Yesterday afternoon. I had a Chriscraft twenty-footer in my boathouse which I often took out alone for a spin on a calm day. I thoroughly enjoy heading directly out to sea and being alone with the salt sea spray and the sun and the roar of a powerful motor in my ears. Yesterday afternoon I was at least four miles out when the motor exploded. There was a terrific roar and a blinding flash of flame and everything went up in pieces. The entire hull was torn apart and it sank in a matter of minutes. Luckily I escaped injury and was able to leap overboard into the water. I’m a very poor swimmer and could not possibly have remained afloat more than a few minutes, so whoever planned it had the expectation that if the explosion did not kill me I would almost surely drown.”

“But you didn’t.”

“But I didn’t. By an absolute miracle there was a fishing boat not more than five hundred yards away. The only craft within miles of me. They rescued me and brought me in safely.”

“And the police think that was an accident too?”

“They insist that it could have been easily enough. A spark from the engine igniting the gasoline tank. I explained it wasn’t that sort of explosion. That it was definitely a bomb of some sort. But I haven’t any proof. Just my own positive impression of what happened. And there’s no chance of recovering the boat to ever find out what caused it.”

“But coupled with the bullet on Monday you’re convinced that someone is out to get you?”

“Aren’t you?”

Shayne shrugged his wide shoulders. “Not convinced. I certainly agree that the law of probabilities is being stretched pretty thin if we accept them both as coincidences. What does Petey Painter think?” he ended blandly.

“Painter!” Saul Henderson spat out the word as though he had bitten into a worm. “I talked to him all right. Insisted that he see me when they tried to put me off with an inspector or something. Well, you know Peter Painter better than I do. Strutting little nincompoop. He sat in his office and smirked and gloated. He knows, of course, that he’s one of the first men on the Beach slated to go when the Reform Administration takes over after the next election. His department is riddled with graft, and people are sick and tired of the highhanded way he runs things. You know yourself that Miami Beach has become a haven for well-known crooks. They’re infiltrating our businesses, crowding decent citizens off the streets. Oh, Painter sees the handwriting on the wall all right. It was perfectly evident from my interview with him.”

“And he knows you’re to be candidate for mayor on the ticket opposing the present administration?”

“It isn’t definite yet. I haven’t been offered the nomination.”

“But it’s generally known that you will be,” Shayne pressed him.

“It’s fairly common knowledge, yes.” Henderson compressed his thin lips and frowned across the desk at the redhead. “I hesitate to accuse him of lack of diligence in investigating the attempts on my life for political reasons,” he said sonorously. “But I can’t help feeling that Peter Painter wouldn’t have been at all unhappy if either of them had succeeded. Nor do I believe he intends to stir himself one bit to prevent further attempts.

“I demanded round-the-clock police protection,” he went on bitterly, “and he blandly refused. Had the audacity to sit there in his office and inform me that his men had more important duties to perform than the prevention of murder. I laughed in his face, Mr. Shayne, and asked him to please name those more important duties. Were they too busy collecting graft, I asked him. Or seeing to it that the gambling dens and whorehouses operated smoothly from dark to dawn without interference. We had quite a session,” he ended feelingly, “and that’s why I feel I need your help.”

“I can see why you might,” Shayne agreed dryly. He leaned forward to mash out his cigarette butt, lifted his empty glass hopefully. “I seem to have run out of my consultation fee.”

Henderson took the glass and got up with a wintry smile. “I’ll have to do something about that.”

Shayne leaned back and watched him go out the door with bleak eyes. For the first time in his life, the redhead had a warmly fraternal feeling for Peter Painter. Even without benefit of Shayne’s private knowledge of Henderson’s real character, the cocky little detective chief was right on the ball this time. And this was one time Shayne had no intention of getting into the act on the opposite side from Painter. Help Henderson stay alive so he could be elected mayor of Miami Beach? God forbid!

Nothing of this showed on Shayne’s face when his host re-entered with a brimming glass for him. Shayne accepted it with a grunt that might be construed as thanks, and took a careful sip while Henderson settled himself back into his chair.

Then he asked abruptly, “Who’s gunning for you, Henderson?”

He drew in a deep breath and held it for a long time. Then he expelled it unhappily and said, “So far as I know I haven’t an enemy in the world. That’s what makes all this so utterly fantastic. Throughout my entire life I’ve tried to be guided by the Golden Rule, and until day before yesterday I felt that I had succeeded. I’ve searched the innermost recesses of my soul and I just can’t come up with anything or anybody who might have a motive for harming me.”

Shayne refrained from asking him how he thought Muriel Graham felt about his treatment of her. Instead, he said, “What about a profit motive? You’re a fairly wealthy man, I believe.”

“I am, yes. But there’s nothing there. I have no relatives to inherit my own money, and my stepdaughter received half of her mother’s fortune which I hold in trust for her until she comes of age in a couple of years. No one would benefit financially by my death.”

“In that case, I don’t see what the hell I can do for you,” Shayne told him bluntly. “If some nut is determined to knock you off, all the police protection in the world won’t keep it from happening. Much as I dislike agreeing with Painter, I have to do it in this case. If you haven’t anything concrete to work on, you’ll just have to sit back and wait on the hot seat for the next time.” Shayne grinned wolfishly as he spoke, and there wasn’t the slightest trace of pity in his voice,

“Yes… I… I see your point. And that’s why I’m so glad to have this opportunity for a private discussion. There is one thing I haven’t told you, Mr. Shayne. One thing I didn’t tell Painter and couldn’t possibly tell him. But I feel I can confide in you. This talk has given me the utmost confidence that you are a man of discretion and honor. I told you in the beginning I was going to bare my soul to you. I know it must have sounded bombastic at the time, but I meant it seriously, Mr. Shayne. I meant it from the bottom of my heart.

“There is this letter, Mr. Shayne. I received it this morning from New York.” He reached down and pulled open a drawer of the desk, lifted out a red and white striped envelope which he looked down at with fear and loathing.

“I almost threw it away at the time. When you read it you’ll understand why. I still don’t believe a word of it,” he went on forcibly. “It is still utterly inconceivable to me how it came to be written. There cannot possibly be a word of truth in the filthy thing. And yet… and yet… after what happened yesterday I just don’t know. I just-don’t-know,” he repeated slowly and fearfully.

“Here.” He held it across the desk to Shayne as though it were a time bomb about to explode. “You’ll have to read it for yourself. There’s no other way. But as God is my judge, I swear there is no reason on earth why my stepdaughter should wish me dead.”

11

Shayne took the airmail envelope and looked at it. The address was a penciled scrawl: Mr. Saul Henderson, Palm Tree Drive, Miami Beach, Fla. It was postmarked New York the previous day.

Shayne opened the flap and took out a single sheet of folded cheap paper. The message was penciled in the same handwriting as the address:

Dear Sir,

This is a friendly warning to say that your stepdaughter is going around offering fifty Grand to get you bumped off. I ain’t a killer an turned her down cold but other guys wont. Watch your step.

A friend

Shayne sat looking down at the note for a long time after he finished reading it. No matter what she had promised Paul Winterbottom, her fiance, she hadn’t wasted any time getting in touch with the criminal element in the big city.

He carefully refolded the single sheet into its original creases and replaced it in the envelope. He dropped it on the desk in front of him and looked up to meet Henderson’s tortured eyes. He said, “You didn’t show this to Painter?”

“How could I? My God, Shayne! Don’t you understand? My own stepdaughter threatening me. Don’t you see what a field day Painter would have with that? What political capital he could make out of it? Even though it’s base calumny without a word of truth in it, if even a rumor of it leaked out to a newspaper I’d be finished in Miami Beach.”

“Still,” said Shayne reasonably, “if you expected Painter to take the attempts against your life seriously and give you protection, you’d have to show him this.”

Henderson said fervently, “I’d rather die.”

Shayne shrugged and said, “Maybe that’s just what you’re going to do.” He leaned back and lit a cigarette, studying his host out of low-lidded eyes.

“Tell me about your stepdaughter. Muriel Graham? Is that her name?”

“Muriel, yes. A sweet and wonderful girl. Like my own daughter, Shayne. I always think of her that way. And I think she loves me as a father. Her mother was quite ill for years as you may know, and Muriel and I were extremely close.”

You don’t know that I know how close, Shayne said to himself sardonically, but aloud, he asked, “So what’s this about her trying to get a hired gun to kill you?”

“I don’t know, Shayne. I simply don’t believe it. Not for a moment. There’s some ghastly mistake. Someone passing herself off as Muriel. A case of mistaken identity. I just don’t know. I haven’t been able to think straight since reading that letter.”

“Why not ask her?” suggested Shayne.

“I would if it were possible. That’s exactly what I would like to do. But she’s in New York visiting friends. I don’t know which one of several she’s with.”

“And this letter is postmarked New York.”

“Yes. But even with that coincidence, I dismissed the whole thing as a hoax when I first read it. Then, that very afternoon the shot was fired at me. I still dismissed it as an impossible thing. And then there was the second attempt yesterday. I simply don’t know what to think.”

“You’re veering around to the idea that maybe Muriel has hired somebody to kill you?”

“No. No!” Henderson pounded the desk angrily with his fist. “Nothing on earth would ever make me believe that. But I am inclining to the belief that the letter isn’t a practical joke. That it has some basis, though what it is I can’t even imagine.”

“I’d still like to know more about your stepdaughter. Did you say she’s nineteen?”

“Yes. An extremely well-poised and attractive young lady. Not at all the neurotic type. The last person in the world to do anything to cause such a letter to be written to me.”

“Yet it was written to you.”

“That’s exactly why I showed it to and am asking you to take the case, Shayne. You can see why I can’t take Painter into my confidence. Yet someone is trying to kill me, and you’ve got to find out why.”

“Still going back to Muriel,” Shayne said placidly. “How old was she when you married her mother?”

“Four years ago. She was almost sixteen.”

“Was her mother an invalid at the time?”

“When we were married? No. She was in poor health, but… her ailment hadn’t been properly diagnosed. None of us guessed that it was… cancer.” Henderson lowered his voice in speaking the word, as so many people do even today. In the same hushed voice he went on: “I insisted that she see the best specialists, but by then it was too late to operate… hopeless. She took to her bed and… all of us did our poor best to see that she was comfortable and happy until the end.”

“About three years ago?” Shayne pushed him relentlessly.

“Three years ago… what?”

“When her illness was diagnosed as cancer and she became bedridden.”

“Yes. That’s right. Though I don’t see…”

“When your stepdaughter was sixteen.”

“Yes. Muriel would have been sixteen.”

“A beautiful girl. On the brink of maturity. Did it ever enter your thoughts, Henderson, that the daughter might become a substitute for the mother? There the two of you were, living together closely in the same house. You, a young man for your years, deprived of the companionship of a wife and the sexual use of her body… living on intimate terms with a young and unawakened girl…”

“Stop it, Shayne! Stop it this instant.” Henderson’s face was congested. His doubled fist pounded the desk loudly. “Of all the filthy ideas I ever heard in my life.” He paused, breathing loudly and hard, glaring across at the detective. “What sort of cesspool do you have for a mind?”

“Pretty damned cesspooly.” Shayne shrugged and stood up, placing a blunt forefinger hard on the anonymous letter from New York. “This is still unexplained. Yet there has to be an explanation of one sort or another. Anyone who hates you enough to hire some stranger to murder you… there has to be a reason for that sort of hatred.”

“But I don’t believe that letter for a moment.”

“You believe that someone has tried twice to kill you in the past two days,” Shayne reminded him pleasantly.

“Will you take the case, Shayne?”

“I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.”

“You wouldn’t… what?”

“I won’t waste time repeating myself,” said Shayne harshly. “Stew in your own damned juice. When you eat dinner tonight, start wondering if poison will be next. Every time you start to cross a street on foot remember how simple it is to commit homicide by automobile. Lock all the windows when you go to bed at night, and bar all the doors. Fire your present servants and hire some new ones whom you believe to be incorruptible. Change all of your regular habits of life and stay away from crowds and places where you’re known. Start running, Henderson. That’s my advice to you.” Shayne grinned down at him evilly. “Don’t trust anyone behind your back. Not ever again. It won’t do any good in the long run, but it’ll be something to occupy your mind while you’re still alive.”

