Brett Halliday

Dividend on Death

CHAPTER 1

THE GIRL WHO FACED Michael Shayne in his downtown Miami apartment was beautiful, but too unblemished to interest Shayne particularly. She was young, certainly not more than twenty, with a slender niceness of figure that was curiously rigid as she sat in a chair leaning toward him. Her lips were too heavily rouged, and her cheeks were too pale.

She said, “I am Phyllis Brighton,” as though her name explained everything.

It didn’t. It didn’t mean a thing to him. He said, “Yes?” wondering why there should be that expression of self-loathing in her eyes; she was too young and too beautiful to have that look. The pupils of her eyes were contracted and cloudy beneath heavy black lashes, and they stared into his face with a fixed intensity that wasn’t quite sane.

“We’re on the Beach,” the girl told him as though that should convey a great deal. She drew herself stiffly erect in the deep chair, gloveless fingers weaving together in her lap.

Shayne said, “I see,” without seeing at all. He stopped looking into her eyes and leaned back, loose-jointed and relaxed. “You don’t use the phrase in its slang meaning, I suppose?”

“What?” The girl was beginning to loosen up a trifle in response to Shayne’s easy manner.

“You don’t mean you’re down on your luck—a beachcomber?”

A nervous smile hovered on her tight lips. Shayne had an idea there would be a dimple in her left cheek if she relaxed and really smiled. “Oh, no,” she explained. “We’re at our Miami Beach estate for the season. My—father is Rufus Brighton.”

Things began clicking in Shayne’s mind. She was that Brighton. He crossed inordinately long legs and clasped his hands about one bony knee. “Your stepfather, I believe?”

“Yes.” Phyllis Brighton’s words came with a rush. “He had a stroke in New York four months ago—only a month after he and Mother married while I was in Europe. They were sending him down here away from the cold when I arrived so I came down with him and the doctor and his son.”

“Brighton’s son?” Shayne asked. “Or, the doctor’s?”

“Mr. Brighton’s son by his first marriage. Clarence. Mother stayed in New York to attend to some business matters and she is arriving this afternoon.” Her voice grew shaky on the final words.

Shayne waited for her to go on. There was no hurry or impatience in his mind. It was quiet and comfortably cool in the apartment above the Miami River, and he had nothing urgent on hand.

Phyllis sucked her breath in sharply and faltered, “I—don’t know how to say it.”

Shayne lit a cigarette and didn’t help her out. She had something inside her that she would have to get rid of her own way.

“I mean—well—you’re a private detective, aren’t you?”

Shayne rumpled his coarse red hair with his left hand and looked at her with a fleeting grin. “That’s a nice way of saying it. I’ve frequently been called worse—with emphasis.”

She looked away from him, wet her lips. Her next question came with a rush.

“Did you ever hear of someone killing a person they loved devotedly?”

Shayne shook his head slowly. “I’m thirty-five, Miss Brighton, and I’m never sure that I know what a person means when he speaks of love. Suppose you tell me what’s on your mind.”

Tears came into Phyllis’s eyes. She flung out her hands toward him. “Oh, I have to! I just have to tell someone or I’ll go mad!”

Shayne nodded, repressing an impulse to suggest it wouldn’t be a long journey. He looked directly into her eyes and asked, “Who are you thinking about killing, and why?”

She jerked back involuntarily, and her breath came out between clenched teeth. “It’s—Mother.”

Shayne said, “U-m-m,” and looked away from her, taking a deep drag on his cigarette. The girl’s answer had startled him for a moment, accustomed as Michael Shayne was to surprising revelations from clients.

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” The girl’s voice was almost out of control.

“We’re all slightly haywire at times.”

“I don’t mean that way. I mean really crazy. Oh, I know I am. I can feel it. It gets worse every day.”

Shayne nodded agreement, and mashed out his cigarette in a tray on the small table between them. “Haven’t you come to the wrong place? Sounds to me as though you need an alienist instead of a detective.”

“No, no!” She placed the palms of her hands flat on the table and leaned sharply forward. Full red lips were drawn away from white teeth, and her eyes were clouded with fear. “They tell me I’m going crazy. Sometimes I think they’re trying to drive me crazy. They say I may try to kill Mother. They’re making me believe it. I won’t let myself believe it but then I do. With Mother coming this afternoon—” Her voice trailed off to silence.

Shayne lit another cigarette and pushed his pack toward her. She didn’t see it. She was staring upward into his face.

“You got to help me. You’ve got to.”

“All right,” agreed Shayne soothingly. “I’ll help you. But I’m no good at guessing games.”

She said, “It’s—it’s—I can’t bear to talk about it. It’s too awful. I just can’t.”

Michael Shayne slowly unlimbered himself and stood up. He had a tall angular body that concealed a lot of solid weight, and his freckled cheeks were thin to gauntness. His rumpled hair was violently red, giving him a little-boy look curiously in contrast with the harshness of his features. When he smiled, the harshness went out of his face and he didn’t look at all like a hard-boiled private detective who had come to the top the tough way.

He smiled down at Phyllis Brighton, turned away from her, and crossed the living-room of his apartment to an open east window which let in the afternoon breeze from Biscayne Bay. Better, he figured, to give her a chance to spill the whole thing. It didn’t look like a real case, but he wanted to give her a chance.

“Take it easy.” His voice was unruffled, steadying. “You’ve got things bottled up inside of you that you need to get out into the open. I don’t think you need an alienist after all. I think you need someone to talk to. Go ahead. I’m listening.”

“Thanks.” The word was a faint whisper which barely carried to him across the stillness. “If you only knew—”

Shayne did know, sort of. He remembered reading the papers, and he could guess at other things that hadn’t been in print.

He said, “You’re not going crazy, of course. Count that off your list. You wouldn’t realize it if you were.” He paused. “About your mother—”

“She’s coming this afternoon. From New York.”

“You told me that.”

“I hear them talking about me when they think I’m not listening. I heard them last night—talking about having me watched when Mother arrives.” She shuddered. “That’s what gave me the idea of coming to you—myself.”

“You’ve said ‘they’ several times. Who are ‘they’?”

“Doctor Pedique and Monty. Mr. Montrose. He’s Mr. Brighton’s private secretary.”

Shayne turned and lounged against the window, elbows hooked on the sill.

“What basis is there for their fear? What’s it all about? Do you hate your mother?”

“No! I love her. That’s—what they say is the matter.” A rush of blood crimsoned Phyllis’s cheeks beneath Shayne’s steady gaze. She lowered her eyes.

This seemed to him to be getting them nowhere. “Suppose you tell me just what they do say.” Shayne’s voice was gently impersonal. “Don’t make any excuses or explanations. Let me sort things out for myself first.”

Phyllis Brighton clasped her hands together and began Jo speak in a glib, curiously sickening patter, as though the words had been committed to memory and she was delivering them without letting herself consider their meaning. “They say I’ve got an Electra complex and it’s driving me insane with jealousy because Mother married Mr. Brighton and I’ll kill her before I’ll let him have her.”

“Is it true?” Shayne threw the question at her before she had time to catch her breath.

She raised her opaque eyes to his and cried out a vehement, “No!” then dropped them and added as if the words might strangle her, “I don’t know.”

Shayne said dryly, “You’d better make up your mind, if she’s due this afternoon.”

“It’s too horrible to be true. It isn’t. It can’t be. But I—everything’s mixed up. I can’t think any more. I’m afraid to let myself think. There’s something horrible inside of me. I can feel it growing. I can’t escape it. They say I can’t.”

“Isn’t that something you’d better decide for yourself rather than let them decide for you?”

“But I—can’t think straight any more. It’s all like a nightmare and I have—spells.”

She was so damned young. Michael Shayne studied her morosely from across the room. Too young to be having spells and to have lost her ability to think straight. Still, he wasn’t a nursemaid. He shook his head irritably, went to a wall liquor cabinet and took down a bottle of cognac. Facing her, he held it up and raised bushy red eyebrows.

“Have a drink?”

“No.” She was looking down at the carpet. While he poured himself one she began talking with dreary hopelessness.

“I suppose it was silly of me to come to you. No one can help me. I’m in a lonely place, Mr. Shayne. And I can’t face it alone any more. Perhaps they’re right.” Her voice sank to an awed whisper. “I do hate him. I can’t help it. I don’t see how Mother could have done it. We were so happy together. Now, it’s spoiled. What’s the use of—going on?” Her lips scarcely moved.

Shayne let the drink trickle down his throat. The girl was talking to herself, not to him. She seemed to have forgotten him, in fact, and was staring at the window with remote, glazed eyes. After a while she stood up slowly, her face twitching, and took one slow step toward the window. Abruptly she flung herself at it in one desperately swift motion.

Shayne lunged in front of her.

Then she was clawing at him, her breath coming in short gasps. Shayne’s face hardened; he smashed one big hand down on her shoulder, and shook her with an almost savage violence.

When she went limp he slipped his arm about her waist to keep her from sliding to the floor; she hung there with her head back and eyes closed, her breasts taut against the thin knit jacket of her sports outfit.

Shayne’s face lost its impersonal fierceness. He looked down at her face moodily, remarking how her lips were parted and her breath was coming unevenly. It was a hell of a note. She was just a kid, but old enough to know better than to act like one.

Abruptly, he realized he didn’t believe that stuff she had hinted about herself and her mother. He would have felt an instinctive repulsion if it was true, and she was not repellent. Far from it. He had to shake her again roughly to keep himself from kissing her.

She opened her eyes and swayed back when he shook her. “That’ll be enough of that,” he said with self-annoyance in his tone.

She sank back into a chair and regarded him gravely, catching her lower lip between sharp teeth. Her eyes were clearer. “I’m all right—now.”

Shayne stood before her with his hands on his hips. It hadn’t been an act, that hysteria of hers. None of it was an act. But it didn’t make sense. Still, he told himself, he liked things that didn’t make sense. Hadn’t he started passing up routine stuff a long time ago? That’s why he had no downtown office and no regular staff. That sort of phony front he left to the punks with whom Miami is infested during the season. Mike Shayne didn’t touch a case unless it interested him. Or unless he was dead broke. This case—if it was a case and not a case history—interested him. There was the feel of beneath-the-surface stuff that set his nerves tingling in a way that hadn’t happened to him for a long time.

He sat down in front of Phyllis Brighton and said, “What you need more than anything else right now is someone to believe in you. All right. You’ve got that. But you’ll have to start trying to believe in yourself a little bit. Is that a bargain?”

Phyllis’s eyes blinked with tears, like a small girl’s. “You’re wonderful,” she said finally. “I don’t know how I can ever pay you.”

“That is an angle,” Shayne admitted. “Haven’t you any money?”

“No. That is—not enough, I’m afraid. But—would these do?”

She lifted a beautifully matched string of pearls from a bag and held them toward him with a hesitation that was either genuine timidity or a wonderful imitation.

Shayne let the pearls dribble into his hand without change of expression. “They’ll do very nicely.” He opened a drawer of the center table and dropped them in carelessly. His manner became brisk and reassuring.

“Let’s get this straight, now, without hysterics. Your mother is coming from New York, and you’re suffering from a morbid inward fear that you may go out of your head and do her some harm. I don’t believe there’s any danger, but we’ll let that pass. The important thing is to see that nothing of the sort can happen. When is your mother expected?”

“On the six o’clock train.”

Shayne nodded. “Everything will be taken care of. You probably won’t see me, but you have to remember that it’s part of a detective’s job not to be seen. The important thing for you to keep in mind is that I’m making myself responsible for you. The matter is out of your hands and in mine. If you feel you can trust me.”

“Oh, I do!”

“That’s swell, then.” Shayne patted her hand and stood up. “I’ll be seeing you,” he promised her casually.

She got up and moved close to him impulsively. “I can’t tell you how you’ve made me feel. Everything is different. I’m glad I came.”

Shayne went to the door with her and took her hand briefly. “Keep your chin up.”

“I will.” She smiled uncertainly and went down the corridor.

Shayne stood for a moment looking after her and rubbing his chin. Then he closed the door, went back to the center table, and lifted out the string of pearls to study them with narrowed eyes. He wasn’t an expert but they certainly didn’t look phony. He dropped them back into the drawer, shaking his head. There were a lot of possible angles.

Ten minutes later, when he left his apartment, he was whistling tunelessly. At the desk downstairs he told the clerk he’d be gone half an hour—he never forgot to do that at the start of a case—and went down the street to a newspaper office, carefully read all the dope he could find on the Brightons, and went back to the hotel. This time he entered by the side door and climbed the service stairway to his second-floor apartment. His phone was ringing. It was the clerk.

“Mr. Shayne, there’s a Doctor Joel Pedique here to see you.”

Shayne frowned at the telephone and told the clerk to send Dr. Pedique up. Even after he had hung up and given the room a swift, characteristically speculative look, he was still frowning. From what Phyllis Brighton had told him, he had an instinctive feeling that he wasn’t going to like Dr. Pedique.

He didn’t. Dr. Joel Pedique was a man whom Shayne, surveying him at the doorway, would have instantly disliked if he had met him with no previous knowledge of him at all. He was small-boned and dark-skinned. His black hair was too long and it glistened with oil, combed straight back from a V where it grew low on his forehead. His lips were full and unpleasantly red. His eyes were beady and nervous, and his nostrils flared as he breathed. The rest of his appearance pleased Shayne equally little. The man’s double-breasted blue coat clung snugly to his sloping shoulders and sunken chest, and immaculate white flannels were tight about plump hips.

Shayne stood aside with his hand on the doorknob and said, “Come in, doctor.”

Dr. Pedique held out his hand. “Mr. Shayne?”

Shayne nodded, closed the door, and walked back to sit down without taking the doctor’s hand.

Dr. Pedique followed mincingly and sat down.

“You have been recommended to me, Mr. Shayne, as an efficient and discreet private detective.” Shayne nodded and waited. The doctor folded his hands in his lap and leaned forward. They were effeminate hands, soft and recently manicured. “I have an exceedingly delicate mission for you,” he went on in a voice like thin silk, his sharp white teeth flashing behind full lips. “I am the physician attending Mr. Rufus Brighton, of whom you must have heard.” He paused as though for effect.

Shayne blinked and looked at his cigarette. He said, “Yes,” noncommittally.

“An exceedingly curious and difficult situation has arisen.” Dr. Pedique seemed to choose his words carefully. “You are perhaps not aware that Mr. Brighton has lately married, and his stepdaughter has accompanied him here.” He paused again.

Shayne kept on looking at his cigarette and didn’t tell him whether or not he was aware of the fact.

The doctor purred on. “The unfortunate child is subject to certain—ah—hallucinations, I may call them in nontechnical terms, stimulated by a violent sexual oestrus and marked by unmistakable symptoms of an Electra complex. In her depressed moods she sometimes becomes violent, and I fear the poor child might do harm to her mother if such a mood were to come upon her.”

“Why the hell,” Shayne asked irritatedly, “don’t you put her in an asylum?”

“But that would be too terrible,” Dr. Joel Pedique exclaimed, spreading his hands out, rounded palms upward. “I have every hope of effecting an ultimate cure if I can keep her mind at ease. The shock of being incarcerated in an asylum would completely unhinge her reason.”

Shayne asked, “Where do I come in?”

“Her mother arrives from the north this afternoon. I should like to arrange for some sort of a superficial guard to be kept over the mother or child during the first few days of her stay. During that period I shall keep the child under close observation and determine definitely whether she can be cured or if she is doomed to enter a psychopathic ward.”

“I see.” Shayne nodded slowly. “You want me to arrange to keep the crazy girl from murdering her mother while you observe her?”

“Bluntly, yes.” Dr. Joel Pedique nodded his small head with a birdlike motion.

“Do you want her tailed from the moment of the mother’s arrival?” Shayne became very brisk and businesslike.

“I hardly think that will be necessary.” The doctor smiled thinly. “I feel that a rather informal watch will be sufficient. It is a matter which must be handled with discretion and the utmost privacy. I—wondered if you might undertake it yourself instead of sending an operative.”

“I might,” Shayne told him casually. “It will cost you more.”

“That’s perfectly splendid.” Dr. Pedique stood up enthusiastically, slipped his right hand inside his coat and drew out a fat wallet. “I suggest that you drop over tonight after dinner and meet Mrs. Brighton and the girl. Everything could be arranged quietly.”

Shayne stood up. “I’ll be there,” he promised, “about eight-thirty.”

Dr. Pedique nodded and fiddled with his wallet.

“Two hundred for a retainer,” Shayne told him.

Dr. Pedique’s eyebrows shot up. Shayne stared at him coldly. The doctor reluctantly drew out two one-hundred-dollar bills. Shayne crumpled them in his hand and led the doctor to the corridor door.

“Eighty-thirty,” he said as he let the doctor out. Dr. Pedique bowed stiffly and went down the corridor. Shayne closed the door and walked back to the table, smoothing the bills out between his fingers. He opened the drawer, took the pearls out, rolled them up in the bills and stuck the wad in his coat pocket.

Then he grinned and muttered, “Now, if the old lady would come around and hire me as her bodyguard, the setup would be perfect.”

CHAPTER 2

AT SEVEN-THIRTY, SHAYNE CAME up a side street from Flagler to the service entrance of his apartment hotel. Down concrete steps and through a door into a square vestibule, then up two flights and to the right.

In his apartment, he crossed to the table, took the wadded pearls and bills from his pocket, unrolled the pearls and let them lie shimmering on the table while his eyes brooded over them. After a minute, and leaving the bills on the table, he carried the pearls into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out the hydrator, which held a head of lettuce. He put the pearls in the bottom, scattered lettuce leaves over them, and replaced the pan.

When he returned to the living-room, he was carrying a glass and a pitcher of crushed ice cubes and water. He set these things down on the table and brought out a bottle of Martell five-star cognac and a wineglass from a cupboard. Shayne’s actions were apparently almost unconscious; the precise somnambulism of habit was in every motion, an automatic smoothness that lasted while he sat down, poured a drink, and lit a cigarette. There was nothing in his face to show what he was thinking.

For the next half hour he sat silently, alternately sipping from the wineglass and the water glass, lighting one cigarette from another. Finally he stood up, turned out the lights and went out. His expression had not altered, but there was purposefulness in his walk.

The elevator deposited him in a large and ornately furnished lobby. Shayne thrust his way across it toward the desk, caught the clerk’s eye, and received a negative shake of his head. Without stopping he went on, out through the side front entrance and across to a row of garages, where he unlocked the padlock on one door and folded himself into the driver’s seat of a middle-aged car. Once the car was backed out, Shayne drove a winding course to Southeast Second Street, thence east to Biscayne Boulevard, and north on the right-hand drive. He paid no attention to his route, and very little to the other cars on the road.

At Thirteenth Street he turned to the right at the traffic circle and sped over the causeway across the Bay. When he reached the peninsula, he drove as far east as the ocean would allow, then turned north. His watch told him it was eight-twenty; the place could hardly be more than a few minutes ahead of him. Shayne relaxed imperceptibly at the wheel; he began to look around him. There was little traffic on the wide street, and few strolling figures in Lummus Park, He checked the house numbers as he drove along, and a short distance beyond the Roney Plaza, slowed and turned into a winding concrete drive between granite gateposts.

The general look of the place was luxurious but conventional to the point of dullness. There was a carefully tended terraced lawn on the left and a wide landscaped area of tropical shrubbery. The dark bulk of a huge mansion showed as he followed the drive to a porte-cochere, bougainvillea-draped in front. Lights shone from the lower windows.

An elderly woman in a maid’s uniform opened the door. He told her his name, and she said he was expected in the library and would he follow her?

Shayne did, down a dimly-lit vaulted hallway, past a balustraded stairway. A woman was descending the stairway, and she reached the bottom just as Shayne passed. She wore the white uniform of a nurse and carried a napkin-covered tray. She was a full-bodied blonde of about thirty, with predatory eyes.

Shayne glanced at her as he passed and caught a fleeting, almost animal look on her face. Her lips were pouted as though in assent, though he had not spoken to her.

The maid led him on to the end of the hall and turned down a narrower one until she stopped outside a wide partly-open door and said, “They’re expecting you inside.” He hardly noticed her noiseless, gliding retreat. It took plenty of money, he reflected, to get that kind of service.

Light streamed through the narrow opening, and there was the low hum of voices. Shayne bent his head and listened but could distinguish no words. He pushed the door open a little more and looked in.

There was the sound of slithering feet on the carpet behind him. Sharp fingers dug into his arm. He turned to look into the white face of Phyllis Brighton. She looked ghastly in the dim light. The lashes were drawn back from her eyeballs as though by some mechanical device, and the pupils were so contracted that the entire eyeball seemed to consist only of smoky iris. Shayne saw that she was wearing a flimsy chiffon nightgown and that her feet were bare. Streaks of blood showed darkly red down the front of her nightgown.

He stared at her face and at the crimson stains, his mouth thin and hard. When he saw her lips begin to move, he thrust her back away from the doorway.

She spoke in a flat, low monotone. “I’ve done it. You’re too late. I’ve already done it.”

Without replying, Shayne pushed her back farther from the door and held her out at arm’s length to study her. Her eyes stared back, but he felt that they didn’t really see him. She stood stiffly erect with her gown hanging slackly from shoulders and breasts. Her lips continued to move, but no articulate words came forth. There was only a low moan each time she exhaled. When she lifted one of her hands, he saw that the inside of the palm was smeared with blood. He caught her wrist as she started to grasp his arm. The abruptness of his motion had some effect on her; she drew back from him, her eyes still staring and sightless, and then turned and led him down the hall. Shayne followed, holding tightly to her wrist. Her bare feet glided soundlessly on the carpet, and her breath wheezed in and out between set teeth. There was a back stairway at the end of the hall. Shayne put his left arm about her shoulders as they climbed the stairs side by side. Her flesh was cold under the thin gown. At the top of the stairs she turned to the right and stopped in front of a closed door. Her head moved jerkily, and her face was contorted with grief or remorse.

“She’s in there.”

Shayne opened the door and fumbled for a wall switch, keeping his arm tightly about Phyllis’s shoulders.

The switch lighted a shaded floor lamp standing near the foot of a bed. Shayne moved inside, and the girl moved with him. He closed the door softly with his heel and gazed down somberly at the body of a murdered woman lying outstretched on the bed. One white hand trailed down limply toward the floor, and there was the slow drip of blood into a thickening pool on the carpet.

Shayne’s arm tightened about the girl’s shoulders as a shudder traversed her body. He roughly turned her away while he stepped near the bed and looked down silently at the woman whom he had promised to protect from harm. She wore, he noticed, a gray tailored traveling-suit, with gray blouse and shoes, and she appeared not to have struggled against death. Blood was clotted on the white pillow and continued to seep from a gaping wound in her throat.

Shayne turned away from the bed, his left arm crushing Phyllis to him. Three traveling-bags stood in partially unpacked disarray near the door. A fitted overnight bag lay open on the brocaded bench before the vanity, and there were toilet articles scattered out in front of the mirror. Half carrying the girl, Shayne moved to the vanity. There was an open hammered-silver jewel case holding a miscellany of personal jewelry. An elaborately tooled handbag of gray leather lay beside the jewel case.

Shayne opened it with his free hand and dumped its contents out. There was a lipstick and compact, a wad of bills, and a neatly folded cablegram, a small leather key-tainer. He smoothed the cablegram out and read it with a frown.

HAVE VERIFIED AUTHENTICITY AND WILL RETURN IMMEDIATELY USUAL ROUTE CABLE WHETHER NEW YORK OR MIAMI

HENDERSON

It had been sent from London a week before, to Mrs. Rufus Brighton in New York. Penciled on the bottom were the words: Will meet you in Miami.

Shayne stuffed the cablegram in his pocket. Phyllis Brighton stirred inside the circle of his arm and began moaning. He led her to the door, put both his hands on her shoulders and shook her. Her eyes came open, and she stopped moaning.

“Where is your room?” Shayne formed each word distinctly.

She shook her head as though too dazed to understand, but reached falteringly for the doorknob. Shayne switched off the light and closed the door. Phyllis moved stiffly ahead of him down the hall to another door which stood partly ajar and which she entered.

A bed lamp burned at the head of a bed which he saw had lately been occupied. On the rug beside the bed lay a large wooden-handled butcher knife. The blade was stained red, and the grip was smeared with blood.

Shayne pushed Phyllis down on the bed and stared at the knife. Then he looked at her and asked, “Is that what you did it with?” His face and voice were expressionless.

She shuddered and did not look at the knife. “I just woke up and—and there it was. I—don’t know. I guess—it must be.”

Shayne said, “Stand up.”

She obeyed like a docile child.

“Look at me.”

She looked at him. The pupils of her eyes had expanded to normal size but they were still glassy and unfocused. He asked, “How do you know you did it?”

“I just woke up and knew.”

“Did you remember doing it?”

“Yes. As soon as I saw the knife I remembered.”

Shayne shook his head. Her voice was dull, as if the words were unimportant to her. Something stunk about the entire setup. He didn’t know just what. There wasn’t time to dig into it now.

He said, “Take off your nightgown. It’s got blood on it.”

Still staring into his eyes, Phyllis’s hands went stiffly downward, gathered up the bottom hem of her gown and lifted it over her head.

Shayne turned his eyes away and held out his hand for it. Beads of sweat stood on his corrugated forehead. This was a hell of a time to be thinking about—anything except earning that string of pearls Phyllis had given him. Keeping his gaze averted, he said, “Give me the nightgown.”

She put it in his hand and waited further orders.

He balled the soft material up in his fingers and said, “Now go in the bathroom and wash your hands and dry them. Get another nightgown and put it on.”

His eyes followed her across the room to the bathroom door. When she went inside he shook his head, then bent and picked up the knife by the blade. He wrapped the bloody nightgown around the handle and transferred his hold there. Then he unbuttoned his coat and slipped the knife, blade downward, into the inside pocket; forcing the point through the lining until the handle rested against the bottom of the pocket. He then stuffed the rest of the nightgown inside the pocket and buttoned his coat.

Phyllis Brighton came out of the bathroom, took a clean nightgown from a hanger in the closet, and slipped it on.

Shayne stood beside the bed and watched her. She came back and stood before him numbly, as though she had no will of her own, but waited for him to instruct her.

“Get into bed,” he said. “Cover up and turn out the light and go to sleep or pretend to sleep. Forget about everything. Everything, do you understand?”

“I understand,” she said in a flat, weary voice.

“You’d damn well better.” He watched her get in bed and waited until she turned out the light. Then he went out in the hall and closed the door. He hesitated a moment as he observed the key in the outside lock. With a scowl almost of uncertainty, he turned the key, left it in the door, and strode down the hall toward the stairs.

He met no one as he padded back to the library. The entire incident had not delayed him more than ten minutes. This time he did not hesitate before the door.

Four men were seated in the library when he went in. Dr. Joel Pedique, who had visited him that afternoon; Dr. Hilliard, a tall, ascetic man with eyeglasses fastened to a wide black ribbon, whom he knew; and two others who he guessed were Mr. Montrose and Clarence Brighton.

“The maid told me I was expected,” Shayne said as he stepped into the room.

Dr. Pedique rose and bowed from the hips. “We have been waiting for you, Mr. Shayne.”

Shayne smiled and said, “Hello, Hilliard.”

“Good evening, Shayne.” Dr. Hilliard didn’t get up, but smiled courteously.

“Mr. Montrose, Mr. Shayne,” said Dr. Pedique.

Mr. Montrose was a wispy little man, bald and cleanshaven. His clothes seemed too large for him, and his face was a pasty-white. He stood up and bowed, and Shayne nodded curtly.

“And this is Clarence Brighton,” Dr. Pedique went on, his voice becoming more effusive.

The youth crossed his ankles in front of him, looked at Shayne in low-lidded indifference, and muttered something.

Shayne looked the boy over carefully as he took the chair Dr. Pedique offered him. About twenty, with a slender, well-knit body, slack mouth, and furtive hazel eyes. His hands were small, and the two first fingers of the left hand were heavily stained with nicotine. All in all, there was an obvious but ill-defined air of defiance about him.

Shayne said, “Well?” and let his gaze slide to Dr. Pedique as the latter resumed his seat.

“We were discussing you and some of your exploits,” Dr. Pedique told him. “Doctor Milliard has been kind enough to tell us something about your work.”

Shayne lit a cigarette and grinned amiably at Dr. Milliard. “Hope you didn’t tell them anything they shouldn’t know, doc. These people are my clients.”

“I assured them that you generally get results,” he answered seriously. Dr. Milliard was one of the most respected members of his profession in Miami, an officer of the local Medical Association, and prominent in civic affairs.

“That’s all right. So long as you didn’t tell them how I go about getting results.” Shayne then turned to Pedique. “I’m here on business. Everything’s all right so far, I judge,” he said casually.

“Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. Mrs. Brighton went to her room immediately after dinner and is resting from the trip. She asked me to bring you to meet her before you go away. The—ah—patient is resting quietly, also.”

“That’s great,” said Shayne. “Now, have you worked out any definite plan of action?”

“That, I should think, would be for you to decide.” Dr. Pedique cocked his head, nodded with pursed lips. “With all the facts in hand, you may proceed as you see fit.”

Shayne nodded and turned again to Dr. Milliard. “How about it, doc? Is Pedique having a pipe dream or is there any danger of the girl harming her mother? How do you see the setup?”

Dr. Milliard brought the tips of his fingers together in front of his chest. “I can’t venture a prediction, having no more intimate knowledge of the case than a somewhat cursory observation has given me. I do approve, however, of taking all possible precautions.”

“Christ!” Shayne complained, “it’s as hard to get a definite opinion out of one of you birds as a lawyer.”

Dr. Milliard smiled suavely. “Mental cases require careful study and observation over a long period,” he told Shayne. “I haven’t,” he added, “been consulted on Miss Brighton’s case.”

Shayne shot a look at Dr. Pedique. “You’ve kept her to yourself, huh?”

Dr. Pedique smiled thinly. “I felt perfectly capable of coping with her case. With Mr. Brighton I did consider that a consultant was necessary.”

“See here,” Shayne said abruptly, “how does the girl’s name come to be Brighton? I understood she wasn’t his daughter.”

“He adopted her at the time of his marriage,” Mr. Montrose explained. “It was his desire that she be legally regarded as his daughter.”

Shayne watched Clarence as Mr. Montrose ended. The boy’s lips poked out sulkily. He uncrossed and recrossed his ankles.

“You’d better let me have a talk with Mrs. Brighton and see if I can arrange a sensible method of going about this,” Shayne said. He stood up, and Dr. Pedique arose hurriedly. “By the way,” Shayne added, “how does she take this? Mrs. Brighton, I mean.”

“She was much relieved when I outlined the arrangement,” Dr. Pedique said. “She is greatly concerned about the girl, of course, but she admitted to me that she had felt cause for alarm on previous occasions.” He slid through the door and held it for Shayne who passed through with a nod of his head toward the three men remaining in the library.

