Brett Halliday

The Corpse Came Calling

CHAPTER ONE

PHYLLIS SHAYNE had installed a typewriter desk and a steel filing cabinet in the apartment that had been her husband’s bachelor quarters before they were married. Otherwise, the apartment remained the same as it had been when Michael Shayne lived there alone—with well-stocked liquor cabinet, comfortable chairs, and a day bed.

In the six months since Pearl Harbor there hadn’t been anything for Phyllis to write on the typewriter and the files were practically empty, but they did add a businesslike touch to the apartment; and Phyllis made it decorative with her warm smile of greeting, which was the first thing one saw when entering.

Michael Shayne always came to an abrupt stop and looked his young wife over approvingly when he came in, then solicitously inquired whether any new business had popped up during his absence.

For weeks he had been receiving a negative shake of his wife’s dark head, but this afternoon she glanced at a memorandum pad on her clean desk and said briskly:

“A phone call for Mike Shayne about twenty minutes ago. Very mysterious—I might even say sinister. A throaty whisper over the wire, quote: ‘Tell Mike it’s Jim Lacy. I’ve got to see him right away,’ unquote; and darned if he didn’t hang up before I could ask him any questions or tell him you mightn’t be in for hours and hours.”

Phyllis Shayne paused, her eyes bright with expectancy lifted to her husband’s gauntly expressionless face. “I might be mistaken, Mike. You’ve always warned me about letting my imagination run riot, but I think he was interrupted before he could finish. You know, I had the impression he intended to go on talking but someone or something stopped him.”

Shayne nodded, taking off his hat and rumpling coarse red hair with bony fingers. “Jim Lacy? I don’t—Yes, I do. I wonder if it could be—Hell, it has to be because that’s the only Jim Lacy I’ve ever known.” He tossed his hat toward a wall rack near the door and advanced upon his wife.

She wrinkled her nose at him. “You make as much sense as usual. I wish you’d stop muttering in shorthand.”

Shayne grinned widely and tipped her shining head back to kiss her lips. “I keep in practice so you won’t learn too many of the darker details of the private detecting business. It was your idea to move down here and spend your days waiting for the telephone to ring.”

“But you needed a secretary.”

“I got along for years without one.”

She clung to the knobby fingers that touched her cheek. “Who is Jim Lacy? He sounded awfully queer over the telephone.”

Shayne shook his head. “Probably isn’t the bird I’m thinking of. Maybe you got the name wrong. Let’s wait and see.”

Phyllis wailed, “You make me so damn mad,” and Shayne said, “A drink will improve your disposition.” He pulled his fingers from hers and went across the room to the liquor cabinet, where he selected two wineglasses, a bottle of cognac, and a bottle of port wine.

Phyllis swiveled her chair to watch him while he set the glasses and bottles on a center table and went to the kitchenette. When his back was turned she made no attempt to hide the fact that she was hopelessly in love with her big redheaded husband, but when he came back carrying a brimming glass of ice water, she made a face at him and said, “There you go. Getting tanked up just when an important case is about to break.”

Shayne said, “One drink isn’t getting tanked up, and we don’t know it’s a case.” He filled one wineglass with cognac, the other with tawny wine. He arched a bushy eyebrow at his wife and asked, “Are you going to relax from your secretarial duties and join me, or are you going to have your refreshment while you remain militantly on duty?”

“Of course I’m going to stay at my desk. How would it look if a client came in and caught your secretary lounging on the boss’s lap encouraging him to get drunk?”

“I’m afraid they’d be envious and try to hire you away from me, angel.” Shayne brought her the glass of wine. He went back to the table and lifted his cognac. “Here’s to a continued dearth of clients. May they avoid my office—”

A shriek from Phyllis brought Shayne whirling around, slopping liquor over the rim of his glass.

A man stood in the doorway. He was hunched forward with arms akimbo, hands thrust in the pockets of a double-breasted serge coat, hugging the garment tightly to his concave belly. His eyes were glazed and they stared straight in front of him without seeing anything. He swayed in the doorway, took a short, uncertain step, then fell to one knee as Shayne leaped forward.

He toppled sideways on the carpet before the detective reached him. A gray froth dribbled out between his lips with widely spaced words that sounded as though he had been saving them up, concentrating on them, for a long time. He said, “They—didn’t—get—” before he died.

Shayne knelt beside him and turned him on his back. He unbuttoned the blue coat and threw it back, showing a tight vest of the same material. He ripped the vest open and put his ear to the man’s chest. Phyllis remained seated, hands flat on her desk, eyes wide and frightened.

Shayne lifted his head and shook it. Phyllis screamed and pointed at him. “Your face, Mike! It’s covered with blood.”