He started to turn away, then swung back to demand, “How well do you know Hilda?”

“Hilda…?” The abrupt transition threw Henderson momentarily off balance. Then he cleared his throat. “You mean the last lady I introduced you to? Mrs. Moran?”

“I mean the gal in the cute glasses. Whatever her name is. How long have you known her?”

“What earthly affair is that of yours, Shayne?”

“I’m making it my affair. How well do you know her?”

“Not well at all. I met her only yesterday as a matter of fact.”

“How?”

“How what?”

“How did you meet her? What were the circumstances?”

“She came into my office to discuss a matter of disposing of some bonds. She is recently widowed, I believe, and not accustomed to dealing with financial matters.”

“So you invited her to drop in for cocktails today?” Shayne asked scathingly.

“I did, yes.”

“You don’t invite all your new clients in for cocktails, do you?”

“All of my new clients aren’t attractive widows alone in the city. I resent your questioning me, Shayne.”

Shayne said, “That makes me feel good,” and stalked out, closing the door firmly behind him. In the other room he found the party in the process of breaking up, and was unable to spot Hilda among those remaining. Lucy Hamilton and Timothy Rourke were together near the archway, and Lucy brightened up when he emerged. “We’re ready to leave, Michael. Is our host coming out so we can thank him?”

Shayne said, “I don’t know. What happened to the gal in the red dress and the cute glasses?”

Timothy Rourke said, “She beat it the moment you and Henderson went out. What did you say to frighten her, Mike? I saw you had her cornered for a time.”

Shayne said, “I’ll tell you about it later.” He took them both firmly by the arm. “Let’s go.”

“But shouldn’t we wait to say good-by to Mr. Henderson?” protested Lucy.

Shayne said, “I don’t think we need to bother,” and dragged them through the archway.

Driving back to Miami, Shayne remained silent and brooding behind the wheel while Lucy and Tim lightly discussed inconsequentials. Both were familiar with his moods and knew when he wanted to be left alone. When they reached the mainland, he suggested they all have dinner together, and they both agreed. Without consulting them, Shayne chose the Chanticleer Restaurant near the western end of the Causeway, and he remained sitting behind the wheel while they got out in front of it.

“Go in and get a table, Tim,” he decided abruptly. “Order Lucy a drink and be nice to her. I’ve an errand that won’t take me long.”

Lucy started to protest, but Shayne put the car in gear and drove away. He located the street address Hilda Gleason had given him without difficulty a few blocks from the Chanticleer. It was a two-story stucco house in a neighborhood of old houses that had been mostly converted into apartments and rooming houses. He went in and climbed one flight of stairs and found a door numbered 5.

He knocked on it loudly and repeatedly without getting any answer. As he was turning away, a door on the other side of the hall opened and a blowsy-looking blonde was framed in the opening with bright light behind her outlining a heavy torso and bulky limbs through a thin nylon dressing gown.

She said a trifle thickly, “She ain’t at home, redhead. But if you want some fun come on over with me.”

Shayne said pleasantly, “Some other time. Right now, I’ve got a yen for women wearing Harlequin glasses.”

He went down the stairs and out to his car, wondering more and more about Hilda Gleason. True, she had admitted she had sought cheap lodgings in Miami, but that didn’t make it essential that she should end up in a cathouse. It was just one more thing to wonder about her.

12

The bedside telephone awakened Shayne from deep and dreamless sleep. He reached out and fumbled for it in the darkness, got it to his ear, and said, “Hello,” into the mouthpiece.

Timothy Rourke’s voice said, “There’s been a killing at Henderson’s house, Mike.”

Shayne muttered, “So they got the bastard. Why bother me about it?”

“Not Henderson. He did the shooting.”

Shayne came fully awake and sat up in bed. “Shot who?”

“I don’t know any details. But I’m headed over there and thought you might like in on it.”

Shayne said, “I’ll see you there.” He tossed back the covers and turned on a light. It was 2:18 in the morning. He threw on clothes swiftly, and was out of the apartment in three minutes.

Twenty minutes later he slowed to make the turn into Henderson’s driveway. There were police cars in front of the house, and an ambulance with a spotlight bathing the front of the house in brilliant white light.

Shayne parked directly behind Rourke’s battered coupe and went up to a cluster of men about the body of a man crumpled on the porch just in front of the door. He lay on his back with sightless eyes staring up into the light. His low jaw was smashed by the bullet that had killed him. He was clean-shaven, with a hawklike face and a very high forehead. He wore a blue and white checkered sport shirt, buttoned at the throat with no tie, an almost new green suede jacket, and dark trousers that needed pressing. His black shoes were scuffed and had been resoled.

Timothy Rourke stood just inside the doorway, making notes on a wad of copy-paper with his ear cocked to overhear conversation inside the house while he gazed down at the dead man.

One of the Beach detectives officiously started to shove Shayne back, and Rourke looked up and said loudly, “You’re being paged inside, Shayne. Henderson was going to phone you until I told him you were already on your way.”

Shayne nodded and pushed past the detective, who gave way reluctantly. He stepped over the dead man onto the threshold and glanced past Rourke into the hallway where a patrolman stood outside the archway, and asked in a low voice, “What gives?”

“Painter is inside with Henderson. The press is excluded and they won’t talk loud enough for me to catch more than half what they’re saying. Get in there and pitch, Mike.”

The detective grinned briefly and went toward the uniformed man who moved to bar his entrance to the room. Shayne stopped in front of him where he could see Saul Henderson and Peter Painter standing face to face in the center of the room where the party had been held that evening. He didn’t look at the cop, but called out, “Did you want me, Henderson?”

He wore a maroon silk dressing gown and bedroom slippers, and his hair was disheveled. He jerked his head around and said gladly, “Indeed I do want you, Shayne. Come right in.”

The cop stepped out of his way and Shayne went through the archway, grinning at the Miami Beach Detective Chief who glared venomously back at him.

He said, “Congratulations, Chief. This is one time you got on the scene ahead of me.”

“And I don’t need you messing into this case, Shayne. You can have a talk with your client after I’ve finished questioning him about this homicide.”

Shayne started to say that Henderson wasn’t his client, but decided to let it ride. He lounged forward and said, “I’ll stick around until you’re through if you don’t mind.”

“Suppose I do mind?” Painter demanded aggressively. He was a small man with glistening black hair and a very thin, very black mustache, impeccably dressed and groomed even at this hour of the morning.

Shayne said, “I’ll stick around.” He sank into a deep chair and got out a cigarette. “Go right ahead and interrogate the suspect. That is, if Henderson is the suspect.”

“Suspect isn’t the word,” snapped Painter. “He admits shooting the man down on his doorstep.”

“In self-defense,” said Henderson quickly. “I told you that he snatched a gun from his pocket as soon as I opened the door.”

“I know you told me. Prove it.”

“The pistol was lying right there beside his hand. I don’t know how competent your fingerprint men are, but they must have found his prints on it.”

Painter didn’t admit or deny the fact. He said, “You admit you came to the door prepared to kill whoever was there.”

“I admit nothing of the sort,” said Henderson hotly. “A man has a right to defend his own home and person.”

“You went to that door with a loaded and cocked pistol in your hand,” said Painter waspishly. “You claim you had no idea who was ringing your doorbell at that time of night, yet you armed yourself before going to the door. That looks like premeditation to me.”

“I didn’t know who it was. I still don’t know. I never saw the man before in my life.”

“Most people don’t carry a cocked and loaded pistol with them to answer their own doorbell.”

“Most people haven’t had two attempts made on their lives in the past few days,” retorted Henderson.

“Oh, yes,” murmured Painter, delicately smoothing his mustache with a thumbnail. “We come back to that, of course. But I’m not at all convinced those were actual attempts on your life, you know. In fact, you could easily have engineered both of them yourself. There’s no proof you didn’t.”

“I think that dead man on my doorstep is sufficient proof. Isn’t it perfectly obvious even to an imbecile like you that he came here to make the third attempt after his first two had misfired?”

Peter Painter’s mobile features tightened with rage. “To an imbecile like me, Mr. Henderson, the nasty thought occurs that those two previous incidents could have been stage-managed just to set up this kill as it happened tonight.”

“My God,” groaned Henderson. “How devious can you get?”

“I’ve known some pretty devious murderers in the past. Isn’t that so, Shayne? Doesn’t this setup look phony to you?”

Shayne waved his cigarette lazily. “Sure. I’ll buy it. All you have to do is turn up a strong enough motive for Henderson wanting the man dead.”

“We’ll probably get that as soon as we identify him.”

“For God’s sake, Shayne,” protested Henderson wonderingly. “You can’t be serious about accepting Painter’s fantastic theory. The reason I wanted you to come here was to testify that you had pertinent information indicating that someone is definitely out to kill me.”

“You mean the letter you showed me this afternoon?”

“Exactly.”

“What’s that about a letter?” snapped Painter.

“An anonymous letter threatening my life,” said Henderson hastily with a warning look and a shake of his head at Shayne. “Mr. Shayne can testify that he read it this afternoon.”

“And you withheld it from the police? It’s a felony to withhold evidence in a homicide.”

“But it wasn’t a homicide this afternoon,” protested Henderson weakly. “It was just proof that those were real attempts on my life.”

“It’s homicide now,” said Painter stiffly. “Let’s have the letter. If the dead man wrote it, it may clear you of suspicion.”

“I… I destroyed it after showing it to Mr. Shayne.”

“You destroyed it, eh?” Painter rocked forward happily on his toes. “Why, may I ask?”

“Because… well, I just didn’t think it was important any more. Mr. Shayne did read it and he can swear to its existence.”

“Can you, Shayne?”

“I can. I’m not at all sure that I will.”

“What do you mean by that crack?”

“Just what I said.”

“I don’t like your attitude.” Painter strutted forward with his chin thrust out aggressively, both hands planted on his hips. “If you can throw any light on this affair, it’s your duty to do so.”

Shayne said pleasantly, “You know something, Petey?”

“I know a lot of things and don’t call me Petey.”

“The something I’m wondering about is this,” said Shayne equably. “How much is your attitude toward Henderson influenced by the fact that you know you’ll be out of a job if he’s elected mayor of Miami Beach next election?”

“In the first place I don’t know that’s so. In the second place I didn’t even know he was a candidate. In the third place I don’t give one good goddamn who or what anybody is when I’m investigating a homicide. Does that answer your question?”

“Then why are you badgering the guy? Stop me if I’m wrong, but the way I get it is this. Some character comes ringing his doorbell at two o’clock in the morning, and because he’s nervous and frightened, he arms himself before going to the door. Whereupon the man pulls a gun, and he’s lucky enough to shoot first. Is that the picture, Henderson?”

“That’s it exactly. I never saw the man before… haven’t the faintest idea who he is.”

“So why don’t you quit barking up that tree, Painter, and start finding out who wants Henderson dead… and why? If the dead man is just a hired hand, the chances are this won’t be the end of it.”

“Hired gunmen,” said Painter stiffly, “don’t generally go out on jobs with a twenty-two automatic.”

“That what he was carrying?”

Painter nodded. “Henderson, on the other hand, was equipped with a forty-five. Made it sort of unequal. Have you got a permit for that cannon?” he added abruptly, turning away from Shayne.

“Certainly. Issued by your own police department. Does the dead man have a permit for his gun?” he probed acidly.

Painter said, “We’re checking the serial number.” He rocked forward on his toes and then teetered back on his heels. “Right now, Henderson, I want to question the other members of the household.”

“There is no one else.”

“You telling me you don’t have any servants with a layout like this?” Painter looked about the room appraisingly.

“There’s a regular housekeeper and a maid, of course,” Henderson told him stiffly. “But neither of them sleep in.”

“So there’s no one except you who can say what went on here tonight?”

“I don’t concede that my word needs verification.”

“I know you’re a widower,” Shayne put in. “But isn’t there a grown daughter, Henderson?”

Henderson looked at him angrily for bringing the subject up, but said, “A stepdaughter. She’s out of town at present.”

“Where?” Shayne pressed him.

“In New York.”

“I think you should get her back here.”

“I don’t see why. She’s been gone for days and can’t possibly have any knowledge of this affair.”