“This way.” Dr. Pedique led him down the hall in the direction the maid had brought him, and on to the wide stairway. They went up the stairs silently, and at the top were met by the blond nurse whom Shayne had seen before. She carried a folded towel on her arm and was about to pass them when Dr. Pedique held out his hand and said, “Ah, Charlotte, how is the patient?”

“He’s resting, doctor.” Her voice was low and huskily vibrant. Her eyes slipped past the doctor’s face and rested with approval on the towering figure of the detective.

“That’s fine,” said Dr. Pedique. The nurse went on down the hall, followed by Shayne’s speculative gaze.

“This way.” Dr. Pedique led him to the same door which Phyllis had taken him to. The room was dark. Dr. Pedique knocked softly. There was no response. He knocked louder and listened, then said, “I wonder—” and tried the knob. The door swung inward and he called softly, “Mrs. Brighton.”

When there was no response, he switched on the light. Shayne stood directly behind him and watched his body stiffen as he looked toward the bed. He crossed the room swiftly and bent over her. Shayne strode in after him, hard-eyed and watchful.

The face which Dr. Pedique raised to Shayne was contorted with horror—and with some other emotion which it was impossible to diagnose at the moment. He shuddered and averted his eyes from the chalk-white face of the woman on the bed. His face was greenish-pale even in the warm light from the floor lamp.

“Looks as if you won’t be needing me now,” Shayne said.

The dapper little physician rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “This is terrible, terrible,” he groaned.

“It’s not nice,” Shayne admitted.

Dr. Pedique risked a second glance at the body and said, more firmly, “It’s—that girl! We thought she had gone to bed. She must have slipped in here and—God! I’ve been a fool. I should have had a nurse watching her every minute.” His suave, dapper manner deserted him completely, and he covered his face with his hands.

The spectacle began to irk Shayne. “Looks like a case for the police. For Christ’s sake, pull yourself together.”

Dr. Pedique made an effort to recapture his professional manner. “I feel wholly responsible,” he said. “Had I used better judgment, I should have sent the girl to an asylum instead of exposing her mother to this danger.”

“Afterthoughts aren’t worth a damn,” observed Shayne. “Let’s call the police and the others, and then get hold of the girl before she bumps somebody else off.”

“It is the strictest necessity,” Dr. Pedique readily agreed. He slid past Shayne and ran to the top of the stairs to call the news downstairs and ask that the police be notified. Then he came back to Shayne, his mouth twitching.

“The girl’s room. We’ll see if she’s there.”

“We’ll wait for some of the others to come up,” Shayne protested. “Doctor Hilliard should be here. A crazy woman with a knife is likely to be a tough proposition.”

Dr. Pedique agreed, his breath coming nervously and noisily. Clarence and Dr. Hilliard raced up the stairs; Shayne could hear the tension in Montrose’s voice, below, as he telephoned the police.

Shayne took the newcomers to the open door of the death chamber and they both looked in. Dr. Hilliard fiddled with his eyeglasses and shook his head drearily. The boy, Clarence, drew back after one hasty glance during which his face went white and drawn.

“Where’s the girl’s room?” Shayne asked Dr. Pedique.

“This way.” They followed him down the hall. Arriving at what Shayne knew to be Phyllis’s door, Dr. Pedique stood back and moistened his lips, waiting for someone else to take the initiative.

Shayne stepped to the door and knocked authoritatively. There was no response. Then, he tried the knob. The door would not open. “Hell,” he muttered, “it’s locked.” Making certain that Dr. Hilliard observed his every move, Shayne turned the key in the lock and opened the door.

The others crowded in the doorway behind him. The room was dark. He groped for a switch, found it quickly, and pressed it. As the light came on, Phyllis Brighton sat up in bed with a little scream of fright. She gasped, “What is it?” and stared at them with distended eyes.

Shayne stepped aside so the others could see her, and muttered, “Hell, she doesn’t look like a murderess.”

“What is it?” she screamed again, half rising from her bed. The front of her nightgown showed stainless and clean.

“Hold everything, sister,” Shayne said as he would have soothed a small child, “your mother has had an accident.”

“Oh!” Her knuckles went to her mouth where she bit at them frantically as if to hold back a scream. Her slender body crouched away from the men as she would have drawn back from wild animals ready to attack her.

“Keep as calm as you can,” Shayne told her. “You didn’t do it. Your door was locked on the outside and you couldn’t have got out if you’d tried.”

“Oh! Where is she? I must see her,” the girl cried. She threw the covers back and started to get out of bed.

Shayne stepped forward and put his hand on her shoulder and gently forced her back. “Take it easy. You’re not in any shape to see her now.”

She sank back obediently. Shayne turned to Hilliard and said, “Better look after her, doc. Get her calmed down before the police come.”

Dr. Hilliard stepped forward with professional calm, and Shayne said to the others, “We’ll get out. Whoever did the killing must have locked the girl in her room first. It’s a cinch she didn’t do it and then lock herself in.”

Dr. Pedique took a white silk handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face. “I don’t understand,” he said as they went down the hallway.

Shayne grinned at his back. “I don’t, either,” he said, “but I guess my job’s finished. I’ll be running along.”

“Wait!” sputtered Dr. Pedique. “The murderer. The police will be here!”

“Let them worry about the murderer,” said Shayne. “That’s their job, not mine. I’m breezing before they start pestering me with idiotic questions.” He went down the front stairs while the doctor and Clarence stared after him, bewildered.

Shayne lost no time in getting his car out of the drive. Two blocks south a racing automobile passed him with screaming siren. He grinned at the police car and drove leisurely back to his apartment hotel in Miami. This time, he went in the front way and up the elevator. A grin accompanied an involuntary sigh when he closed the door of his apartment and walked over to the center table. He took off his coat and gingerly took the butcher knife and nightgown from his pocket and laid them on the table beside the bottle of cognac. The look of being withdrawn from what he was doing began to come over his face once again. It meant that Michael Shayne was beginning to add up the score. So, when his eye lit on the two hundred-dollar bills, which were lying where he had left them, he merely grunted, picked them up, and stuck them in his pocket without any indication of whether he was surprised to find them still there or not. Then he went to the bedroom and undressed, slipped his gaunt length into tan pajamas, and pulled on a dressing-robe. With felt bedroom slippers on his feet, he padded out to the other room, took the tall glass to the kitchen where he crushed new ice cubes and made another glass of ice water.

Returning, he set the glass carefully on the table, poured a wineglass of cognac, and set cigarettes and matches on the small stand near by. Next he lowered himself info the deep chair, lit a cigarette, and proceeded to gaze through the blue smoke at the chiffon-wrapped butcher knife before him.

It was a few minutes after ten when he sat down. Two hours later the ash tray was filled with half-smoked butts, the level of the liquid in the brandy bottle was considerably lower, the small amount of water remaining in the glass was warm, but he had reached no conclusion. Carefully he poured another glass of cognac and debated whether he should get more ice. Deciding it was too much trouble, he lifted the glass to his lips.

He held it there, but his eyes shifted toward the door as a soft tapping sounded on the panel. After one reflective sip, he set the glass down carefully and stood erect. The tapping sounded again. Shayne’s arm shot out and opened the table drawer. The other arm swept the knife and nightgown in it. He closed the drawer soundlessly and padded to the door.

When he opened it and looked out, he said, “I’ve been expecting you,” and stood aside to let Phyllis Brighton enter.

CHAPTER 3

SHE WAS WEARING A TWO-PIECE KNITTED DRESS which clung tightly to her firm young body. Hatless, her black hair was wind-blown and very curly; without make-up, her complexion seemed engagingly fresh, though she was unnaturally pale. Shayne studied her sharply. She passed him toward the center of the room, whirled about to face him with the palms of her hands flat on the table behind her as he closed the door.

“Tell me I—that I didn’t do it.”

“You tell me,” Shayne suggested. He moved toward her, and his face was grim.

Her elongated eyes held his, and her body was tensely arched like a drawn bow. When she answered, her voice sounded as if she had been running. “No one else can help me. I had to come to you.”

He stood close to her and said harshly, “You’ll get us both in the jug and then I won’t be a hell of a lot of help. Why in the name of God did you come here and how close are the cops on your tail?”

“I had to come here. They’re not following me. I slipped my car out of the garage and came out the back way.”

“Who saw you come upstairs?”

“No one. I found a side entrance.”

“Where’s your car parked?”

“In a parking-lot on Second Street.”

Shayne nodded glumly and stepped around her to the table to light a cigarette. The girl’s eyes followed him, her body holding the same tense pose, as if she feared she would wilt to the floor if she relaxed one muscle.

Shayne frowned at the cigarette and went to the cabinet where he got another wineglass. Still only the girl’s eyes and head moved. The rest of her was like a brittle statue.

Shayne poured both glasses full and moved in front of her with one in each hand.

“Drink this.”

She made no move to touch the glass he offered, shaking her head despairingly. “I can’t. I never drink.”

“It’s time you learned,” Shayne told her. “You’ll learn a lot of things not in the book if you stick around. Drink it.”

Her eyes wavered before his. Her right hand came up slowly from the table top, and then she swayed. Shayne cursed deep in his throat and caught her, spilling some of the cognac. He held the glass in his other hand to her lips and she swallowed obediently. A brief grin broke the hard intentness of Shayne’s look; he tilted the glass up and kept on holding her till it was empty. Phyllis Brighton choked and sputtered, and he let her down into the chair he had been sitting in.

“The first pint is always the hardest,” he told her cheerfully. “I’ll get some ice water.”

He drained the other glass, and setting them both on the table, went to the kitchen and fixed a small pitcher of ice water. Phyllis’s eyes were watering, and she was still sputtering when he came back. He poured a glass of water and handed it to her, pulled up another chair in front of hers so their knees touched when he sat down.

“All right,” he said. “Tell me all about it.”

“What can I tell you?” She shuddered helplessly. “I came here for you to tell me.”

Shayne lit another cigarette and said carefully, “What am I supposed to know, sister, that you don’t know?”

She set the glass down and gripped the arms of her chair. “Tell me I didn’t—kill Mother.” Frenzy lurked in the smoky depths of her eyes.

Shayne looked at the ceiling and sighed. “I’ve seen queer ones but this beats them all.”

The girl reached for the water glass with shaking fingers. “Can’t you see you’re driving me crazy?”

“Driving you, sister?” Shayne looked at her in mild disgust.

“Yes.” She choked over a gulp of water.

Shayne said, “You’d better fix up a coherent story if you want me to keep you out of jail when the coppers come.”

“I don’t want to fix up any story,” she cried wildly. “I want to know the truth. I don’t know what happened tonight. If I did it I’ll kill myself.” Her body vibrated like a taut wire in a wind. She fumbled with the catch on her handbag and brought out a pearl-handled .25 automatic pistol.

“That,” said Shayne evenly, “would wind up the case beautifully. Go ahead.” He nodded toward the automatic.

She wilted suddenly and began to sob. Shayne reached out an immoderately long arm and plucked the tiny weapon from her fingers. His wide lips twitched and he ran fingers through his mop of carroty hair.

“God in heaven,” he fumed. “Let’s get together on this. What do you and what don’t you know? What am I supposed to know and what am I supposed not to know?”

“Did I—d-did I k-kill my mother?” she managed to get out between quivering lips.

“That’s the third time you’ve asked me,” he told her irritably. “Suppose you come clean with your end of the story. What do the police think?”

“I don’t know.” She wrung her hands and peered appealingly at him from beneath lowered lashes. “They asked me a lot of questions and told me to stay in my room.”

“Whereupon you sneaked over here to be comforted.” Shayne poured out two more glasses of cognac and pressed one into Phyllis Brighton’s fingers. Then he filled the water glass and put it into her other hand.

“Put the liquor down without taking a breath and follow it with a big gulp of water.”

She did as she was told, and her eyes grew brighter as the dose coalesced with the previous drink she had taken.

Shayne sipped at his glass and said, “Start at the beginning. From the moment your mother arrived.”

She swallowed hard and averted her eyes. “They wouldn’t let me go to the station to meet her. I just saw her a few minutes before dinner and then at the table. She was upset because Mr. Brighton wasn’t well enough for her to see him, and she went to her room to lie down after dinner. I didn’t feel very well and I—went to bed and to sleep and—and I didn’t wake up until you came to tell me what had happened.” She raised her eyes miserably to Shayne’s face. He was peering at the liquor in his glass.

He said mildly, “That’s the story you told the police. All right. It’s a good one. Stick to it. But you’ll have to tell me the truth if I’m going to help you.”

“I have,” she cried wildly. “That’s the absolute truth. Unless—unless—” She began sobbing brokenly.

Shayne said, “Ah?” and waited.

“You were there,” she reminded him. “I thought maybe you knew something else. I—sometimes I do things and don’t remember.”

“I’ve heard,” said Shayne to his glass, “of convenient losses of memory. But this is the most remarkable case I’ve ever personally contacted.”

“Don’t you believe me?” she asked wildly. She jumped to her feet. “If you don’t believe me it’s no use.” Her hand darted for the pistol.

Shayne caught her wrist and forced her back to the chair. “Hell, I don’t know what to believe,” he growled. “There’s a lot of angles—” His voice trailed off as he stared speculatively at her.

He emptied his glass and set it down with a thump. “You and I,” he told her, “have got to learn to talk each other’s language.” He took a handkerchief from the pocket of his robe and wiped the sweat from his face. His voice was faintly incredulous. “You don’t remember anything from the time you went to sleep and when we came crowding in your room?”

“No!” she cried, her eyes bright. “You must believe me.”

“What the hell are you worrying about then? Didn’t they tell you that your door was locked on the outside?”

“Yes.” She shuddered. “But they seemed to think there was something awfully peculiar about that.”

“What do you think about it?” demanded Shayne.

“I don’t—know what to think.”

His heavy brows came down fiercely over his eyes. Phyllis Brighton watched him apprehensively.

“Taking your crazy story for something to start on,” he said finally, “how long have you been having these spells of doing things and forgetting?”

“You do believe me!” She clasped her hands and looked almost happy.

“I learned a hell of a long time ago in this business not to believe anybody or anything—not even what I see with my own eyes. Let it pass. We’ve got to start somewhere. I asked you a question.”

“It’s been going on for months,” she told him breathlessly. “That’s one of the symptoms that Doctor Pedique has been treating me for. And the worst part is the way things that I really do get mixed up with things I’m just thinking about doing before I lose track.”

“Say that again. More slowly. It doesn’t quite make sense.”

“It’s—hard to explain,” she faltered. “When I wake up I sometimes have hazy memories of doing things. And when I check up, I find I really did some of the things I remember—and others didn’t happen at all.”

Shayne was staring at her with hard eyes, but his voice was soft.

“I’m guessing you’ve got some hazy memories about this evening that you haven’t mentioned.”

She jerked back as though he had struck her. “I—they’re so mixed up that I don’t know whether any of them are real or just my imagination.”

“That,” said Shayne glumly, “is what I was afraid of.”

“Are you—keeping anything back from me?”

Shayne nodded slowly and rubbed his chin. “Some things that don’t check up—yet.”

Phyllis’s eyes were very bright. “I remember, or imagined, some things about you.”

It was awfully quiet in the room. Outside, the drone of late-evening traffic sounded distantly faint. Shayne twirled his glass between heavy fingers and did not look at the girl. He finally said, “Yeah?” without raising his eyes.

He could hear Phyllis’s breathing quicken. “Did you see me before you came to my room with the others and wakened me?”

“What makes you ask that?” He looked at her.

She was frowning perplexedly. She looked older than he had thought her this afternoon. Twenty, maybe. And she was beautiful.

“Because I remember, or dreamed, that you talked with me. That you put your arm around me and walked with me. That you—made me take off my nightgown in front of you.”

Shayne couldn’t stand that look of tortured questioning in her eyes. She was thinking about that locked door. It was the one thing that stood between her and the belief that she had committed matricide. If he took that away from her—

He shook his head. “That’s a hell of a thing to imagine, youngster, even for Freud. You’ve got a lot of goofy ideas. I’m not the kind of a guy to watch a girl take off her nightgown in a bedroom—and not do anything about it. You can mark me out of your dream.”

“I—wondered.” She shivered and swallowed hard, looked away from him. “There are some women who don’t—appeal to men that way.”

“What are you getting at?” he growled.

“I’ve been reading some of Doctor Pedique’s books. He lent them to me to study so I might understand myself better when he discovered what he thinks is my—unnatural love for Mother.”

Her voice trailed off, and again there was only silence in the room. Shayne sipped his cognac and fought to keep a rational grip on himself. Something inside him was beginning to feel sick. The girl’s voice began again, quite impersonally, as if the whole thing were hateful but she was resigned to it. “His books are full of case histories of people with curious sexual complexes. I didn’t realize—I didn’t know there were that sort of people in the world.”

“There are lots of things you’d be just as well off not knowing.”

“But it was important to me. It fascinated me after Doctor Pedique hinted I wasn’t—normal that way. I read everything he had, to try and find out for myself whether he was right.”

Shayne’s fist thumped on the table. “He was screwy to give you those books to read. You’re too young and you’ve got too much imagination. It’s not healthy to study that sort of stuff.”

“I wanted to,” she cried wildly. “I had to find out about myself.”

“Well, did you?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I thought I recognized the same feelings inside of me as the books described.”

“Autosuggestion,” Shayne muttered. “You were wide open to that sort of stuff.”

“I’ve got to know, now.” She leaned toward him pleadingly. “I can’t go on any longer without being sure. You’ve got to help me.” She caught his hands in hers.

“I?” Shayne frowned. “I’m not a doctor. I can’t—”

“But you’re a man.” There was frenzy in her voice. “A normal man. You can tell. The books say normal men can tell and won’t have anything to do with girls like that. If you can’t—if you won’t—if you don’t want me, I’ll know. And I’ll kill myself.”

Shayne pushed his chair back and stood up. It was hot in the room, stifling. He loosened his pajama collar and went to the window, drawing in great drafts of fresh air, and tried to get a grip on himself.

When he turned about, she was also standing, trembling, her face white. “You are repulsed by me. Then—it’s so!”

“Don’t be a fool,” Shayne said roughly. “You’re just a kid. I can’t—Good God! I’m old enough to be your father.”

“I’m nineteen. And you’re only thirty-five. You said so this afternoon.” She was moving toward him, hope glowing hotly in her eyes.

There was a weakness inside of Shayne. Phyllis Brighton stopped very close to him.

She said, “Don’t you see I have to know? I have to. Nothing else matters. You promised to help me. You can. By proving to me that I’m a normal woman—desirable to a normal man.”

“You’ve been out with men before, haven’t you? Haven’t they—”

“Not with ones that are grown up, like you.” She held out her hands. “If you’d just kiss me I’d know,” she said, as if it hurt her to ask him.

“If I kiss you,” Shayne told her somberly, “it won’t end there.” He had hold of her hands and he didn’t realize that he was crushing them in his hard grasp.

“I don’t want it to end there.” Her voice was quiet, and she didn’t seem young any more. Shayne forgot that he had been thinking of her as just a kid who was trusting herself with him alone in his apartment. He was drawing her closer, hurting her cruelly, but she did not flinch. Exaltation shone in her eyes. She lifted her head, offering him her lips.

He said, “God have pity on us both if I kiss you, Phyllis.”

Her only response was to press close to him. The resilient warmth of her body against him was too much for Shayne to resist. There was a blaze flaming inside him now. He kissed her lips, and she gave herself to him, eagerly, utterly.

He put her away from him after a time, and his gaze was hungry, brooding. “I warned you. You can’t turn things like this on and off, you know—like an electric switch.”

“I don’t want to.” There wasn’t a trace of coquetry in her smile. It was a smile of sincere and honest gladness. “Where’s the bedroom?” She glanced about the room.

“That door.” Shayne’s forefinger stabbed at a closed door. “The bathroom is the door on the right.”

She patted his hand and went to the bedroom. Shayne stood there, and his gaze followed her until the door shut her from his sight. His mind was racing, trying to puzzle something through in spite of the clamor in his blood. Nothing quite like this had ever happened to him before. He poured himself a drink, held it up, and let light spill through the amber fluid. Then his eyes became abruptly intent, and he set the glass down without tasting it, went to the bedroom, and knocked.

Phyllis’s muffled voice called, “Come.”

Shayne saw that she was already in bed, the coverlet pulled up to her chin.

There was a loud thumping on Shayne’s outside door as he started to say something to Phyllis.

He whirled tautly. A heavy voice called, “Open up, Shayne.”

He turned to look at Phyllis. “No. They didn’t follow you. Like hell they didn’t. Stay in bed and don’t move. Don’t make a sound. I’ll try to stall them.”

He whirled and went out, switching off the light and closing the door quietly. “All right,” he growled as the thumping continued, “give a man time to get out of his bathroom.”

Stepping softly to the table he pocketed the .25 automatic, set Phyllis’s wineglass upside down in the cabinet, and emptied his. Then he strode to the bathroom, flushed the toilet, sauntered to the door, and opened it. He didn’t bother to act surprised when he saw the heads of the Miami and the Miami Beach detective bureaus standing in the corridor outside. Instead, he scowled and said, “This is a hell of a time to come visiting,” stepped aside, and let them enter.

CHAPTER 4

WILL GENTRY CAME IN FIRST. He was a heavy man with a face the color of raw beef who walked solidly on the thick soles of square-toed black shoes and wore a dark suit and a black felt hat tipped back on his perspiring forehead. A stolid, persevering man who ran the Miami detective bureau as it had been run for thirty years. He said, “Hello, Mike,” and went past Shayne to stand by the table.

His companion was Peter Painter, “dynamic and recently appointed chief of the Miami Beach detective bureau,” as the press had been describing him. Shayne knew him slightly. He was medium in height and slender, a few years younger than Shayne, and his appearance at the moment was characteristic. He wore a double-breasted Palm Beach suit and a creamy Panama hat. White-and-tan sport shoes, a pin-striped tan shirt, and a brown-and-red four-in-hand tie completed his ensemble. Shayne’s eyes flickered as he took in this sartorial tour-de-force, but not from admiration.

Painter had flashing black eyes, a thin face, and mobile lips across the top of which there ran the narrow line of a beautifully trimmed and exceedingly black mustache. He had been a New York detective for three years, and had resigned to head the Miami Beach detective bureau. He nodded and followed Gentry into the room.

Shayne closed the door and moved toward the table. His eyes were hard but his manner affable. He stopped at the cabinet and took down two clean wineglasses, set them on the table, and unstopped the brandy bottle. “Have a drink?”

Gentry nodded absently, his eyes going around the room.

Painter drummed on the table top with hard finger tips and said, “I don’t drink while on duty.”

Shayne lifted shaggy eyebrows in quizzical inquiry as he poured two drinks. “I thought this was out of your territory.” He handed Will Gentry a glass and poured fresh ice water from the pitcher.

“That,” Painter told him, “is why I asked Gentry to come along with me.”

Shayne nodded and drank. Then he drew up a straight chair and motioned toward the two easy chairs close together in front of the table. “It isn’t against your principles to sit down, is it?”

He sat down, as did Gentry. The older man shook his head slightly at Shayne. Painter did not move. He said, “I want that girl, Shayne.”

Shayne shrugged and sipped from his glass. “There are lots of girls,” he said softly.

“I want only one of them. Phyllis Brighton.”

“Christ,” murmured Shayne, “you’re welcome to her.”

Painter’s eyes were fixed on his face. “Where is she?”

Shayne gravely patted the pockets of his dressing-gown and looked at Painter with guileless eyes, murmuring, “Gracious. I seem to have mislaid her.”

Painter’s dapper figure grew tense. He leaned forward angrily.

“Now, now,” Gentry interposed. “Cut out your horsing, Mike. Painter thinks you had something to do with her disappearance from her home.”

Shayne asked, “Has she disappeared?” His tone was noncommittal.

The Miami Beach man said, “That won’t get you anywhere, Shayne. Maybe you can get away with your kind of stuff on this side of Biscayne Bay, but you can’t on my side.”

Shayne grinned and said, “Can’t I?”

“No. By God, you can’t.” Peter Painter’s dark eyes flamed dangerously. “That girl’s guilty as hell, and I’m going to break that case tonight.”

“Fair enough.” Shayne lit a cigarette and smiled mockingly at the little man. “Cherchez la femme.”

“You,” said Painter, “have got her hidden out.”

“Want to search the dump?”

“Hell, no. I don’t think you’re dumb enough to have her here. Where is she?” The question crackled at Shayne.

“She was in bed when I left the Beach.”

“What have you been doing since you drove away?”

“Sitting here drinking some very excellent cognac and cogitating upon the devious ways of murderers and the like.”

“Why,” asked Painter savagely, “did you run away from the scene before I arrived?”

“That’s your bailiwick,” Shayne reminded him. “I wanted to give you plenty of room for your schoolboy antics.”

Painter stiffened and said, “By God—”

“Now, now,” Gentry interposed again. “There’s no use getting tough,” he admonished Shayne.

“Why the hell shouldn’t I get tough?” Shayne flared at him, disregarding Painter. “This mail-order detective busting in here with his damfool questions and accusations. To hell with him! I was all set to give him what dope I had picked up, but now he won’t get a thing from me.”

Through tight lips, Painter said thinly, “I’ll jerk you in as an accessory if you don’t watch your step.”

Shayne didn’t pay any attention to him. He went on talking to Gentry.

“What’s the angle? Suppose the girl has disappeared? Does that make her a murderess? And what am I supposed to do about it? If he can’t keep tabs on his suspects am I supposed to do it for him?”

“See here, Shayne.” Painter sat down, making it evident that he controlled himself with difficulty. “Do you want to answer my questions now or shall I swear out a warrant for your arrest and drag you in where you’ll have to talk?”

“I’ve been in better jails than yours.”

“All right. Come clean and you needn’t get in mine.”

Shayne added, “And worse.”

“Now wait,” Gentry said hurriedly to Painter. “You’re off on the wrong foot. I’ve worked with Mike Shayne before. He’ll rot in your Miami Beach jail before he’ll answer any questions he doesn’t want to answer.”

“And I’ll stink like hell while I’m rotting,” Shayne added sardonically.

Painter compressed his lips and said, “I’ll take that drink you offered me.”

Shayne emptied the bottle of Martell into the third glass and handed it to him. “Off duty,” he said, “you might not be a bad guy.”

Painter drank half the liquor and set the glass down, fiddling with its slender stem. He said slowly, “I understand you were retained on the case by Doctor Pedique.”

“I was.”

“Because he feared the girl might murder her mother.”

“Right.”

“And you arrived this evening too late to avert the expected tragedy.”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Shayne told him. “A tragedy, if you’re talking for the headlines.”

“The girl had already killed her mother when you got there, hadn’t she?”

Shayne emptied his glass and grinned wolfishly. “Had she?”

“Well, damn it!” Painter exploded. “She was dead, wasn’t she?”

“She was dead,” said Shayne carefully, “when Doctor Pedique took me to her room.” He gazed benignly into the Beach detective’s angry eyes.

“Which makes a strong case against the girl,” said Painter harshly.

“Admitted.” Shayne paused, then added casually, “Did they tell you we found the girl’s door locked—on the outside?”

“There might be a dozen explanations for that.”

“Sure,” Shayne agreed soothingly. “The kid might have bumped her mother, gone back and locked her door, and then crawled into her room through the keyhole. Only trouble with that theory,” he added, “is to figure how she got the key back into the keyhole after crawling through.”

Gentry choked on the last of his drink while Painter snorted, “Being funny isn’t going to help.”

“Then your methods,” Shayne told him, “aren’t going to solve the case.”

“For God’s sake,” implored Gentry, “you two guys quit knifing each other.”

Shayne said, “I’ll get another bottle,” and went out to the kitchen. When he came back with a full bottle of Martell neither detective had changed his position.

“I should be getting almost drunk enough to do some real detecting,” said Shayne pensively as he opened the bottle.

Painter rubbed his sharp chin and asked, “Then you don’t think the girl did it?”

“When you grow up enough to shave that silly mustache off,” Shayne muttered, “you’ll maybe have learned not to indulge in too many theories on a murder case.”

Peter Painter stood up, quivering with indignation. “I didn’t come here to be insulted.”

Standing, Shayne towered over the dapper detective chief. “No? Then why did you come?”

“To give you a chance to clear yourself,” Painter snarled.

Shayne poured himself and Gentry a drink, held the bottle invitingly over Painter’s glass. He muttered, “You’re hell on duty,” when Painter shook his head.

Painter turned away indecisively, and Shayne sat down, asking in an interested tone, “Did you find whatever they used to kill Mrs. Brighton?”

Painter swallowed hard and looked back over his slim shoulder. “I have a hunch you know more about the murder weapon than anyone else.”

“You’re giving me a lot of credit,” said Shayne mockingly. “Hell! Didn’t they tell you I wasn’t alone in the house a minute?”

Painter turned about with his jaw rigidly jutted. “I know your record, Shayne. You stay out of my territory hereafter or I’ll throw you in the can on general principles—and keep you there.”

Shayne stood up. His fists were knotted, and his eyes were mad. “You’re in my territory now,” he said softly, and moved around the table toward Painter.

Gentry lurched up and got his solid bulk between them. “No, Mike. No.” He pushed the redheaded detective back and said out of the corner of his mouth to Painter, “Scram, for Christ’s sake. I’ll see you in my office later.”

Shayne said thickly, “The little twerp. I’ll wring his neck.” He pushed Gentry aside and moved toward Painter, breathing heavily.

Painter whirled before Shayne reached him, went out the door, and slammed it shut.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Gentry said when Shayne came back.

“Why not?” He poured out a drink, held the glass up to the light and peered through it, shook his head unsteadily, and poured the liquor back in the bottle, spilling a few drops on the table.

Gentry said, “He’s a smart little guy.”

“He can’t push me around without getting pushed.” Shayne dropped into the chair Painter had vacated and lit a cigarette.

“I told him to take it easy,” Gentry rumbled. “But God, you know how these city guys are. Always got to be shaking a leg.”

“He’s not a city guy now,” Shayne told him. “He’s nothing but a chief of detectives.”

Gentry grimaced wryly but didn’t say anything.

“What the hell sent him prowling around here looking for the girl?” Shayne went on. “I haven’t started taking up with the screwy kind—or kids—yet.”

Gentry sipped his cognac. “She’s got to be somewhere, Mike.”

“Hell, yes. So has prosperity, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got a line on her.”

“Haven’t you, Mike?” Gentry did not look at him.

Shayne grinned amiably. “That’s a Beach case. Let him find out where she is.”

“I know. I’m just trying to make it easy on you. Painter’s not going to quit.”

“Thanks, Will.” Shayne’s tone was curt. “I’ll make it easy on myself.”

“Okay.” Gentry drained his glass and spread out his hands. “I’m not trying to put the heat on you.”

Shayne said, “Don’t,” in a remote tone.

Gentry studied him thoughtfully. “You’re plenty tough, Mike. But Painter—I wouldn’t push him too far.”