Michael Shayne nodded somberly. He took a handkerchief from his hip pocket and wiped the dead man’s blood from his cheek. He said, “His chest is shot full of holes. God only knows how he held himself together to get here.”

He stood up and heeled the door shut.

“Michael! Is it Jim Lacy? The man who phoned?”

Shayne shook his head slowly. He stared down at the dead man and the lines of his face deepened into trenches. “I guess maybe it is Lacy. I can’t be sure. Haven’t see him for ten years. Ten tough years, if this is he.”

The features of the corpse were flaccid, the flesh shrunken so that cheek- and jawbones stood out in harsh relief.

Phyllis asked breathlessly, “How do you suppose—Michael! what do you suppose?”

He said, “How in hell do I know?” without looking at her. He tugged at the lobe of his left ear with right thumb and forefinger, then shrugged and turned to the table where he poured himself a drink to replace the one he had spilled.

Phyllis went swiftly to him. She gripped his arm. “Aren’t you going to do something? You can’t just leave him lying there.”

“Why not?” Shayne’s eyes were narrowed and hard.

“It isn’t decent.”

Shayne said, “He’s as comfortable there as he would be anywhere.” He tossed off his drink, then said more gently:

“Look, angel. You’d better hike upstairs to the apartment and settle down with your knitting. I’ve got to figure this thing out. He said, ‘They didn’t get—’ before he died. Who are they? What didn’t they get? Why was he killed on his way to my office?”

“Aren’t you going to call a doctor?” Phyllis tightened her fingers on his arm.

“What for?” Shayne looked at her in astonishment “He’s dead. No doctor can bring him back to life.”

“But the police! Shouldn’t you report it? The murderer may be escaping right now.”

Shayne put both his hands on her shoulders and steered her back to the day bed. “You’re mighty sweet, Phyl, and sometimes you show a glimmering of intelligence, but I’m still running my end of this business. I’ll call the police when I get ready, and I’ll have a story all fixed to tell them. You relax and meditate on the pleasure of being married to a guy who has dead men drop in unexpectedly.” He pushed her down, then patted her shoulder and turned away.

Phyllis breathed unevenly and watched with wide eyes while he went to the corpse and knelt down, began rifling the dead man’s pockets.

A tuneless whistle came from the detective’s lips as he made a little pile of personal belongings on the floor. Presently he squatted back on his haunches, examining and returning loose change, a key ring, and such trifles to the same pockets they had come from.

He retained a worn leather wallet which he went through carefully. He counted a sheaf of small bills, laying aside two hundred and putting a five and some ones back. He carefully examined all the papers in the wallet, refolded and replaced them, then put the wallet back in the dead man’s inside coat pocket.

Shayne frowned, ruffling the sheaf of bills, then placed them inside his own wallet and said over his shoulder to Phyllis, “You can make an entry in the ledger: ‘Two hundred dollar retainer from Jim Lacy.’”

A little gasp from her lips brought him around to look at her. He grinned when he saw her expression.

“Don’t look at me with such loathing, angel. How am I going to find out anything if I don’t do some snooping?”

“It’s ghoulish,” she burst out, “looting a dead man’s pockets.”

Shayne shrugged wide shoulders. “I left the cops a few dollars to fight over. Who’s going to pay my fee if Jim Lacy doesn’t?”

“Then it is Jim Lacy?”

“In person. Unless someone has gone to the trouble of planting Jim Lacy’s billfold on him.”

“Does that make it right to steal his money?”

“Steal isn’t a nice word,” Shayne complained. “I told you to enter it in the ledger to make it legal.”

“But how do you know there’s going to be any case? Your client’s already dead.”

“That,” Shayne told her, “is my case. I practically never let the murder of a prospective client pass unnoticed.” He got up and went toward Phyllis. She stood up, her young face strained and anxious.

Shayne put his arm about her shoulders. “You insisted on playing at being my secretary, Phyl. Part of that job is not asking questions and not passing judgments. You’re upset by having a dead man fall in the door. I didn’t arrange it, but hell! That’s the way things go in this business.” He put a forefinger under his wife’s firm chin and tipped her face up. “Are you going to take orders—or would you rather resign right now?”

The look of strain went away from Phyllis’s face. “I guess I am upset. I haven’t even drunk my wine.”

A twinkle came to Shayne’s gray eyes. He released her with a push toward her desk. “Now, you’re more like the gal I married. Drink your wine.” He hesitated, rubbing his bony chin, then muttered, “I still don’t know what they didn’t get.”

He studied Lacy’s body a moment, then knelt beside the dead man again. He gently withdrew the right hand from its coat pocket, frowned at the empty palm, and tried the other hand.

This time his eyes glistened with satisfaction. The fingers of Jim Lacy’s left hand were tightly clenched in death over a small piece of white cardboard. Shayne spread the fingers out one by one. He rocked back on his heels and turned the torn fragment over and over in his hands.