Shayne shook his head sternly. “I’d be careful about the impression you give Painter. If he gets the idea you don’t want your stepdaughter brought back to testify, he’s likely to get official about it and insist that she return. And even though you do think Chief Painter is an imbecile, I wouldn’t underrate him if I were you. Once he gets an idea, he’s hell on wheels about carrying it through.”

Painter said, “I don’t need any testimonials from you, Shayne. What about your stepdaughter, Henderson? Why don’t you want her to come back?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t. I just don’t see any reason for it at this time.”

“Isn’t the fact that you’re under suspicion of murder reason enough to want your family around you?”

Henderson wet his lips and protested weakly. “You can’t be serious about that, Chief.”

“Suppose you let me decide whether I’m serious or not. You’ve been making a nuisance of yourself demanding police protection from some nebulous danger, though you’ve insisted all the time that you haven’t an enemy in the world.”

“Now wait a minute,” protested Henderson.

“You wait a minute and listen to me.” Painter was warming up now, and he strutted forward two paces, thrusting his pointed chin aggressively in Henderson’s face. “You’re building your whole defense for this killing tonight on the assumption that the dead man came here planning to murder you, yet you want us to believe that no one has a motive for wanting you dead. You can’t have it both ways, Henderson. The police may be stupid, but, by God, we’re not that stupid.”

“I didn’t mean to imply…”

“You may as well understand right now that I’m the one who’ll decide who’s to be questioned and who isn’t. Perhaps I won’t be chief of detectives after next election, but, by God, I am now, and I don’t let anybody tell me how to run my department. Now, this stepdaughter of yours who’s supposed to be in New York. Did you ship her out of the city just to avoid having her questioned?”

“What a preposterous ideal She’s been planning the trip for months.”

“I think I want to talk to her,” grated Painter. “Where can she be reached by telephone?”

“I have no idea.”

“Nonsense. You must have.”

“But I don’t. She’s visiting various friends and I don’t know where she is tonight.”

“Can’t you call some of the friends and find out?” put in Shayne, taking a sadistic pleasure in watching the householder squirm.

“Just what I was going to suggest. Either arrange to contact her at once or I’ll put a call through to New York to have her located and brought back here immediately.”

“On what grounds? I simply don’t understand…”

“There are a lot of things you don’t understand about police work, Henderson,” Painter told him witheringly. “On the grounds that she is an important witness in a homicide and is suspected of fleeing to avoid questioning.”

“But how can she be a witness to something that happened in Miami Beach tonight?”

“A killing that must have roots in your own life. You can’t expect me to believe that a complete stranger just wandered up here to your front door by the purest chance… armed with an automatic pistol which he drew the moment you opened the door. If this was the third attempt on your life, it’s self-evident that you do have an enemy who wants you dead. If you can’t throw any light on that, we’ll have to go to the people closest to you. Your stepdaughter is certainly the most logical person to question on that point.”

“Yes… I begin to see your logic,” Henderson admitted unhappily, not able to refrain from a baleful look at Shayne’s impassive face. “I’ll contact Muriel’s friends in New York, and ask her to return at once.”

“Do that. And if you don’t, I’ll show you that we’re not so stupid and insular here as you think. I want to talk to that girl.”

A detective came hesitantly through the archway and said, “If you got a minute, Chief…”

“I’m through here.” Painter faced Henderson again and told him, “I’m not arresting you… yet. But don’t try to leave town, and get your stepdaughter back here in the morning.” He turned and went away stiffly on hard heels, and Henderson turned to Shayne, mopping perspiration from his face.

“Why did you bring Muriel into this? It was entirely your doing. If you hadn’t mentioned her name, Painter would never have thought of questioning her.”

Shayne said, “Because I’d like to ask her some questions myself, and Painter has the facilities for locating her which I don’t. I didn’t one goddamn bit appreciate the way you tried to use me to pull your chestnuts out of the fire tonight,” he went on harshly.

“You’re not my client and I had no moral obligation to conceal the fact that the letter you showed me this afternoon positively named your stepdaughter as the instigator of the attempts against you. If that dead man on your doorstep was hired by her, she’s the one who’s really responsible for his death. Goddamn it, Henderson,” he went on angrily, “don’t you realize that every bit of dirty linen in a man’s life comes out in a homicide investigation? This thing may look cut and dried to you, but Painter is a stubborn cuss when he gets started and he won’t stop digging until he finds a motive. If your stepdaughter has a secret motive for hating you, you’d better spill it to me right now. I might be able to do something for her if I know the truth before Painter has a chance to dig it out.”

“But I swear as God is my judge that there’s nothing, Shayne. It’s not that I’m afraid to have her questioned, it’s just that the publicity will ruin me politically and socially if such rumors ever get out.”

Shayne said, “This is your last chance to come clean with me before I walk out of here and start doing some digging of my own.”

“But I have nothing more to tell you. I swear that as…”

“I know,” Shayne interrupted with a disgusted snort. “So you’ll have nothing to complain about when God does start judging you.” He turned and stalked out.

13

“Now then, Mike. How does all this tie in?” demanded Timothy Rourke, following the detective as he emerged from the house and circled around to his parked car.

Shayne paused with his hand on the door handle. “All what?”

“I’ve been patient,” said Rourke bitterly. “I’ve been a good boy and refrained from digging into things or asking questions when you asked me not to. But now you’ve got your corpse. It’s time you came clean. Remember me? I’m the guy who started you on this. Handed the whole thing to you on a silver platter.”

“What did you hand me on a silver platter?” Shayne grunted uncompromisingly, opening the door and sliding his rangy frame beneath the wheel.

Rourke moved swiftly to stand against the door and prevent it from closing. “Jane Smith. For God’s sake, Mike! Don’t you know that from that first evening I knew Saul Henderson was in it somehow, and it didn’t take any great deductive powers to figure that Jane Smith was Henderson’s stepdaughter. From that, it was an easy jump for my agile mind to deduce that Henderson was the man she wanted bumped off. But I stayed away from it, Mike, because you asked me to. I trusted you to let me in when the time was right. I got you over here to meet Henderson this afternoon and you slipped off for a private talk with him and never gave me a word of it. But now Henderson has killed a man on his doorstep. You know how it looks from where I stand?”

“How does it look to you?”

“As though that dead man is the substitute killer Jane Smith dug up after you turned her proposition down. If that’s true, you can’t sit on it any longer, Mike. I’m a reporter, goddamit. I’ll have to start working on that lead unless you give me the dope. And if I do it on my own, Peter Painter will be third-degreeing Miss Muriel Graham before you know it.”

“He’ll be questioning her in a few hours at any rate,” Shayne told him tonelessly.

“I understood she’s in New York.”

“I put a bug in his ear tonight, and he’s having her brought back pronto.”

“You’re tossing her to Painter?” Rourke asked incredulously.

“What else can I do?” grated Shayne. His voice softened. “Not exactly, Tim. And I’m not going to hold out on you much longer. I have one fast call to make over in Miami, and then I’ll have a pretty clear picture. Go back to the office and file your first story without pulling Muriel Graham into it,” he went on persuasively, leaning forward to switch on the ignition. “Then come straight to my place and I’ll meet you there and we’ll decide exactly where we’re going.”

“All right, Mike. I’ll wait another hour if you say so. But no more than that.”

Shayne said, “An hour will do me fine.” He leaned forward to switch on the motor, then hesitated and asked, “Any identification on the dead man?”

Rourke shook his head. “Not a damned thing. A few bucks in his pocket and a matchbook from the Lucky Tiger Bar on First Street in Miami.”

Shayne nodded and his motor roared to life. Rourke stepped back to let him swing the door shut, and Shayne cut his front wheels sharply to pull past the reporter’s car and the police vehicles in the driveway.

The first faint streaks of dawn were breaking in the sky behind him when Shayne pulled off the Causeway onto the mainland and drove directly to the same two-story stucco house he had visited earlier that same night. The street was deserted and no lights showed in any houses of the block as he pulled in to the curb.

He got out and went up the walk to the front door, found it unlocked and entered a small hall where he groped around and found a light switch. A forty-watt bulb overhead lighted the hallway and the flight of stairs leading up. He climbed the stairs quietly, not tiptoeing but avoiding unnecessary sound. The upper hall was faintly illuminated from the light below, and he went directly to number 5 where he knocked lightly. There was complete silence in the old house as he waited. He tried the doorknob when there was no response, and found it locked as he expected.

He knocked again, longer and more loudly, and was rewarded by the creak of bedsprings inside the room. Then Hilda’s voice, slurred with sleep, came from beyond the locked door, “Who is it?”

“Mike Shayne.” He kept his own voice low, but loud enough to penetrate the thin wooden panel. “Open up.”

He heard a click, and light showed around the door casing. There was silence and a momentary wait, and he could envision Hilda Gleason (or was it really Moran?) standing on the other side of the door trying to make up her mind whether to unlock it for him or not.

Then he heard the click of a latch, and the door opened inward a few inches and her composed voice came through the crack. “Please wait one moment, Mr. Shayne.”

He waited, and through the crack could hear her movement across the room. In a very brief time he heard her coming back, and the door swung wide to admit him. He stepped inside and faced her as she closed the door tightly.

Without make-up, her face was white and strained. Her light brown hair was straggly, and her eyes were round and frightened. She was barefooted and wore a shabby, light flannel robe which she clutched tightly together in front, and the two-inch hem of a white nylon nightgown showed around the bottom of it. There was a double bed with rumpled sheets and covers at Shayne’s right, beyond it a single window that was open all the way from the top.

She said, “What is it? I was sound asleep when you knocked. It must be very late indeed.”

“It’s practically morning.” There was one upholstered chair and one straight chair in the room. Her Angora jacket was draped carefully on the back of the big chair, and there was a brassiere and garter-belt on one arm of it. Shayne turned to gather them up and put them on the straight chair. With his back to her, he said casually, “Why don’t you get back into bed? We have a lot of talking to do.”

“Have we, Mr. Shayne?” He sank down into the chair while she settled herself near the head of the bed with both pillows propped up behind her, a sheet and coverlet modestly pulled up to her waist.

“Where have you been tonight?”

“Asleep.”

“I came by to see you after I left Henderson’s, but you weren’t in.”

“Then it was you my neighbor across the hall described so glowingly.” The hint of a smile dimpled her face, and then a faint blush crept over it and she dropped her eyes from his direct gaze. “I assure you I did not know exactly about the girls who live here when I took this room. But then it didn’t seem to matter because I didn’t expect visitors.”

Shayne lit a cigarette and settled back to watch her through hooded eyes. “Why were you at Henderson’s this afternoon?”

“But I have told you. To attend the party.”

“Is your name Gleason or Moran?”

She sighed. “It is Gleason.”

“Why did you go to Henderson’s office as Mrs. Moran and strike up an acquaintanceship with him?”

“I think… I will have to tell you the truth, Mr. Shayne.”

“I think you had better.”

“Would you tell me first why you think it is important? What you were doing at Henderson’s yourself?”

He said, “Don’t you know that Jane Smith is Henderson’s stepdaughter?”

“Jane Smith?” Somehow he couldn’t believe that her complete surprise could possibly be faked. She stared at him in utter astonishment. “You mean the one in the bar that night? The one I saw with Harry at home before he came here?”

Shayne nodded. “That same girl. Who called herself Jane Smith to me. You didn’t know?”

“That she was Mr. Henderson’s stepdaughter? But no. How could I guess that? Even though I did see her driving from that house…” She caught in her breath and her lower lip, and managed to look like a small and contritely guilty child. “I have lied to you, Mr. Shayne. I did not see her by accident on the street. I was in a taxicab going slowly past the Henderson house when she drove out from it. I had my taxi follow her to that hotel, and the rest is as I told you.”

“Why did you lie about that part of it?”

“Because I did not want… I did not think I should tell you I had been watching the Henderson house.”

Shayne said, “Start back at the beginning and tell me the truth this time.”

“Yes. I think I must do that now. It was only a little untruth I told. I thought perhaps… to protect Harry.”

“From what?”

“If… something should happen to Mr. Henderson. Nothing has happened to him, has it?”

Shayne said, “Nothing has happened to Henderson… yet. I’m waiting for the truth, Hilda.”