Shayne pushed the bottle toward his friend and grinned a mirthless, fleeting grin. “Drink up.”

Gentry shook his head. “No more, thanks. Painter will be waiting for me at my office.”

“How do you and he stand?” Shayne asked abruptly.

“Well—he’s only been over on the Beach a couple of months. I don’t know him so well but I guess he’s okay. Sort of hotheaded little rooster—and he likes to play hunches.”

“Tell him not to get any more hunches about me.” Shayne ground out his cigarette as Gentry got up.

“Play it your own way,” Gentry said. “But I’m warning you, Mike. Painter’s under pressure on that new job and he’s going to break this Brighton case or else.”

“Sweet Jesus,” groaned Shayne, getting up. “Between the two of you, you’ll have me believing I slit Mrs. Brighton’s throat. Who put the finger on me in the first place?”

“I wasn’t there,” Gentry reminded him. “I just came along with Painter when he said he was coming up.”

“Pedique told him my part of it,” Shayne growled. “That was finished when we walked in and found the old lady already croaked. What makes him think I stole the girl?”

“He’s going around in circles and had to end up somewhere,” Gentry said, moving toward the door.

“Sure,” sneered Shayne. “Just like all the rest of these boy-scout dicks. He hits a tough case and feels like he has to make a pinch whether he can make it stick or not. You can tell him for me,” he added as he opened the door, “that if I had the girl I’d keep her hid out just to get his goat.”

“I think he’s already figured that out,” said Gentry thoughtfully. He stood in the corridor and took off his hat, crushing it in his hands. “Well—g’night, Mike.”

Shayne said good night and stood in the doorway and watched the Miami detective chief go down the hall and board an elevator. Closing the door he went back into the room and stopped by the table to listen intently. No sound came from the closed bedroom.

He went to the door and opened it quietly. The gentle sound of relaxed breathing came to him. He went into the room and stood beside the bed. In the dim light he could see the girl lying on her left side with her face turned to the wall. Her left arm was curled up on the pillow, and her cheek rested on it. She was breathing evenly, and he wondered if she was asleep.

He said, experimentally, “Hey.”

She did not move. The spread was pulled down, and a bare shoulder was exposed. Shayne leaned over and said between his teeth, “It’s all right. They’ve gone.”

She still didn’t move. He straightened doubtfully, shaking his head. Then he said, “Hell,” in an undertone and went to the door. He stopped there, turned, and watched her for a full two minutes. If she wasn’t asleep she was doing a good job of playing possum.

He said, “Hell,” again and went out, closing the door behind him. Then he went over to the table, pulled out the drawer, and looked down at the nightgown-wrapped butcher knife with hard eyes.

His fingers groped in the pocket of his dressing-gown and came out with the .25 automatic. He dropped that on top of the butcher knife and closed the drawer. Then he took the empty brandy bottle, glasses, and water pitcher to the kitchen, and remembered to open the kitchen window. It would be a hot night, and at least he might as well be comfortable. Then he went into the bathroom, opened that window wide, too, and left the door open for ventilation as he came out. In the living-room he pulled the studio couch out and spread it up to sleep on. For all his profession, Mike Shayne had something domestic in him. Years of hotel rooms had made him fond of his own brand of comfort. Moving a straight chair to the head of the bed he put an ash tray, cigarettes and matches on it, lit a cigarette, and turned out the light. Sliding under the sheet, he puffed lazily, thinking about the sleeping girl in his bedroom.

CHAPTER 5

SHAYNE AWOKE EARLY the next morning. The moment his eyes were open, he snorted and sat up to look around, then sank back and reached out a long arm for cigarette and match. Lighting it, he puffed heavily and watched the gray-blue whorls of smoke drift upward and impinge upon the ceiling. When the cigarette was finished, he shook the spread and sheet from his gaunt frame and heaved his legs over the edge of the couch. He rumpled his red hair with one hand while his feet felt about the floor for bedroom slippers and his eyes studied the closed bedroom door. When he had managed to find the slippers, he stood up, slid his feet into them, pulled on his dressing-gown, and went to the closed door.

He opened it gently.

Phyllis Brighton was still there in his bed. Asleep. He padded in quietly, made a collection of clean clothes for the day, and carried them out without awaking her. Closing the door, he went to the bathroom and shaved, came back to the living-room and dressed.

His ensuing actions were an oddly typical combination of domesticity and professional shrewdness. Shayne had learned to keep house with a minimum of required thought. Going into the kitchen, he turned on two plates of the electric stove and the top oven burner, measured out six cups of water and put them on to boil, slid four slices of bread into the oven to toast, got some little pig sausages from the refrigerator and arranged them in a heavy iron skillet which he put on one of the burners after turning it to low. All of which took him less than three minutes.

In the living-room again, he threw dressing-gown, slippers, and pajamas in the middle of the mattress and folded it over. After pushing the two halves of the studio couch together, transferring cigarettes and matches from the chair to his pocket, and setting the ash tray on the table there was no outward indication that he had not slept in his own bed. He inspected the room thoughtfully to make sure that even Painter’s sharp eyes would find nothing amiss. Then, more carefully, he pulled out the table drawer, carried the bloody butcher knife and nightgown to the kitchen, and put them down on the drainboard while he turned the sausage and looked at the toast.

With no change of manner or expression, he took the butcher knife from its flimsy wrapping, and scrubbed it thoroughly at the sink. Yanking down a dish towel, he dried the knife and chucked it in the drawer with his own kitchen utensils. Then he ran cold water in a dishpan and put the bloodied nightgown in a pan of cold water to soak.

The sausages were ready to be turned again, and the toast was browned on one side. He took care of them and measured seven heaping tablespoons of granulated coffee into the Dripolator with the same impersonal care he had just given the kitchen knife that didn’t belong in his kitchen. The water hadn’t boiled yet so he soused the nightgown up and down in its water while he watched for steam to come out of the aluminum teakettle. Shayne liked making breakfast. When the kettle boiled, he poured it in the Dripolator, turned off all three burners, set the drip pot on one, turned the sausage again, took the toast from the oven, and buttered it.

Then he soused the gown some more and rinsed it under the faucet. Wringing it out he slipped his thumbs under the shoulder bands and shook it down full length. He nodded approvingly when he saw the bloodstains had disappeared, went to the oven and tested its heat with his hand. It was warm but not hot enough to injure the fragile fabric. After carefully spreading the damp gown on the toasting-tray, he closed the oven door and left it to dry, reflecting on the convenience of being able to destroy evidence while you prepared breakfast.

Whistling softly he took down a wooden serving-tray from a shelf, split the sausages on two breakfast plates; put cups, saucers, and silverware on the tray; punched two holes in the top of a small can of evaporated milk and put it on the tray beside a sugar bowl; balanced the toast on one end and the steaming Dripolator on the other; managed to get the whole thing set right side upward on the palm of his right hand.

In the living-room he set the loaded tray on the table, pushing the cognac bottle to one end. As an afterthought, he took half a bottle of dry sherry from the cabinet and carried it to the breakfast table with two glasses. Then he went to the closed bedroom door, knocked, and opened it.

Phyllis Brighton sat up with a dazed cry of fright and stared at him. He said, “Good morning,” went to the closet and took out a flannel robe which he tossed across the foot of the bed, saying, “Get into that and come on out to breakfast. It’s getting cold.”

The bedroom door opened, and the girl emerged timidly. The bathrobe was swathed about her slender body, trailing the floor behind her. She had tied the cord tightly about her waist, and rolled up the sleeves so her hands came out.

Shayne lifted his eyebrows and grinned at her. “You look about fourteen in that getup. How about a shot of sherry?”

She smiled bravely and shook her head. “No, thanks. Not before breakfast, at least.”

“Sherry should be our national before-breakfast beverage,” Shayne told her. He filled a glass and emptied it, then pushed the easy chairs aside and set two with straight backs at the table. “Sit down,” he said without looking at his companion.

He deftly transferred the things from the tray to the table as she sat down, dropped the tray on the floor, and poured two cups of strong, steaming coffee. Then he sat down opposite her and started eating. With downcast eyes she silently followed his example.

“What time did you go to sleep last night?” Michael Shayne deftly speared a sausage with his fork, bit half of it off, and chewed appreciatively.

“I—” She hesitated, lifting her eyes to him, but he was lifting his coffee cup and seemed interested only in determining whether it was yet cool enough to drink.

“I—it all seems so much like a dream that I hardly know what was sleeping and what was waking.”

Shayne nodded and grunted, “Eat your breakfast.”

She drew her sleeve back to reach for the sugar, and Shayne shoved it toward her, asking casually, “Did you hear the John Laws talking about you?”

“Part of it.” She shuddered and spilled sugar from her spoon. “Who were they?”

“Miami and Miami Beach detectives.”

“Oh.” She stirred her coffee.

“It’s a damn good thing you don’t snore.”

Her body tensed. “They—didn’t find out I was here?”

“Hell, no.” Shayne contemplated her in mild surprise. “You’d be in the cooler if they could find you.”

“You mean—arrested?” There was morbid fear in her voice and eyes.

“Sure.” Shayne drank his coffee with the healthy appreciation of a strong man for strong coffee.

“What did they—I pulled the covers over my head and tried not to listen.”

“They don’t know anything,” Shayne told her calmly. “Everything would have been jake if you just hadn’t taken the fool notion to run away. Painter has a reputation to uphold and he feels that he just has to pinch somebody. You’re it.”

“You mean—he’ll arrest me now?”

“If he finds you,” Shayne told her cheerfully. “Go on and eat your sausages. They won’t be any good after they get cold. And this coffee’ll put hair on your chest.”

Her lips quirked up at the corners. She dutifully nibbled at a sausage and sipped her coffee.

Shayne finished his share and poured himself another cup of coffee. Then he leaned back and lit a cigarette. “You’d better stick around here for a while, while I try to find out just what’s what.”

“Stay here?” She raised her eyes fearfully to his.

“This is about the last place they’ll look for you. Especially since last night.” Shayne chuckled and added, “Painter admitted he didn’t think I was dumb enough to bring you here.”

“But—what will they do to you if they find me here?”

He shrugged wide shoulders. “Not a hell of a lot. After all, you’re my client. I’m within my rights in protecting you from false arrest while I do some checking up.”

“Oh.” She breathed happily, and a flush colored her cheeks. “Then you do believe me? You’ll help me?”

Her gratitude and joy embarrassed Shayne. He frowned and said, “I’m going to try and earn that string of beads you handed me yesterday.”

“You’re wonderful,” Phyllis Brighton said tremulously. “Everything will be different if you’ll just believe in me. You’re so strong! You make me feel strong.”

Shayne didn’t look at her. He lifted his coffee cup and said into it, “I came damn near weakening last night, sister.”

The flush on her cheeks deepened to scarlet but she didn’t answer.

Shayne said, “Forget it.” He drained his cup and got up. “I’ve got to stir around and earn my fee.” He went into the kitchen and took her nightgown from the oven. It hung crisply dry from his finger tips when he came back.

Phyllis Brighton looked at the filmy garment in utter consternation. She gasped. “Why, that—that’s mine. Where did you get it?”

Shayne’s eyes were wary. He asked negligently, “When did you see it last?”

She frowned as though trying to remember. “I don’t know exactly. It’s one I wear quite often.”

Shayne kept on watching her. He said grimly, “If you’re lying you’re doing a hell of a good job.”

She shrank back under the impact of his words. “What is it about? I don’t understand.”

“You and I,” Shayne told her wearily, “are in the same boat.” He tossed the gown to her. “Put it on and go back to bed. It’s silk and it’ll soon get rumpled and won’t show that it’s recently been washed without benefit of ironing.” He stalked to the corner and took down his hat.

Phyllis turned her head to watch him. She half arose, and her voice was frightened.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going out to walk around in circles.” He put on his hat and went to her and rubbed his knuckles against the soft smoothness of her neck between the hairline and the rolled collar of the robe.

“You stick it out here. Better wash up the dishes first thing—at least one set. Then go back to bed. And put that nightie on. Close the door and stay in bed no matter what happens until I tell you to come out. Understand?”

She nodded with a quick intake of breath, pressing her cheek down hard against his hand before he withdrew it.

He moved toward the door, warning her. “Don’t pay any attention if the phone rings or somebody knocks. And don’t move if you hear someone come in. It might be me, but I might not be alone. You stay behind that closed door no matter what happens. Rest and try to sleep. Don’t try to think.” He went out and closed the outer door on the night latch.

He stopped at the desk in the lobby for mail. There wasn’t any. It was almost ten o’clock. He chatted with the clerk for a minute, telling him he would be back at noon or would call for any messages.

Outside in the bright Miami sunlight he walked to Flagler, then west to the police station. He went in a side, door and down a hall to Will Gentry’s office. The door stood ajar. He rapped and pushed it open.

Gentry looked up from the newspaper he was reading and grunted, “Hello.”

Shayne tossed his hat on the desk and sat down in a straight chair.

Gentry said, “Painter got his headlines, all right.”

“Did he?” Shayne lit a cigarette.

“Haven’t you seen the paper?”

Shayne said he hadn’t, so Gentry pushed it across the desk to him. The detective smoothed it out and read the headlines, squinting through the upward-curling smoke of his cigarette. He glanced swiftly through the two-column version of the Brighton murder and pushed the paper aside.

Gentry leaned back in his swivel chair and thoughtfully bit the end off a black cigar.

Shayne said, “Mr. Peter Painter and the press find the girl guilty.”

Gentry nodded. “The poor devil had to give the papers something. Her disappearance looks bad.”

“Yeah.” Shayne contemplated the glowing end of his cigarette.

“You’d better dig her up, Mike.” Gentry lit his cigar.

“Not as long as that little twerp is on her tail. The damned—” Shayne unemotionally mentioned Painter’s probable ancestry in censorable terms.

Gentry waited until he had finished. Then he said, “He was here waiting for me when I got back last night. Had a couple of reporters and gave them the statement you just read. He was going to tie you up with the girl’s disappearance but I told him he’d better lay off.”

Shayne swore some more. Not so unemotionally this time. Gentry listened with an appreciative grin. He said, “All right. What’s your theory on the case, Mike?”

“I don’t waste my time having theories,” Shayne growled. “That luxury is only for detective chiefs.”

He glared at Gentry, and Gentry grinned and puffed on his cigar, finally asking patiently, “What do you want me to do, Mike?”

Shayne leaned across the scarred desk. “I want the dope on Doctor Joel Pedique—all the way back.”

Gentry nodded. “I’ll shake up what I can. Anything else?”

“That’s all for now. And thanks.” Shayne lumbered to his feet.

Gentry told him that was all right, and Shayne went out. He stopped at a drugstore and called Dr. Hilliard’s office. A nurse informed him that the doctor would be in at ten-thirty. It was ten-twenty, so Shayne sauntered down Flagler Street and south a block to an office building on the corner. The elevator carried him up to the tenth floor, and he walked down the hall to the sumptuous suite of offices occupied by Dr. Milliard and an associate.

The golden-haired reception girl smiled, took his name, and asked him to wait. She went through an inner door and came back, nodding for him to go in.

Dr. Hilliard greeted him affably, and they talked a long time. But the doctor could not or would not give Shayne any more definite information about Phyllis Brighton than he had proffered last night. Shayne talked vehemently and at great length, setting forth an idea that was in his mind. The doctor admitted many of the premises as possibilities, but professional ethics forbade his discussing Dr. Pedique’s conduct of her case.

After a time Shayne abruptly switched his questioning to Mr. Brighton’s condition. On this point Dr. Hilliard was less reticent. He told Shayne frankly that the man’s condition puzzled him. There was no organic disease, yet the patient did not improve. From his study of the case he was willing to admit that Dr. Pedique had apparently done everything possible to effect a cure. It seemed to Dr. Hilliard that Mr. Brighton had simply lost the will to recover. Every test indicated a healthy physical condition, yet he continued to grow steadily weaker. They were, he told Shayne, conducting tests to ascertain whether certain glands were functioning improperly. If these tests tailed to indicate such was the case, he would be at a complete loss to diagnose the ex-millionaire’s malady.

Shayne listened attentively, asking leading questions and drawing the physician out as much as possible, clearly showing his disappointment when Hilliard failed to confirm his suspicions of Dr. Pedique. After a pause, he leaned forward and asked, “Isn’t it possible, doctor, that certain drugs might be responsible for Mr. Brighton’s continued weakness? Wait!” He held up his hand as Dr. Hilliard started to shake his head.

“I’ve got a theory,” he went on. “I’m not a medical man and I’m not trying to horn in on your game. I’m simply tying up logic with facts. I’m not accusing anyone—yet. But there’s been a murder committed. Take a long time to think this over before you answer. Is it possible—possible, doctor—that someone having access to the patient could be giving him some sort of drug, some sort of wrong medicine or wrong treatment, doing something to keep him in the weakened condition which you find inexplicable?” He leaned his long frame far over the desk and held Dr. Hilliard’s eyes intently.

The doctor lifted his eyeglasses and fiddled with them while he considered the implications contained in Shayne’s question. He was an ethical and honorable man. He was fully conscious of his duty toward society. He liked Shayne and he disliked Dr. Joel Pedique. He had read the morning paper and he shrewdly guessed that Shayne was seeking to protect Phyllis Brighton from a murder charge. From his observation of Phyllis he did not believe her guilty. He considered all these things before answering.

“It is utterly impossible, Shayne. I’m sorry I can’t advance your theory. Really I am.” He settled his glasses back on his nose and shook his head regretfully. “There are, however, certain conditions which preclude consideration of the hypothesis that any outside agency could be responsible for Mr. Brighton’s condition.”

Shayne sank back with a disappointed, “Damn.” He lit a cigarette and puffed on it morosely.

“You’re sure?” he burst out finally.

“I do not,” Dr. Hilliard told him, “offer snap judgments.”

Shayne muttered, “No. God knows you’ve never been accused of that.” He breathed hard, and the base of his nostrils flared. “That knocks my swell theory into a cocked hat.” He stood up and grinned crookedly. “That’s what I get for having a theory. Hell! I’m as bad as a chief of detectives.”

Dr. Hilliard stood up with him. “Any time—any information I can give you—”

“Thanks, doc.” Shayne nodded and ambled out.

It was almost twelve when he got out of the elevator downstairs. He went to a phone booth and called the clerk at his hotel to learn if there had been any calls for him.

The clerk had one urgent message. Shayne was to call a Mr. Ray Gordon at suite 614 at The Everglades at once. Shayne thanked him, hung up, and called The Everglades.

There was a short wait. A voice finally said, “Hello.”

“This is Michael Shayne. You left a message for me to call you.”

“Mr. Shayne? Good. Can you come to my suite immediately on a matter of urgent business?”

Shayne said he could. He hung up and started to walk the few blocks to the hotel.

CHAPTER 6

A BIG MAN OPENED THE DOOR of 614 at Shayne’s knock. He was almost as tall as the detective, with broad shoulders bulkily emphasized by the heavily padded double-breasted coat he wore. Clean-shaven, the contours of his face were a series of square corners. His lips were thin, his complexion gray. His eyes were cold, as expressionless and hard as two marbles.

Mr. Ray Gordon’s most distinctive feature was the type of haircut he affected. His hair was clipped high on a square head all the way around from one temple to the other, leaving a mop of bristles on top which stood erect and added deceptively to his appearance of great height. There was nothing else out of the ordinary in his appearance. His blue coat and sports trousers were of fine texture and beautifully tailored, but conventional enough. A modest pearl scarf pin enhanced the quiet gray of a four-in-hand which matched the shade of his soft-collared shirt.

He inclined his head and stepped aside for Shayne to enter. A large, comfortably furnished living-room overlooked Biscayne Bay. There was no one else in the room, but open doors led off to the left and right.

Shayne stopped inside the room and turned to face the man, asking, “Mr. Gordon?”

Gordon nodded. He closed the door and studied Shayne. Not covertly nor antagonistically, but with a curious directness and complete disregard of the other’s reaction.

“You’re Michael Shayne?” His words were clipped and hard, though not harsh.

Shayne nodded and stared back aggressively.

Gordon moved to a chair and motioned Shayne to another one, making no offer of his hand or further greeting. He said, “Shamus Conroy told me about you.”

Shayne sat down and lit a cigarette. His eyes were veiled. He said, “That bastard?” unemotionally.

“Conroy said that’s what you were,” Gordon told him. He took a long cigar from a leather case and lighted it with a gold-inlaid lighter. “I considered that a good recommendation—knowing Conroy.”

Shayne relaxed visibly. “I thought maybe you were a friend of his.”

“On the contrary.” Gordon considered his cigar with approval. “I’ve got a job for a private dick. One that can keep clammed and isn’t too thick with the local police.”

Shayne said, “I’m listening.”

Gordon blew a lazy smoke ring and asked, “Want a drink?”

“Call your shots,” said Shayne. He stretched out his long legs and looked out the window at the palm-fringed shore of the Beach beyond the shimmer of Biscayne Bay.

Gordon called, “Bring in a couple of setups, Dick.”

They both smoked in meditative silence. Shayne heard the clink of glasses through the open door on the left. From where he sat he could see into the open bathroom which led off to the right. The outer surface of the door opening inward to the bathroom was a full-length mirror which reflected the interior of another connecting bedroom on the other side of the bathroom.

The lights were on in the inner room, and a woman was sitting before a low vanity making up her face. Her back was toward the bathroom, and Shayne contemplated the reflection with idle disinterest. It was a youthful back. The curve at the base of the woman’s head was youthful, and the dark bobbed hair had a sheen.

A sleek youth came through the other door with a tray bearing two Tom Collins setups. Glossy black hair grew low on his forehead. His complexion was pasty, and his nose was beaked. He was foppishly dressed. He looked as though he might have enjoyed pulling the wings from flies when he was a child—as though he might still enjoy it. There was a slight bulge just in front of his left armpit. He set the tray on the table with a furtive glance at Shayne, hesitated, and then went out as silently as though he walked on tiptoe.

Gordon mixed the drinks with care and handed one to Shayne. They both drank from the frosted glasses. Gordon asked, “How big an outfit do you have?”

“I work alone.” Shayne frowned at his glass. “But I have plenty of good men on the string I can call in when I need help.”

“I noticed,” said Gordon, “that you don’t have an office listed in the telephone book.”

Shayne shook his head and didn’t say anything.

“You’ll need all the men you can get for this job I have in mind,” Gordon went on.

“I’ll get all I need.” Shayne drained his glass and set it down. The girl in the inner room had turned her head and was leaning forward putting an earbob in her left ear. He could see her reflected profile and it was startlingly beautiful. Clean-cut, classic features with an indefinable air of hauteur which didn’t quite ring true.

“You’ll have to get on it right away,” Gordon was saying. “It’s pretty damned important.”

“Then,” Shayne suggested, “let’s get down to brass cracks.” The girl had turned her head and was putting on the other earbob. Shayne had a hunch she knew he was watching her through the reflection.

“Here it is.” Gordon emptied his glass and thumped it down. “A man named D. Q. Henderson is due in town in the next few days. Today, perhaps. He may be traveling under a different name. I want to know the minute he hits Miami.”

“How’s he coming? Where will he go when he gets here?”

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t be hiring you if I knew the answers.”

Shayne rubbed his bony chin thoughtfully. “It’s a big order. Tell me more about the man. There are two railroads, a couple of airplane lines, several boats, and a lot of highways bringing people into this man’s town every day. And a lot of them hitchhike, and others come on their private yachts.”

“You can disregard the last two you mention,” Gordon told him thinly.

“Which doesn’t help a hell of a lot,” Shayne grunted. The girl had arisen and was moving toward the bathroom untying the sash of her silken negligee. Her eyes were demurely downcast, and he felt she was putting on an act for his benefit. Inside the bathroom she dropped the negligee from her shoulders, and he had a glimpse of brassiere, brief pants, and white flesh before she closed the door softly.

Seemingly unconscious of the direction and intent of Shayne’s gaze, Gordon said suavely, “If you don’t feel that you can handle the job, say so and quit wasting my time.”

Shayne said, “Mother of God! Do you expect me to meet every incoming tourist and ask him if his name is D. Q. Henderson?”

Gordon’s eyes lost the expressiveness of two marbles. His gaze was remote, yet it had a probing quality. Shayne dredged up a grin with some difficulty, remembering the eyes of a captive Gila monster he had once seen.

He stiffened when Gordon’s hand slipped inside his coat, and relaxed when the hand came out bearing some folded papers. Gordon sorted the papers over and handed a small but very distinct photograph of a spare, middle-aged man, with a high forehead and a clipped mustache.

“There’s your man.”

Shayne studied the photograph. “I can have copies made. Is he likely to disguise himself and try to slip in? In other words—does he know the finger is being put on him?”

“Mr. Henderson,” Gordon told him, “is one of the best-known art critics in the United States. He’ll not be after any publicity, but I don’t think he’ll try to slip in.”

Shayne nodded glumly. “It’s a job. I’ll put some good men on it right away. And that’ll cost you plenty.”

“How much?” Gordon’s hand went inside his coat again. This time, Shayne didn’t stiffen. Gordon laid a flat wallet on the table and looked at Shayne with heavy eyebrows lifting in a straight line toward the roots of his hair.

“I’ll take a grand for a retainer.”

Gordon’s eyebrows stayed up in a straight line across his forehead. “I’m not hiring you to bump the President.”

Shayne stood up and said, “What the hell? This isn’t piker stuff. You’re wasting my time.”

Gordon stood up, too. His face was unsmiling, square-cornered. “You’re pretty tough.”

“Tough enough.” Looking past Gordon, Shayne saw the sleek youth lounging in the inner doorway with a look of greedy hope on his face. Thin fingers were clawing toward the bulge under his left arm.

Shayne turned his back on the young man. His lips came back from his teeth wolfishly, and he said, “I’ve changed my mind. It’ll be two grand.”

Gordon began to smile. It was a curious and complicated process. His lips spread open and the upper portion of his face seemed to lift away from mouth and jaw, making not unpleasant crinkles in the hard flesh.

He said, “You and I’ll get along,” and lifted two one-thousand-dollar bills from his wallet.

Shayne accepted them without emotion. He had Henderson’s picture in his left hand. “Let me get this straight. You don’t want this guy hurt or detained? You want him tailed as soon as he hits town—and word sent to you?”

“That’s it.” Gordon went toward the door. “I don’t want him bothered at all except I don’t want him to communicate with anyone in Miami until I have a talk with him.”

Shayne lit a cigarette and muttered, “It would help a hell of a lot if I knew where he was likely to go when he arrives.”

Gordon stared at him for a moment, then came to a decision. “Henderson will likely register at a hotel first. He might not. He might go directly to the Beach or stop to telephone the Brighton residence over there. That two grand is to keep him from doing that.”

“Why the hell didn’t you say so at first?”

When Gordon opened the door without replying, Shayne went on. “The Brightons? Rufus Brighton? That’s where they had a murder last night.”

“So it is,” Gordon agreed curtly. He was holding the door open.

Shayne went out, saying, “I’ll be around when I need more expense money.”

Gordon stood in the doorway and watched him go down the hall. He closed the door when Shayne stopped at the elevators and pushed the button.

In the ornate lobby, Shayne turned to his right from the elevators and went into a cubbyhole of an office with no sign on the door. He said, “Hello, Carl,” to the fleshy man who sat behind a littered desk.

Carl Bolton was the house dick on duty. He was bald, and had a pleasant, vacuous face. He leaned back and lifted a pudgy hand. “Hi, Mike.”

The redheaded detective draped his long body on a corner of Bolton’s desk. “What about six-fourteen?”

Bolton said he didn’t know anything about 614 but he could find out. Shayne said he wished he would, and Bolton went out through an inner door. He came back presently with a slip of paper.

“They checked in this morning from New York.” He read from the slip. “Mr. Ray Gordon, his daughter, and a secretary. Secretary’s name is Dick Meyer. Why? Something phony?”

“The secretary,” Shayne told him, “is a torpedo. The daughter is too damned pretty to be just a daughter. Keep your eyes open, guy.” He stood up.

“Wait a minute. What’s the dope, Mike? You got something on ’em? Give.”

“I’ve got nothing on them—yet. I’m just tipping you.”

“Look,” Bolton complained, “don’t I always play ball with you?”

“Sure.” Shayne strolled out, saying over his shoulder, “They’re clients of mine, heavy with sugar. That’s all I can give you. Call me if anything breaks.”

It was twelve-thirty as he walked out of the hotel. He went to Flagler Street and turned west, stopped at a delicatessen when he thought about Phyllis and lunch. With a paper bag containing sliced meat, cheese, rolls, and some fruit, he went on to his apartment hotel and in the front entrance. The clerk said there hadn’t been any more calls for him, which was all right. He was whistling unmelodiously when he got off the elevator and went down the corridor to his door.

He stopped whistling when he saw his door standing wide open. He hesitated and started to put down the food, then squared his shoulders and walked on in.

Passing through the doorway he noted that the lock had been jimmied to force the door open. He showed no surprise as he met the gaze of the two men awaiting him in easy chairs.

CHAPTER 7

WILL GENTRY TOOK THE CIGAR from his mouth and grinned mirthlessly at Shayne. Peter Painter didn’t grin. His face was flushed, his eyes angry. He was sitting stiffly erect and he didn’t move as Shayne entered.

Shayne said, “Hello,” as though it was the most natural thing in the world to find them there. The living-room showed no evidence of having been searched. The bedroom door was closed. Shayne circled the two men and went toward the kitchen with his paper bag.

Gentry asked, “How goes it, Mike?” Painter didn’t say anything. His hot eyes followed the detective’s lounging figure into the kitchen.

The breakfast dishes had been washed and neatly put away. Shayne set his bag down on the kitchen table. Without a glance behind him he put water on the electric stove to boil, measured coffee into the Dripolator.

“Where is she, Shayne?” The words came incisively, like small pellets flung from a tiny gun.

Shayne looked over his shoulder at the Miami Beach chief of detectives, standing spread-legged in the doorway. The smaller man’s body was tense with anger. Shayne turned away without answering, carefully fitting the top back on the coffee can.

“You’re going to talk or else.” Painter’s words came more softly but with an undertone of shrillness. “You can’t give me the run-around, Shayne!”

Shayne kept his back turned and began whistling softly, lifting down a long loaf of French bread and getting a knife from the drawer. The wooden-handled butcher knife came first to his hand, and his whistling lips twisted into an ironic grin as he began slicing bread with it under Painter’s gaze.

He heard a funny gurgling noise behind him. Then Gentry’s lumbering footsteps and his soothing voice.

“Getting apoplexy won’t help, Painter. Let me talk to Mike.”

The detective continued to slice bread with his back to them, cutting each slice uniform and thin, pleased with the razorlike edge on the knife.

Gentry spoke placatingly at his shoulder. “I’m trying to keep you out of trouble, you dope. But you’ve got to help a little. Mr. Painter’s not used to being treated like this.”