Watching him curiously, Phyllis asked, “What is it, Michael?”

“Damned if I know.” His frown deepened. “It looks like—something familiar. There’s printing on it—parts of words—it’s been torn on three sides—” He shook his head. “The only thing I’m certain of is that it’s what they didn’t get from Lacy.” He slipped the piece of cardboard in his pocket and stood up, reached for his hat.

“Get this straight, Phyl. Here’s what you’re to do. Call headquarters as soon as I get out. Get some excitement in your voice and report that a man just stumbled through the door and fell dead. You don’t know where I am.”

“Where will you be?”

“Out.” He stepped toward the door, paused. “You’d better tell them about the phone call from Jim Lacy—the truth. They might trace it. But forget that I was here when he dropped in—and you don’t know anything about the identity of our caller.”

Phyllis nodded, her lips tightly compressed. She kept her face averted from the corpse. “I understand.”

Shayne grinned reassuringly. “I’ll beat it. I think you’ll lie more convincingly without an audience.” He stepped over the dead man and started out.

The telephone on Phyllis’s desk shrilled as he went through the doorway. He stopped and looked back.

Phyllis lifted the receiver and said, “Yes?” She listened a moment, widening her eyes at her husband to let him know the call was for him.

“I don’t believe Mr. Shayne will be able to—” She paused, biting her lip and listening further. She put her hand over the mouthpiece and said:

“It’s the clerk downstairs. There’s a girl to see you.”

Shayne shook his head. “Tell her—”

“She says that Jim Lacy sent her,” Phyllis interrupted.

Shayne stopped shaking his head. He said, “That’s different. Have the clerk stall her a few minutes, then send her upstairs to the apartment. I’ll trot up there and see what she wants. You go ahead and call the cops. Don’t mention the girl. Tell them exactly what I told you to. And wash out that glass of mine and put it up.”

He hurried out, leaving the door standing open, went to the end of the corridor and up one flight of stairs. He hastily unlocked a spacious corner apartment and strode in, shucking off his coat. He tossed coat and hat into the bedroom and returned to the living-room, loosening his tie. Miami’s late-afternoon sunlight flooded the room warmly from an open west window.

He lit a cigarette as an elevator stopped and opened its doors down the hall. He swiftly stepped aside and manipulated a wall mirror so it swung about and revealed a compact assortment of liquors and glasses. He grabbed a bottle of cognac and poured a wineglass half full, carried it to a deep chair, and settled back just as a knock sounded on the door.

He yelled, “Come in,” and took a leisurely sip of cognac as the door opened.

CHAPTER TWO

A GIRL PAUSED HESITANTLY just inside the threshold. She appeared quite young, with lustrous, smoothly waved hair that gave off an illusive sheen like the patina of old and well-rubbed silver. She wore a dress of dove-gray silk, and looked cool and poised. She had a slender, well-put-together body and nice legs.

Shayne set his glass down and went to meet her. She peeled off a white lace glove and smiled, but her blue eyes were frightened.

Shayne engulfed her hand in his and drew her into the room, shutting the door. “You wanted to see me?”

“It’s—are you really the detective—Michael Shayne?” Her lips parted breathlessly, her eyes were wide with doubt.

Shayne ruffled his red hair and grinned his nicest grin. “Disappointed?”

“N-No. Only—” She shrugged well-fleshed shoulders and pivoted away from him, looking around the living-room with interest. “This isn’t at all what I imagined a detective’s office would be like.” She moved to an open window, casually glancing inside the bedroom through the open door.

“My wife is out,” Shayne told her equably. “We’re alone here if that’s what’s on your mind.”

She turned slowly, pressing the heels of her palms against the window sill behind her. Her hair glistened with a yellowish tinge in the tropical sunlight. She narrowed her eyes at Shayne, then parted generous lips in a slow smile. “I didn’t know you were married.”

“That,” said Shayne, “is the reason I hastened to mention it.” He went to the table and lifted his glass. “Can I get you a drink?”

“No, thank you.” The smile went away from the girl’s lips. She said jerkily, “My name is—Helen Brinstead.”

Shayne lifted his glass in acknowledgment. “Miss Brinstead.” He sipped from the glass, his eyes holding hers over the rim. “You said a man named Jim Lacy had sent you.”

She lowered long eyelashes, giving her face a demure look of youth and inexperience. “Yes.”

Deliberately, Shayne said, “I knew a Jim Lacy once. Ten years ago. From what I knew of him then, I wouldn’t expect a girl like you to be acquainted with him.”

She kept her eyelashes down. In a low voice, she said, “It must be the same man.”

“He used to be a private detective, too.”

“He still is.”

“Then why come to me? If you need the services of a detective.”