“Yes. It was when it first began with Harry. Two months ago. We were watching the television that evening on Harry’s night off. There was a program from Miami. Comedians and stars, and a lot of important people in Miami. And there was this one famous comedian who was getting the key to Miami Beach presented to him. I was not paying much attention when Harry sat up straight and said out loud, ‘That dirty son-of-a-bitch.’ Like that. And on the screen was Mr. Henderson making a speech. And I said to Harry, ‘Who? What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘I mean that bastard standing up in front of the camera shooting off his big mouth, that’s what. Henderson, hell!’ Harry went on, and I never saw him so angry. ‘His name isn’t Henderson any more than mine is. My God, what I know about that dirty skunk! Did you hear them say something about him getting elected mayor of Miami Beach, Hilda?’ he asked me. ‘My God, if that’s not something. Mayor, no less.’

“And I didn’t know what he was talking about, you understand, Mr. Shayne? And, by that time, there was a singer and an orchestra on the program and I asked him what he meant by it all, but he wouldn’t tell me. He just said it was better I didn’t know and he didn’t want to talk about it any more. But that was the beginning. Harry was changed after that night. He never mentioned Mr. Henderson’s name again and flew into a rage when I begged him to tell me. But he began brooding and talking about injustice and how life wasn’t fair to some people, and how terrible that we should be poor when others that deserved to be shot were living off the fat of the land.”

“And you knew he was referring to Henderson when he talked that way.”

“I knew it in my own mind, yes. But he would not say so. And then the girl came one night like I told you, and everything else was just as I said.”

“Except that you didn’t admit to me that you knew his trip to Miami had some connection with Henderson?”

“That is right. That is all I told wrong. And how I saw the girl you say is Mr. Henderson’s stepdaughter.”

“And you decided to go to Henderson yourself day before yesterday? Using an assumed name.”

“I was afraid to say I was Mrs. Gleason. I thought I might learn something about Harry. It was all I could do.”

Shayne mashed out his cigarette and sat back, tugging at his ear lobe. He believed Hilda was telling the truth now. But what did it mean? Somehow he was now positive that the dead man he had seen on Henderson’s doorstep was her husband. He hated like hell to tell her so, but he knew it had to be done. But before doing so and while she was still calm and composed, he tried to pry further information from her.

“Going back to that first evening while you and your husband were watching TV. You’re sure he said, ‘His name is no more Henderson than mine is?’ Those were his exact words?”

“He said that, yes.”

“And he mentioned knowing something bad about him?”

“Very bad, I think. From the way he spoke.”

“When and where do you think he had known Henderson under a different name?”

“I do not know. It was before I met Harry, I am sure of that.”

“When did you first meet your husband?”

“Ten years ago. In Algonquin, where I was born. He came and went to work as a bartender.”

“What do you know about his past life?”

“Very little.” She sighed and fingered the edge of the coverlet at her waist nervously. “He did not like to talk about before he met me. He would mention sometimes places in the West he had been… tending bar, I think. He was a wandering man until we were married.”

“Did you ever have the impression he had a reason not to talk about his past? That he had something to hide?”

“Mr. Shayne, I have thought that, yes.” Tears brimmed in her eyes. “I did not care. I did not press to know. We were in love and our marriage was good. I did not wish to know the past. The present was all I thought or cared about.”

Shayne straightened in his chair restively and shook out a cigarette. “Did your husband own a pistol, Hilda?”

“Never. He was not a man who believed in violence.”

The last match in his book refused to light and he dropped it and the empty book into the ash tray with an exclamation of disgust.

Hilda reached to the bedside table beside her and lifted a book of matches questioningly. Shayne stretched out a long arm to take it, opened it and broke off a match, closed the book before striking it.

His gaze brooded on the lettering on the front of the book as he held the flame to the tip of the cigarette. He blew the match out and read the advertising legend aloud in a matter-of-fact tone: “The Lucky Tiger Bar.” He expelled his first puff of smoke and studied her face thoughtfully, “That’s on First Street here in Miami, isn’t it, Hilda?”

She said, “I do not know.”

Shayne said, “I want all of the truth now, Hilda. You lied to me about not finding your husband in Miami. You did find him. You were with him in this Lucky Tiger Bar. When?” He spat out the words like bullets and she flinched at their impact.

“That was when I first came,” she faltered. “On Monday afternoon. He had written in his note the name of that bar where he had met an old friend, but I swear he would not tell me where he was staying here. And I did not see him again after ten o’clock that night when he walked out the door very angry because I had begged him to return with me and give up whatever crazy plan he had.”

“What time did you reach Miami Monday?”

“The bus arrived at four o’clock. I had only the name of the bar to find him and I went straight there. Harry was drinking beer and he was angry to see me… thinking me still at home. We sat in a booth until ten o’clock that night and he drank beer and was drunker than I have ever seen him.

“He would not tell me anything, Mr. Shayne, except that I must leave him alone and we would be rich. It was going just as he planned, he told me, and I must not interfere. I begged him and I cried, but it only made him angrier, and he stalked out cursing me.” There were tears streaming down her cheeks when she finished, and she put her hands over her face to hide them.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“What good was it to tell? I was so ashamed, and I still did not know how to find him in this city. I went to the bar again next day and afterward, but he did not come.”

“What was your husband wearing the last time you saw him? When he walked out of the Lucky Tiger Bar?”

“Just his everyday clothes. Harry is not a fancy dresser, but neat.”

“Did he have a green suede jacket?”

“He wore that, yes. It was new this fall.” Her eyes were unwaveringly fixed on his. “You have found Harry, Mr. Shayne?”

“I’m afraid I have, Hilda. I think he’s… dead.”

She didn’t cry out. She didn’t blink her eyes, and tears began silently rolling down her cheeks. She said, “I think I knew it would be. Inside me. I knew. Tell me, Mr. Shayne.”

Shayne told her as gently as he could. “I’m not positive, of course. You’ll have to make the identification.”

“But why, Mr. Shayne? At Mr. Henderson’s house with a pistol in the night?”

Shayne said, “First, he must be identified.” He stood up. “You’d better get dressed.” He looked about the room and saw there was no telephone. “Is there a pay phone?”

“In the hallway outside.” Still outwardly composed, Hilda threw the covers off her legs and stood up.

Shayne said, “I’ll use it while you dress. Open the door when you’re ready.”

He went out into the dimly lit hall and found a wall telephone. He dialed Miami Beach Police Headquarters, and after a little difficulty got Painter himself on the wire.

“Mike Shayne calling. Have you identified Henderson’s corpse yet?”

“How could we with nothing at all to work on? Nothing whatsoever.” Painter sounded personally aggrieved. “He’s one of those cheap bastards who even did his own washing… and dry-cleaning too, I guess. All we’ve got is his prints and the serial number on his pistol.”

“His prints on it?”

“His and no others. If you’re holding out any information, Shayne…”

“On the contrary. I think I’ve got him identified for you.”

He heard a swift intake of breath over the telephone. “So you did know something, Shayne. By God, I…”

“I followed up a hunch and I think it’s going to pay off for you,” Shayne told him smoothly. “A Mrs. Harry Gleason is coming over in a taxicab to the morgue to look at him. I think he’s her husband.”

“Gleason? What’s the full story, Shayne?”

“Mrs. Gleason will give it to you… if it is her Harry. Better meet her at the morgue in twenty minutes.”

Shayne hung up before Painter could say anything more. The door of Hilda’s room opened as he turned away from the phone, and she stood in the doorway wearing a dark two-piece suit with a white silk blouse, and she was settling her Harlequin glasses over her eyes.

She stepped aside as Shayne re-entered the room, and he told her, “We’ll go down and I’ll put you in a cab to go across to the morgue on the Beach. Chief Peter Painter will meet you there, and will want a statement from you, if you identify your husband. I don’t want to be there while you make it.” He took both her hands in his and looked down at the blue-tinted glasses. “Do you trust me, Hilda? Will you do exactly as I say?”

“I trust you.”

“Then tell Painter the truth as you told it to me just now. But leave out the girl, Hilda. Just don’t mention her being in Algonquin, or seeing her here. Tell Painter that you came to me for help in locating your husband, and all the rest of it. But leave Muriel Graham and Jane Smith out of it for the time being.”

“Why should I do that? I know that she is behind it all.”

“Probably. And if she is responsible for your husband’s death I promise you that she’ll pay for it. But you can help by not mentioning her to Painter.”

She said, “I will do what you say.”

Shayne went out and she followed him, turning off the light and locking the door. Downstairs, they got in Shayne’s car and he drove to Flagler where he found an empty cab and put her in it. He pressed her hand tightly and said, “I’ll see you later, Hilda. Right now I’ve got a lot of things to do.”

He stood and watched the cab pull away, and felt sorry as hell for the self-contained woman whose ten years of married happiness had ended so tragically. Then he drove to his hotel, where he had promised to meet Timothy Rourke.

14

The gangling reporter had had a key to Shayne’s second-floor suite for many years, and Shayne found him there when he arrived, comfortably ensconced in a deep chair with the dregs of a highball in his right hand.

“Any further developments?” Shayne asked as he strode in.

“Nothing new. I filed my story with only a passing mention of the stepdaughter in New York. I’m waiting for the low-down on her.”

Shayne passed him to pour a couple of ounces of cognac into a glass. Without bothering to get a chaser, he returned to his own chair and sank into it with a sigh. “I’ll be glad to spill it, Tim. Maybe talking out loud will clarify things in my own mind. Your Jane Smith of the newspaper ad was Muriel Graham, of course. She told me so that night when she explained why she was offering fifty grand to get him bumped off.”

“And why was she?” Rourke’s deep-set eyes were bright with eager curiosity.

Shayne told him. Starting from the beginning, he repeated the girl’s hysterical story in her own words as well as he could remember them.

He was striding up and down the room, running knobby fingers through his coarse red hair when he finished. “That’s why I refused to tell you the full truth that night, Tim. Damn it, I was sorry as hell for the kid, yet for Christ’s sake, I couldn’t help her with her crazy plan.”

“That brings us to when you shoved me down the stairs. Was your late visitor Jane Smith as you hoped?”

“No. Another woman entirely. Remember me describing the other two women in the Crystal Room who I thought might be Jane? One of them wore Harlequin glasses and had a faintly foreign accent and came to my table just as Jane came in.”

“Harlequin glasses?” Rourke did a fast double-take. “Tinted blue?”

Shayne dropped back into his chair and nodded. “The woman who arrived late at Henderson’s party yesterday afternoon, and whom I cornered briefly. Hilda Gleason is her name. She had a story of her own to tell.”

He briefly repeated the story Hilda had told him that first evening. “So you can see why I wasn’t too surprised to see her pop up at Henderson’s, but didn’t understand how she had got there. There was that past connection between the man’s stepdaughter and her husband.”

“What past connection?” asked Rourke, puzzled.

“I just told you. About the phone call from Denton, Illinois. And Hilda going down to the saloon to watch her husband meet the girl and go off for a conference with her. That girl who met Gleason in Illinois was Muriel Graham… who called herself Jane Smith in the advertisement.”

“Yeh. I got that angle straight now. So, how did this Hilda Gleason manage to pop up at Henderson’s cocktail party?”

“By going to Henderson’s office the preceding day under an assumed name, and representing herself to be a lone widow who needed advice on her investments. She’s attractive enough so it wasn’t difficult for her to wangle an invitation from him. I just left her a few minutes ago,” he went on wearily. “And this time she told me the truth.” He filled the reporter in briefly on Hilda’s amended story. “So I just put her in a cab headed for the Beach morgue to see if the dead man is Harry Gleason.”

Timothy Rourke was sitting upright, scribbling notes furiously, his lean features avidly intent. “Will she be there yet?”

Shayne glanced at his watch. “Better give her another ten minutes.”

Rourke stopped scribbling and settled back with a frown. “This is one hell of a mixed-up mess. How did Muriel Graham and Gleason manage to make contact in Illinois a month ago? Here you’ve got two people who evidently hate the same man for different reasons, but how did they get to know each other?”

“Muriel is the only one who can tell us that now. Do you happen to know whether Henderson succeeded in contacting her?”

“Yeh,” Rourke said absently. “Our man phoned in from the Beach just before I left the office. Muriel Graham is due in on a jet flight at seven-ten this morning.”

“Good. I’ll damned well be at the airport to meet her.”

“Along with Painter and his boys.”