Shayne stopped slicing bread. He turned and scowled at Gentry. “Isn’t that just too bad?” he grunted sarcastically. “What am I supposed to do in order to please Mr. Painter? Want me to get down on my knees and apologize for leaving my door locked and causing you two imitation yeggs the trouble of using a jimmy to get it open?”

A puzzled expression came over Gentry’s beefy face. He sighed and spread out his hands. “Come into the living-room, for God’s sake, and let’s talk this over. There’s nothing for you to get humped up about, Mike. We didn’t jimmy your damned door.”

“No?” Shayne cut two more slices of bread. Then he laid the knife down and turned around. His eyes were bleak. Painter backed out stiffly, and Gentry took Shayne’s arm with a relieved sigh.

In the living-room, Shayne sat down and spoke to Gentry, disregarding Painter.

“What the hell’s it all about? If you didn’t jimmy my door, who did?”

Painter started a rush of words, but Will Gentry shut him off. “It’s this way, Mike. Somebody called Painter at eleven-forty-five, all excited, and said the Brighton girl was asleep in your apartment. He called me to meet him here and make the pinch official, and jumped in his car and rushed over from the Beach. We came up from the lobby together and found your door just like it is now. There wasn’t anybody here.”

Shayne’s gaze went to the closed bedroom door.

“No soap,” Gentry told him. “No sign of any girl in there. What sort of monkey business is it, Mike?”

Shayne turned his gaze to Painter. “Man or woman that telephoned the tip?”

“A man.”

“I suppose you didn’t think to have the call traced.”

Painter bristled up like a fighting cock. “Are you trying to teach me my business? Of course I had the call traced. It came from the public telephone booth in the lobby downstairs.”

“Which leaves it wide open,” Shayne muttered.

“Are you sure you didn’t make that phone call—just for a cover-up?”

“Sure,” Shayne grunted with withering scorn. “And I jimmied my own door—after drowning the girl in the bathtub and grinding her up into Bologna. That’s what I’m about to make sandwiches out of.”

Gentry groaned. “All right. Go on, you guys. I’ll stick around and gather up the pieces.”

Shayne turned toward his friend with hunched shoulders. “I’m sick of this half-wit jumping me.”

Painter got up, grating out an oath. He pushed himself in front of Shayne aggressively. “Where’s the girl?”

Shayne said to Gentry, “You tell him, Will. I think I hear my water boiling.” He got up and went into the kitchen. He could hear a subdued murmur in the living-room as he poured the coffee water and made sandwiches. Then he took the drip pot, a cup and saucer, and the plate of sandwiches in to the living-room table. Painter watched him in sulky silence.

Shayne poured himself a cup of coffee without offering either of them any, and bit into a sandwich.

“Why,” asked Gentry, “did you bring the girl here, Mike?”

“I didn’t bring her here,” Shayne denied wearily.

Painter reached into his coat pocket and brought out a girl’s handkerchief and lipstick with a dramatic flourish. He laid them on the table and demanded, “How did these get into your bedroom?”

Shayne’s bushy eyebrows curved upward. “Digging into my private life?”

“They’re not what one would naturally expect to find in a bachelor’s boudoir.”

“I don’t know,” countered Shayne. “If you make a thorough search you’re likely to turn up half a dozen assorted gewgaws like those. What the hell? Send your vice squad around if that’s what you’re after.”

“And I suppose you have dozens of lace handkerchiefs initialed ‘PB’?” suggested Painter.

“My memory isn’t so good,” Shayne told him amiably. “We’ll go in and check up if you’ll let me finish my coffee in peace.” He lifted his cup and drank heartily.

“You’re stalling,” Gentry said. “That won’t get you anywhere. If she was here and isn’t now—where is she, Mike?”

“I’m no good at guessing games.” Shayne grinned and bit into a second sandwich with gusto.

“You can’t deny that she was here,” Painter snarled.

“I can deny any damn thing I please. And get away with it as far as you’re concerned.” Shayne turned away from the angry little man and asked Gentry, “Did you pick up anything on the lead I gave you this morning?”

“Not a thing. We burned up the wires to New York for an hour. Pedique’s record is as clean as a hound’s tooth.”

“I could have told you that,” Painter put in. “I checked on him last night.”

“I’m not,” Shayne told him, “the slightest bit interested in anything you can tell me.”

“What about the Brighton girl?” Gentry interrupted. “Was she here last night?”

“You were here last night,” Shayne reminded him. “You didn’t see her, did you?”

“You’ll have to talk fast,” said Painter with an ugly twist to his mouth, “to explain away this initialed handkerchief.”

“I don’t intend to do any explaining. Make your own deductions and see what it gets you.” Shayne lumbered to his feet and carried the dishes into the kitchen where he rinsed them under the hot-water faucet and set them to drain. Whistling cheerfully, he brought out a fresh bottle of cognac and set it on the table.

Painter stared angrily at the floor, and his Miami colleague watched thoughtfully while Shayne got down two glasses and filled them to the brim. He handed Gentry one of the glasses, ignoring the Miami Beach chief of detectives.

He held his glass high and said pleasantly, “Here’s to more and bloodier murders.” After draining his glass and smacking his lips, he added, “If you birds are all through I won’t take up any more of your time.”

“By God!” Painter burst out. “The voice over the telephone sounded a lot like yours. You’re just dumb enough to think that would be a smart stunt. It would cover you up nicely in the girl’s disappearance. Where were you at eleven forty-five?”

Shayne sat down and lit a cigarette. He said gently, “None of your damned business.”

Painter turned to Gentry and exploded, “We can drag him in on suspicion.”

Gentry had been watching Shayne. He shrugged his shoulders.

“He’d be out in an hour on habeas corpus. Nope.” He shook his heavy head. “I don’t think Shayne knows any more about where the girl is than we do. Come on.” He got up abruptly.

Shayne grinned at them quizzically. “Come back any time. You never can tell when I’ll have a murderess sleeping in my bed.” He sat at the table and watched them go out.

After a few minutes he went to the phone and called the clerk to ask if they had gone through the lobby. The clerk knew Gentry, and said they were just going out the door. Shayne hung up the phone and went into the bedroom. The covers were thrown back on the bed. He searched under the pillow and mattress, and on the dresser, for a note. There was none. Everything was in perfect order. He went through the bathroom carefully and through the kitchen. The night latch was on the kitchen door leading out to the fire escape. On sudden thought, he went into the living-room and found the .25 automatic gone from the drawer.

Finally he went to the front door of the apartment and examined the marks carefully. The door had been expertly forced open by someone in possession of an excellent set of burglar tools. There was a Yale lock on the door, but a jimmy had spread the door far enough from the jamb to allow the insertion of a slender piece of steel behind the latch to force it back. The entire operation had probably taken only a few minutes and should have been noiseless.

Well, there was nothing to wait around for now. He closed the door and found it had been sprung a trifle but not too much to prevent the latch from holding. He got his hat and went down to the lobby.

The hotel was a small one and had no house detective on its staff. The elevator boys said they had noticed nothing unusual in the vicinity of his room that morning. He described Phyllis to them, but none of them remembered seeing her go out. Anyone who wished to, of course, could enter and leave the building by the private side entrance.

He went to the manager’s office, explained that his apartment had been burglarized, and asked that a thorough check be made of all employees to learn if any of them had noticed any suspicious persons loitering in the corridors. Then he went out and down to Flagler Street.

Pelham Joyce had a studio on the second floor of one of the many arcades on Flagler. Shayne climbed the dingy stairway and entered a huge room overlooking Flagler. The floor was uncarpeted and dirty, littered with the accumulation of cigarette ashes and butts. There were canvases hung on almost every inch of wall space. An easel stood back from the front windows with a half-finished portrait on it, and there were a few chairs scattered about. Pelham Joyce sat in a rocking chair, his slippered feet resting upon the window sill.

He craned his neck as Shayne entered, nodded, then went on interestedly watching the stream of traffic on the street below. He was a shrunken man with a huge bald head. His face was anemic and thin. He wore stained canvas trousers, a dirty shirt which had once been white, a polka-dotted Windsor tie fastened loosely about his gaunt neck, and a shabby velveteen smoking-jacket. His age was indeterminate, though Shayne had sometimes guessed him to be well past seventy. He had studied at the principal academies of art in Europe and had once achieved a small measure of fame for portrait work. But the boulevards of Paris and the absinthe which could be purchased there had sapped his strength and his skill.

Shayne had known him for years; a bit of flotsam tossed up by Miami’s hurrying tide of humanity, dreaming and idling away the declining years of his life contentedly in the tropical climate which demands so little effort for continued survival.

Shayne drew up a chair which had four whole legs and sat down beside him. Pelham Joyce waved a hand at the spectacle out the window. The hand was so thin it was almost transparent.

“Fools. Going around in their private circles and each believing that today is important.”

Shayne said, “Did you ever hear of D. Q. Henderson?”

“Of course.” Joyce did not look at him. “A self-appointed Art critic who trots around the world pandering to the insatiate desire of pork-packer millionaires to be known as patrons of Art.” Each time Pelham Joyce spoke this last word, he invested it with the dignity of a capital A.

“Men like Brighton?” Shayne spoke casually.

“Exactly.” Joyce’s gaze fluttered, birdlike, over Shayne’s face. “Henderson picked up some good things for Brighton when the fool was building his collection. Brighton made the grand gesture of turning his collection over to the Metropolitan, and then I understand he tried to retract when he found himself without funds. The Metropolitan refused, of course—trust them to hang onto anything they get hold of—so I doubt whether Brighton is so patronizing toward Art any longer.”

Shayne waited patiently until he finished. Then he asked, “Do you know if Henderson is still acting as Brighton’s agent?”

“Don’t suppose Brighton can afford the luxury of an agent any longer.” Pelham Joyce chuckled toothlessly.

“Don’t such agents sometimes trace and pick up for a song some unknown pictures by the old masters which later sell for a fabulous sum?”

“That’s more newspaper talk than anything else,” Joyce mumbled.

“But it does happen?” Shayne persisted.

“Oh, yes. It was Henderson, I believe, who dug up an authentic Rembrandt from some ruins in Italy five years ago. It hangs with the Brighton collection now.”

“How much,” Shayne asked, “is such a picture likely to bring?”

“Whatever some damned fool will pay for it,” Joyce told him sharply. “A hundred thousand—half a million—two million. It’s rarity that counts with the collectors, not Art.”

“They generally smuggle them into this country, don’t they?”

“Of course.” Sharply. “No self respecting collector would think of paying honest duty on a rare painting.”

“How,” Shayne asked patiently, “do they go about it?”

“The simplest method is to paint over the original signature and daub on the initials of a well-known imitator of the master’s work. Then, I believe, they generally make a practice of boldly entering through Mexico to avoid the discerning eye of the New York authorities.”

Shayne thanked him, and they sat together for a time while the old man grumbled about the decline of Art and the accompanying disintegration of all Artistic Integrity. But only for a few minutes. Shayne left the disconsolate old man and went down to the Ask Mr. Foster Travel Bureau. For some time he studied steamship routes from Europe to Mexico, and train and plane routes to the United States, jotting down a great deal of interesting information and firmly refusing the clerk’s pressing offer to arrange the details of a trip to any part of the globe. Then he went back to his hotel.

From his apartment he called long distance and asked for the customs office at Laredo, Texas. When the connection was made, he talked to the man in charge at great length. With two one-thousand-dollar bills in his pocket, he gave no thought to the toll charge momently piling up. He hung up with the customs official’s promise of full-cooperation in the matter of notifying him if and when a Mr. D. Q. Henderson passed through the Port of Entry.

It was three o’clock. Shayne went down to the lobby and learned that the careful questioning of all hotel employees had brought no information to light concerning the burglarizing of his apartment. The manager was despondent and sympathetic, but Shayne assured him it did not matter particularly, since nothing of value had been stolen.

Then he went out, got in his car, and drove across the causeway toward the Brighton estate on Miami Beach.

CHAPTER 8

THE BRIGHTON PLACE LOOKED MUCH THE SAME by day as by night. There was an atmosphere of oppressive gloom about the huge house which Shayne attributed to his knowledge of the unsolved tragedy of the preceding night. In the daylight, he saw that a drive led past the south side of the house to a large concrete garage in the rear. All the garage doors were closed, and it was impossible to tell whether there were any cars behind the doors or not. The upper portion of the garage appeared to be subdivided into living-quarters.

There were no parked cars in the drive nor beneath the porte-cochere. Shayne parked where he had last night, got out, and went up the steps. He pressed the electric button briefly.

The front door was opened after a short wait by the same maid who had admitted him previously. She looked more shrunken, and her eyes were red as if from lack of sleep. She recognized him, but didn’t seem particularly pleased to see him. In a dour tone she asked him what he wanted.

Shayne told her he wished to see Miss Brighton. “Miss Phyllis Brighton,” he amended.

“She’s not here.” The maid tried to close the door, but Shayne’s foot prevented her from doing so.

“When do you expect her back?”

“I don’t know.” The maid sniffed primly, a sniff of self-righteous indignation.

“It’s important,” Shayne told her. “Haven’t you any idea when she’ll be here?”

“No, I haven’t. She’s not been home since—since last night.”

“All right,” Shayne said cheerfully. “I’ll speak to Mr. Brighton.”

“Oh, no, sir.” The maid was aghast. “He’s ill. Very ill. No one is allowed to see him.” She pushed the door against Shayne’s foot.

“Very well,” he said placidly. “I’ll see Doctor Pedique.”

“The doctor is resting, sir. He’s not to be disturbed.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Shayne bellowed. He pushed the maid back and the door open. “I’ll just prowl around and talk to myself.” He stepped past her.

She pattered along after him. “I think Mr. Montrose is in the library.”

“That’s just swell,” Shayne grunted. “I’ll see him after I get through talking to myself.” He went up the front stairway, and the maid followed him after a moment of hesitation.

Shayne turned on her when he reached the top. “Which is Mr. Brighton’s room?”

“But you can’t disturb him, sir. It’s strictly against the doctor’s orders.”

“No doctor,” Shayne told her, “can keep me from seeing anybody I want to see. Show me his room before I start opening doors.”

“Very well, sir,” she said in an exasperated be-it-on-your-own-head manner, and led the way to the end of the left wing. She knocked gently on a closed door and stood obstinately before it so that Shayne would have to move her forcibly aside to enter.

The door opened a trifle, and a slender girl in a white starched uniform slipped out and closed it behind her. She was very young and small, with rosy cheeks and honest gray eyes.

“What is it?” She looked past the maid at Shayne.

“This—gentleman,” with a jerk of her shoulder toward Shayne, “insists on disturbing Mr. Brighton.” She slipped aside and glared at Shayne.

“Oh, no.” The nurse shook her head decidedly. “It’s strictly against the doctor’s orders.”

Shayne brushed past the maid and stood close to the nurse. The top of her stiff white cap was not as high as his chin. She looked up at him calmly.

He said irritably, “I’m not going to eat your patient. I simply want to look at him. Certainly there’s no harm in that.”

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I can’t let you in.” The maid turned and stalked away.

Shayne smiled beguilingly and patted the girl’s cheek. “Be an angel,” he urged.

“You’ll have to get permission from the doctor,” she told him earnestly.

Shayne chuckled. “Right on the job, aren’t you, sister? Where’s the nurse I saw last night? The tall one with the come-hither eyes and the sex appeal in every movement. Now, she’d let me in.”

The girl’s gray eyes twinkled merrily. “Perhaps she would. You mean Miss Hunt? On night duty?”

“The doc called her Charlotte,” Shayne said.

“She’s off duty now, resting in her room down the hall. We’re changing shifts today. I stay on until midnight, then she relieves me.”

“That would be my luck.” Shayne sighed lugubriously. “Of course,” he went on, “I could like you just as well if you weren’t so tough about sticking to orders.”

“But I am.” She smiled, but made no move to step away from the door. Her eyes frankly questioned him.

“I’m a detective,” he told her bluntly. “There was murder done here last night. Better let me in to give your patient the once-over—else I’ll have to waken Pedique and get a certificate of admission.”

She hesitated, then smiled shyly and said, “You’re Mr. Shayne, aren’t you?” He nodded, and she went on. “I’ve seen your picture in the papers. I guess it’ll be all right, though Mr. Brighton is asleep. If you’ll promise not to awaken him—”

“I’ll be as quiet as a mouse with rubbers on,” Shayne assured her.

She opened the door and stepped silently inside. Shayne tiptoed after her into the sickroom. An east window was open, and a gentle breeze blew in, invigoratingly fresh, mingling with the faint odor of antiseptics permeating the room. A white screen stretched out before the bed. The nurse went to it softly, holding out her hand behind her as a signal for quiet.

Shayne moved up behind her, taking the soft hand in his and squeezing it as he leaned over her shoulder and peered at the sleeping patient. His face was turned toward them and he was breathing easily. An emaciated and bloodless face, ghastly in repose. He had been a large man, but illness had stripped his body down to the framework of bones. One talonlike hand lay outside the sheet, loosely gripping an open fountain pen. Ink had smeared the tips of his fingers and made a blotch on the sheet. The nurse drew her hand away from Shayne’s grasp, leaned forward, and gently took the pen from the sleeping man’s clutch.

She straightened up, and her shoulders pressed against Shayne’s chest. The man’s appearance had been photographically caught by the detective, and he moved back softly.

The nurse smiled and whispered, “He insists on trying to write letters in bed and is always making a mess.” She placed the fountain pen on an enameled table.

Shayne studied the pen as the girl moved toward the door. It was of odd design, filigreed with white gold. His hand darted out and picked up the pen, slipped it in his breast pocket with the point up as he strolled casually toward the door.

The nurse stepped outside with him and closed the door, leaned back against it. “Is that all you wanted?”

Shayne grinned engagingly and said, “I could use your telephone number.”

The girl smiled up at him but made no reply.

Shayne went on more seriously. “You might give me dope on the general setup over here. How long have you been on the case?”

“Ever since they arrived.”

“Do you live here?”

“Yes. In Miami.”

“How did you happen to come on the case? Know Pedique before?”

“No. They called the Nursing Registry, and I happened to be the next on the list.”

“I see.” Shayne hesitated. “And Miss Hunt—was she employed in the same manner?”

“Oh, no. She’s from New York. She came down with them.”

Shayne considered that. Then he said, “And she has a room, stays here all the time?”

“Yes.” She smiled again. “So you don’t need her telephone number.”

“I’d still like to have yours,” Shayne said, but went on without giving her time to reply. “Which is the other nurse’s room? I think I’ll bother her with a few questions while I’m here.”

“I’m sure,” the girl told him sedately, “Charlotte won’t mind if you bother her.” There was a hint of malice in her voice.

Shayne glanced at her sharply. “Not jealous?” he drawled.

“Of course not. You flatter yourself.” She laughed softly and started down the hall. “I’ll show you her room. The only thing is,” she continued as Shayne swung along beside her, “that Charlotte very nearly drove me crazy asking questions about you when she went off duty this morning. She likes her men big and rough and redheaded.” She threw Shayne an impish glance.

“That gal’s got good judgment,” Shayne said. “I hope you didn’t tell her anything about me to cool her off.”

The nurse flushed. “I didn’t know anything to tell her. Only what I read in the newspapers.” She stopped before a closed door.

“That’s your fault. You could know all about me if you’d give me that phone number.”

She smiled at him and tapped on the door, then turned the knob and stuck her head inside.

“Here’s the boy friend, Charlotte.”

She stepped back, and Shayne went into the room as a sleepy voice asked, “What—who?”

The room was a replica of the room Phyllis Brighton had taken him to, both in size and furnishings. The nurse’s blond head lay on the pillow. Her eyes were only half open.

They opened wide when Shayne pulled up a chair by the bed and sat down. “Oh, it’s you, big boy?” Her voice was no longer a sleepy drawl.

“It’s me.” He grinned at her. “I thought you might be lonesome.”

“And how!” Charlotte exclaimed fervently. Her long body was fully clothed, and she moved restlessly on the bed.

Shayne’s gaze traveled over her. He said, “Did you by any chance mean that come-hither look you tossed me last night?”

She giggled. “They’ve kept me cooped up here till I’d give most any man the glad eye.”

Shayne frowned. “You’re not particular, eh? You’d even step out with me.” He made a move as though to leave the room.

“Wait a minute.” She caught his hand, and her eyes caressed him. “I was just kidding, big boy. You knocked me all in a heap when I first saw you. You got something that does things to me.”

Shayne subsided and lit a cigarette. He grinned and said, “You’d repeat that last statement with emphasis if you stepped out with me.”

“Uh-huh. I’ll bet I would,” she whispered.

“Well, why not?” He leaned toward her and lowered his voice to match her whisper.

She shook her head and said longingly, “I can’t.”

Shayne’s eyes looked squarely into hers for a long moment before he muttered, “You’re off duty tonight, aren’t you? Until midnight?”

“Yeah.” She moved her head restlessly on the pillow, drawing nearer to him, but she looked away from him when she said almost inaudibly, “But I’m supposed to stick around this dump all the time.”

Shayne leaned over her and asked, “What for? The other nurse will be on duty.”

“I know—but—” She moved her head off the pillow and moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. Shayne’s face was not more than a foot away from her, his eyes boring into hers.

“I’ve got an apartment.” He gave her the address and the number. “Better use the side entrance on Second Avenue. I’ll be there alone all evening.”

“I’ll remember that number.” Her eyes were bright and feverish. She hunched her shoulders to the edge of the bed. Shayne kissed her moist, parted lips.

She lay back and looked at him and said, “My God!” when he stood up.

He smiled crookedly and said aloud, “Thanks for the interview, sister. You and I have the same idea about a lot of things.” And he added under his breath, “I’ll be looking for you tonight.” He turned abruptly and went out, closing the door with a wave of his hand.

There was no one in the corridor. He went to the balustraded stairway and on down to the library. He saw Mr. Montrose engrossed with a number of papers at a desk on the far side of the room.

Shayne walked in and said, “Good afternoon.”

Mr. Montrose jumped. He smiled apologetically when he saw who it was, stood up, and said, “Mr. Shayne. You startled me.”

“Sorry.” Shayne walked across the room and drew up a chair to the side of the desk.

“Do sit down.” Mr. Montrose’s voice was unexpectedly cordial.

“Thanks.” Shayne sat down. So did Mr. Montrose. The wispy little man cleared his throat nervously. He said, “This has been a terrible ordeal for all of us, Mr. Shayne. I trust that you and the police have apprehended the murderer.”

There was a clean ash tray on the top of the desk. Shayne ground out the butt of the cigarette he had lit in Charlotte’s room and lit another one.

“We’ve struck nothing but blind trails thus far,” he confessed. “I’m working on a lead which may mean something.” He paused for a moment and assumed a deeply thoughtful attitude, then went on. “May I take the liberty of asking a few pertinent questions?”

“Oh, yes, indeed,” Mr. Montrose assured him. “I’ll be happy to assist you in any way possible.” He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his palms together.

“You’re Brighton’s secretary?”

“Yes.” Mr. Montrose nodded and waited.

“You’re fully conversant with his business affairs, I presume?”

“Yes, indeed. Since his illness the burden has naturally fallen on me.” He sighed as though the burden was a heavy one, but that he was bearing up as well as could be expected under the responsibility.

“What, in rough figures, is Mr. Brighton’s estate worth?” Shayne asked bluntly.

The little man gazed up at the ceiling and considered the question. “His holdings have been hard hit,” he said with a frown. “It is difficult, of course, to make a snap appraisal. I doubt seriously, however, whether the entire estate could be liquidated on the present market for more than a hundred thousand dollars—certainly not more than one hundred and fifty thousand.” He shook his head sadly. “And that, mark you, is the estate of a man worth millions a few years ago. Literally millions.”

“Yes. That’s tough,” Shayne granted. “Who inherits? The two children?”

“Equally. Have you heard, Mr. Shayne, that Miss Brighton has disappeared?”

“Yes. I heard something about it. No other heirs, eh? No other member of the Brighton clan to put in a claim if Rufus Brighton should kick off?”

“There are no other heirs,” said Mr. Montrose primly.

“No brothers or sisters?” Shayne persisted.

“As to that,” Mr. Montrose admitted, “Mr. Brighton has two sisters and a brother living. I helped draw up his will, however, and there is no provision for any of them.”

“Seems to me I’ve heard of the sisters,” Shayne muttered. “They’re both married and pretty high society, aren’t they?”

“Both of Mr. Brighton’s sisters married extremely well,” Mr. Montrose agreed with pursed lips.

“How about the brother?” Shayne frowned at his cigarette. “Wasn’t he mixed up in some scandal a few years ago?”

Mr. Montrose drummed on the desk with his finger tips. There was a look of distress on his face. “I do trust, Mr. Shayne, it will not be necessary to drag that story through the newspapers again.”

Shayne said shortly, “I don’t talk for publication. I simply want all the facts before me. I have a hunch this was murder for profit. Thus far I find only two persons who would profit by the death of Mr. or Mrs. Brighton. I understand that Brighton is just clinging to life and may let go at any time.”

“I begin to see the theory you’re working on.” Mr. Montrose nodded and ceased drumming on the desk.

“Theories are all right,” said Shayne. “But I need all the pieces. How about this brother? Weren’t they in business together or something? And didn’t the brother embezzle a wad of money and get put away for it?”

Mr. Montrose sucked in his breath cautiously. “So it was reported. Though I don’t mind saying, Mr. Shayne, that I have always felt a great injustice was committed. I was intimately associated with Mr. Julius Brighton for many years before the affair and I cannot believe he committed any dishonest act.”

“Julius Brighton?” Shayne nodded, crushing out his cigarette. “That’s the brother. I’m beginning to recall it. That was about seven years ago.”

“They were partners in a brokerage business which failed.”

“And you knew Julius pretty well?”

“I was his confidential secretary for ten years. I knew him altogether too well to give the slightest credence to the charges made against him.”

“The jury evidently believed them,” Shayne grunted. “They convicted him, didn’t they?”

Mr. Montrose pointed out sharply, “The jury was in a mood to convict.”

Shayne nodded absently. “What did they give him?”

“Literally a death sentence.” Mr. Montrose spoke with high indignation. “Julius Brighton was broken in spirit as well as body when they dragged him away to serve a ten-year sentence.”

Shayne nodded and lit another cigarette. “Was that when you went to work for Rufus Brighton?”

“Soon afterward. My modest savings also went in the crash. I have always felt,” Mr. Montrose continued in an aggrieved tone, “that the entire truth was not brought out at the trial.”

Shayne got up, saying, “At least that seems to let Julius out as an heir. They quarreled, I take it.”

“Oh, yes.” Mr. Montrose smiled thinly. “I think you can rest assured that Julius will never be mentioned in any will made by Rufus Brighton.”

“All right.” Shayne dismissed the matter. “About the servants. What is the staff?”

“There’s only the one maid who let you in, the housekeeper, cook, and chauffeur. And Miss Hunt, of course, the nurse who accompanied Mr. Brighton from New York.”

“By all means,” murmured Shayne, “let us not forget Miss Hunt.”

“Eh?”

“Skip it,” said Shayne airily. “The others, do they all live here? And have they been employed long?”

“Yes. Except the chauffeur. He is quartered over the garage and was employed just before we left New York, to drive the limousine down. The others are the regular staff maintained here the year around.”

Shayne said, “Thanks. I’ll wander around a bit.” He went out, leaving Mr. Montrose sitting at his desk.

The ubiquitous maid flitted past him in the corridor. Shayne stopped and asked if there was a rear entrance leading from the garage. She led him down another hall to an unlocked rear door.

Shayne went out and found a concrete walk leading to the garage. A low hedge separated it from the driveway south of the house. As he went along the path he noticed that a curving drive led directly from the four-car garage into the alley. That, he decided, was how Phyllis had given the police the slip last night.

One of the garage doors was open. An outside stairway led upward at the end of the building to a narrow porch opening into the living-quarters above. Shayne walked directly to the stairway and started to climb it. He was halfway up when a hoarse shout stopped him. He looked down and saw a burly figure emerge from the open garage door. A heavy low-browed face peered up at him. The man wore dirty coveralls over a chauffeur’s uniform and was wiping his hands on a piece of oily waste.

“Where d’yuh think you’re going?” he bellowed.

Shayne leaned on the railing and grinned down at him. “I’m on my way to pay the chauffeur a social call. Are you it?”

The man threw down the waste and moved to the bottom step, turning his face up and staring with close-set eyes, growling through thick lips, “You ain’t got any business up there.”

Shayne said reprovingly, “That’s not a nice way to greet a visitor.”

“I ain’t expecting no visitors.” The chauffeur mounted the steps slowly, blinking upward at the detective. He had no eyelashes at all, and the lack gave his face a curiously naked appearance.

“You’ve got one now,” Shayne told him.

“Have I?” It was a surly growl. The chauffeur pushed past Shayne to a couple of steps above him.

“You’ve got one now whether you like it or not,” Shayne insisted pleasantly. He started up another step.

“Not so fast, buddy.” The chauffeur put a grimy hand on his shoulder.

Shayne said evenly, “Take your hand off me.”

The man glared at him, then moved up three steps where he blocked the stairway. “Spill your piece,” he growled.

“We’ll go on up.”

“No, we won’t. You can do your talking right here.”

Shayne’s eyes blazed. The blaze died away to a hard glitter. “Such inexplicable bellicosity must be based on more than personal animosity,” he mused.

“Don’t be cussing me,” the man blustered.

Shayne smiled up at him. A terrifying sort of smile. His lips drew back from his teeth.

“What’s upstairs that you’re afraid I’ll see?”

The chauffeur blinked uncertainly. “You must be the redheaded detective they were talking about last night.”

“I’ll be presenting my credentials in a minute,” Shayne promised him.

“Aw, say.” The chauffeur became conciliatory. “I’m willing to talk, see? But sometimes a guy don’t want his private room busted into. Get what I mean? A guy might have a dame on the sly. Go on down, and we’ll chew the fat.”

“That,” said Shayne with quiet viciousness, “is exactly why I’m going to look in your rooms.”

Fear washed over the chauffeur’s face like a shadow. His greasy fist came up from nowhere and smashed against the side of Shayne’s jaw. The detective lurched back, grabbing wildly at the railing. Grunting curses, the chauffeur swung a heavy foot and planted it in the face below him.

The railing collapsed, and Shayne’s body slithered limply to the ground.

He came back to consciousness just before sundown. He was sprawled drunkenly in his car parked on a side street near the east end of the causeway. He sat up and shook his head, gingerly feeling his face. The rearview mirror showed a livid bruise on his forehead and clotted blood on his cheeks.

He leaned over the wheel and held his bursting head in both hands. Curses came from his lips in a whispered stream.

After a time he sat up, muttering, “If this isn’t a hell of a note. And me with a date with a hot-mouthed blonde for tonight.”

He looked at himself in the mirror again, shook his head dismally, then started the motor and drove across the causeway to Miami.

CHAPTER 9

PARKING HIS CAR IN THE HOTEL GARAGE, Shayne went around to the side entrance and up to his apartment. With one glass of brandy inside him, he poured out another glassful and carried it into the bathroom. The lavatory mirror was no kinder than the one in the automobile. He emptied the brandy glass and then went to the kitchen and drank a couple of glasses of ice water. His head throbbed each time he moved, but he was beginning to get used to it.

Coming back to the bathroom he turned on the hot-water faucet in the tub, went into the living-room shrugging off his coat. He heard something fall to the carpet and looked down at a gold-filigreed fountain pen. He blinked, trying to remember where he had seen it before, finally recalled stealing it from the sickroom for some vague purpose which didn’t seem important any more. He picked it up and dropped it in the table drawer, hurried into the bedroom to undress, and got back to the tub of steaming water before it overflowed.

After soaking himself as red as a boiled lobster in the tub and punishing his flesh with a cold needle shower he decided that life might be worth while after all. Dressed only in undershirt and shorts he padded out to the kitchen and put coffee water on to boil. Then he dressed in clean flannels and a white sport shirt without a tie.

He made a pot of strong coffee, but his stomach muscles rebelled at the thought of food. Carrying the Dripolator into the living-room he drank three cups of the pungent stuff liberally laced with cognac. By the end of that, all was decidedly well with the world. He even essayed his customary tuneless whistle while he carried things back to the kitchen and set about preparing to receive company.

His preparations consisted of squeezing oranges and lemons and mixing a quantity of the juice with eggs, gin, grenadine, and crushed ice in a tall silver cocktail shaker which he gave a vigorous shaking up as he carried it into the living-room. He then set out cocktail glasses and sat down to wait for Charlotte.

The shaker had a heavy coating of frost when her knock sounded on the door. Shayne got up and let her in. She was wearing a beret and a dashing sports costume which showed off her figure extremely well. She lifted her face to Shayne as soon as he closed the door, and he kissed her clinging pouted lips. She pressed herself against the length of him and closed her eyes.

Drawing away at last, she breathed deeply, with full-lunged ecstasy. Her eyes widened in dismay as she saw the ugly bruise on his forehead. “What did you run into, sweet?”

“Your chauffeur’s foot.” He took her arm and led her to the table.

“Oscar?”

“I don’t know his name. We didn’t get that far with the amenities.” He poured out two pinkish cocktails. “Some sort of squarehead. He looks as if he might be named Oscar.”

“When did it happen—and why?”

“This afternoon. I gathered that he doesn’t care for inquisitive detectives.” Shayne grinned and lifted his glass. “Drink up.”

She lifted hers and clinked it against his glass. “Here’s to sex, sin, and such,” she proposed.

They both drank. Shayne poured out two more and pulled up a deep chair for Charlotte. He gave her a cigarette when she sat down, lit it and one for himself. “Did you tell Doctor Pedique where you were coming?”

“I certainly didn’t.” Her eyes sparkled rebelliously. “I slipped out. I don’t know what they think I am, keeping me cooped up like I was in a convent.”

“Maybe they think you’ve taken the vow,” Shayne suggested.

Charlotte wrinkled up her nose at him. “They call it twenty-four-hour duty. That was the arrangement when I took the case. They have another nurse now, but I’m still supposed to stick around every minute.”

Shayne lifted his glass and sipped at it. “Which must be plenty tough on a gal with the curves you’ve got scattered here and there.”

“I’ll say. I left a swell boy friend behind in the big city when I went out on this case.” She leaned back and stretched out long legs, her skirt sliding above her knees.

Shayne moved his chair a little closer and laid his hand over hers.

“You’re not supposed to leave the house, eh?”

“I’ve got strict orders to be on hand twenty-four hours every day,” she said resentfully. She sipped her cocktail and watched him from beneath lowered lashes.

“Of course,” said Shayne, “there’s Doctor Pedique and Clarence. You shouldn’t get too lonesome with them around.”

She said, “Oh, them,” making a wry face.

Shayne grinned. “I had a hunch they were maybe like that.”

“And how.” She set down her empty glass. “The whole gang over there is screwy, if you ask me.”

“How long have you been on the case?”

“Pedique and I went on it together just before they shipped him down here. But I didn’t come here to talk about cases. I thought you were a live number. You didn’t miss giving me the eye that first night when you came.”

“Give me time to get steamed up.” Shayne grinned. He emptied his glass, poured out two more cocktails. She tilted her head on one side and watched him.

“You sure mix pretty cocktails. Good, too. And they’ve got authority. I can feel just those two. They get me all hot inside. You know.” Her gaze was slumbrously passionate.

Shayne said, “Yeh. I know. Just relax. You’re among friends.”

She took a sip and leaned closer to him so her head touched his shoulder. “I won’t be responsible after I drink about two more. You’ll have to take care of me.”

“I can do that.” Shayne slipped his arm about her shoulders.

She giggled. “Yeh. I bet. Don’t take too good care of me. Anything goes, see? Anything. Just so you promise to send me home in a taxi at eleven-thirty.”

Shayne rubbed the lobe of her ear between thumb and forefinger and promised to see she got back on time. Then he switched the conversation back to the subject that interested him.

“So Pedique was called in on the case just before the patient left for New York?”

“Yeh. We both got a hurry call just about in time to catch the train.”

“I wonder why they changed doctors so suddenly?”

“I dunno. Rich people are funny. I think I did hear someone say that Monty had a fuss with the other doctor, though. Didn’t think he was doing the old boy any good.”

“Monty?”

“Yeh. Montrose. He practically runs things with the old man sick.”

“Is Pedique doing the patient any good?” Shayne asked suddenly.

“Not so you could notice it. Take it from me, he’s more interested in the kids than the old man.”

“Do you mean Clarence and Phyllis?”

“Yeh. That’s Doctor Pedique’s real racket, you know.”

“No. I didn’t know.”

“Sure. Screwy stuff. I’ve worked with him before. I don’t know how they came to call him in for the old man. But I didn’t come here to talk shop.”

Shayne grinned at her briefly and pressed his palm against her body beneath her arm.

“Don’t think I’m going to forget why you came here. But I’m curious about the setup over there. The two young folks aren’t Pedique’s patients, are they?”

“You’d think so, all right. He’s practically turned the old man over to Dr. Hilliard. I’ve got a hunch maybe that’s why they called Pedique in—using Mr. Brighton as a blind.”

“Is that so? They seemed normal enough.”

“Hell! You don’t know the half of it.” Charlotte tensed and pressed her cheek down against Shayne’s arm, turned her head slowly, and her teeth worried his flesh.

He laughed, said, “Hey! We need another drink,” and drew away from her to empty the shaker in their two glasses.

She leaned back laxly and watched him. Her face was flushed, and there was a hot glitter in her eyes.

“We’ll drink these, and I’ll mix some more.”

“I don’t know whether I need any more.” She took hers and emptied it avidly.

“Might as well let your hair all the way down—if you know what I mean.”

“God, yes. I know. I’ve always wanted to get drunk with a redheaded man. You know—drunk.” She spoke the last word with a feverish intensity. Her lips were moist and bluish-red.

Shayne said, “Uh-huh,” and put his drink down. Casually, he said, “You told me I didn’t know the half of it about the two youngsters. Do you mean they’re both—that way?”

Charlotte wagged her head wisely. “Clarence has got a loose screw, all right. And I can’t see that Doctor Pedique is doing him any good. The girl is different. I don’t quite catch her. She seemed all right at first. But she’s been plenty jittery lately. She’ll go out like a light one of these days, if she hasn’t already. But you were gonna mix me a drink.”

Shayne said, “So I was.” He got up and took the shaker into the kitchen, where he squeezed more fruit juice, mixed up another batch, and went back with it.

Charlotte had moved from her chair to the studio couch and turned out all the lights except one floor lamp near the foot of the couch. Her eyes followed him with anticipation as he pulled a straight chair near the head of the couch, arranged shaker, glasses, and cigarettes so they would be within arm’s reach.

Then he sat down beside her and poured two fresh cocktails. “Sit up and take some nourishment.”

She sat up waveringly. He steadied her with his arm about her shoulders while she gulped the drink down. She sank back with a little sigh and said, “That’s the kind of nourishment I’ve been pining for for a long time, Red.”

Shayne said irritably, “I hate to be called Red. My name is Mike.”

“Okay, Mike.” She looked up at him with invitingly pursed lips.

Shayne leaned over her and kissed her. Her arm went about his neck, drawing him down to her. With his lips close to her ear, he muttered, “Who killed Mrs. Brighton?”

“Who cares? Kiss me again, Mike.”

“I care. I’ll kiss you plenty—after you tell me.”

“Whadda you care? I didn’t kill the old battle ax.”

“I’m not even sure of that.”

Charlotte tittered. “You do pick the Goddamnedest time to go into your detecting act.”

“I’d like to find out before you get too drunk to tell me.”

“I’m pretty woozy right now, but not woozy enough to start making guesses on who got careless with a knife.”

“How do you know it was done with a knife?” Shayne asked softly.

“Wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

Charlotte lifted herself unsteadily on one elbow and stared at him with indignant eyes.

“Not trying to put me on the spot, are you, Mike?”

He kissed her and said, “Hell, no. I’m in a bad hole on that case and I just thought you might be able to give me a lead.”

“Well, I can’t.” She sank back drowsily. “Do things to me.”

“Think back.” Shayne kneaded soft flesh between his finger tips. “You were on duty when it happened. Who had a chance to get in her room and do it?”

“The whole caboodle of them. They were all around at one time or another. I wouldn’t put it past any of them. Even Monty. He’s cagey. And I don’t think the old lady liked him. Or the old man himself might have slipped out of bed and slit her goozle while my back was turned. He’s foxy enough to do it. And he’s half nuts, too. Know what I caught him doing the other morning?”

Shayne patiently admitted he hadn’t the slightest idea.

“He was feeding his breakfast out the window to the squirrels on the lawn.” She giggled. “He’s plenty goofy. I believe he does that with half the food he pretends to eat. Wouldn’t surprise me any if that wasn’t all that’s the matter with him.”

“We were talking about Mrs. Brighton’s death,” Shayne reminded her.

“Yeh. Well, I don’t know a thing.” She snuggled her head close to him. “The police asked me questions for an hour, and I told them all I knew. Kiss me.”

Shayne kissed her. It lasted a long time and became rather involved before it was over.

A faint click drifted through the stillness to Shayne’s ears. His perceptions were passion-drugged and did not immediately respond to the stimulus.

It wasn’t until he became aware of a cool breeze sweeping through the kitchen that he realized he and Charlotte were no longer alone in the apartment.

He lifted himself away from her fevered lips and listened. He thought he heard a faint rustle in the kitchen, but could not be sure. The pounding of Charlotte’s heart and his was loud in his ears.

He tensed, wary and alert. Charlotte’s body stiffened with him. Her voice was a throbbing whisper.

“Oh, God, what is it? If they find me here—”

He put his hand over her mouth. Even in that moment her tongue came from between her teeth to caress his fingers.

His muscles flexed, and he made a lunge for the kitchen. The outer door slammed shut in front of him. He jerked it open and leaned out. He could hear feet hurrying down the fire escape but could see nothing in the darkness.

He switched on the light and then tried the outside knob on the back door. The night latch was still on as he had left it. It couldn’t have been opened without a key. He closed the door and looked at the nail where the key always hung.

It wasn’t there. He frowned, trying to remember when he had last seen it. He couldn’t recall any particular time. It had just always hung there. Anyone who had been in his apartment recently might have carried it away.

There was a bolt on the inside of the door which would hold it securely against being opened from the outside with a key. He threw the bolt, turned out the kitchen light, and went back into the living-room.

Charlotte was sitting up staring at him with unveiled terror in her eyes. “What was it?”

“Nothing. I’ve just got the heebie jeebies. Left the back door open, and it blew shut.” He poured himself a cocktail and drank it.

Charlotte held out her hand for one. Her hand shook. “God, but I was scared for a minute. I thought there was someone out in the kitchen looking in.”

Shayne didn’t tell her she hadn’t been mistaken. He poured her a drink and said indifferently, “What if there had been? We’re both free, white, and twenty-one, aren’t we? Or, is there a husband in the background? By God, if there is—” He stared down at her angrily.

“No. You got me wrong, Mike. I just thought they might have trailed me here from the house.”

“What if they did?” he asked roughly. “Is it any of their business if you want to sleep around a little?”

“Don’t get sore, Mike. I told you I hadda slip out. They’re so damned afraid that I might take an hour off.” She sank back and held out her arms invitingly. “Don’t be sore.”

“I’m not sore,” Shayne said shortly. “But I like to know where I stand. I’ve kept alive and healthy this long by not horning in on another man’s game. If you’ve got any strings tied to you, sweetheart, say so and get out.”

“I haven’t, Mike. I swear to God I haven’t.” She was tugging at his hand. “You can’t leave me like this.”

“All right,” Shayne said, “I won’t.” He leaned over and pulled the cord of the floor lamp.

It was eleven-fifteen when Shayne cursed in the darkness as he groped for the light cord. He found it and yawned as the light came on.

“You’d better get ready to go,” he said over his shoulder as he got up and poured himself a lukewarm cocktail. “I’ll phone for a taxi.”

Charlotte yawned, too, as she sat up. She said, “It’s hell to have to break something like this up, isn’t it, dearie?”

Shayne grimaced at the warm cocktail and at Charlotte’s term of endearment. It had the professional touch. He set the half-full glass down and moodily went to the cabinet where he poured himself a slug of Martell.

Charlotte scurried into the bathroom and called through the halfshut door, “You’d better call the taxi. There’ll be hell to pay if I’m not back by midnight.”

Shayne drank the brandy, went to the phone, and called the clerk to have a taxi sent around to the side entrance at once.

Charlotte came out of the bathroom, patting her hair in place, bright-eyed and smiling.

“It’s been a big evening. I knew it was gonna be when I first looked at you over there on the stairway. Remember? When I get bothered first time I see a man—look out.”

Shayne said the taxi would be waiting, and started to the door with her. She caught hold of his hand tightly, pulled him to her as he started to open the door. He kissed her mouth without enthusiasm and opened the door.

“You’re not disappointed, are you?” she pouted as they went down the hall together.

Shayne said no, he wasn’t disappointed, refraining from adding that he hadn’t expected a hell of a lot. She clung to his arm going down the stairs and told him happily that she would be back for a repeat performance as soon as she could slip away again. He explained that he often had to work at night and advised her to call before coming. She promised she would.

The dustily white arc of a moon was peeping from behind heavy clouds when they went out the side entrance. The taxi was waiting. A nondescript sedan loitered at the curb with motor running, fifty feet behind the taxi.

Shayne helped Charlotte in, gave the Brighton Beach address to the driver with a dollar. She leaned out to smile and wave as the taxi pulled away and made a U-turn in the middle of the block.

Shayne turned back toward the private entrance of the hotel with a sigh of relief. The sedan nosed up, and a hand came out of the right front window. Moonlight glinted on blued steel, and a .45 automatic spurted orange flame four times in rapid succession.

Shayne staggered, half turned back toward the street, then slumped down on the concrete sidewalk.

The sedan lurched away in a screaming circle, darted north to mingle with the midnight downtown traffic.

A crowd gathered, and Shayne lay still. Police whistles shrilled through the night, and an ambulance siren shrieked, and the shriek died to a moan as brakes squealed and white-coated young men leaped out. After a hasty examination Shayne was placed on a stretcher, and the siren rose to a shriek again as it tore off toward Jackson Memorial Hospital. The crowds dissolved. There was only a red stain on the concrete to show where Shayne had lain. Then the hotel porter came and washed that away, and there was nothing.

Shayne stopped groaning and began joking with the ambulance riders as they drew up at the entrance. They stripped his long-muscled body and found that two .45 slugs had ripped through his right shoulder, smashing the collarbone. Another had grazed the ribs on his right side, and the fourth bullet had bored cleanly through the flesh just below his right ribs. He asked for a cigarette while they cleansed and dressed the wounds, and cursed amiably when he was informed he would have to wear a cast for at least two weeks and must avoid strenuous exertion.

He had lost a lot of blood, and the doctor in charge of the emergency ward said he had better spend the night there and go home in the morning.

Shayne said he’d be damned if he’d sleep on one of those cots. He winced with pain but sat up doggedly and asked someone to call him a taxi.

Another ambulance came screeching up with an accident victim. No one paid any attention to Shayne as they gathered about the stretcher to see whether fate had been kind and delivered them an interesting case to practice on.

An orderly who had been on the second ambulance sauntered over to Shayne and asked him for a light.

Shayne gave it to him. The orderly said, “You’re Michael Shayne, the detective, aren’t you?”

Shayne admitted his identity. The orderly was a young fellow with an agreeable smile. He said admiringly, “They can’t kill you, huh?”

Shayne said they hadn’t so far but he didn’t want to take any chances on getting sliced up by staying in the emergency ward all night.

The orderly thought that was very funny and he had a good laugh. Then he said, “Business seems to be picking up in your line, Mr. Shayne. Two murders in two nights. Miami’ll grow up into a city if we keep on.”

Shayne said, “Yeah,” without much interest, but the orderly wasn’t to be put off.

“Funny about them having another killing up at the same place where that woman was murdered last night.”

Shayne stiffened. His tongue licked out to wet his lips. “Brighton’s?”

“Yeah, that’s the place. I was talking to one of the fellows from a Beach hospital downtown, and he said it just happened a little while—”

Shayne interrupted hoarsely. “Who was it tonight?”

“Some girl.” The orderly wrinkled his brow and tried to remember.

“A girl?” Shayne’s left hand reached out and got hold of the young fellow’s shoulder.

“Yeah.” The youth winced and looked at him curiously. He started to say something jokingly about Shayne not breaking his shoulder, but he didn’t when he saw the detective’s face.

“I remember now. It was a nurse that’s working there. I guess she had been stepping out and was just coming in. I think they said her name was Hunt—something like that. She had just stepped out of a taxi and was going up to the door when someone bopped her twice through the head with a .25 automatic.”

Shayne exhaled slowly. His fingers loosened their grip on the white-coated shoulder. He sank back on the hospital cot as the attending physician came to him briskly, saying, “Of course, if you feel you’ll be more comfortable in your own bed we’ll be glad to arrange to have you taken there.”

Shayne shook his head. “Thanks, doc. I’ve changed my mind. I believe I’ll feel more comfortable with some company tonight.”

CHAPTER 10

AN INTERN HELPED SHAYNE get his clothes on the next morning. His wounds had been freshly dressed, and it was evident that no complications were likely. His collarbone and shoulder were in a plaster cast, his right arm in a sling.

With the exception of a painfully stiff right side Shayne felt pretty good. He bummed a ride in an ambulance to the corner of Flagler Street and Second Avenue, where he bought a morning Herald and sauntered up to Child’s Restaurant for breakfast. Ordering bacon and eggs, buttered toast, and lots of coffee, he spread the newspaper out with his left hand and began to catch up on the events of last night.

The murder of Charlotte Hunt had pushed the attack on Michael Shayne out of the headlines, for which he was duly grateful. He read the account of her death slowly and with great care, grimacing at the repeated mention of a possible love angle and the reiterated assumption that she was returning from an assignation in Miami when killed.

The only real basis for this assumption was the small caliber of the “death weapon,” which suggested a woman and probable jealousy. It wasn’t much but it was all the authorities had to work on. At the time of going to press the taxi driver who brought her home had not been located, having driven away from the estate before his passenger was murdered. Peter Painter was prominently quoted as positively asserting the murder would be solved as soon as the driver was located and it was learned from him where he had picked up the nurse for her last ride.

There was nothing at all in the front-page story to indicate the police believed there was any connection between the murders of Mrs. Brighton and Charlotte Hunt, but merely a brief paragraph commenting on the apparent coincidence of the two deaths. Another brief item on the front page mentioned that Phyllis Brighton had not yet been apprehended and was still being sought for questioning in connection with her mother’s murder.

The waitress brought Shayne’s order as he began reading a somewhat casual account of the attack upon him. According to the story, newspaper reporters had been turned away from the hospital where he lay at the point of death. There were no clues to the identity of his attackers except their method, which pointed to a gang reprisal. Mention was briefly made of his anti-criminal activities, and it was suggested that he had been put on the spot by persons whose enmity he had aroused in the past.

Shayne munched a piece of toast and ate a strip of bacon as he turned to the second page which was given to pictures of the Brighton estate and photographs of the various persons involved in the two killings, together with statements by local and state officials. The state, it appeared further, offered a thousand-dollar reward for the arrest of Mrs. Brighton’s murderer or murderers. Shayne chuckled aloud as he read another lengthy, obviously dictated statement by Peter Painter promising an immediate arrest and offering two hundred and fifty dollars as a personal reward for information leading to the apprehension of the miscreant or miscreants. But his face was grim as he laid the paper down and belatedly went on to eat the rest of his breakfast. He reflected that things were beginning to get interesting. There had been over a grand laid on the line so far. And those offers, he reminded himself, had all been made before the second murder. If they hooked the two killings together and still didn’t get an arrest, he calculated the chances were good for the amount of the rewards being doubled.

When he had finished his eggs and ordered more coffee he turned to the editorial page. A scathing editorial there took cognizance of the double murder on the Beach; asked pointedly if there might not be some connection between the two; and sarcastically inquired what, if anything, the man in charge of the Beach detective force intended to do to make the lives of the other residents safe.

Shayne pushed the paper aside and chuckled grimly. He drank his second cup of coffee, paid his bill, and went out. It was only a block and a half to his hotel.

The staff and guests of the building gathered excitedly about him in the lobby, but he brushed aside their questions with the smiling assertion that he would live and that he was on the trail of the persons who had shot him down.

There was a lengthy night letter in his mailbox. He read it as he went up on the elevator. It was from a customs officer in Laredo, Texas.

HENDERSON ARRIVED LAST EVENING BY TRAIN AND CHARTERED PRIVATE PLANE TO CONTINUE TRIP TO JACKSONVILLE FLORIDA WHERE HE WILL MAKE CONNECTIONS WITH PAN AMERICAN AT NOON TO MIAMI STOP HE DECLARED FOR ENTRY ONE PAINTING VALUE FIVE HUNDRED BY R M ROBERTSON WHO IS WELL KNOWN IN ART CIRCLES AS IMITATOR OF RAPHAELS WORK STOP COMMUNICATE IF I CAN HELP FURTHER

Shayne unlocked his door, went into his apartment, and laid the message on the table. Everything was as he had left it last night. His first, almost inevitable action was to go to the cabinet and take a stiff drink of cognac. After that he sat down, uncomfortably, and lit a cigarette. Things were evidently coming to a head, but the pattern as he saw it didn’t make any sense. After a time he read the message carefully a second time, then got up and went to his coat in a closet. There he got the cablegram he had taken from Mrs. Brighton’s handbag the night of her death. Back at the table he laid the messages side by side and read first one and then the other while he finished his cigarette. Finally he got up decisively and went to the telephone.

He called a number and waited. A hoarse, accented voice answered. He said, “Tony? This is Mike—Shayne.”

“Mike? I read in the papers that you was dead, maybe.”

“Not quite. I’ve got a job for you, Tony. Get this straight. It’s plenty important.”

“Yeah. I get it, Mike.”

“There’s a man named Henderson coming in on the Pan American plane that leaves Jacksonville at noon. You can check on what time it gets in here.”

“I’m listening.”

“He may not be using his right name on the passenger list. I’ll leave a picture of him in an envelope in my mailbox downstairs. You can pick it up this morning. There’ll also be five C’s in the envelope. This guy has got a painting that’s worth that much to me. Get it from him and leave it down at the desk for me.”

“A painting, boss?”

“Sure. A picture. You know—painted on canvas.”

“What kinda picture, boss?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be a picture of a man, maybe a mule. Or a mountain, or maybe a Goddamned apple. He’ll only have one picture with him. Get it for me.”

“Yeah.” Tony sounded doubtful. “Is it a big picture? In a swell frame, maybe?”

“I don’t know. It may not even be framed. It doesn’t matter. Doesn’t half a grand talk?”

“Oh, sure, boss. I get it for you. No rough stuff, huh?”

“No more than necessary. I don’t want him hurt. And don’t, for God’s sake, let me show in it at all.”

“Oh, sure not. You know me, Mike.”

“Yeah. I know you. That’s the reason I’m warning you to go easy. This is dynamite, Tony.”

The voice assured him again that he would be very careful in carrying out the assignment, and Shayne hung up.

He took another drink, put the cablegram and telegram in his pocket, got the photograph of D. Q. Henderson which Gordon had given him and the two bills which the square-faced man had paid him as a retainer. Going down to the desk he got an envelope and scrawled Tony on the front of it with his left hand. Putting Henderson’s picture inside, he passed the unsealed envelope and the two thousand-dollar bills across to the clerk.

“Get one of those bills broken and put five hundred in the envelope and seal it,” he directed. “Leave the envelope in my box for a mug named Tony who will be in to get it sometime this morning. Put the other fifteen hundred bucks in the safe for me. Tony is supposed to leave a package for me sometime this afternoon. I don’t know how big it’ll be. Put it in the safe if it’s not too big—and put it some place where it’ll be safe if it’s too big.”

“I understand, Mr. Shayne.” The clerk took the envelope and the two bills.

“And forget it,” Shayne instructed further.

The clerk said he would, and Shayne went out to the hotel garage and got into his car. By devious maneuvering he backed it out with only his left hand, got it in second gear and left it there until he had passed all the traffic lights and was headed north on Biscayne Boulevard.

Then he shifted to high and drove across the causeway to Miami Beach.

At the Brighton estate he parked his car where he had on previous occasions, but did not go up to the front door. He followed the driveway instead, going along the south side of the house to the garage. One of the doors stood open, and he could see a car inside, but the chauffeur did not make an appearance as Shayne stalked directly to the stairway and climbed up to the chauffeur’s quarters.

He tried the knob at the top without knocking. The door opened inward. He went in and looked around. It was not a large room, plainly furnished with an old couch, several chairs, and a rough writing-desk.

Two doors opened off the rear of the room. The one on the right was closed. The other stood open.

He went to the open door and peered in at an accumulation of odds and ends of discarded and broken furniture. Grimy rear windows looked out over the Atlantic Ocean, and cobwebs were festooned on the ceiling and walls. A thick layer of dust lay on all pieces of furniture.

There was a small clear space directly in front of the door. It had been swept clean of dust very recently.

Shayne stood on the threshold and studied the interior of the room a long time, finally getting down on his knees and examining faint scratches on the newly swept boards. They extended across the threshold, and he moved out on his knees, following the dim marks across the floor to the outer door. They appeared to have been made by dragging some heavy object recently from the storeroom out to the steps.

He got up, dusted off his knees, went to the closed door and jerked it open.

It was Oscar’s bedroom, but the chauffeur was not to be seen.

Shayne went in and looked things over. It was furnished with a single bed, an old dresser, two straight chairs, and there was a lavatory in one corner. A closet in another corner held two cheap suits, an overcoat, a raincoat, a chauffeur’s uniform, and a pair of much-washed coveralls. There was a cobweb clinging to one of the coverall sleeves, and the knees were dirt-stained since it had been laundered. Shayne knelt stiffly and turned down the wide cuff at the bottom. Sand spilled out. Not dirt. Fresh, clean beach sand.

Shayne backed out of the closet, breathing hard. A wooden tool chest stood at the foot of the bed. It opened readily. Inside was a bewildering assortment of wrenches, hammers, hacksaws, and the accumulated nuts, bolts, and odds and ends which a mechanic tosses into his tool chest. Shayne fumbled through them, lifted out a cloth-wrapped roll which he untied and spread out on the floor. His expression did not change as he found himself looking down at a complete set of burglar’s tools.

He tied the roll up again, replaced it, and put down the lid. In the front room, he hesitated a moment, then went out. A deep scratch led from the doorway to the top of the stairs.

He started down and saw Oscar come around the corner of the garage. The chauffeur stopped and stared when he saw Shayne.

The detective paused on the bottom step and awkwardly got a cigarette between his lips with his left hand. He lit it as Oscar moved nearer.

Oscar’s face was a curious study in conflicting emotions. Fear and anger were there, but they were overlaid by a placating smile. He wet his thick lips, and his gaze was fixed on Shayne’s injured arm in its sling.

“Say,” he rumbled, “I didn’t do that, did I?” All of Shayne’s face except his eyes smiled. He said, “I don’t know. Did you?”

He stepped off onto the ground and looked levelly into the eyes of the man who had kicked him in the face yesterday.

“I—didn’t think so,” Oscar mumbled. “I didn’t see that your arm was hurt when I left you in your car on the causeway.”

Shayne said placidly, “Your foot’s pretty heavy, Oscar. It’s dangerous business, kicking people around like that. You can’t tell what complications will develop.” The smile left his face. His nostrils flared at the base as his breath came faster.

“Well, say, I—I guess I got mad yesterday.” He dropped his gaze. “I—hadn’t oughtta done that.”

“No,” said Shayne softly, “you really hadn’t oughtta, Oscar.”

“Well, I—I’m sorry.”

“You’re going to be a hell of a lot sorrier,” Shayne said in the same level tone.

Oscar’s big hands doubled into fists, and he took a step forward.

Shayne said, “Better not, Oscar. Don’t push your luck too far.”

“I hate cops that come messing around,” Oscar said heavily.

“I hate lugs who don’t keep their feet where they belong.” Shayne turned and went toward the house while Oscar stood and looked after him with his mouth open.

Going in the rear door, Shayne passed an open door leading in the kitchen. He stopped and spoke to a fat Negress who was rolling out pie crusts and humming “Jesus Loves Me.”

“Hello, Mammy. I’m looking for the gardener.”

She ceased humming and rolled her eyes at him. “Dey ain’ no gahdner heah dat I knows ’bout.”

“Who takes care of the lawn and flowers? Does the chauffeur do it?”

“Dat Oscah man? Lawsy, no.” Her fat body shook with mirth. “He don’ do nuffin, ’cep’ walk aroun’ lookin’ mad an’ skeerin’ folkses.”

He thanked her and went on thoughtfully, meeting no one on his way to the library where he peered in. Clarence was sprawled out in a deep chair with his back to the door. Shayne stepped back and went on without being observed. He went up the rear stairway that Phyllis had shown him that first night. At the top he stopped and listened. An oppressive silence gripped the house. A heavy, unnatural silence. The silence of death, Shayne told himself wryly.

He went quietly down to the sickroom at the end of the hall and opened the door without knocking. A girl in a nurse’s uniform was sitting in a rocking chair by the window.

She didn’t hear the door open. She was leaning forward with her chin in the palm of her hand, looking out the window. Shayne stood there staring at her profile. It was a nice profile but that wasn’t why he stared. There was something strikingly familiar about her. He didn’t know where he had seen her before, but he knew it was important.

She turned to face him as he stepped inside then sprang up briskly.