Shayne said, “I’m not so sure of that. Petey is more likely to be catching up on his beauty sleep. After all, he doesn’t know any of this background stuff on her.”

“He will if Mrs. Gleason identifies her husband and tells her story.”

“She promised me she’d keep Muriel out of it until I had a chance to check further.”

“What bothers hell out of me,” muttered Rourke, “is why Muriel was still trying to hire somebody to do the job on Henderson just a few days ago, if she had already hired Gleason a month ago.”

“We don’t know for sure that she did.”

“Then why did he pop up at Henderson’s house early this morning with a gun in his pocket?”

“Maybe he turned down her proposition that night in Algonquin, but kept on brooding about Henderson and finally decided to take a crack at the guy on his own.”

“Wouldn’t he have informed Muriel of his intention so he could collect the pay-off when he succeeded?” objected Rourke.

“She’s the only one who can answer any of these questions.” Shayne looked at his watch again. “You got a leg-man at Beach Headquarters?”

“Yeh, Jimmy Powell. Think he’ll have the identification by this time?”

“Try him.”

Shayne poured himself another very short drink of cognac while Rourke got the News reporter on the Beach covering the police beat.

“Jimmy? Tim Rourke. I got a tip the Henderson corpse might be identified.”

“We just got it. A bartender named Harry Gleason from some town in Illinois. His wife positively identified him and Painter is getting a statement from her right now. I’ll phone it in for the first edition.”

Rourke said, “Do that, Jimmy,” and hung up. He nodded to Shayne. “She identified him all right, and she’s giving her story to Painter.”

Shayne muttered, “Let’s hope she’ll keep it the way I told her to.”

“You can’t hold out much longer,” Rourke warned him.

“I know. But damn it, Tim! If there’s any way in the world to do so I want to avoid tossing Muriel to Painter and you boys. A story like that will hang over her head the rest of her life. Even her fiance who seems a nice enough kid, probably won’t be able to stomach the whole truth.”

“If she is responsible for Gleason’s death, you won’t be able to keep it hidden.”

“I know that as well as you do.” Shayne tossed off his drink savagely. “That’s why I’ve got a lot of things to do before her plane lands at seven.”

“Such as what?”

“Such as: Who is Saul Henderson? According to Mrs. Gleason, that isn’t his name. What’s the connection between Gleason and him, going back to the period before she and Gleason were married. Get your paper to work on Henderson’s background, Tim. Contact the News Services in New York and have them start some discreet digging. Get us some ammunition before seven o’clock.”

“I’ll try,” Rourke said doubtfully. “It’s pretty early in the morning to get any real action out of New York.” He yawned and got up. “What will you be doing?”

Shayne said, “I don’t know.”

“Sitting on your dead butt while I dig up information for you?” suggested Rourke good-humoredly.

Shayne said, “It’s your story you’re going after. Hell, I don’t even have a client or a retainer.”

“You meeting the seven-ten plane?” asked Rourke casually as he strolled toward the door.

“Let’s meet at the airport about six-forty-five to see if you’ve got anything. The coffee shop.”

Rourke said, “Fine,” and went out with a farewell wave of his hand.

Shayne paced the floor for a time after the reporter left, considering and discarding various plans for getting background information on Gleason and Henderson in a hurry. As Rourke had pointed out, it was an awkward hour to get anything definite done-and it was even an hour earlier in Illinois than in Miami. However, Shayne didn’t know how busy he would be later in the day, and he decided he might as well get a couple of angles started.

He consulted his old address book from the center drawer of the sitting-room table, and found a Chicago number which he called.

He sat and listened while the phone rang at least a dozen times in the Midwestern city, and he grinned happily when a surly and sleepy voice finally replied.

“That you, Bitsy?”

“Yeh. Who’s that sounding so happy to wake a guy up?”

“Gee, I’m sorry about that,” said Shayne with elaborate concern. “When I knew you, pal, you’d just about be ready for bed at this hour.”

“Then it was a hell of a lot of years ago,” yawned Bitsy Baker in Chicago. “Who is this?”

“Mike Shayne.”

“Mike… Shayne? I’ll be damned. You in town, Mike?”

“Nope. Miami.”

“What’s up?” The voice was suddenly wide-awake and businesslike.

“You free to take on a little job?”

“Soon as it gets daylight out here.”

“Write this down, Bitsy. Algonquin, Illinois. Know where it is?”

“Sure. Out in the country a little way.”

“Get out there by the time the farmers start waking up. There’s a Harry Gleason just been killed here tonight. Lived in Algonquin ten years. Bartender in some bar. Get every damned thing you can on Harry Gleason and his wife, Hilda, a native of the town. What I want mostly is background on Gleason. As far back as you can get. He may have had a different name in the past. Check the cops, newspapers and friends… you know.”

“Sure, I know.”

“Also, these last two months, Bitsy. Any strangers been in town to see him. Any talk he’s done around the bar about a trip to Miami or prospects for picking up some quick dough. Get whatever you can and call me collect at my office.” Shayne gave him the number. “Say, ten o’clock this morning, your time. I’ll know by then whether I want you to do any more.”

“Sure, Mike. How’re things otherwise?”

Shayne said, “Dull.”

“Same here. Ten o’clock. By.”

Shayne said, “Good-by, Bitsy,” and hung up. He took another small drink and paced the floor a short time longer, and then called the Henderson number on Miami Beach.

Mr. Henderson’s voice answered promptly, indicating that the financier hadn’t been any more able to sleep than Shayne had.

The detective slurred his voice into a slangy southern drawl: “That there Mister Henderson?”

“This is Henderson, yes. Who’s calling?”

“This here’s a frien’ uh Harry’s, pal.”

There was a long pause and Shayne wondered if the man would hang up. He didn’t. He asked uncertainly, “Harry who?”

“Harry Gleason, thass who.” Shayne chuckled evilly. “You didn’ reckon it was all ended nice an’ clean an’ sweet just from you knockin’ Harry off, did yuh?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you are talking about.” Henderson was breathing hard and the words sounded as though he almost strangled over them.

“I reckon you kin guess. I’ll be seein’ yuh.” Shayne hung up and wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. He fervently hoped that Henderson was sweating too.

He looked at his watch and went into the kitchenette to put water on the stove to boil, and measured coffee into a dripolator. When it boiled, he poured it into the top and went into the bathroom to shave, then stripped off his clothes and took a fast shower.

Twenty minutes after making his call to Henderson, dressed in fresh clothes and with a mug of hot black coffee at his elbow, Shayne called the Beach number again.

Again Henderson’s voice answered as if he had been sitting waiting for the instrument to ring.

“Mike Shayne, Henderson. I suppose you know your victim has been identified.”

“Yes, I… a reporter called me half an hour ago. Some man from the Midwest, I understand. But under the circumstances, Shayne, I hardly think the word ‘victim’ is the correct designation for him.”

“Let’s let it ride until we have a better one,” Shayne suggested blithely. “A man named Harry Gleason, eh?”

“So they say.” Henderson sounded very unhappy about it.

“What do you think of the story his wife told the police?”

“I was given only the gist of it. I have no comment. I never heard of the man before. But, Shayne…” his voice suddenly became imploring, “… now that you’re on the line… I wonder… I need to talk to you,” he ended desperately. “I just had another very peculiar telephone call and I’ve been wondering what to do. I would like to engage your professional services,” he added formally.

Shayne said wolfishly, “I don’t know whether they’re for hire to you or not. But I’m willing to discuss it with you.”

“Right away? Could you come over?” Henderson sounded pathetically eager.

Shayne said, “I can be there in half an hour,” and hung up. He finished his coffee with satisfaction, and went out to drive over to the Beach.

The sun was up over the Atlantic when he arrived at the Henderson house. There were no cars in the driveway, but an unmarked sedan was parked unobtrusively on the street just beyond the entrance, and the man sitting behind the wheel was smoking a cigarette and had the brim of his hat pulled low on his forehead. Shayne grinned at this evidence of Painter’s thoroughness, and turned in the drive to park in front of the door.

Henderson opened it for him as soon as he pressed the button. He was fully dressed and clean-shaven, but his thin features were strained and his eyes were bloodshot.

“Come right in, Mr. Shayne.” He led the way through the archway and dropped disconsolately into a deep chair beside an ash tray piled high with half-smoked cigarette butts. “This has been a most harrowing experience.” He rubbed the back of his right hand wearily across his eyes. “It was good of you to come. This last occurrence has completely unnerved me.”

“Tell me about it.” Shayne sprawled his rangy body into a chair near him.

There was a bottle of Drambuie and a stemmed liqueur glass on the table beside Henderson’s chair. The glass held a small portion of the thick liqueur, and he picked it up and drained it, asking Shayne, “Would you care for some? Or something else perhaps?”

Shayne shook his head. “I switched to coffee an hour ago. What have you to tell me?”

“There was an anonymous telephone call. Mysterious and definitely threatening.” He settled back and half closed his eyes and repeated what Shayne had said to him over the telephone almost word for word.

“Yet I swear I don’t know anyone named Harry Gleason,” he protested as he finished. “I can’t make head nor tail of it. But it does indicate that… that my life is still in danger. I beg you to take the case, Mr. Shayne. Find out who is threatening me, and why.”

“I’ll consider it if you’ll come clean with me.”

“But I have… ah… come clean with you.”

Shayne said, “You can make a start by telling me what name you used before you started calling yourself Saul Henderson.”

All the color drained from Henderson’s face at the same time that the strength oozed from his body. He wilted in his chair, white-faced and panicky. Then he called on some inner reserves and swung angrily to his feet.

“I don’t know what your game is, Shayne, but whatever it is, I don’t like it. You’ve been throwing out veiled hints and implications ever since yesterday afternoon, and I’ve had enough of it. I’ll see you to the door.” He swung on his heel and walked stiffly toward the archway and Shayne came quickly to his feet to follow him, pausing by his host’s chair to pick up the empty liqueur glass carefully by the fragile stem, and drop it into the side pocket of his jacket.

Henderson was standing holding the front door wide open when Shayne ambled out. He stood in frozen-faced silence while Shayne paused to say, “My secretary will bill you for this visit, Henderson,” and he closed the door loudly behind the detective.

Shayne drove swiftly back to Miami and stopped at police headquarters where he found Sergeant Calhoun on duty in the Identification Department. He took the liqueur glass carefully from his pocket, handling it by the flared bottom, and told the sergeant:

“This should have some pretty good prints that might have a bearing on that Beach killing. Get an authorization from Chief Gentry if you need it, but I wish you’d rush them to Washington fast.”

Sergeant Calhoun said cheerfully, “I’ll get them off first, and ask for the authorization later, Mike,” and Shayne hurried out of the building to his car and drove directly to the airport.

It was two minutes after seven o’clock when he got his car parked and reached the coffee shop. Timothy Rourke occupied a stool near the door, nursing a cup of black coffee. Shayne sat beside him and said, “The same” to a white-jacketed waiter. “Any luck, Tim?”

“About what you’d expect. A few unimportant items going back past his marriage to Mrs. Graham. Reading between the lines, there’s nothing to indicate he was very much of anybody or had too much dough until he latched onto the rich widow. As soon as offices open in New York, there’ll be a squad of legmen going around interviewing everyone who had contact with him before his marriage.” He looked at his watch as the waiter put a cup of coffee in front of Shayne. “Plane’s due in about three minutes. On time, they say.”

Shayne nodded absently, taking a sip of hot coffee and wishing he were home drinking his own brew. “Watch out for Henderson to blow a gasket when I try to grab hold of the girl for a quiet talk. Shove him around a little if you have to in order to give me a crack at her.”

Rourke nodded as the loudspeaker announced the arrival of Muriel Graham’s flight from New York. They got up and joined a small group of waiting people moving toward the gate through which incoming passengers would come. As they worked their way toward the gate, Shayne nudged Rourke and pointed toward Peter Painter flanked by two Miami cops standing squarely in front of the barrier. “Petey isn’t missing a bet.”

“And there’s Henderson, who doesn’t look too happy to see him,” Rourke rejoined, jerking his head toward the harried-looking mayoralty candidate pushing his way through to come up immediately behind the chief of detectives.

The redhead and the reporter watched with interest as deplaning passengers streamed toward the gate. There weren’t too many arrivals on this early flight, and Shayne didn’t see Jane Smith among them. He was beginning to wonder if she had missed the plane or had intentionally stayed away when he saw a very tall and slender, dark-haired girl at the end of the line stop in front of Henderson and say something to him, and then languidly accept his outstretched hand.