Shayne recognized her as soon as he saw her full face. The severe white uniform made quite a difference, but it could not wholly disguise her. The absence of make-up also gave her a much younger, fresher appearance than when he had seen her before, but there wasn’t any doubt in his mind concerning her identity. She was the girl whose reflection he had seen in the mirror in suite 614 of The Everglades. The girl who was registered as Mr. Ray Gordon’s daughter.

It was a little too much for Shayne to digest all at once. He stood and stared at her and wondered what the hell while she tilted her head and moved toward him.

She said, “No visitors are allowed here. The patient is very ill,” in a controlled tone which managed, somehow, to be brisk and hard at the same time.

Shayne leaned against the door, studying her eyes and trying to determine whether she recognized him or not. It was impossible to deduce anything from them; they were curiously light, hazel he supposed, of the type incapable of expressing any emotion. Her manner was grave, professional, and questioning. She was, Shayne mentally conceded, a hell of a good actress if she recognized him.

He said, “Are you the new nurse—replacing Miss Hunt?”

“Yes.” She kept her voice low, coming close to him and making a gesture of caution toward the screen behind which the sick man lay.

“I’m Shayne,” he told her. “The detective who is supposed to keep people from getting killed around here.”

She did not smile pleasantly at this. Her manner indicated that she was totally devoid of a sense of humor. She said, “Yes?” again and lifted her eyebrows. They were beautifully plucked and arched.

Shayne asked, “How’d they come to get you on the job, sister? And why didn’t I get here sooner?”

“I was called from the Nurses’ Registry.” She disregarded the implication in his second question.

“What’s your name?” he asked. “And I could use your telephone number, too.”

“Myrtle Godspeed.” She shook her head dubiously. “You wouldn’t have any use for my phone number.”

“You don’t know me, sister. Of course”—he glanced deprecatorily toward his bandaged arm—“I’m in pretty bad shape right now.”

He stared levelly into her eyes. She stared back, her gaze cold and remote. He pushed past her, and she got out of his way, watching him with low-lidded eyes as he leaned against the wall by the dresser.

“This damned place is like a morgue. Where is everybody?”

“They’re asleep, I think. I was called this morning early to relieve the other girl who had been on duty all night. I don’t believe anyone here got much sleep last night.”

Shayne moved impatiently. His right elbow brushed against the dresser and knocked off a handbag lying near the edge. It fell to the floor with a dull thump. He bent over awkwardly and picked it up. The girl started forward impulsively to help him, but he straightened with a grimace.

“I made it all right.” He offered her the bag. “Yours?”

She took it from him and said, “Yes.”

“That’s a mighty expensive bag for a trained nurse to be toting around,” he said softly.

She compressed her lips and said icily, “I paid for it.”

Shayne’s chuckle was throaty. “I’ll bet. And how! Give me your phone number and you can have another one just like it.”

She gazed at him disdainfully. “What gave you the idea you were such hot stuff? If you haven’t anything else on your mind, I’ll ask you to go. I won’t weep any salty tears if I never see you again.”

Shayne grinned and said, “I’m beginning to think it was too bad the other doll got bumped. She liked her men big and tough and redheaded.”

The nurse turned away from him and said, “I don’t,” emphatically.

“Okay, sister.” Shayne’s manner changed. He lounged toward the door and asked, “Where’s Pedique?”

“In his room asleep, I presume.”

“Which is his room, angel?” he asked patiently.

“I thought you were a detective.”

“No wisecracks.” He stood in the doorway. “Show me Pedique’s room before I start knocking on doors and wake up every damn soul in the house.”

She peered around the screen and then came toward him. Shayne smiled and went slowly into the hallway. She passed him at a sprightly pace with her head high. He followed her to a turn, and down it to another door.

She stopped and pointed at it. “I was supposed to knock here if I needed the doctor.”

Shayne said, “Thanks,” and knocked. The girl went down the hall and vanished around the corner.

There was no response from within. Shayne knocked loudly. There was still no response. He tried the knob. The door was locked from the inside. He rattled the knob and cursed aloud.

A door across the hall opened, and Mr. Montrose peered out. He wore an old-fashioned nightgown and clutched a shabby robe around his thin shoulders. “What do you want?” he croaked. Then: “Oh! It’s you, Mr. Shayne?” He padded across the hall in his bare feet.

“I’m hunting the doc,” Shayne grunted.

“This is his room. I’m positive he’s in. Perhaps he’s sleeping soundly. Poor fellow. He was very much upset over the events of last night.”

“He must be sleeping damned soundly,” Shayne said. He banged on the door again and shouted, “Hey, doc!”

Silence was the only response. He stopped banging and rubbed his chin.

He said quietly to Mr. Montrose, “No man could sleep through that racket.” There was an open transom above the door. He stooped and put his left arm around Mr. Montrose’s thin shanks and said, “I’ll boost you up and you can have a look-see.”

He hoisted the small man, and Mr. Montrose clutched at the transom, peering into the doctor’s room. He shuddered violently and said, “Oh—my God!”

Shayne let him slide down and looked at his face. Then he set his teeth together, drew back, and lunged at the locked door with his left shoulder. He snarled with pain, as the impact shook his injured right shoulder, then drew back and threw himself at it again. The lock gave this time, and he crashed into the room as the door swung on its hinges. He staggered upright and moved to the side of the bed. Mr. Montrose followed him, making a curious whimpering noise as he stared at the doctor’s body.

Dr. Joel Pedique looked exceedingly peaceful in death. Fully clothed, he lay outstretched upon the bed. His thin features were composed, and there was a lurking expression of triumph on his lips. His left hand dangled down by the side of the bed. An overturned glass lay on the rug just beneath where it had dropped when his fingers relaxed their hold. On a bedside table there was an open cardboard box containing a number of pinkish wafers. A pink residue clung to the bottom of the glass. The top of the box was marked with the familiar symbol of poison.

Lying beside the box were a number of sheets of note-paper filled with evenly spaced script. Shayne picked them up and read the superscription aloud. “‘To Whom It May Concern.’”

He said wearily to Montrose, “For Christ’s sake, stop whimpering. You ought to be used to this around here by this time. Go and call Painter and tell him to bring the coroner along.”

Then he moved over to a window through which the sunlight streamed, slumped into a rocking chair, and began reading the strange document which Dr. Pedique had left behind.

CHAPTER 11

“I AM GUILTY” (Dr. Joel Pedique had written) “of a crime so horrible that I cannot go on with the conviction of guilt burdening my soul. The death of two innocent women and the destruction of a beautiful girl’s mind are an overwhelming weight upon my conscience. I shall expiate my crime in the only possible manner after setting down this true account so I may be assured the guilt will rest squarely upon my shoulders and mine alone after I am gone.

“Since boyhood I have been cursed with an evil curiosity which has led me into many shameful practices, though I early lost my sense of shame. These finally culminated in the tragic denouement which the law will doubtless call matricide—unjustly, for I alone stand self-convicted as Mrs. Brighton’s murderer. Yes, and as the murderer of Charlotte Hunt, also.

“A deranged intellect has been my tool—but I feel that I must go back into the past to make understandable the events of the last few days.

“Scientific experimentation is good; it is only through experimentation that science has made its tremendous forward strides; yet an irrational zeal for charting the unknown can blacken the soul and lead to the most evil consequences if one be driven to carry such experimentation to its completely logical conclusion, as I have done.

“It is with no thought of exculpation that I use the word ‘driven’ as above. Before God, I seek no exculpation. Yet, I use the word advisedly. Since youth a strange inward force has driven me to acts which I consciously realized were an affront to God and to humanity. I have been like one possessed of a demon which I recognized yet could not exorcize.

“So much for motivation. It has not been a recent seizure nor can I plead ignorance of the evil inherent in such odious practices. As a child I recall wondering if chickens could survive without their protective feathering. There were chickens in the yard. I plucked one of them alive—and wept bitterly over its cold body after death.

“Time and again has this selfsame tragic drama been repeated in my life, manifesting itself in a strange and unreasoning passion to thwart nature regardless of consequences, followed by bitter remorse over the inevitable consequences of each cruel experiment.

“With this background I entered upon the study of medicine. It is needless to relate in detail how this cancerous growth upon my soul, nourished by ever-widening opportunities, spread its unwholesome tentacles to engulf every decent instinct within me” (Shayne’s lips twitched slightly as this paragraph passed under his eye) “blighting my life and destroying what might otherwise have been a brilliant career.

“Early in my study of medicine I became aware that it was in the mental realm rather than that of the physical that the most fascinating opportunities for experimentation present themselves. Cunningly, then, I devoted myself to a comprehensive survey of the vast field of psychology, psychiatry, psychometry, eventually specializing in psycho-physics, which treats of the psychical and the physical in their conjoint operation.

“Here, indeed, I was enthralled. Here, verging upon the metaphysical was my long-sought opportunity for experimentation in a practically untouched field.

“I shall not catalogue my long list of failures with the dire results which followed upon the heels of each unsuccessful experiment. I plunged into my chosen work with a dreadful zest, reassuring myself with the stern credo that the individual must be sacrificed on the altar of scientific advancement.

“I shudder tonight as I consider in retrospect the wrecks of normal intellects I have left behind me. With ingenuity which might better have been employed otherwise, I have contrived to achieve an almost perfect balance between sanity and insanity—an almost perfect balance. Perfection has eluded me, as the shattered intellects of my subjects will tragically attest.

“These generalities will not suffice. I am strong now. I have achieved the perfect balance which I have unsuccessfully sought to educe in others. As I set down these words I feel myself straddling that void into which I have sent so many of my patients plunging. I question how long this delicate balance may be maintained and I hasten to get on with my lengthy avowal before I am overtaken by the same nemesis which has relentlessly pursued those who have trusted me.

“In brief: I have for years been working upon the theory that certain drugs fed to the human body in conjunction with a form of mental suggestion which I shall term psychocatalysis—reverse psychoanalysis—might be employed to bring on certain forms of mental derangement. It has been, and is, my firm belief that if such a procedure could be successfully devised and completely charted, by reversing the exact process—substituting for the insanity-producing drugs and mental suggestions their exact opposites—it would be possible to effect a cure from insanity.

“A fantastic theory? A grotesque chimera? Perhaps. Yet it is basically sound. A dream, however, which will be made into reality by others stronger than myself. I bequeath my charts and my findings to some fellow scientist who is utterly conscienceless. I find that I cannot continue.

“The opportunity offered me by the Brighton case was a godsend to me. Not many months ago I was forced to close the door of my private asylum for mental patients in the city of New York. My almost perfect record of failures to effect cures had induced in people a hesitancy to entrust their dear deranged ones to my care. Without subjects for further experimentation I was lost, and I felt I was very near to final success.

“The opportunity to accompany an aged sick man and two young people to Miami where I would be free to work with the young folks without interference was too admirable to reject.

“I will here enter into no detailed analysis of the methods by which I proceeded to transform an intelligent and normal young girl into a maniacal matricide—a prowler in the night seeking victims to satisfy the blood-lust which I have aroused in her innocent breast. These details are fully set forth in my notes and observations of her case. They can be of interest only to science.

“Suffice to say that upon arriving in Miami I immediately turned my attention to the two young people. With little time for an old man who was obviously near death I called in a local physician who has largely taken his care off my hands.

“In past experiments I have discovered that every individual possesses some latent phobia or complex, more or less well-defined, which presents a certain path toward insanity if such phobia be developed and encouraged by mental suggestion.

“Selecting Clarence first, I soon discovered in the boy an unnatural leaning toward homosexuality. Proceeding to encourage this trait and develop it, I was discouraged when he did not respond to mental stimulus as I had hoped. Naturally dull and unintelligent, his reflexes were slow and uncertain, and it soon became evident that Phyllis was the better subject for my experiment.

“By patient delving into her mental processes I soon discovered an ill-defined but positive bent toward Lesbianism plus even less developed symptoms of an Electra complex. The foundation was slight, but the subject was so perfectly normal and so sensitively attuned mentally that the desired progress was rapid.

“By careful mental suggestions, in strict accord with Freudian principles, I fast instilled in the reservoir of her subconscious the unrealized desire to do bodily harm to her mother in order to frustrate that unfortunate lady’s love for her husband. At the same time, under pretext of treating an imaginary ailment, I was able to produce periods of hypnotic influence, hypnagogic states during which the subjective mind held full sway over her actions, and from which she emerged to normal with only hazy memories of what had occurred during those drug-induced periods. These could be regulated as to duration and severity by changing the dosage.

“It was at this crucial point in my experimentation that Mrs. Brighton announced her intention of joining her family. I could not draw back. I was possessed of a frenzy to conclude my final experiment by determining whether I could wholly control the girl’s reaction to her mother’s presence.

“It was on the very eve of Mrs. Brighton’s arrival when I began to doubt myself. My treatments had been so successful that I found the girl responding strongly to the slightest stimulus of either drug or mental suggestion. She wavered, in fact, upon the very shadow-line of mania.

“Fearing that I might have miscalculated the effect which would be produced by her mother’s arrival, I went to a Mr. Shayne in Miami. He had been recommended to me as a discreet and able private detective. I cautiously explained as much of the situation to him as seemed wise, and he agreed to protect the mother from any possible tragic consequences.

“I returned much relieved after the interview. Mr. Shayne had been not unduly curious and he impressed me as being an exceedingly capable man. Mrs. Brighton arrived, and the girl greeted her with a queer admixture of loathing and love, while I observed her, closely, taking notes for making out a behavior pattern.

“The situation became intensified during the course of dinner. Phyllis was cross and unruly. I experienced a strangely creative joy as I looked on. I felt impersonal, Godlike. I felt as a master musician must feel as he draws forth beautiful harmonies or crashing discords from a delicately attuned instrument. Phyllis Brighton was my instrument. My will was her master. Yet, everything might have gone well had I not yielded to the temptation to make the supreme test.

“I had to know whether I could force the girl to murder her mother, and whether I could then bring her mind back to rational functioning.

“I do not expect to be understood or forgiven. It was madness. Deliberate, coldly conceived murder. I had to know. What mattered the life of one foolish woman against the exquisite joy of knowing complete success? I drew Phyllis aside after dinner and whispered in her ear. I prepared a carefully calculated dosage of the drug and instructed her to take it half an hour later. She walked from me somnolently, climbing the stairs to her room. I went into the library to await Mr. Shayne and to know the outcome of my dread experiment.

“The world knows the outcome. The girl escaped from me before I had an opportunity to determine whether I could restore her sanity after the dreadful deed. Tonight she is roaming the streets with a small automatic pistol in her hand—hopelessly deranged—responding to the murderous impulses for which I alone am responsible—so help me God.

“The thing that was once Phyllis Brighton has struck again tonight. She will kill again and again until she is destroyed. Like Frankenstein, I have created a monster beyond my power to control. When the lifeless body of Charlotte Hunt was carried into the house tonight I realized to the fullest extent what a horrible menace I have loosed upon this community.

“I repeat that I do not seek to exculpate myself. I shall atone in the only manner left to me. Before my own conscience and before God I am guilty of what may well go upon the records as the most heinous crime of this century.

“Phyllis Brighton must be hunted down and destroyed ruthlessly, and for that I must pass sentence upon myself. I go now to answer to God for what I have done.

“JOEL PEDIQUE”

Michael Shayne drew in a great breath of the fresh air flowing in through the open window as he read the concluding words and laid the sheets of paper aside. It seemed to him that he had not breathed since reading the first words. He was surprised to look up and see the bright sunlight outside. With the words of Pedique’s confession still ringing in his mind it had seemed to him that the room was full of darkness.

The quiet of the death chamber was abruptly shattered by the wail of a rapidly approaching police siren. Shayne lit a cigarette and leaned toward the window where he could look down on the curving driveway in front of the house. A police car ground to a stop as he watched. Peter Painter was the first figure to get out. Shayne drew back from the window as the detective chief hurried up the front steps. He lit a match and applied the flame to Dr. Joel Pedique’s confession. The notepaper crackled, and the flames spread rapidly as Shayne crumpled up the sheets and fed them to the fire.

The last bit of the document was reduced to ashes as Painter burst into the room.

CHAPTER 12

PAINTER’S EYES NARROWED when he saw Shayne sitting by the window. He slowed his stride and approached the bed silently, stood by and looked down at Pedique’s lifeless body without a change of expression. Finally he turned his head and looked at Shayne.

“Dead, eh?”

“Or else he’s a good hand at playing possum,” Shayne replied.

Painter snorted. He turned back and studied the doctor’s relaxed features and the articles beside him. “Suicide, eh?”

“I was not a witness,” Shayne disclaimed.

Mr. Montrose came and stood in the doorway. He looked shrunken, terrified, helpless. Shayne grinned at him and said, “You ought to be getting used to it by now.”

Painter swung about and said to Montrose, “I’ve sent for the coroner. Nothing must be touched until he comes.”

“Why don’t you and the coroner move your offices up here? Then you could keep a hearse backed up to the door and give these people real service.”

“Why don’t you,” Painter snarled in thin-lipped rage, “go to hell?”

Shayne shrugged his shoulders patiently. “It was just a helpful suggestion.”

“I’ll get dressed,” Mr. Montrose quavered, “if you don’t need me for a minute.”

Painter didn’t pay any attention to him. He advanced toward Shayne. “I’ve been looking for you all morning.”

“I haven’t been hiding.” Shayne slouched back in his chair and drew deeply on his cigarette. Painter stood before him, spread-legged and flatfooted.

“I’ve found out where Charlotte Hunt was last night before she was murdered.”

“Not jealous, are you?”

“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, Shayne.”

“I don’t intend to do any.”

Painter’s eyes blazed murderously. His fingers curled into claws by his side. He said, breathing hard, “I’ll read Pedique’s confession if you don’t mind.”

“His confession?” Shayne lifted bushy eyebrows.

“Don’t try to hold out on me. Montrose saw it.”

“Mr. Montrose must have been seeing things,” Shayne told him softly. “Doctor Pedique left no confession.”

“Now, by God—” Painter began to tremble.

“Don’t go off the deep end,” Shayne soothed. “Doctor Pedique did leave quite a lengthy private document but it really wouldn’t interest you.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Painter’s anger spilled over into his voice. “Where is it?”

Shayne pointed to the pile of ashes. “I was afraid you wouldn’t listen to reason, so I burned it.”

“After reading it?”

“Naturally.”

Painter drew up a chair and sat down rigidly, as though he might fly into a thousand pieces if he relaxed. He said, “You’re either a fool, Shayne, or the Goddamnedest scoundrel it’s ever been my misfortune to encounter.”

Shayne ground out his cigarette and grinned. “Take your choice.”

“I’m through letting you give me the run-around, Shayne.”

This didn’t seem to call for any reply, so Shayne didn’t give it one.

“You’re doubly implicated now,” Painter warned him. “Triply, by God. You can’t get away with destroying evidence in a murder case.”

“But I have,” Shayne told him mockingly. “And the hell of it is you’ve got to play ball with me, Painter. You’ve got to have what I’ve got and you’re beginning to suspect that you can’t blackjack it out of me.”

Painter waited a moment to get hold of himself before asking, “What was in Pedique’s confession?”

“That’s something you’ll never know.”

“Don’t push me too far, Shayne. I warn you. I’m willing to co-operate, you understand. But your attitude makes co-operation impossible.”

“We’ll co-operate my way,” Shayne told him, watching the dapper little man from beneath lowered lids as carefully as any dry-fly fisherman ever played a heavy trout in a rushing mountain stream. He continued slowly. “I hold the winning cards and all you’ve got is a busted straight. I don’t have to bluff. Get this straight. I burned that damned screwy note of Pedique’s to keep you from making an ass of yourself. You’re under so much pressure to make an arrest that you would have rushed to the newspapers with a fool statement that the case was closed—and ruined everything—including yourself and my client. I’m not under pressure and I’m gathering up the loose ends. If you’ll sit tight for twenty-four hours I’ll hand you a story that will crack the headlines all over the country. I’m talking straight and for the last time. I was in Miami before you came and I’ll be here after you’re gone. If you’re smart you’ll play ball. You can glom onto all the glory when it’s over. I’m after something else. Is it a go, or isn’t it?” He stood up and waited.

“Twenty-four hours,” Painter groaned. “They’re hard on my tail for some action. And this case won’t stand another murder, Shayne.”

“There won’t be any more.”

“The governor’s threatening an investigation.”

“Hell, he’s always threatening an investigation. Stall for twenty-four hours.”

Painter looked at his watch indecisively. “It’s after eleven now.”

“Noon tomorrow.” Shayne edged toward the door. Painter nodded unhappily, and Shayne went out.

He stopped just outside, stuck his head back in the door. “About co-operating—there’s one thing you might do.”

“What?”

“Get the chauffeur’s fingerprints and check with the F.B.I. and New York. I want to know if he’s an ex-con.”

He went on down the hall with Painter’s growled assent.

Driving to Miami, he parked in front of his apartment hotel and went in. The clerk told him Tony had picked up the envelope and there weren’t any messages.

He went up to his room and fortified his aching side with a slug of brandy, then called the Nursing Registry. A pleasant voice answered the call.

He said, “This is Mr. Shayne, private detective. I’m working on a case in which one of the nurses you sent out is more or less involved. I wonder if you could give me the name and home address of the girl you sent out on the Brighton case early this morning?”

The pleasant voice asked him to wait.

Shayne waited.

“Miss Myrtle Godspeed.” The address was in the northwest section of the city. Shayne thanked her and hung up.

He took another drink and went down to his car. There was no choice; he’d have to move fast now, much as he wanted to be quiet. His shoulder gave him hell as he worked gearshift and steering-wheel with one hand. He begrudged the time that it cost him to drive to where Myrtle Godspeed lived, far out on Northwest 24th Street. There were three small stuccoed houses side by side in the block. The address he was looking for was the center house. He stopped his car, got out, and went up to the front door.

The shades were down at the front windows, and no one answered his knock. He went around to the side and found a window through which he could look into the living-room of the small house. It was furnished and seemed to be in perfect order. Shayne went around to the back door and found it locked. He took a skeleton key from his pocket and opened it without any trouble. A woman came out the back door of the house on the west and looked at him curiously. She came across the yard toward him as he opened the door. He saw her coming and waited.

She was elderly and fat with stringy hair and hostile eyes. “There ain’t anybody to home. What you want?” she greeted him.

“I’m a detective,” Shayne told her. “Who lives here?”

The woman shrank back from him, and her eyes clouded. “Miss Godspeed lives here. She ain’t—ain’t in trouble, is she?”

“I don’t know,” Shayne said shortly. “Does she live here alone? And what do you know about her?”

“She lives here all alone. She’s not—particular neighborly, but I ain’t got nothin’ agin her. But there’s been a lot of funny doings about here lately though—and now you’ve come to mention it, I ain’t so sure she’s living all alone, neither.” The old woman’s manner was intriguingly mysterious.

Shayne lit a cigarette and said casually, “What sort of doings?”

“People coming and going all hours of the night. Moving in and moving out till a body don’t rightly know who lives here and who don’t.”

“How long,” Shayne asked, “has this been going on?”

“A couple of days, now. Nights, rather. It ain’t like Miss Godspeed, neither.”

Shayne nodded and said, “I’m going to have a look around. You might come in, with me so I’ll have an alibi in case anything is missing later.”

He went inside, and the woman followed him curiously. There was no sign of disturbance within. Kitchen and bedroom were in perfect order. The bedclothes were rumpled and thrown back as from a hasty rising, and articles of feminine attire were thrown over the back of a chair. The neighbor woman stood in the doorway and pointed a blunt forefinger at a framed photograph on the dresser.

“That there’s her picture.”

Shayne looked at it. It was not a photograph of the girl who that morning had told him her name was Myrtle Godspeed. He nodded with pretended disinterest, went on poking about the bedroom without finding anything.

In the living-room he found a gaudy folder from a steamship company extolling the beauties of the Republic of Cuba as a vacation spot. He noted the name of the line for future reference, and wandered about the living-room while the woman watched him as though she expected him to whip out a magnifying glass and get down on his knees. He shrugged his shoulders. “Everything seems to be in perfect order here. Nothing more I can do.” He hitched up his pants and stepped toward the bathroom, saying, “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go in here a minute while it’s handy.”

The elderly lady looked embarrassed and hurried out the back door. Shayne didn’t go into the bathroom. He stepped into the bedroom and picked up the framed photograph of Myrtle Godspeed, slid it beneath his coat and held it pressed against his body with his injured arm. Then he went into the bathroom and flushed the toilet, sauntered out casually, and locked the back door under the watchful gaze of the neighbor woman. He gravely thanked her for helping him out, went out to his car, and drove to the downtown ticket office of the steamship company whose Cuban folder he had seen in the living-room.

One of their boats had sailed from Miami for Havana the preceding morning, but the clerk could not recall any Miss Godspeed on the passenger list. At Shayne’s insistence, the list was checked with negative results.

Shayne then produced his photograph of the nurse, and the clerk immediately recalled selling her a ticket two days before. She hadn’t given him her name, of course, and there was no way of determining what name she had used if she was aboard.

The boat, however, was lying over in Havana that day, and Shayne arranged to have the picture flown over by airplane, and to have the crew asked to identify it. By this time his shoulder was worse, and his face drawn with pain as he went back to his hotel and in the lobby.

“Mr. Shayne!” The desk clerk beckoned to him. “I just took an urgent telephone message for you. You’re to call 614 at The Everglades Hotel as soon as you come in.”

Shayne thanked him and went to the switchboard and asked the girl to put him through. She did and he took the call from a booth.

Ray Gordon’s metallic voice said, “That you, Shayne?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve got to see you at once.”

Shayne grunted, “Okay.”

“Come over here as quick as you can. I’ll be waiting.”

Shayne said, “Okay,” again, and hung up. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his left hand as he left the booth and went out into the hot sunlight. Agonizing currents of pain spread from shoulder downward. He walked swiftly to The Everglades, keeping to the curb and protecting his injured side from passers-by.

He went directly to the elevator and up to the sixth floor; down the corridor to 614 where he knocked. The door swung open, and Shayne walked in. Gordon closed the door behind him. The gunman, Dick, stood in the center of the room, his thin body slightly crouched. His eyes were yellow slits, and there was an expression of greedy triumph written all over his pasty face. His right hand held a silenced Luger automatic. It was pointed at Shayne’s belly, and the youth’s hand was steady.

Gordon said, “Get ’em up,” and Shayne lifted his left arm toward the ceiling.

Gordon stepped close and felt all over him for a weapon without finding one. He said, “Loosen up, Dick, this mug’s clean,” then stepped around in front of Shayne, treading lightly on the balls of his feet.

His face showed no trace of emotion, though lips were sucked back from his teeth.

He said, “You lousy double-crossing skunk,” and smashed Shayne in the face with a rocklike fist.

CHAPTER 13

SHAYNE’S HEAD WAS SNAPPED BACK by the smashing blow, hitting the wall with a dull thump. He put his left hand behind him and pushed himself erect. A trickle of blood ran from his split upper lip into his mouth.

He started to speak, and Gordon hit him again, a side-wise blow with his open palm. Shayne rolled his head with the blow and kept his feet. The youthful gunman slid down into a chair, stiffly watchful. He held the Luger carelessly trained on Shayne’s midsection, and there was an evil gleam of gratification in his yellow-tinged eyes.

Shayne said, “This’ll cost you, Gordon.” His tongue licked out over his bloody lip.

Another blow smashed him between the eyes, sent him staggering back.

Shayne planted his feet wide apart, shaking his head slowly. “I don’t know what the score is. You’d better get your dope straight.”

“I’ve got it straight.” Gordon slapped him with his open palm again. Shayne slumped back against the wall. Murderous rage flamed in his eyes, and his left hand was clenched into a fist, but he couldn’t disregard the covering Luger and the twitching lips of Dick.

Gordon stepped back, surveying him implacably. “That’ll give you an idea what you can avoid by talking fast.”

“What do you want me to do?” Shayne grunted. “Recite ‘Gunga Din’?”

“Wise guy, eh?” Gordon stepped in and sloughed him again. Shayne’s left hand groped about for a support and found the back of a chair to hold him erect.

He nodded jerkily. “Pretty wise.”

“You’re not wise enough to take Ray Gordon for a ride. Playing both ends against the middle don’t go, by Christ, when I’m in the middle.”

“If I knew what the hell you were talking about,” Shayne muttered, “we might get together.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were hooked up with the other outfit when I called you in? Suck me for two grand, eh? No man can do that and live to enjoy it.”

“I’m not,” Shayne told him, “hooked up with anybody.”

“You’re a liar. You were over at the Brighton house this morning.” Gordon drove his hard-knuckled fist into Shayne’s face again. The big body of the detective rocked back and slowly toppled to the floor. He hit on his right side, and his teeth bit back a groan of anguish.

Gordon drew back his right foot and kicked him in the belly. Shayne doubled up in agony, and Gordon kicked him in the face, saying flatly, “I’m just getting started.”

Blood oozed onto the carpet from a long split on Shayne’s cheek. His left arm groped out, and he painfully lifted himself to a sitting position. Through puffed lips, he said, “Be careful you don’t start something you can’t finish.”

Gordon sat down and studied him blandly. “I’d enjoy killing you, Shayne. But that wouldn’t do me any good. I can make you wish I had killed you if you don’t come clean with me.”

“I never was very good at riddles.” Shayne spit out a mouthful of bloodied saliva on the rug.

“Men don’t cross me up,” Gordon told him, “and live.”

“Men don’t beat me up,” Shayne replied, “without paying for it.”

“The hell they don’t. You’ve been playing around with lame-brains too long, you dim-witted cluck. Before I finish you’ll wish your mother hadn’t taken time off from work to lie down in a gutter—”

Shayne hunched forward, resting his weight on his left hand. His lips slobbered blood, and his eyes were mad. Without getting up, Gordon lifted his foot and ground the heel of his shoe in Shayne’s face, toppling him over on his side. Then he got up and asked conversationally, “Well?”

Shayne’s smashed lips drew back from his teeth. “About two more like that and I won’t be able to answer your foolish questions.”

Gordon reached down and twined strong fingers in the detective’s wiry red hair. Jerking his shoulders up, he slid him over and propped him against the wall, sitting up.

“What’s your hookup with the Brighton outfit?”

“None.”

“You’re still a Goddamn liar.” Gordon swung his foot back with an unpleasant smile.

Shayne said, “All right. What do you want to know?”

“That’s better.” Gordon sat down. “What have you found out about Henderson?”

“Nothing.”

“That kind of talk won’t keep you alive.”

“Would you rather have me think up some lies?”

“What arrangements have they made about the picture?”

“Who is ‘they’? And what picture?”

Gordon said, “Okay, mug. If you insist.” He leaned over and slugged Shayne with his fist. Then he stood up and deliberately kicked him into unconsciousness.

Dick got up and came forward with gleaming eyes as the detective’s muscles relaxed and he lay soddenly still.