With a bleak look of questioning on his face, Shayne shoved forward just as Painter moved in officiously and took the tall girl’s arm.

“Miss Muriel Graham?” he demanded.

She looked sideways and down at his hand on her arm while Saul Henderson thrust his face close to Painter’s and grated, “This is my stepdaughter, yes. But she’s very tired from her trip and I’ll have to ask you to excuse us now. Later… after she’s rested…”

“I want to talk to her now, Henderson.” Painter kept his hand firmly on her arm and drew her away, nodding curtly to one of the uniformed policemen, who interposed his bulk between the girl and Henderson.

Shayne tapped Painter on the shoulder as the little man turned away with the girl, paying no heed to Henderson’s loudly voiced objections.

“You’re making a mistake, Petey. This girl is…”

“An important witness whom I’m taking into custody for questioning,” Painter told him officiously. “I don’t need any advice or interference from you, Shayne.”

The redhead shrugged and stepped back with a quizzical grin on his face while Painter triumphantly led the girl inside the terminal building with Henderson still being forcibly detained from following them by the policeman.

Timothy Rourke studied his friend’s face speculatively, and muttered, “You might have known Painter wouldn’t pass up a bet like this. Hell! You might as well quit covering for Henderson. Let the girl tell her story.”

“I’m not covering for Henderson. I was trying to tip Petey off. That girl isn’t Muriel Graham, Tim.”

“She isn’t? Didn’t you hear Henderson introduce her as his stepdaughter?”

“I heard him,” Shayne agreed grimly. “But she’s a ringer, Tim. That’s not my Jane Smith. Remember that Henderson made the contact in New York personally and arranged to have her fly down. God knows what sort of story this one will tell Painter.”

“Well, you hoped to keep Muriel out of it,” chuckled Rourke. “It’s not your fault that Painter wouldn’t listen when you tried to tell him the truth.”

Shayne muttered, “Yeh. You can be a witness that I tried to warn him, Tim. But he was so damned afraid that I would horn in…”

He grinned suddenly and delightedly, and moved toward the building entrance with long strides. “Maybe I’ve still got time to wrap this up while Painter is listening to whatever story Henderson wants him to hear.”

15

In the airport parking lot, Shayne paused beside the reporter’s car while Rourke got in. He said “I’m headed home for a cup of decent coffee and some heavy thinking. Keep in touch with Painter on the Beach for anything they turn up on Gleason… and push those New York inquiries on Henderson. Tim, I’m getting a stronger hunch all the time that this whole case had its beginnings ’way back in his past.”

“Who do you suppose the girl is that Henderson has brought in to impersonate his stepdaughter?”

The redhead shrugged. “He was really on the spot there. He must have sweated blood early this morning knowing Muriel would almost certainly break down and spill her guts if she were hauled back here to testify. Give the guy credit for thinking fast,” he went on angrily, “and arranging things neatly. She’ll load Painter with a story about what a wonderful father Henderson has been to her, and he’ll swallow it hook, line, and sinker.” He turned and strode off to his own car while Rourke lifted a hand in farewell and drove away.

Two hours and four mugs of coffee later, shaved and freshly dressed, Michael Shayne entered his office on Flagler Street and found Lucy already at her desk in the anteroom. She glanced at her watch meaningfully and said, “Practically the crack of dawn, Mr. Shayne. I don’t suppose you’ve even had time to glance at the morning paper?”

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t, angel. Anything important?”

She shrugged and pursed her lips. “A little matter of a midnight killing at your friend’s, Mr. Henderson, house on the Beach. I don’t suppose it interests you particularly.”

He paused with his back half to her, in the act of hanging his hat near the door, realizing suddenly that she was completely unaware that he had been mid-wifing the case since about two o’clock. He said, “You know how badly I need my beauty sleep in the morning. Got a copy of the paper?”

She held it out to him. “Peter Painter has it all solved anyhow. You’re to call Tim Rourke at his office.”

Shayne said, “Get him,” turning toward the open door of his private office and reading the headline: Prowler Shot By Householder.

In his office he tossed the paper down and sat wearily behind his bare, flat-topped desk. He slowly lit a cigarette and dropped the match into a tray as his phone buzzer sounded. He scooped it up and said, “Tim?”

Rourke’s voice said, “A couple of interesting things from Beach homicide. Item one: A fast report from Washington on Gleason’s fingerprints identify him as an ex-con. He did a ten-year stretch in the Colorado pen for arson. Released twelve years ago. Item two: Ballistics says that the twenty-two pistol Gleason carried is the same gun that fired the bullet into Henderson’s automobile in the first murder attempt against him a few days ago.”

Shayne said, “I didn’t know that was a twenty-two also.”

“It was. Until this comparison the Beach police had theorized it was fired from a rifle in the hands of some fool kid. That’s one reason they had written it off as probably accidental.”

“Anything else?”

“One more curious thing, Mike. Henderson called in to report another threat against his life early this morning. An anonymous telephone call from someone who claimed to be a friend of Gleason’s. Henderson swears he didn’t recognize the voice and has no idea who it was. But it scared him plenty.”

Shayne chuckled happily over the telephone. “Keep this under your hat, Tim, but don’t you waste any time chasing down that lead. The guy’s initials are M. S.”

There was a very brief silence over the wire. Then Rourke sighed, “Why, Mike?”

“Just trying to foul the waters a little,” Shayne told him cheerfully. “Anything else from your pipelines to Henderson’s past?”

“Nothing yet. And that’s sort of curious in itself. Right now it looks as though he appeared from nowhere a few years ago and feathered his nest with nice soft banknotes by marrying a wealthy widow.”

“With a nubile stepdaughter,” said Shayne grimly.

“With a nubile stepdaughter,” agreed Rourke no less grimly.

Shayne said, “Keep on digging,” and hung up.

He leaned back in his swivel chair and took a lazy drag on his cigarette as Lucy hurried into his office with color flaming in her cheeks.

“I heard everything Tim said, Michael.”

“No reason why you shouldn’t.”

“You are mixed up in the Henderson case, aren’t you?”

“Sort of.”

“Why didn’t you tell me… instead of pretending you didn’t know what I was talking about when you came in?”

He said mildly, “You went to some lengths to tell me Painter had it all solved while I was sleeping late.” He yawned wildly. “Get Will Gentry on the phone and ask him…”

His desk telephone interrupted him. Lucy compressed her lips firmly and reached for it. She said, “Michael Shayne’s office,” then nodded and said in a subdued voice, “He’s right here, Chief Gentry.”

Shayne took the instrument from her and said, “I was about to call you, Will.”

“Sure. Any time you want a job done for free, just call on the Miami Police Department, Mike.”

“That’s what I always figured,” said Shayne cheerfully. “Service with a smile. What you got this time, Will?”

“Some hocus-pocus about fingerprints you turned in to Sergeant Calhoun without bothering to get an authorization from me.”

“And?”

“Where’d you lift those prints, Mike?

“You know that crazy hobby I’ve got… lifting fingerprints? It’s a sort of compulsion with me. Every time I see a nice set of prints…”

“Come off it, Mike.” Gentry’s voice was bluntly forceful. “Calhoun says they tie in with the Henderson kill on the Beach.”

“They do.”

“How?”

“That’s Painter’s baby, Will. You wouldn’t want to horn in on his territory.” Shayne made his voice mildly reproving.

“Goddamit, Mike!” Gentry paused to regain control of his temper. “The man’s a fugitive, Mike. Don’t cover up for him.”

“I won’t. What’s the rap against him?”

“Arson and manslaughter. Twenty years ago in Endore, Colorado. The man’s name is Ernie Combs.”

Shayne frowned and tugged at his left earlobe with right thumb and forefinger. He repeated aloud, “Endore, Colorado?” nodding at Lucy to make a note of it. “That’s all you got, huh?”

“That’s all Washington gave us. I’ll tell you this right now, Mike…”

Shayne said, “Thanks a million,” and hung up. He looked at his watch and told Lucy, “It’s too early in Colorado to call anybody, but try it anyway. Get the police department or sheriff’s office in Endore, Colorado.”

She nodded efficiently and hurried out to the other office.

Shayne mashed out his cigarette and his gray eyes were very bright. He got up and went behind the desk to a filing cabinet and took a bottle of cognac from the second drawer. He uncorked it and turned to a water cooler where he nested two paper cups together and was pouring amber liquid into them when his buzzer sounded. He strode back to the desk and lifted the instrument to his ear, took a sip of cognac as Lucy said, “I have Chief of Police Dyer of Endore, Colorado, on the wire, Mr. Shayne.”

He set the nested cups down and said, “Chief Dyer? I’m sorry to bother you so early in the morning, but we’ve got a murder case here in Miami that you may be able to help us with.”

A rasping voice chuckled, “Chickens have been up out here for two hours so ’tain’t so early. Say your name is Shayne?”

“Michael Shayne. How far do you go back on the force, Chief?”

“Further’n you, I reckon, son. What you wanta know?”

“Twenty years ago,” Shayne told him succinctly. “An arson job. You still have a warrant outstanding for Ernie Combs?”

“That murderin’ son-of-a-bitch,” grated the thin voice over more than two thousand miles of telephone wire. “You got him there?”

“Did you say murder, Chief?”

“Close enough. Wife died in the hospital two months afterward givin’ birth to a boy-child, but it was the burns that killed her. I allus swore I’d get that Ernie…”

“A man named Gleason implicated with him?”

“Harry Gleason. Yep. He took his rap and served his time like a man. But that goddamned slippery Ernie Combs…”

“We’ve got him on ice for you here, Chief,” Shayne interrupted him. “Any reward offered?”

“There was ten thousand put up when it happened more’n twenty years ago. I reckon maybe it still stands good.”

Shayne said, “I’ll be in touch with you later,” and hung up. He reached for the cognac and downed it, crushed the two paper cups together in his right hand with savage intensity as Lucy reappeared in the doorway and asked eagerly, “Who is it, Michael? I don’t even know what…”

With slow deliberation, Shayne said, “Go out and close the door, Lucy. Don’t put any calls through. Nothing.” He got up slowly, his gaze bleak and abstracted, while Lucy withdrew quietly and drew the door shut behind her.

Michael Shayne stood at the window for a long time, looking down at the slow-moving traffic going eastward on Flagler Street while a frown of fierce concentration creased his brow and his mind played with the broken and jagged pieces of the puzzle that had been put into his hands.

When the telephone finally recalled him to his desk, he saw with a start of real surprise that it was almost eleven o’clock.

Lucy Hamilton said apologetically, “I know you told me not to bother you, Michael, but there’s a long-distance call from some man named Bitsy Baker, and he insists…”

Shayne said, “Put him on, angel.”

Bitsy’s voice came over the line a moment later, “Mike, I’m in Algonquin, but I haven’t got much.”

“Give it to me.”

“Harry Gleason is a quiet sort of Joe. Well-liked here, with a nice wife. No one knows much about him or where he came from. Close-mouthed cuss, I guess. He sort of turned up here ten years ago…”

“How about the last couple of months?” Shayne put in sharply.

“Yeh. Well, he has been sort of changed and surly. No one seems to know why he took off suddenly or where he went. Then his wife disappeared too. They all figure he took a run-out powder on her and she followed him. If you want me to keep on digging, Mike…” Bitsy Baker’s tone was questioning and apologetic.

“You can drop that angle,” Shayne said decisively. He hesitated, rubbing his angular jaw thoughtfully. “You know a town in Illinois named Denton?”

“Yeh. Little place south of here. Close in to Chi. You got something there?”

Shayne said, “I…” Then after a thoughtful pause he said decisively, “I think it’s something I’d better handle myself. Bill me for your time, Bitsy, and thanks.”

He depressed the cradle and released it, told Lucy in the outer office, “Check with information to see if a telephone is listed under the name of Combs in Denton, Illinois. I don’t have any address. That’s C-o-m-b-s, angel.” He hung up and sat back and relaxed broodingly until Lucy reported: “There is a Denton number for a Roy Combs, Michael. The only one in Denton.”

“Can you dial it direct?”

“I think so. I’ll check.”

Shayne got up and picked the open cognac bottle from the top of the filing cabinet and strode into the other room. His secretary was looking in the front pages of the telephone book and she looked up and nodded as he lowered one hip onto the low railing beside her desk with the bottle dangling from his big hand. She said, “I can dial it.”

“Go ahead. And give me the phone.”

He drank deeply from the neck of the bottle while she dialed the long-distance circuit and the Denton number she had written down. She listened a moment and gave his local number to the operator and then silently handed the instrument to him.

He heard it ringing far away in Denton, Illinois, and then it stopped and a woman’s voice said, “Hello?”

“Is Roy at home?” asked Shayne gruffly.

“No. He won’t be back until a little after lunch. Is that Pete?”

Shayne said, “No,” and hung up. He told Lucy, “Get me a seat on the first jet flight to Chicago. Round trip. With a return reservation this afternoon if you can.”

16

It was less than a half-hour drive by taxi from the O’Hara Airport to the small town of Denton. Shayne had the driver stop at a filling station on the outskirts of the village, where he consulted a telephone book and got the street address of Roy Combs. The station attendant told him to continue as they were to the first traffic light, then turn left for a block and a half.

They did so, and drew up in front of a small sunbathed house in a row of similar small, frame houses, each with its neat rectangle of front yard and attached one-car garage.

There were small children playing in some of the other yards, but none in front of the Combs’ residence. Shayne got out and told the driver to wait with his flag down, and strode up the cinder walk to the front door framed by trellised roses. There was no electric button, so he knocked and waited.

The door opened and a young girl stood in the dimly cool interior looking out at him questioningly. She wore tight, black Toreador pants and a fresh white cotton blouse, and was barefooted. Smooth black hair with curling tips hung down on each side of her face to frame the piquant features.

Shayne took off his hat and said gravely, “Hello, Jane Smith.”

A little cry of terror and of recognition escaped her lips. Her black eyes widened and she put her right hand impulsively up to her mouth, gnawing at the knuckles with sharp white teeth like a small child in the face of catastrophe.

Otherwise, neither of them moved for a long moment. Then she wrenched her gaze away from Shayne’s and turned partly aside with a half-sob, bending her head abjectly so the long black hair swung forward and formed a curtain to hide her face.

Shayne stepped inside the square living room and closed the front door behind him. As his eyes adjusted themselves from the bright sunlight, he gazed somberly about at the worn rug on the floor, shabby cretonne slipcovers on the furniture and two Grant Wood reproductions on the walls. The sitting room was clean and tidy, and spoke of lower-middle-class poverty.

His gaze went back to the slender figure of the girl whose head was still bowed and turned away from him, and then it lifted and went beyond her to the figure of a young man standing in the open doorway beyond her. He wore cotton slacks and a Tee-shirt, and his sandy hair was damp and freshly brushed.

Shayne said sardonically, “And Paul Winterbottom. Last time I saw you was in a Miami bar, Paul. Or do you prefer to be called Roy?”

“It’s Mike Wayne!” The young man’s tight features fell apart suddenly. He blinked his eyes vacuously and his mouth drooped open. Then he got hold of himself and darted forward fiercely to put his arm tightly about his wife’s slender waist, and he exclaimed too loudly… for Shayne’s benefit rather than hers: “Don’t you worry, Hon. We haven’t done anything… no matter what he says.”

She turned into his encircling arms and clung to him, sobbing. He wet his lips and glared defiantly over the top of her head at the Miami detective.

Shayne dropped his hat on a low table and lowered his rangy body into a deep chair near the door. He said dryly, “I have a seat reserved on a four-o’clock plane back to Miami. Let’s get some talking done.”

“All right,” said the young man fiercely. “So you chased us down. So what? You can’t pin anything on us. We haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Have you seen today’s paper?”

“No.”

“Your father shot and killed a man in Miami last night,” Shayne informed him bleakly.

Roy Combs staggered back, releasing his wife. He stuttered, “My… father?”

Free of his arms, the girl straightened and tossed her head back, then whirled to face Shayne, advancing toward him soundlessly on bare feet, hands outstretched, curved and clawlike.

“Don’t call him that.” Her voice and face were dangerously calm. “Don’t ever call him that.”

“Wait, Beth.” Roy stumbled forward and caught her arm, pulled her back. “Who did he kill, Mr. Wayne?”

“Harry Gleason.”

They stood close together in front of him, trembling and looking at each other.

Shayne kept his voice hard and impersonal. He said, “Sit down on the sofa, you two, and answer some questions.” He got out a cigarette and lit it while the frightened young couple moved back and sat down side by side on the sofa, holding hands tightly and with their eyes fixed on Shayne as though he were a bomb with a short fuse that was burning down fast.

“How much do you know about what happened in Endore, Colorado, more than twenty years ago?”

“Everything,” said Roy Combs bitterly. “When Harry Gleason finished his stretch in the penitentiary, he took me out of the State Home where I’d been since birth and put me with a private family where he paid my room and board until I finished high school. Then he showed me the old clippings and told me the whole story about my father and mother. And now you say Harry’s dead. Henderson killed him? Just like he killed my mother…” He broke off into dry sobs.

Shayne said, “I’m afraid it was self-defense. Gleason came to his house with a gun at midnight, and Henderson shot first.”

“I don’t believe it. He just fixed it to look that way. Harry wouldn’t have ever done that. He was hell-bent on peace. He made us promise we wouldn’t do anything to Henderson after he saw him on television that time and knew he was still alive.”

Shayne shook his head. “There’s evidence that Gleason made one previous attempt with the same gun he threatened Henderson with last night. And whoever you hired to plant the bomb on Henderson’s boat didn’t help matters either,” he went on deliberately. “With two unsuccessful attempts on his life in the last few days, he had every legal right to shoot first without asking questions when Gleason turned up on his doorstep last night.”

“We don’t know anything about a bomb,” said Roy fiercely. “We didn’t hire anybody to do anything. You tell him, Beth.”

“I couldn’t find anybody who’d do it,” she said listlessly. “Even with that wonderful story I thought up and offering them all the money in the world. They still wouldn’t do it. Just like you,” she ended with a faint curl of her upper lip. “All I got was good advice like you gave me.”

“It was a crazy idea from the word go,” put in her husband vehemently. “My God! if I’d had the faintest idea what Beth was up to, I’d never have let her go to Miami. But she claimed she just wanted to find out what kind of man he was… to spy out the situation for Harry and help him put the clamps on him later.”

“To blackmail him?” asked Shayne harshly.

“Call it blackmail if you want to. I don’t. I didn’t blame Harry one bit. God in heaven! think what he’d been through on account of him.”

“What,” asked Shayne, “had he been through?”

Then the whole story of perfidy and cowardice and near-murder almost a quarter of a century before poured out of the young man’s eager lips while Shayne sat very quiet in the small living room and listened to it.

In mid-depression years, Ernest Combs and Harry Gleason were equal partners in a wholesale business in a suburban community near Denver, Colorado. With slack times and a succession of bad breaks, they faced the prospect of losing their business and everything they had invested. With a large stock of heavily mortgaged and completely insured goods in an isolated warehouse, the two desperate men had hit upon the expedient of selling off the stock secretly and at a high discount, and salting away the proceeds in cash-then burning the empty warehouse to the ground and collecting insurance on the non-existent contents.

The plot had been carefully planned and was put into effect one wintry evening when a heavy snowfall made it difficult for fire engines to operate.

One terrible hitch occurred at the last moment after the fire had been carefully set in several places and the two partners were escaping safely. Combs’ young wife, seven months pregnant, had learned of their plan and gone to the warehouse to stop them, unknown to either of them.

It wasn’t until the incendiary flames were raging and they were both safely outside the building that they became aware that Mrs. Combs was trapped inside and would surely perish unless they took prompt action to save her.

According to young Roy Combs’ bitter story, the two men reacted differently under stress. Combs cursed his wife’s stupidity in putting herself in jeopardy and washed his hands of the whole affair, disappearing into the night without a trace-and taking with him the entire cache of cash the two men had secreted.

Harry Gleason, on the other hand, turned in the other direction to turn in a fire alarm and then sped back into the burning building in an effort to save his partner’s wife.

Due to his prompt action, the fire apparatus arrived in time to save the building from complete destruction (thus baring the arson plot) and to rescue Gleason and Mrs. Combs alive.

The woman, however, suffered such severe burns that she was hospitalized and never recovered, dying two months later because of her weakened condition as a result of her injuries when a son, Roy, was born to her.

Gleason had been promptly sentenced to the penitentiary for his part in the crime, and a nationwide search was instituted for Ernie Combs-without avail. No trace of him had ever been discovered-until one night in Algonquin, Illinois, when his face appeared on the television screen in front of a bartender and his wife, and he was identified as Saul Henderson, wealthy widower of Miami Beach and mayoralty candidate of that city.

“Harry telephoned me that night,” Roy Combs told Shayne stonily. “He was all fired up to notify the police immediately, but I told him to wait. I drove up and talked to him one afternoon. By that time he had quieted down and was talking about threatening Henderson with exposure and making him pay all his money for our silence. We talked it all over and couldn’t agree on anything. Frankly, I wanted to see him suffer for what he had done to my mother, but I couldn’t help thinking about all that money he had inherited from the woman he’d married… and the way Beth and I live here on my salary as a garage mechanic. Much as I hate to admit it, I am his legal son, and can prove it, and I would inherit everything if he died.

“Oh, we talked it over and over and over,” he went on with a bitter twist to his young mouth. “Harry and I, and Beth and I. Beth, I think, hated him worse than I did. I guess it was a female trait… because of what he did to my mother. Anyhow, in the beginning Beth talked wild and crazy about killing him so I’d inherit his money, but I talked her out of it. And I didn’t want Harry to try to blackmail him either… not because I didn’t think he deserved to be blackmailed, you understand, but because I was afraid he’d be too smart for us and the whole thing would backfire. But I couldn’t make up my mind to denounce him to the law either,” he went on helplessly.

“He certainly deserved no better, but what good would that do us? We’d never get a penny of his money… as long as he was alive and knew he had a son who was alive.”

“So you and your wife decided on this Jane Smith deal?” said Shayne as the young man paused.

“Not exactly. That was entirely her own idea, and she didn’t confide a word of it to Harry or me. What she did do was to offer to take what money we had in the savings account and go down to Miami and nose around and find out everything she could about him. Then she promised to come back and we’d put our heads together and decide what to do next. She went up and saw Harry herself late one night, and got him to promise he wouldn’t do anything until she came back and reported. And now you say he went down anyway and Henderson shot him.”

Roy Combs jumped to his feet and clenched his fist angrily. “Damn it! That’s what I was afraid would happen. I told Harry he’d be too smart for us. Well, he won’t get away with it. I’m not going to hold back any longer. Damn all his money to hell! I’ll see he spends the rest of his life in jail.”

Shayne said dryly, “I don’t think you need to worry too much about that aspect of it. But I’m curious about you, young lady.” He turned his attention to Beth. “Where did you get the idea of masquerading as Henderson’s stepdaughter and telling the weird tale you unfolded to me in that hotel room?”

She sat bolt upright on the sofa with her hands clasped primly in front of her. “It seemed like a perfectly wonderful idea. I went down and read all the newspapers and talked to people and found out everything I could about him and his dead wife and Muriel Graham. And then I just made up that story. I tried to think of some good reason for wanting him dead and for offering to pay so much money to hire it done.”

“I told her it was the craziest thing in the world, Mr. Wayne. As soon as I found out what she had done. You see, she didn’t tell me a word about it until you had answered that advertisement and she had made her plans to meet you. Then she wrote me a letter. I hopped on a plane and went right down there to stop her, and got to Miami that evening while she was meeting you.

“When she saw me afterward and told me what you said… about being a friend of that famous detective, Mike Shayne and all, I was scared to death you would tell him, and that’s why I called you next day and pretended to be Paul Winterbottom… so you’d know she wasn’t going to go on with it and try to get anyone else to do the job.”

“But she did,” Shayne said flatly. “She found someone who planted a bomb on his boat and tried to kill him that way.”

“You didn’t, did you, Beth? You promised me…”

“I swear I didn’t, Roy. I did have the name of one other man in New York that I didn’t tell you about, and I tried to get him to do it when I stopped off there on my way home. B-b-but he was just like Mr. Wayne.” Tears streamed down her face and she wiped them away with the back of her hand defiantly.