“Go through him,” Gordon ordered curtly. He sat down and lit a cigar with steady fingers while Dick slid the automatic into a shoulder holster and knelt beside Shayne.

Deftly, the youth’s fingers went through Shayne’s pockets and piled everything he found on the rug in front of Gordon.

There were some small bills and loose change. A key ring and a loose skeleton key. A pocket knife and a sweaty handkerchief. The cablegram addressed to Mrs. Brighton which Shayne had taken from her room, and the telegram advising of Henderson’s imminent arrival.

Gordon’s facial muscles twitched as he read the two messages. “And the bastard didn’t know anything about Henderson,” he growled, turning swiftly to the telephone to learn when the Pan American plane from Jacksonville was due.

A string of oaths boiled from his mouth when he was informed that it had landed at the airport fifteen minutes previously. He cut them short to whirl on Dick. “Let’s get out to the airport. Maybe we can spoil their party after all.”

Dick grabbed his cap and motioned down to Shayne. “What’ll we do with the body?”

“Let him lie. We’ve got to get going. He don’t matter if we can reach Henderson.” They hurried out together, leaving Shayne lying on a carpet soggy with his blood.

It was an hour before he stirred back to life. He groaned and tried to use his right arm to lift himself, the excruciating pain clearing his brain swiftly.

He sat up with another groan, lifting his left hand and gingerly feeling his battered face. The blood had dried, and he decided he was all there, though much the worse for wear. With a terrific effort of will, he dragged himself painfully to his knees, then lurched up to his feet. Both eyes were puffed and black, and he couldn’t see very well, but he managed to make his way to the bathroom on wobbly knees, leaned against the lavatory while he turned on the ice water and soaked a bath towel.

He winced and cursed as he bathed the dry blood from his battered face, grimacing at the grotesque image of Michael Shayne that grimaced back at him from the mirror. Then he drank several glasses of ice water and decided he might live.

He looked like the wrath of God, all right, but aside from that he congratulated himself on being in pretty fair condition as he went back into the living-room.

The pile of stuff from his pockets was still on the floor. Things blurred before his eyes when he tried to stoop down to recover them, and he had to get down on creaking knees to paw over them. He nodded without surprise when he discovered the two messages were gone, stuffed the rest of the stuff back in his pockets and reeled back up on his feet.

People glanced at him in astonishment and got out of his way as he went to the elevator and down to the lobby.

Carl Bolton was kidding the switchboard girl and he glanced up with incredulous eyes as Shayne weaved toward him. “For God’s sake, Mike! I didn’t know Joe Louis was in town.”

Shayne tried to grin, but it hurt too much. He said, “Listen, Carl. You remember checking 614 for me?”

“Sure.” They moved behind a potted palm to avoid the curious stares of the hotel’s exclusive clientele.

“Any dope on them?”

Bolton screwed up his fat face and shook his head. “I been keeping tabs and I ain’t caught anything screwy. The daughter checked out yesterday. They rented one of those Drive-Yourself automobiles and took her and her bags off in it.”

Shayne nodded. “Okay, Carl. Leave them alone unless they check out. You might tail them for me if they do.”

“Yeah. I’ll do that. But what the hell’s it all about, Mike? You look like—”

“Gordon owes me a pretty big bill,” said Shayne softly. “I aim to collect before he leaves town.” He went out, leaving Carl Bolton staring after him and scratching his head.

Shayne took a taxi and went to his apartment hotel. Inside, the clerk started exclaiming about his appearance, and Shayne cut him short by asking curtly whether a package had been left for him.

The clerk said there was a package in the safe. It had been left by the man who had picked up the envelope that morning.

Shayne’s slitted eyes gleamed as the clerk got out a tightly rolled cylinder about two feet long. It was wrapped in heavy brown paper and tied with a cord.

Inside his own apartment, Shayne took a water glass of Martell to clear his head, then opened the package Tony had left him.

Beneath the brown paper was a tightly rolled canvas. Shayne spread the oil painting out on the table and considered it somberly.

It didn’t look like so much to Shayne. There were some plump cherubs in the background, a bearded man lying outstretched on a rude couch with a woman bending over him holding what looked like a glass of wine to his lips. The coloring was quiet, harmoniously blended browns and grays.

Shayne took another small drink, wondering if the unostentatious painting could possibly be at the bottom of a couple of murders. His gaze kept straying back to it, and he began to feel that he recognized the woman’s face. That worried him because he knew damned well that if the thing was an authentic old master it shouldn’t have in it the portrait of any woman who moved in Michael Shayne’s circles.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on the problem, and things began to get foggy, and he was a freckled Irish lad kneeling by his mother’s side in a Catholic chapel, and there was the subdued drone of the priest’s lips and a ray of light coming softly through the stained glass of a window radiantly lighting the figure of a Madonna. He opened his eyes slowly and stared at the picture again. Curiously different, the features of the ministering woman were those of the Madonna he remembered from childhood. He leaned closer and looked down at a scrawled signature on the canvas. R M Robertson.

He rolled it up carefully and rewrapped it, went down to the lobby, and told the clerk to forget about the package and about seeing him after receiving that call to The Everglades Hotel. The clerk said he would, and Shayne went out with the brown paper cylinder under his arm.

Things were going around in circles before his eyes but he grimly made his way to Pelham Joyce’s studio on Flagler. He entered unsteadily and thrust the parcel at Joyce, croaking, “See what you make of it.”

There was a dusty leather couch in one corner of the studio. Shayne made it there before his knees buckled under him. He stretched out painfully as the artist unrolled the painting and studied it.

He nodded with pursed lips. “An excellent imitation of Raphael’s work. By Robertson, of course. By Jove, the man’s caught the very spirit of the Master’s style—tone, color, harmony, excellence of composition. No mere reproduction, either. I’m positive I haven’t seen an original—”

Shayne propped himself on one elbow and asked, “How does an expert go about telling that from a genuine Raphael?”

“By the signature, of course.” Joyce pointed to it.

“Suppose,” said Shayne slowly, “the bird who painted that had put a copy of Raphael’s signature on it and tried to palm it off as an original?”

“That has been often attempted—unsuccessfully.” Pelham Joyce chuckled toothlessly. “There are many tests which may be applied. The age of the canvas, for instance. Quality and texture of the paint, the mellowing influence of centuries. For example,” he went on, turning to the painting carelessly, “this canvas will show obvious newness.” He turned a corner up to examine it. Shayne watched him silently.

“Why, bless my soul,” Joyce muttered. “The canvas seems to have been treated to make it appear authentically ancient. But the pigments, of course, cannot be treated.” His voice trailed off as he leaned close to examine the painted surface.

Shayne kept on watching silently through puffed eye slits. The old man straightened up with a queer blending of bewilderment and anger on his face.

“It appears,” he muttered, “that some fool has gone to great lengths to give this work an appearance of authenticity.”

“What would be your opinion if you discovered Raphael’s original signature covered over by that daub of paint carrying Robertson’s name?”

Pelham Joyce’s thin body trembled as he bent over the painting again.

Sinking back, Shayne closed his eyes and said, “Do you recall our talk the other day? You told me that the easiest way to smuggle a valuable painting past the customs was to paint another signature over the original and declare it a reproduction.”

Joyce heard him but did not answer. He wet his lips excitedly and breathed with agitation. He finally straightened up and turned glittering eyes on the detective.

“Before God, my boy. If Raphael’s signature is beneath that daub which appears to have been superimposed upon the original, you have made a—a priceless find. Priceless!”

“Do you know what the old boy’s original signature looks like?”

“Of course. I have photographs of many of his famous pieces. By heavens, Michael Shayne, how did you come by this?”

Shayne dragged himself up to a sitting position and told the aged artist all about it—as much as he knew and something of what he suspected. He went further and divulged an inkling of his plan of action for the morrow, under a pledge of secrecy. Pelham Joyce had an important place in those plans, and he cackled with enjoyment and understanding as Shayne explained exactly what he wanted done.

Then Shayne got up and went away, leaving the painting in Joyce’s studio until he should call for it.

The evening News was on the street when Shayne shambled out into the air. Up and down the block newsboys were shrilly shouting the headlined news of the bold daylight robbery of D. Q. Henderson, the famous art connoisseur.

Shayne bought a paper and glanced at the story as he made his way to the nearest hotel. An unidentified man had held up Mr. Henderson as he left the airport, and stolen from him a painting upon which Mr. Henderson declined to place any certain value. There were no clues to the identity of the lone bandit. Shayne turned into the lobby of a small hotel where he wasn’t known and signed himself as Mr. Smith upon the register. Paying for a room in advance, he went upstairs and crawled between the sheets without undressing.

CHAPTER 14

HE SLEPT FOUR HOURS and woke up wondering where he was and why he hadn’t just gone on and died. He remembered where he was when he turned on the light, and he knew why he had kept on living when he remembered Gordon. Somewhat to his surprise he found that he was hungry, and his first act was to call down and order dinner sent up. Then he phoned the clerk at his apartment hotel while he waited for it.

“There are two calls for you, Mr. Shayne,” the clerk told him. “Both of them important, I guess. One is from the Tropical Steamship Company. They left a message.”

“Read it to me.”

“Here it is: ‘Photograph identified by steward as Miss Mary Gray, disembarked this morning on inland vacation tour of Cuba. Can be reached through American Express.’ That’s all of that. The other call—”

Shayne said, “Hold it. One thing at a time is all I can handle tonight. Get a cablegram off to Miss Mary Gray. Take this down. You are already involved in one murder and may avert other deaths by immediate co-operation stop. Cable my expense full particulars your reasons for sailing under assumed name who financed trip and why. Read that back to me.”

The clerk read it back to him. Shayne told him to get it off right away and hold the answer when it came. Then he asked, “What about the other call?”

“Mr. Painter called from the Beach an hour ago. He wants you to contact him immediately.”

Shayne thanked the clerk and hung up. There was a light rap on his door.

He went to it and opened it a wary crack. It was a waiter from the hotel restaurant with the meal he had ordered sent up.

He let the waiter in and went back to the phone while the man set up a folding table in the center of the room.

Peter Painter’s voice sounded irked and worried over the wire. “Shayne! I’ve been trying to get in touch with you on that fingerprint request you made this morning.”

“Did you get something on Oscar?”

“Plenty. He was released from the New York penitentiary three months ago after serving a sentence for manslaughter. He has a long record, but is clear with the law at present.”

Shayne said, “Wait. Let me think.” His head throbbed with pain, and it was difficult to think. This meant something. It was the link he had been looking for. While he tried to put things into their right places, Painter barked at him.

“For God’s sake, Shayne, if you’ve got anything, let me have it. That art robbery at the airport has put additional pressure on me. It seems to tie up to the Brighton killings, somehow. I’ve got to give the papers something.”

Shayne grinned at the phone. The angle was coming to him now. “Let ’em wait until tomorrow. Noon tomorrow. Promise them anything, but don’t open your mouth before I tell you to. I’m going to hand it to you, all sewed up in a bag. There’s only one piece lacking in the whole puzzle. You can get that for me. Get the warden of the New York pen on long distance and find out if Julius Brighton is still an inmate or whether he has been paroled or pardoned.”

“Julius Brighton? What the hell?”

“Don’t mess things up by trying to lame-brain your way into it now,” Shayne crackled. “Get that information and call me back here.” He gave him the number and hung up.

The soup was thick and hot and good. The steak, however, was a mistake. It was quite tender, but not tender enough for Shayne’s bruised jaws to handle. After painfully wrestling with it for a time, he gave up and ordered another bowl of soup.

He was finishing that when his telephone rang. It was Painter with the information that Julius Brighton had been released on parole, an extremely sick man, a week before Oscar’s release—with the additional information that Brighton was now being sought in New York for violation of his parole, not having reported to the parole officer for the past month.

Shayne curtly thanked him and hung up while Painter was demanding to know what it was all about. He sat down, lit a cigarette, and stared at the wall. He had all the pieces, now. How the hell did they fit together? He closed his eyes and mentally tried to piece them together. It took him a long time. And in the end he had only a theory. It was a good theory but he wasn’t satisfied. There was one gruesome bit of proof lacking.

He sighed, knowing he couldn’t put it off any longer. He had to know why Oscar wouldn’t let him in his room that first afternoon. He had to know what heavy object had been dragged out of Oscar’s room during the interval between his first and second visit to the garage apartment. A cobweb clinging to the sleeve of a pair of coveralls, dirt-stained knees, clean fresh beach sand in the cuffs of that pair of coveralls.

His entire theory rested on that flimsy basis. He couldn’t hand it to Painter that way. He had to know.

He got up and went out, his face grimly set. It was the showdown. He couldn’t put it off any longer.

The cool night air felt good as he walked down the street to his parked car. It was where he had left it before receiving Gordon’s message earlier in the day. It seemed as though he had parked it there weeks ago.

He got in and drove slowly toward the causeway, stopping at an all-night garage where he was known and borrowing a spade and a slender steel rod with a sharpened point.

There was a pale arc of moon low in the west, and fleecy clouds overhead. A light breeze rippled the surface of Biscayne Bay as he drove over the causeway. It was past midnight and there was little traffic to bother him. By the time he reached the ocean drive and turned north, the breeze was freshening, whipping in whitecaps from the Atlantic. He drove more slowly, taking deep breaths of the salt-tanged air, subconsciously delaying as much as possible.

He stopped his car beneath a palm tree a quarter of a mile south of the Brighton estate, took his steel rod and spade and made his way between two palatial residences to the water’s edge. There he turned and plodded along on the hard-packed sand. The tide was out, leaving a wide expanse of sloping wet sand which glistened in the faint starlight. He mentally checked each narrow strip of private beach as he passed until he knew, suddenly, that he was approaching the south boundary of the Brighton estate.

A low stone wall ran down to a point some twenty feet away from the water’s edge at low tide. Shayne stopped at the wall and leaned his spade against the rocks. Through the wind-whipped fronds of tall palms the house could be faintly seen. One upstairs window showed a dim light. That, he reasoned, was the sickroom.

Beyond the house, the garage and its upstairs apartment was dark. He took the pointed steel rod in his good hand and went to work, probing down through the beach sand at two-foot intervals, following along the upper tide-line to the north wall of the estate and then coming back with his probing a couple of feet east of his first row.

The heavy rod sank easily into the sand, and Shayne didn’t try to force it down more than a foot. There was no need to bury it very deeply. He thought of Oscar as the type who would not dig a deeper hole than was necessary. He began to wonder if he had guessed wrong as he probed back and forth without striking anything except yielding sand. Yet, he knew he couldn’t have reached a false conclusion. It had to be this way. It was the only reasonable answer to the whole complicated puzzle. And every puzzle has to have a reasonable answer. Still, a little practical proof of his own rightness would help.

He had worked down to within six feet of low waterline when his probe struck something hard less than six inches beneath the surface. Shayne leaned on the steel rod, panting, with a strange glint in his eyes. Miniature waves rolled in, wetting his feet as he stood there. He looked toward the silent house and garage again, then carefully probed around, outlining a rough rectangle about two feet by four.

Leaving his rod sticking thereto mark the spot, he went back for the spade and awkwardly began the one-handed job of turning back a six-inch layer of beach sand on top of something which appeared to be a steel-banded trunk when he laid the spade aside and turned the light of his flash upon it. He turned the light off at once, dropped to his knees, and dug the sand away from the lock with his hands. It was locked, but his steel rod made quick work of the flimsy clasp, and he knelt down again to lift the lid.

A thick nauseating stench rolled up and struck him sickeningly in the face when he threw the lid back. He closed his eyes against it, turned his head to cough and spit the vile taste out of his mouth. Then he picked up his flashlight and turned its beam into the open trunk.

He stared at the naked corpse of a man he had never seen before, cramped grotesquely into the small space and in a remarkable state of preservation which indicated the rude use of some embalming fluid or pickling process. Perhaps, he thought, the sea water when the tide was in. Shayne didn’t linger with his discovery very long. He dropped the lid back, hastily shoveled most of the sand back over the trunk, knowing the inflowing tide would hide all trace of his work by morning.

He went back to his car the same way he had come, drove back to Miami and to his newly-rented hotel room where he called the clerk at his apartment hotel and asked if an answer to his cable had come. It had, and the clerk read it to him.

DON’T UNDERSTAND REFERENCE TO MURDER BUT HAVE NOTHING TO CONCEAL STOP TRIP WAS PAID FOR BY A MISS GORDON WHO WANTED MY PLACE ON TOP OF NURSING REGISTRY LIST TO BE CALLED ON SOME CASE FOR PERSONAL REASONS WHICH WERE NOT DIVULGED TO ME STOP AM FRANTIC WITH WORRY PLEASE EXPLAIN FULLY OR SHALL I COME BACK

MYRTLE GODSPEED

Shayne told the clerk to cable her not to worry but to hold herself in readiness to return as a witness when she was required.

Then he went to bed and to immediate sleep. He had more than a theory, now. He had the case sewed up and ready to dump into Painter’s lap—after he had collected a couple of debts.

CHAPTER 15

SHAYNE WOKE EARLY THE NEXT MORNING. He was stiff and sore, but most of the swelling had gone out of his face. A painful examination of his right side and arm convinced him that he would not require the attention of a doctor for a few more hours at least. He phoned down for a barber to come and shave him, for breakfast to be sent up, and the morning paper.

The barber came with the boy who brought the paper, and Shayne submitted to lathering and scraping while he snatched glances at the headlines. The majority of the front page was given over to the tremendous story of the stolen masterpiece. It was prominently mentioned that Henderson, at the time he acquired the painting, had been acting as Brighton’s agent, and lurid questions were asked by the newspaper concerning the possible connection between the missing masterpiece and the three mysterious deaths at the Brighton estate.

The barber did his best with Shayne’s bruised and lacerated face, and departed just as a hearty breakfast was brought up. Shayne continued to read the news columns between bites of food and gulps of coffee. Dr. Pedique’s suicide was gravely discussed. There was a lengthy and somewhat frantic statement by Peter Painter. The governor of Florida was continuing his vigorous threats of an investigation and had doubled the reward offered for the clearing up of the mystery. Painter’s offer remained the same. In his statement he gave his word of honor that the entire mystery would be cleared up at noon today.

Shayne lay down and smoked a cigarette after he had finished with the paper and with breakfast. It was nine-thirty. His eyes narrowed as he blew smoke toward the ceiling and went over every detail of his plans and action. There was one phase that depended a great deal upon chance and quick talking. He frowned as he tried to judge what the reactions of the various actors would be, and to plan how to meet any contingency. Finally he was satisfied.

He got up and went to the phone after he finished the cigarette. Brighton’s telephone number wasn’t listed, and he asked Information for it. She gave it to him, and he called.

A feminine voice answered the phone. He asked for Mr. Montrose. There was a short wait. Then Mr. Montrose’s weedy voice came over the wire.

“This is Shayne.”

Mr. Montrose said, “Yes?” doubtfully, as though struggling against a desire to add, “What of it?”

“It’s too bad,” Shayne went on smoothly, “about Henderson and the painting.”

Mr. Montrose agreed that it was, indeed.

“I’ve heard it was actually a Raphael.”

Mr. Montrose cautiously admitted that it might have been.

“I,” Shayne told him, “am in touch with the party now in possession of the masterpiece.”

Mr. Montrose’s gasp assured Shayne that he had the man’s full attention now. “You?”

“I have been instructed to proceed with negotiations for its return,” Shayne told him suavely.

Mr. Montrose’s voice twittered excitedly over the wire. “Upon what conditions?”

“I presume you have full authority to act for Mr. Brighton in the matter?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. Full authority. But I don’t understand.”

“My client is a Mr. Ray Gordon from New York,” Shayne told him deliberately. “His terms are very reasonable because he’s anxious to get rid of it before it scorches his hands. He asks ten thousand dollars in cash.”

A sharp indrawing of breath came over the wire. Whether it expressed anger or relief, Shayne could not tell. There was a slight pause before Mr. Montrose replied cautiously, “That is an exceedingly large sum.”

“Let’s get down to business,” Shayne said brusquely. “You know damned well it’s dirt cheap.”

“It is—not unreasonable.”

“It’s plenty reasonable and you know it. The canvas is worth ten or a hundred times that amount. It’s a little too hot to handle, and Gordon is willing to do the right thing. Here are the conditions,” he went on sharply. “One word to the police and it’s all off—you’ll never see the Raphael again. I’ll bring it to the house at eleven-thirty today, on the dot. My client may or may not be with me, but there’ll be enough quick-trigger boys around so you’d better not set a trap. Have the money ready in small bills and you can have Henderson on hand to identify the painting. Get that straight. Eleven-thirty sharp! We’re playing with dynamite, and the fuse has to be timed to the minute.”

“I—I understand. And I agree to those conditions. The money will be waiting, and I give you my pledge to preserve strict secrecy.”

“Be sure that you do,” Shayne warned harshly. He hung up and went back to the bed to sit down and smoke another cigarette.

Then he called The Everglades Hotel and asked for 614. Gordon’s clipped voice answered the phone.

The detective said, “Shayne talking.”

There was a pause. Then Gordon said, “All right. Talk.”

“What am I offered for a genuine Raphael this morning?”

Gordon began swearing strange oaths, and Shayne interrupted happily, “Tut, tut. Get wise to yourself, guy.”

Gordon swore some more. Shayne waited until he was completely through before saying placidly, “Mr. Montrose over at the Brighton house has got your pretty little picture. But he—er—is afraid of it. Things are a little bit too tough for him to hold onto it, what with a few stray murders and such. It’s going into the open market. Want to bid?”

“Hell, no. I don’t want to buy the damned thing.”

“You’re already in two grand,” Shayne reminded him bleakly. “Besides—well, we won’t mention what else. But I think you know what I mean. I can make a deal with Montrose for ten grand.”

“Ten grand? Why, that’s not a tenth—”

“That’s why you’d better not pass up the chance. Montrose hasn’t got the guts to see the deal through. There’s a nice profit in it for a man that’s not afraid of the heat—like you.”

“What’s the lay?” Gordon rasped.

“It’s at the Brighton house. I’m handling the deal. You drive up to the front door at eleven-forty—that’s twenty minutes to twelve—with ten G’s in your pocket. You can bring your nasty little boy with his Goddamned Luger if you want, and an art expert to pass on the picture. I’ll be waiting for you.”

“You’ll get your guts blasted out,” Gordon warned him, “if this is a plant.”

“And you’ll get yours blasted out,” Shayne told him unemotionally, “if you pull up in front of the Brighton house more than a minute before or after eleven-forty.”

“Why the timing? It sounds like a phony.”

“That,” Shayne told him, “is something for you to worry about. We play this my way or not at all.”

When Gordon didn’t answer immediately, Shayne said, “Listen, louse. The only reason I’m letting you in on this is because it means money in my pocket. But I’m not going to beg you. Take it or leave it—and Goddamn sudden.”

“I’ll take it,” Gordon said thickly.

“Eleven-forty,” Shayne reminded him and hung up. He felt drugged with pain and weakness as he went to the bed and sat down. But he still had a call to make, and he didn’t feel up to talking to Painter without a drink inside of him. Dragging himself back to the phone he ordered a quart of Martell sent up. When it came he sat on the edge of the bed and drank deeply out of the bottle.

The pungent stuff took immediate effect. He was his old self as he picked up the phone again and called the office of the Miami Beach chief of detectives.

Painter’s voice sounded strained and uneasy over the wire. When Shayne told him who it was, he exclaimed, “It’s after ten o’clock, Shayne.”

“Things are clearing up nicely,” Shayne soothed him. “But you’re a lousy cheapskate. I don’t see anything in the papers about you getting generous and raising the reward you’re offering personally.”

“Good God! The state is offering two thousand.”

“And your measly contribution is two hundred and fifty. Is that all it’s worth to you to break this case—with full credit?”

“Full credit?” Painter sounded as though he were strangling.

“That’s the lay. I don’t want any publicity. It’s bad for my business. But I can use cash.”

“Come clean,” Painter begged.

“Here’s my offer, fair and square. Double the reward you’ve offered. Guarantee me that every penny goes into my pocket and my name doesn’t appear.”

“Five hundred?” Painter sounded startled. “That’s pretty stiff for me to put up.”

“Is your job worth that?” asked Shayne stridently.

“Well—yes, of course.”

“It won’t be worth a plugged nickel if I bust this case under your nose and don’t let you in on it.”

“That’s blackmail,” Painter protested.

“Call it anything you like, just so I get the money. Think it over, pal. Take it or leave it.”

Painter thought it over—for thirty seconds. He said unhappily, “I’m in a hole. I’ll play it your way.”

“Right. You got any men at Brighton’s place?”

“There’s one stationed in the house.”

“Drag him out right away. Scatter about six or eight in plain clothes around on the outside; cover the street both ways and every exit from the grounds. Keep them out of  sight and give orders not to let a soul leave the grounds after eleven-thirty. Got that?” Painter said he had it.

“And don’t let any reporters on the grounds after eleven-thirty. Better call all the papers right away and tell them to have their best men in your office at twelve o’clock. Promise them the story of the year—and you won’t be missing it.”

“Tell me what to expect.”

Shayne chuckled happily. “I can tell you this much. Have the coroner and undertaker standing by.”

“Wait! You swore there wouldn’t be any more killing.”

“This’ll be justifiable homicide.” Shayne chuckled. “You’ll get a medal for saving the state hanging money. Be hanging around outside the grounds out of sight about a quarter of twelve. Don’t, for God’s sake, come busting in and spoiling my show until the shooting starts.”

“Shooting? Now look here, Shayne—

“I’m just guessing.” Shayne hung up and fortified himself with another long pull from the bottle. Then he put it in his pocket and went downstairs, feeling almost human again.

At the desk he paid for the extras he had ordered, and went up the street to Pelham Joyce’s studio.

Joyce met him at the door, tremendously excited. “Perhaps you had a finger in this,” he charged.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“About a certain Mr. Gordon calling me up not ten minutes ago and giving me a puff about having been recommended to him as the foremost connoisseur of Art in the city—and asking me to go with him this noon to authenticate what is purported to be a genuine Raphael he contemplates purchasing. I don’t know any Mr. Gordon.”

Shayne sat down and began laughing helplessly. “I told him he could pick his own expert.”

“Then you are responsible?”

Shayne shook his head feebly. “Absolutely not. I didn’t mention your name. He must have inquired around. But, by God, he couldn’t have picked a better man to pass on this Raphael.” He sank back and laughed some more while a frosty smile appeared on Joyce’s features as he began to understand.

“Is the painting okay?” Shayne asked after a time.

Joyce went over to the table where it was spread out, rolled it up, and replaced the brown paper covering that had been on it originally. Shayne took it and thanked him and said they’d be seeing each other about eleven-forty.

Then he went down to the street and to his own hotel. He smiled grimly as he unlocked the door and went in. The apartment had been thoroughly searched during his overnight absence, and no effort had been made to cover it up. The door hadn’t been jimmied this time. Mr. Ray Gordon was a gentleman who managed such things more smoothly.

The bedroom and kitchen had been as thoroughly gone over as the living-room. He opened the refrigerator and took out the hydrator. Poking his finger down through the shredded lettuce he found the pearls had not been molested. He put the hydrator back as it had been, went into the living-room, and sat down in the midst of the disorder, alternately smoking cigarettes and sipping brandy while he waited for eleven o’clock to come.

Precisely on the hour he got up and went out with the painting under his arm.

Downstairs he casually mentioned to the clerk that his apartment had been burglarized, and asked him to send up a maid to straighten things out.

Then he went out, got in his car, and clumsily drove north to the causeway and east across Biscayne Bay to Miami Beach.

CHAPTER 16

PULLING UP AT THE BRIGHTON ESTATE, Shayne saw a couple of strolling pedestrians in the street and recognized one of them as a Beach detective, but the fellow merely looked at him blankly as he turned in.

There was another loiterer on the beach in a bathing-suit, and a fourth lolling in the shade of a palm behind the garage. The police trap was set. Shayne parked his car beyond the porte-cochere and went up the steps with the million-dollar bait under his arm. The elderly maid answered his ring and sourly told him he was expected in the library. It was eleven twenty-eight as Shayne went down the hall.

Mr. Montrose and a man whom Shayne recognized as D. Q. Henderson arose as he stepped in. They had been sitting in two armchairs near the center of the room. Beyond them was Oscar the chauffeur, sitting stolidly in a straight chair with a low-browed glower for Shayne as the detective greeted the trio briskly, “Gentlemen.”

“Mr. Shayne.” Mr. Montrose moved forward, rubbing his hands together, with his eyes fixed on the cylindrical article beneath Shayne’s arm. “You have it?”

“Naturally.” Shayne awkwardly transferred the roll to his right hand and offered his left to Mr. Montrose. He nodded past him toward the morose chauffeur.

“What’s that ape doing here?”

“You mean Oscar? Ha-ha.” Mr. Montrose’s laugh was without mirth. “I felt a natural uneasiness about being alone with such a large sum of money. Ah—decidedly so in view of the tragic events of the last few days. I asked Oscar to remain as a sort of guard until the transaction was completed.”

“You’ve got the money?” Shayne asked brusquely. “Oh, yes, indeed.” Mr. Montrose patted his breast pocket. “And you have the—ah—”

“Raphael,” Shayne supplied shortly. He walked to the table and dropped the rolled painting.

Henderson came forward, and Mr. Montrose exclaimed, “Oh, dear me. I do beg your pardon. This is Mr. Henderson, Mr. Shayne.”

Shayne nodded to the art expert and said, “Look it over and let’s finish our business.”

Mr. Montrose wet his lips and moved to Henderson’s side as the expert took up the roll and unwrapped it. The secretary was shaking with agitation, and his eyes glittered as Henderson carefully unrolled the picture on the table. Even Oscar seemed to sense something of the drama of the occasion. He heaved his body up and edged toward the table, planted his hands solidly to support his weight as he leaned forward to stare openmouthed at the not-impressive blending of soft colors on the canvas.

Henderson’s breath made a queer little unmusical whistle as he studied the painting a moment, then he turned and nodded to Mr. Montrose. “This is it.”

“I’ve kept my part of the bargain,” Shayne said to Montrose. “I’ll take that ten grand.”

“Are you positive?” Mr. Montrose asked the art expert. He eyed the unostentatious painting with an air of faint disappointment.

D. Q. Henderson said haughtily, “I stake my reputation as a connoisseur of Art on its authenticity.”

Mr. Montrose leaned past Shayne and pointed a shaking forefinger at the painted signature. “That,” he quavered, “does not spell Raphael.”

Henderson smiled indulgently. “Naturally not. This masterpiece would not have been allowed to leave the Continent had the truth been known. And it would cost a small fortune to enter an authentic Raphael through the customs. I, myself, saw to having Robertson’s signature painted over the original. You’ll find the old master’s mark plain enough when this bogus signature is scraped off.”

“For Christ’s sake!” Shayne broke in harshly. “Are you stalling, Montrose?” He made a gesture as though to pick up the canvas.