“It seemed like it was foolproof when I made it up,” she sobbed. “Saul Henderson doesn’t deserve to keep on living. And it wouldn’t really have hurt the Graham girl any. She could easily deny knowing anything about it and refuse to pay the money I was promising in her name. And I bet she hates him too and would be glad to see him dead,” she added viciously. “Maybe he never did do to her what I dreamed up and told you, Mr. Wayne, but I bet he did plenty of other things just as bad. I’m not sorry I tried at all. I’m just sorry that I failed.”

“Yeh,” said Roy dismally. “And that Harry got impatient and went down and tried to shake him down on his own. If he’d only waited. We could have figured out something better between us. And no matter what you say,” he went on forcibly, “I don’t believe Harry ever went gunning for him. He hated his guts plenty, and figured he was due at least his share of the money Henderson ran off with, but ten years in prison was plenty for Harry and I swear I don’t believe he’d take a chance on ever getting sent back.”

Shayne looked at his watch and got up. He said, “After all this blows over, Roy, I suggest you take this wife of yours out to Hollywood. She’ll make your fortune for you.”

17

Shayne had time to make one telephone call from the Chicago airport before his jet flight took off. He made that call to Timothy Rourke in Miami, and as a result the reporter was at the airport to meet him when his plane landed at dusk.

“Everything set?” Shayne asked as they went toward the exit together.

Rourke nodded, his thin face serious and unhappy. “I came out in a taxi so we could talk in your car.” He lengthened his stride to match the detective’s as they went toward the car Shayne had parked there at noon. “Lucy has Mrs. Harry Gleason in tow and will meet us at Henderson’s house in half an hour. Will Gentry has persuaded Painter to meet him there, though Will is sore as hell because you jumped off to Chicago without telling him any more about those mysterious fingerprints you turned over to him in connection with the case. And that’s more than you told me about them,” Rourke added angrily as he got in the front seat beside his oldest friend.

Shayne started the motor and threaded his way out of the parking lot and into an eastbound stream of traffic. “What did Gentry tell you about the prints?”

“Just that Washington identifies them as belonging to a wanted man. Whose prints are they, Mike?”

“Saul Henderson’s of course. I’m willing to bet none of your newspaper contacts picked up any back trail of Henderson’s from New York. That should have tipped you off.”

“They didn’t,” Rourke admitted uncomfortably. “Is that what your sudden trip to Chicago was all about?”

Shayne said, “Yeh. Henderson is a worthless bastard, Tim. Harry Gleason took a rap for him twenty years ago and came to Miami to collect when he discovered Henderson was in the chips.”

“Instead, he collected a forty-five slug,” muttered Rourke. “With Henderson absolutely in the clear on that kill whether Gleason threatened him or not.”

Shayne said, “He still has to answer to that old charge.”

“No statute of limitations on it?”

“That’s one question I’ve been afraid to ask,” Shayne admitted irritably. “Arson and possible manslaughter. Are they subject to the statute?”

“Damned if I know. Some states, I guess. Hey! There’s something else, Mike, that bothers hell out of me. That girl. Muriel Graham. The one you said Henderson had brought in as a ringer to fool Painter.”

“What about her?”

“I’ll swear she isn’t, Mike. Isn’t a ringer, I mean. I interviewed her today after Painter put her through his personal ringer, and her fiance was right there with her. A chap named Paul Winterbottom, rather well known locally. She’s the real goods, all right. How could you have made such a mistake?”

Shayne said grimly, “It’s easy for me. How does she feel about her stepfather?”

“Exactly the opposite from the way you expected. Insists he’s a wonderful man, and can’t understand why anyone would have it in for him. The only way I can figure that deal, Mike, is that you had the wool pulled over your eyes by an impostor… Jane Smith.”

Shayne said, “You’re improving, Tim. One of these days I’m going to turn my license over to you.” They were on the Causeway now, leading to Miami Beach, and Shayne sighed deeply, glancing at his watch and then stepping harder on the gas as he realized they were due at Henderson’s in a few minutes.

Chief Will Gentry’s inconspicuously marked car was already parked in the circular driveway when they arrived, with Peter Painter’s official car standing close behind it, uniformed chauffeur lounging at the wheel. A Miami taxi turned into the driveway behind Shayne and stopped behind him when he pulled up under the porte-cochere.

Lucy Hamilton got out of the taxi first, and hurried up to him with both her hands outstretched, a look of uncertainty on her face. “I’ve got Mrs. Gleason, Michael.” She lowered her voice, glancing over her shoulder at the woman getting out of the taxi behind her.

“I couldn’t explain why you wanted her here, Michael… to confront the man who killed her husband. She’s… pretty near the breaking point.”

Shayne squeezed her hands tightly and pushed her toward Rourke. He went past her to Hilda, and linked his arm in hers while he leaned inside the cab and gave the driver two dollars. “I’ll take the ladies home, driver.” He stood for a moment and looked down into Hilda’s taut face and questioning eyes. He said, “I know this is going to be an ordeal, but it will soon be over and you can go home to Algonquin.”

“Accompanied by my husband in his coffin,” she said in a tight voice.

Shayne continued to look down into her upturned face without speaking. Then he turned her about firmly with his arm in hers, and they followed Timothy Rourke and Lucy Hamilton onto the porch where Harry Gleason’s bloodstains from the previous night had been cleanly washed away.

The same maid opened the door for them, and motioned them through the archway into the square room where the cocktail party had been held just twenty-four hours previously.

This time there were only four persons in the room: Henderson and his stepdaughter, and the two police officers from Miami and the Beach.

Muriel Graham sat at Henderson’s right, and gravely acknowledged the introductions made by Will Gentry, who stood in front of the fireplace with a half-smoked cigar in his hand, and as soon as the formalities were over and the others had seated themselves, Peter Painter addressed Shayne aggressively:

“Suppose you come to the point, Shayne; I understand it was your suggestion that we all come here.”

Shayne nodded and ruffled his red hair. He moved over to a position at the other end of the mantel from Gentry where he could look down at all the others. “I made a flying trip to Chicago today. To a little town called Denton, where I talked with a young couple named Mr. and Mrs. Roy Combs.”

Gentry and Henderson were the only two who reacted to the name. The police chief paused with his cigar halfway to his mouth, and turned to look at Shayne quizzically. Henderson sat bolt upright and opened his mouth twice as though to speak, but closed it both times.

“Your son, Henderson,” Shayne told him harshly. “Born twenty-two years ago when your wife died in a hospital as the result of burns she received when you and Harry Gleason burned down an empty warehouse to collect insurance on its non-existent contents.”

“No!” The exclamation was torn from Hilda Gleason’s lips. She wrung her hands together and her face twisted tragically. “Not Harry. I knew there was something, but…”

“Not Harry,” said Shayne, and his voice softened. “In fact, you can go right on being proud of Harry Gleason, Hilda. He was a hero twenty-two years ago even though he did serve a ten-year prison sentence for arson. It was he who went into the burning building and saved his partner’s wife from certain death while her own husband left her there to die with their unborn child still in her womb.”

Henderson dropped his face into his hands and did not speak. Painter jumped to his feet and thumbed his mustache. “I knew there was something like that about you all the time, Henderson. I sensed it from the beginning. That’s why your life was threatened… why Gleason was after you. Why you had to kill him on your own doorstep.”

Henderson lifted his face from his hands, looking old and broken. “I had to fire in self-defense. As soon as I saw him standing outside the door last night with a gun in his hand I knew it was he who had made the two previous attempts and that it was his life or mine. The law can’t touch me for that,” he ended fiercely. “And God knows I’ve paid through all these years for the terrible mistake I made that night so long ago. Don’t you think I’ve paid ten times over in sleepless nights and agony of spirit?”

He got to his feet slowly and faced seven stony faces with his arms outstretched and tears streaming down his cheeks.

“I didn’t know what I was doing that night. I thought they had both died in the fire. Do you understand? I thought I could do nothing to help them. Harry and I had a chartered plane waiting nearby, and I was in New Orleans before morning and aboard a ship bound for South America. It wasn’t until months later that I learned the full truth. By then, my wife was dead and Harry was serving his time. There was nothing I could do to help them by giving myself up. Don’t you see? Don’t you understand?”

No one answered him. Slowly, one by one, their eyes dropped from looking at him. Will Gentry chewed on his cigar for a moment and then said conversationally to Painter: “He’s your pigeon, Pete. I’m glad I don’t have to dirty my hands by taking him into custody.”

Henderson looked around at the ring of impassive faces slowly. He sat down jerkily and regained control of himself. “I don’t know what this fuss is all about,” he told them coldly and with an evil ring of triumph in his voice. “There is a statute of limitations that applies to a case like this. In the state of Colorado it went into effect some years ago… as I was very careful to ascertain on the best legal advice. So now I will have to ask you all to leave my house, reminding you that you are uninvited. Except you, Muriel,” he went on hastily and pleadingly, “I do hope and pray that you will listen to my side of it…”

She stood up and said coldly, “I have heard quite enough already. I’ll be happy to go with the others.”

Shayne said, “Wait a minute,” and the tone of his voice made them all stand very still. “The statute of limitations doesn’t apply to murder, Henderson.”

“It wasn’t murder,” he cried out fiercely. “The charge was suspicion of manslaughter… and to that charge, my friend, the statute of limitations does apply.”

“I’m talking about last night, not twenty-two years ago,” growled Shayne.

“But you know now why Gleason came here. That was the only thing that bothered Chief Painter before. All right. Now he knows. I hoped I could hide the truth, but… since I cannot, at least it will serve to clear me.”

Painter turned to Shayne angrily, and said, “The fact is, Shayne…”

“The fact is,” Shayne interrupted him blithely, “that Painter has been ahead of you all the time, Henderson. He put his finger on it from the first moment last night when he suspected that those first two attempts on your life had been planned by you as a build-up to last night so that you could shoot an unarmed man down in cold blood and claim self-defense. Remember, Petey, how you pointed that out yourself in this room last night?”

“I did, didn’t I?” Painter agreed in a pleased tone.

“But Harry Gleason wasn’t unarmed,” interjected Henderson. “He was carrying that twenty-two pistol you found on the porch beside him. The same one he’d tried to shoot me with in my car on Monday evening. Chief Painter’s own ballistic tests proved that, didn’t they, Chief?”

“Of course they did,” agreed Shayne. “And that’s exactly how Petey tied a noose around your neck.”

“Is it?” asked Painter with intense interest.

“Because Harry Gleason has an alibi for Monday evening when that twenty-two bullet was fired into your car cushion. He was drinking beer steadily in a bar in Miami from four o’clock in the afternoon until ten o’clock that evening. He never had that twenty-two in his possession, Henderson. You fired that decoy shot yourself just as you exploded the gas tank on your boat when you were at a carefully calculated distance from a rescue craft so you knew you’d be picked up before you drowned. You had it in your pocket last night when you went to the front door after inviting Gleason to come here and discuss payment of blackmail, and all you had to do was press his fingerprints on it after you killed him with a slug from your forty-five.

“For God’s sake, Henderson,” Shayne went on in a tone of deep disgust. “Painter has had you figured for this all the time and he already has a salvage crew bringing up the remains of your boat to get proof that there wasn’t any bomb at all, but just a gas tank that you blew up yourself.”

“Shayne is right, Henderson.” Peter Painter strutted forward officiously. “We’ve got you dead to rights for premeditated murder. I’m inviting you to be my guest for a few months until they hang you.”

“Why,” demanded Lucy Hamilton indignantly a little later while they were driving back to Miami with Rourke and Mrs. Gleason in the rear seat, “did you kow-tow so to Chief Painter and practically force him to take the credit for solving the case when you did everything yourself?”

Shayne grinned and reminded her, “We’re going to be in business here for a long time, angel. Cheapest way in the world to keep Petey in a good humor… and this time there wasn’t any money involved.”

“What’ll become of Jane Smith?” demanded Rourke from the rear.

Shayne chuckled and said, “Legally, I suppose Roy Combs will inherit his father’s money when Henderson hangs. So Jane will come out with just what she started out to get… and without murder on her mind.”

Content

Brett Halliday
The Homicidal Virgin

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