“Oh, no. No, indeed.” Mr. Montrose flutteringly stopped Shayne.

“All right. Let’s see your money,” Shayne growled.

Mr. Montrose sighed and dipped his hand in the inside breast pocket of his coat. He drew out a long unsealed envelope. His fingers lingeringly caressed the thick sheaf of bills as he riffled them under Shayne’s intent gaze, then slid them back into the envelope.

“This is a tremendous responsibility I am assuming for Mr. Brighton,” he murmured. “Naturally, I wish to take—every—er—precaution.”

“What more do you want than Henderson’s word?”

Mr. Montrose held the envelope tightly in both hands. Oscar had stepped back two paces and his little eyes were fixed on Shayne’s uninjured left hand.

“I should like,” Mr. Montrose said apologetically, “to see the bogus signature removed and the true one revealed.”

“Why not?” Shayne reached out and tweaked the envelope from the secretary’s hands. Oscar stiffened, but no one paid him any heed.

“Go on,” Shayne said to Henderson. “Scrape it off and show him. I’m not going to do a Houdini with the dough. But I’ll just keep a tight hold on it before half a dozen niggers jump out of the woodpile.”

Henderson looked questioningly at Montrose. “As Mr. Brighton’s accredited representative, do you accept full responsibility?”

“I do. Of course I do.” Mr. Montrose was shaking feverishly.

“Very well.” D. Q. Henderson spoke with a solemnity befitting the occasion. He drew a penknife from his pocket and opened a small blade.

“This, gentlemen, is an event such as few men of this generation have been privileged to witness.” He bent over the canvas and began scraping lightly and with extreme care over the surface of Robertson’s signature.

Slowly, beneath the blade of the knife, another layer of paint began to appear faintly.

Mr. Montrose’s breathing was hoarse as he bent almost double watching the knife blade. Bit by bit, in almost imperceptible degrees, the signature of Raphael began to show up beneath that of Robertson.

Shayne took one backward stride and placed the envelope in his pocket. “That,” he said, “should satisfy you, Montrose.”

The maid stuck her head in and said, “A Mr. Gordon and two other gentlemen.”

While Mr. Montrose craned his head around, Shayne exclaimed, “My client. He’s a trifle late but he’s bringing his expert to be sure the painting is genuine and he isn’t cheating you. Bring them in,” he directed the maid.

He moved toward the door and grinned at Gordon as the square-faced man strode in. Dick was a pace behind, his eyes queasy as they rested on Shayne’s face. Pelham Joyce came last, holding himself stiffly erect, his shrunken body swathed in a frock coat which might have fitted him when he was young.

Shayne said, “Mr. Montrose and Mr. Henderson—D. Q. Henderson. My client, Mr. Gordon.”

Gordon strode to the table and looked down at the painting suspiciously.

“And this,” Shayne went on, taking Joyce’s arm, “is the well-known artist and art critic, Mr. Pelham Joyce.”

Joyce nodded stiffly. Henderson held out his hand with a smile of genuine warmth.

“Pelham Joyce? Gad, sir, I’m indeed pleased to make the acquaintance of so eminent a connoisseur.”

“You honor me,” Joyce told him precisely. “What is this falderal about a hitherto undiscovered Raphael?”

“There you are, sir.” Henderson stood aside to give Joyce access to the painting. Dick lounged in the background, his gaze interlocking antagonistically with Oscar’s.

Joyce stood by the table and peered at the canvas as though he had never seen it before. His lips moved, and one word came worshipfully from them. “Raphael.”

“I smuggled it in by painting the signature of Robertson over the master’s mark,” Henderson explained importantly. “I’ve just now scraped off the bogus name.”

Joyce’s voice shook with emotion as he turned to Gordon and assured him, “A genuine Raphael.”

Gordon asked hoarsely, “Do you guarantee it?”

“There is not a shade of doubt concerning its authenticity.” Joyce spoke sincerely and confidently.

“Very well.” Gordon’s lips were twisted in a snarl as he turned to Michael Shayne. “Much as I hate to do business with you—”

Shayne stopped him with upheld hand, jerked his head toward the door significantly. Gordon hesitated, then followed him out into the hall.

Beads of sweat stood on Shayne’s forehead as he held out his hand. This was the crucial moment. If Gordon paid without being noticed by Montrose—

There was no difficulty. Guessing that Shayne was planning on a piece of private profit, but unwilling to forego the bargain, Gordon sullenly counted out ten one-thousand-dollar bills into the detective’s outstretched hand.

Shayne thrust them into his pocket and went back into the library to lean over Joyce’s shoulder and peer at the painting. In the presence of the two experts, he muttered, “I don’t pretend to know a damned thing about art but the thought just struck me—in connection with that bogus signature painted over Raphael. How do you know positively this is an original signature? Why couldn’t someone have cleverly painted Raphael’s name over that of an imitator?”

D. Q. Henderson swelled up like a pouter pigeon and began on a lengthy tale of how his eagle eye had detected the masterpiece in a ruined French chateau. There could be no possible doubt.

But Pelham Joyce frowned as he leaned over the signature and studied it keenly. He exclaimed, “Henderson, I do believe this is a slovenly imitation of Raphael’s authentic signature. Good God, man! You’ve let your imagination run away with your better judgment. I must admit that I was taken in by my first cursory examination. But, my dear fellow,” he went on patronizingly, “you certainly should be familiar enough with the master’s signature to realize that this is not at all characteristic.”

He pointed out certain minor discrepancies while Henderson choked and sputtered and rubbed his eyes, while Mr. Montrose pawed at him frantically, bleating, “What is it? What is it?”

Gordon moved up behind Pelham Joyce and swung him about with a heavy hand on the artist’s withered shoulder. “Caught them trying to put something over on us, eh?”

Joyce wriggled away without loss of dignity. “Let us have no more hasty judgments, gentlemen. I’m sure all of us wish to ascertain the exact truth. Suppose we stand aside while Mr. Henderson again applies his penknife and discovers whether an unworthy imitator has superimposed the master’s mark upon his own signature.”

D. Q. Henderson was dazedly moaning, “It can’t be. I tell you it’s impossible.”

Gordon was glaring at Montrose, and he remarked acidly, “I certainly intend to know before I leave here.”

“And I,” Mr. Montrose returned with equal acidity, “also intend to know before you leave here.” Each of them, thinking the other was the seller, glared with complete animosity and distrust.

Mr. Montrose wet his lips, and his eyes flashed a signal to Oscar.

Gordon moved slightly toward Dick as Henderson tremblingly opened his penknife again. Shayne stood in the background with a sardonic grin on his gaunt face, his left hand gripping the slack of Joyce’s coat behind the shoulders, his gaze mentally calculating the distance behind him to the hall.

There was only the sound of nervous breathing as Henderson unhappily bent forward and scraped away paint to reveal a bold R M Robertson.

He could not believe his eyes and he could not meet the accusing gazes fixed upon him as he straightened up and faltered, “By heavens, gentlemen—” His voice broke and he backed away as Montrose and Gordon took a simultaneous step toward him.

“I’ve been duped,” he cried hoarsely. “This is nothing—a rank imitation.”

Mr. Montrose screeched a shrill epithet at Gordon and jerked a table drawer open, fumbling for a pistol inside. Gordon threw a curse back at him as a Luger and a .45 came out of hiding.

Shayne’s long leg shot out and neatly knocked Henderson’s feet from under him as his left arm jerked Pelham Joyce backward into the hallway.

Inside the library a Luger barked murderously, and Oscar’s .45 thundered in reply.

CHAPTER 17

PETER PAINTER CAME HEADLONG through the front door as the reverberations died away in the library. There was the whimpering of an art critic, unwounded but too frightened to get up off the floor. Shayne grunted with pain as he gathered himself together in the hallway where he had tumbled with Joyce. His shoulder cast had broken, and his side was one numbing sheet of pain.

Painter ran past him with a .38 in his hand, flinging questions and curses indiscriminately until he reached the doorway and cautiously peered into the library. He drew back and turned to Shayne with a subdued air. “What—happened?”

Shayne was helping Pelham Joyce to his feet. Assuring himself that the artist was only shaken up, he went toward Painter, asking grimly, “Did they all cash in?”

“It looks like it.” Painter followed him into the death chamber, exclaiming bitterly, “And you promised me there’d be no more deaths.”

“Justifiable homicide,” Shayne told him cheerfully. “Save the state plenty of money.”

D. Q. Henderson came slithering out of the library on hands and knees.

Painter jumped for him, but Shayne said, “Let him go. He was an innocent bystander. Better have your men watch the stairs and let no one down.”

Painter issued the order to his men who were crowding in, then he and Shayne surveyed the shambles in the library.

Dick was the only one of the quartet still alive. He was shot through the groin, and his body thrashed about on the floor while his eyes were like those of a cornered rat.

Gordon had died easily with a .45 slug through his head.

Mr. Montrose was crumpled grotesquely over the table with his hands spread out toward the canvas as though he sought to clutch it to him in death.

Oscar had taken a lot of killing. The Luger had drilled him four times through the belly before it stopped him.

“Everything’s under control here,” Shayne said quickly. “There’s still a job to be done upstairs. Come on.”

He and Painter hurried out, and Painter gritted an order to his men to drag Dick out and try to patch him up. As he trotted to keep pace with Shayne’s long strides, he muttered, “You’d better start talking fast. There’s a hell of a lot of explaining to be done.”

“Wait till we clean it up.” Shayne was leaping up the stairs with Painter at his heels, a pistol in his hand.

Shayne ran down the corridor to the sickroom and threw the door wide open.

The nurse who was impersonating Myrtle Godspeed was crouched close to the door, her face haggard and frightened. Her hand dived into her expensive handbag when she saw Shayne.

He kicked her hand as it came out, and a pearl-handled .25 automatic went spinning across the floor. Shayne grappled with her with his good arm, and snarled at Painter, “Get Julius Brighter on the bed. He’s the man you want.”

The pseudo nurse was sobbing and scratching. Shayne grimly pinioned her arms to her side and dragged her to the bed where a gaunt scarecrow of a man was putting up an amazing fight with Painter before the Beach detective chief got cuffs on his bony wrists.

“Put some cuffs on her, too.” Shayne shoved her into Painter’s arms. “She killed the other nurse, Charlotte Hunt, with that little automatic that I kicked out of her hand. Come on down to the library where we can be alone, and I’ll give you the whole thing so you can pass it on to the press.”

Painter’s detectives were crowding in by that time. He turned the two prisoners over to them with orders that they were to be kept separate and not allowed to talk. Then he followed Shayne down to the library where he faced the redheaded detective and grated, “There’s a gang of reporters in my office waiting for a story.”

Shayne sat down and lit a cigarette. “And what a story.”

“What happened?” Painter spoke curtly and gestured toward the bodies.

“I gave the whole outfit the double cross, and they each thought the other had done it. That picture on the table,” Shayne went on amiably, “is the Raphael D. Q. Henderson has been raving about having stolen from him yesterday in Miami. Only it’s not a Raphael—as Henderson will tell you now. Henderson is the bird who scuttled out on his hands and knees as you came in.”

“But what’s it all about?”

“That picture, mostly,” Shayne told him. He went on in a changed tone. “But I promised you information worth half a grand. Here it is.

“Montrose killed Mrs. Brighton. Or maybe it was Oscar who did the actual slitting of her throat. It doesn’t matter. Oscar did what Montrose told him to. And Montrose was hep to the fact that Doctor Pedique had Phyllis Brighton worked up to the point where she forgot things, and he knew I’d been called in to keep her from killing her mother. That made a perfect setup. After murdering Mrs. Brighton, Montrose slipped the murder knife in Phyllis’s room and spattered blood on her nightie.”

Painter made a sudden exclamation, and Shayne grinned at him. “I was one up on you there. I got hold of the knife and locked her door on the outside before anyone else got to her. That was the knife I sliced bread with in my kitchen while you watched me. A damned good knife, too.”

“But why,” Painter demanded witheringly, “did Montrose kill Mrs. Brighton—or have her killed?”

“To keep her from recognizing the sick man as Julius Brighton—and thus learning that her husband was already dead.”

Painter swallowed hard and complained, “You’re away ahead of me.”

“Julius Brighton,” Shayne patiently explained, “is Rufus Brighton’s brother. Rufus helped frame him on an embezzlement charge years ago which ended in his being sent to the pen. He was paroled a couple of months ago on account of ill health. He hated Rufus and saw a chance to switch identities when he got paroled.

“Here’s the way I figure it out,” Shayne went on while Painter made noises in his throat. “When Julius returned on parole he found his brother Rufus a very sick man. Well, Julius was sick, too. Montrose is in charge of things, and Montrose hates Rufus as much as Julius does. Together, they manage to get rid of Rufus. Either he actually dies or they kill him and slip Julius into his sickbed. They change doctors when they switch patients, hiring Pedique and Charlotte Hunt and hurrying to Miami, away from people who might discover the impersonation. Julius is a mighty sick man, and all sick men look alike to a certain extent. The girl hardly knows Rufus, and the boy doesn’t count. He’s half batty and doesn’t go near the patient. Do you get the picture?”

“Hell, no. What happened to Rufus Brighton’s body? How could they cover up a death and substitute another patient?”

“Easy. By changing doctors and nurses just before they start south. And by getting a doctor who was more interested in his private experiments of inducing insanity in normal persons than he was in treating a sick patient.”

“What about Rufus Brighton? You say—”

“Rufus Brighton’s body is buried in a trunk out on the beach. I dug it up last night and had a look. They were playing a waiting game and even had their getaway figured. After they had cleaned up, Julius Brighton would have pretended to die, and they had Rufus Brighton’s body ready to be substituted so they’d have all been in the clear no matter what sort of future investigation there was. Oscar dragged the trunk out of his room and buried it after I started snooping around.”

Painter slid limply into a chair. “How’d you get onto the switch?”

“I didn’t—at first.” Shayne put out his cigarette. “It had me plenty stumped. But there had to be some motive back of Mrs. Brighton’s murder. It began to make sense when Charlotte told me that Mrs. Brighton hadn’t been to her husband’s room before she was killed but had insisted that she see him a little later. I wondered why someone wanted her kept out of the sickroom.”

“But why the elaborate hoax?” Painter demanded.

“It gave them control of Brighton’s estate which they were converting into cash. But his estate has shrunk to a fraction of its value, and they knew about the painting Henderson was bringing across the border, and it was worth waiting for—or so they thought.”

“How about Hilliard? Was he in on it, too?”

“Hell, no. Doctor Hilliard stands so straight he leans backward. And he was in a tough spot. No wonder he couldn’t diagnose his patient’s illness. The old devil Julius has been deliberately starving himself to stay emaciated and so weak that he can’t have visitors who might recognize him. He pretends to eat, but throws his food out the window to the squirrels. I got that information from Charlotte, too. But she didn’t realize the significance of it.”

“What about Charlotte’s murder? What was the reason?”

“Gordon—that’s Gordon.” Shayne pointed to the slain man. “He engineered that killing. He was determined to get one of his gang in here to keep a finger on things just in case I slipped up and let Henderson deliver the painting to Montrose. I was retained by Gordon to keep the masterpiece from reaching its destination,” he went on in response to Painter’s questioning look.

“But Gordon didn’t trust me, so they must have called the Nursing Registry and gotten the name of the nurse next on the list to be called.” Shayne paused thoughtfully, then exclaimed, “By God, I’m glad that other nurse—the one who was on with Charlotte when I first came—had sense enough to get away without being murdered.”

“Well?” Painter was getting jittery. “Go on—go on.”

“The next nurse for call was Myrtle Godspeed. Gordon and his moll located her in a hurry and made her a proposition. They shipped her off to Cuba, and Gordon’s moll shot Charlotte, then hurried out to Myrtle Godspeed’s house and answered the call when it came for a substitute nurse.”

Painter was holding his head in his hands. “Who,” he sighed, “was Gordon? And that guy who wasn’t quite dead?”

“Gordon’s a New York racketeer who learned about the painting somehow, and came down here to snatch it. The not-quite-dead guy was his torpedo. They weren’t hooked up with Montrose and Julius at all—didn’t know anything about the hoax—nor care. They just wanted the painting.”

“I’m getting things straight,” Painter muttered. “Who blasted you on the sidewalk that night? And why?”

“That was Montrose and his little playmate, Oscar. I don’t know whether they tracked Charlotte to my apartment, or whether she put the finger on me for them. I suppose I’ll never know.”

Shayne paused reflectively and lit a cigarette, then went on. “It was Montrose and Oscar that jimmied my door that morning and found Phyllis in my bed. You’ll find a jimmy out in Oscar’s tool box in his bedroom that’ll fit the marks on my door.

“Montrose was worried as hell about that first murder and wanted to hang it on Phyllis—wanted to get her out of the way, anyhow, I suppose, to save trouble beating her out of her share of the estate. So when they found her asleep they slipped out without waking her—or so they thought—and phoned you while one of them watched the outside door. But she must have wakened when they were there and played possum, then slipped out the back way and down the fire escape before you got there.”

“What about the girl now?” Painter demanded. “Where is she?”

“I wish to God I knew. I expect she’s hiding out around town. She’s hiding from you. You were so hell-bent on tying her mother’s murder on her. She’ll pop up when the papers announce the case is broken wide open.”

Shayne got up stiffly. “Is that all you want to know? You got it straight to hand to the reporters?”

“‘I’ll do some checking first.” Painter’s eyes glittered with excitement. “There’s that phony nurse upstairs. And the body in the trunk. Man!” He smote Shayne’s shoulder in his excitement. “If it ties together like you’ve given it to me, it’ll be the biggest story of the year.”

Shayne winced with pain and backed away from Painter’s enthusiastic hand. “Worth five hundred berries?”

“I’ll say,” Painter exulted. He started out the door and met Pelham Joyce coming in. He turned back with a frown and muttered, “About that picture—I’d like to get that straight.”

Shayne grinned at Joyce as he replied. “Better get Henderson’s statement on the painting. But here’s what happened. He picked it up in Europe for a genuine Raphael while he was on the Brighton payroll. In order to get it out of Europe and into this country, he disguised it as an imitation by painting over Raphael’s signature and putting ‘R M Robertson’ on top.

“It was stolen from Henderson on his arrival here, and by a peculiar quirk came into my possession. I jockeyed with Gordon and Montrose, who were both after it, and got them together, each thinking they were going to buy it from the other. Montrose had Henderson here to identify it as genuine, and Gordon brought Mr. Joyce along as his expert.

“Before the deal went through,” Shayne continued glibly, conscious of twenty thousand dollars in his pocket of which Painter knew nothing, “Henderson proudly scrapes off the name of Robertson and shows us what is supposed to be Raphael’s signature. But,” Shayne chuckled, “Joyce wasn’t to be caught napping. He thought the signature looked phony and insisted on scraping below it. Henderson did, and found Robertson’s name underneath.”

“Holy smokes!” Painter ejaculated. “Then Henderson was trying to put one over?”

“I think not,” Pelham Joyce broke into the discussion. “Mr. Henderson’s reputation is unassailable. I believe Henderson was absolutely honest in judging it a Raphael. An error in judgment rather than dishonesty.”

Painter walked over to the picture and studied it with interest. “It’s already cost three lives—and it’s not worth a damn, eh?”

“No one seems to be particularly interested in it now.” Shayne shrugged and said to Joyce, “Suppose we take it along with us for a souvenir?”

“An excellent piece of work.” Pelham Joyce’s finger tips caressed the painting. His face lighted up. “There is a spot in my studio where I should love to hang it.”

The coroner came bustling in as Joyce lovingly rolled up the painting and wrapped it in its covering.

Shayne said to Joyce, “Let’s get out of here.” They went toward the door together, and Shayne said over his shoulder to Painter and the coroner, “We’ll both be on hand for the inquest.”

They went out through throngs of Miami Beach policemen and got in Shayne’s car. He groaned as he set the car in motion, and gripped his underlip hard between his teeth. His shoulder throbbed with excruciating pain. His head lolled back against the seat as the car stopped. He muttered to his startled companion, “Flag a car and send me to the hospital. You hang—onto—the—Raphael.”

CHAPTER 18

IT WAS HOURS LATER when Shayne came back to consciousness in the emergency ward of the Jackson Memorial Hospital. He gritted his teeth, sat up, and asked what time it was. A doctor came hurrying to his bed and told him it was four o’clock and that he must take it easy and get some rest until his strength returned.

Shayne said, “Rest be damned. I’ve been here three hours already. Where are my clothes?”

It was the same doctor who had treated his wounds when he was brought in from the midnight shooting. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “All right. Be stubborn. I warned you to take care of yourself the other time. You’ll carry this cast around for an extra month just because you horsed around when you should have been in bed.”

Shayne chuckled and asked for a cigarette. Then he again demanded his clothes.

The doctor shook his head and called an orderly to bring Shayne’s clothes. “But, what’s your hurry?” he argued. “We were going to move you into a private room as soon as you woke up. A night here with fresh dressings in the morning would fix you up as good as new.”

“I’ve got a date,” Shayne informed him with a wide grin. He dressed with the orderly’s aid, and whistled expressively when he found the twenty thousand dollars intact.

“You’re an honest bunch,” he grunted.

The orderly gazed at the bills in respectful awe.

“God in heaven! Who are you? The Secretary of the Treasury?”

“Just a flatfoot trying to get along,” Shayne told him cheerfully. He put the money back in his pocket and his feet on the floor. A slight dizziness was the only discomfort he felt. “If you’ll whistle up a taxi, I’ll be set,” he announced.

The orderly complied, eying Shayne with unmitigated respect as he went out.

Shayne gave the driver his address and settled back comfortably. As they turned into Flagler he heard the newsboys shouting an extra. “All about the Brighton case! Three dead in final roundup!” Shayne had the driver pull up at the curb while he got a paper. He spread it out on his knees and chuckled while reading the lurid news account of the affair.

Peter Painter was the hero of the day. According to printed accounts, he had fearlessly entered the fray single-handed and come out with three dead, one wounded, and two prisoners.

Under questioning, the sick man in the upstairs room had confessed he was Julius Brighton, and that his brother Rufus had died in New York—insisting that he died a natural death, and admitting no regret over the attempted imposture which Montrose and Oscar, his former cell-mate, had helped engineer. The trunk containing Rufus’s embalmed body had been dug up on the beach. The bogus nurse had confessed nothing, but a ballistic test proved that her .25 automatic had killed Charlotte Hunt.

The real Myrtle Godspeed had made a telephonic statement of her innocent entanglement in the affair, and arrangements had been made to bring her back from Cuba to confront the woman who had inveigled her into accepting an expense-paid vacation in Cuba.

That was about all. It was enough. Shayne’s name was mentioned only casually, and not at all in connection with the solving of the case. “Which,” he told himself as he got out at his hotel, “certainly justifies a payoff.”

He went in the side entrance and up to his apartment. A maid had cleaned up all the evidences of disorder left by Gordon when he searched the apartment.

Shayne went to the kitchen and crushed ice cubes into a pitcher which he filled with water. He set it on the table with a large glass and a wineglass. Then he opened a fresh bottle of Martell and set it beside the pitcher.

Drawing up a comfortable chair, he lit a cigarette and poured himself a drink. Sitting alone, he sipped the liquor and smoked meditatively while strength flowed back to his body.

The telephone rang as he finished a second glass. He answered it and heard Painter on the wire.

The chief of detectives’ voice was exultant. “Everything has worked out perfectly, Shayne. The reward will be paid to me personally. I’ll turn it over to you—privately—as soon as I receive it.”

“Two and a half G’s?” Shayne questioned laconically.

“That’s right. And thanks.”

Shayne said, “Money talks,” and hung up.

He went back to the table and finished his drink. He then took a sheet of paper out of the drawer and looked for a pencil. There wasn’t any. A lopsided grin spread over his face as he picked up the fountain pen which he had taken from the sickroom.

He sat down and wrote across the top of the sheet:

He nodded approvingly at the figures and poured himself another drink. Dusk was creeping in through the windows, but he didn’t turn on the lights. Suddenly he remembered something. He got up and went to the kitchen door. It was still bolted shut as he had left it the night of Charlotte’s visit. He unbolted it but left the night latch on. Then he went back to the living-room—to his cognac, his cigarettes, and his not unpleasant meditations. It grew darker in the room, then lighter as the street lamps came on. Shayne sat in a listening attitude.

He sat like that a long time before he heard the sound he was expecting. The faint click of a key in the lock on the kitchen door.

His back was toward the kitchen. He did not move except to reach out in the semidarkness and fold the sheet of paper upon which he had cast up his profits on the Brighton case. He heard the back door open softly, then light footsteps advancing hesitantly from the kitchen. He chose that moment to light a cigarette, still with his back turned, seemingly unaware of another presence in the room.

The intruder stole upon him as he blew out the match. Soft hands were clasped over his eyes, and a laughing voice exclaimed, “Guess who.”

Shayne did not move. He said lazily, “So it was you who stole the key to my kitchen door.”

Phyllis Brighton leaned her cheek down against his coarse red hair for just an instant. Then she took her hands from his eyes and came around from behind him.

“Pull the cord on the floor lamp,” Shayne suggested.

She did, and faced him accusingly in the soft light. “You’re not even surprised to see me.”

“Of course not. I expected you sooner. Sit down.” Shayne pointed to a chair and reached for his glass.

Phyllis drew the chair close and sat down. Her eyes were bright and unclouded.

“It’s a good thing I wasn’t sure it was you who had that key,” Shayne told her easily. “Else I would have known it was you who peeked in the other night—and I might have suspected you had killed Charlotte Hunt out of jealousy.”

Her eyes dropped before his. “I saw plenty—to make me jealous.”

“That’s what you get for sneaking in through kitchen doors at such an ungodly hour,” Shayne pointed out. “I was in a tough spot that night, but business is business. I got enough dope from her to solve the case.”

Phyllis shuddered and said, “Ugh! Let’s not talk about it.”

“I,” Shayne told her, “will be very happy to forget Miss Hunt. But where the hell have you been hiding?” He lifted his glass and took a long drink.

Phyllis laughed with carefree pleasure. “Right here in a downtown hotel. I’ve seen you on the street twice. And, oh!” she went on exultantly, “I’m all cured. Just getting away from that horrible house has made me well. I haven’t had another single one of those spells of forgetting.”

Shayne nodded. “That’s one thing that didn’t get into the papers. Pedique made a full confession just before he committed suicide. He was trying to drive you crazy, angel, with a mixture of drugs and hypnotism. I burned his confession.”

“Thank God.” Tears swam unashamed in the girl’s eyes. She reached out her hand, and Shayne gripped it tightly. “You’ve been—wonderful to me,” she breathed.

Shayne grinned, released her hand, and patted it. “You’re the kind of kid men like to be nice to.” He swung up awkwardly and went into the kitchen, saying, “By the way, I’ve got something here that belongs to you.”

He opened the refrigerator and took out the hydrator, brought it in to the table while Phyllis watched with wondering eyes.

“Don’t look,” Shayne said.

Phyllis obediently closed her eyes while Shayne dug under the lettuce with his left hand and brought out the shimmering pearl necklace.

Going around behind her chair, he dropped it down over her head. His hand strayed toward the curling tendrils of hair on her neck, but he jerked away before touching her, and his face was expressionless as he moved from behind her.

She opened her eyes wide, and her hand flew up to the necklace. “But these are yours,” she exclaimed. “They were your—what do you call it—your retainer.”

Shayne sat down and shook his head. “No, darling. Tough as I am, I can’t take a retainer from you.”

“But you’ve earned it,” she implored, lifting the pearls from her neck and thrusting them at him. “It’s little enough for what you’ve done. I know it was you who did all the work on the case.”

Shayne pushed the pearls back toward her. A diabolic grin lurked at the corners of his mouth. His fingers closed over the folded sheet of paper and crumpled it up. “I’ll get along,” he assured her.

Phyllis didn’t say anything. She stared at him bright-eyed, seemingly struggling with words which would not form themselves.

Shayne poured himself another small drink and said slowly, “You and the boy are the sole heirs, eh?”

“I—suppose so.”

Shayne toyed with his glass. “The estate isn’t very large. I imagine Montrose has been stealing from Brighton for years, getting even for the raw deal he felt Rufus handed Julius.”

She made a little gesture and said, “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I have enough money for the present.”

Shayne drank some cognac. He said, “I just wanted you to know—after all the ruckus is cleared up and forgotten, there’s a genuine Raphael in the possession of an artist friend of mine which belongs to the estate. It’ll be worth a pretty good pile of dough.”

“A Raphael? But the papers said—”

“The papers,” Shayne told her, “don’t know a hell of a lot of angles on this case. It’s genuine, all right. I had Pelham Joyce paint a bum ‘Raphael’ on top of the new signature Henderson had put on for smuggling purposes and then a second fake ‘Robertson’ on top of that. That made four signatures piled up on each other. Only two were scraped off by the time the shooting started. The bottom signature is authentic.”

Phyllis drew in her breath unevenly. “You’re a remarkable person—and I owe you a lot.” Her fingers crept out and touched Shayne’s hand.

Shayne drained his glass. He said, “It’s fun being nice to you, angel.” Then he patted her fingers and went on with a grin, “It’s been a good case. There’s only one thing I’ll always regret—that those two mugs busted in on us just when they did that first night.”

Phyllis stood up. There was something very close to adoration in her eyes. She said breathlessly, “You needn’t—regret it any longer.”

Shayne looked up at her for a long moment from beneath raggedly bushy brows. “What are you trying to say?”

She returned his gaze bravely, color flooding her cheeks. “Must I—draw you a blueprint?”

Shayne lurched to his feet. Phyllis swayed toward him. Her eyes were clear and unashamed.

He caught her shoulder with his sound hand and turned her toward the door, muttering, “God help me, I almost weakened once before.”

He let go of her in the doorway. She stood rigid, her back toward him. His lips brushed the top of her hair, and he said huskily, “Wait a minute.”

She stood like that without turning while he strode back to the table and picked up the pearls. He came back and slid them over her head, growling, “Go out and grow up. Then come back, and we’ll do something constructive about it—if you still feel the same way.”

Her hand went up to touch the pearls. “But you—you can’t afford to take cases for nothing,” she faltered. “And the newspapers didn’t even give you a line of credit.”

“I’ll get along,” he assured her, “without the credit. But—if you insist—I will collect a slight fee.”

His one arm turned her slowly so her luminous eyes gazed unflinchingly into his. She swayed back against his arm and trustingly lifted her lips. Shayne leaned down and collected more than a slight fee, then sent her away with a little push, closing the door behind her.

His face was morose as he went back to the table and poured himself another drink. Something new had come into his life—and gone out of it.

His brooding gaze fell on the folded sheet of paper listing his cash receipts on the case just finished. He opened it out and read the items slowly. The muted beat of evening traffic drifted up from the street below and into the room through an open window. The sound was not unlike the rumble of a distant drum, but Shayne’s mind was occupied with other things, and he paid no heed to it.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18