“Mr. Lacy advised me to. He explained that he had a New York license and had no authority in Florida.”

“Is Jim Lacy here—in Miami?”

“Yes. I just happened to meet him today. I—I knew him casually in New York.” Helen Brinstead lifted her long eyelashes. She took a step toward him, wringing her hands. “I’m so alone here, Mr. Shayne. So frightened. You must listen to me—help me. You must! There’s no one else.”

Shayne nodded. “Sure, I’ll listen to you. That’s my job. Relax.” He took her arm and steered her to a chair a couple of feet in front of him.

She crossed her legs and leaned forward imploringly. “It’s going to sound too utterly fantastic, but I beg you to reserve a decision until you hear me out. That’s all I ask. I’ve kept it bottled up inside of me too long. I can’t go on. It’s too utterly horrible to face alone.” She stared past him, panting through compressed lips.

Shayne offered her a cigarette. She shook her head and he lit one for himself. “You make it sound very interesting, Miss Brinstead. I like a case that offers possibilities beyond the dull routine of crimes motivated by lust and greed.”

Her eyes were a darker blue when she shifted her gaze back to him. She looked older, and her words sounded rehearsed.

“Before I take any more of your time, I’ve heard—well—that your fees are dreadfully high. I don’t know whether I can afford to pay what you’ll charge.”

Her fingers were writhing together in her lap. Her gray skirt slipped above her knees, but her eyes were intent on Shayne and she didn’t notice. He lifted a big hand reassuringly.

“Sometimes I manage to collect a decent fee, but it’s always in line with the job I do and never more than my client can stand. We’ll discuss the fee after you’ve told me what you want done.”

“One thing more. No matter what I tell you, you’ll keep it confidential? Will you give me your word of honor?”

“Hell,” said Shayne in disgust, “if you don’t think you can trust me, you’d better leave right now.”

A flush crept into her cheeks. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and lowered her lashes. She smoothed her skirt down over her knees and said tonelessly, “I guess I’m acting like a fool. I—you see—I—I tried to commit suicide yesterday.” She shuddered, with eyes downcast. “Everything looked so terribly hopeless. Then I met Mr. Lacy and he told me about you and, well—I was crazy enough to start hoping again.”

Shayne said, “This isn’t getting us anywhere. You’re talking in circles and now you’ve got back to the starting point. See if you can’t start making sense for a change.”

She glanced up angrily, then faltered, “I deserved that. The trouble is, I’ve been thinking in circles. I think I’ll take that drink you offered me.”

“What’ll it be? There’s practically anything you want in the cabinet.”

“Just—whatever you’re drinking.” Helen glanced at the cognac bottle timidly.

“This is pretty potent stuff to take straight unless you’re used to it.” Shayne heaved his rangy body up and went to the cabinet, where he got a Seltzer bottle and a highball glass. He went into the kitchen, returned with three ice cubes in the tall glass. The girl watched in silent absorption while he poured cognac over the cubes and squirted Seltzer in. She accepted the glass gratefully.

As Shayne settled back in his chair the wail of a police siren came through the open window behind him. It sank to a moan, then wailed high again, died to silence outside the apartment hotel.

The girl asked, “Is that a fire engine?”

“That, or the cops.” Shayne nodded toward her highball. “Does that taste all right?”

She drank some and said, “It’s wonderful.” She was relaxed now, her left hand lying against the arm of her chair, her head comfortably back against the cushioned headrest. Her legs were uncrossed and stretched out in front of her, and her skirt had again crept above her knees. Shayne smoked idly and waited for her to begin.

“You’re wonderful, too,” she told him suddenly. “I feel utterly tranquil sitting here. As though all my troubles were unimportant. How can you be so gentle and understanding when they say you’re tough and conscienceless?”

Shayne chuckled. “It’s my bedside manner. I lull you into a sense of false security and you find yourself telling me things you wouldn’t tell your priest.”

“That’s just what I’m ready to do now, but I can’t think how to begin.”

“Let’s begin with Jim Lacy. I’m interested because I haven’t been in contact with him for ten years. What is he doing in Miami?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know Mr. Lacy very well. That is—well, I did once. Some time ago. But we simply met here by accident. When he learned about my trouble he said if there was any man in the world who could help me it would be Mike Shayne.”

“I can’t do anything without a few facts to chew on,” Shayne reminded her.

“I know. It isn’t easy to get started. You see, I’m—not at all what I seem. Actually I’m terribly wicked underneath.”

“Just what form of depravity are you addicted to?” Shayne asked her, grinning.

“It isn’t funny.” Her voice was suddenly tight and harsh. “I’ve done some despicable things. And now they’ve caught up with me. Back in New York I was—what they call a decoy girl in a divorce racket.

“I suppose you know how the racket is worked,” she went on tensely. “I was a show girl and jobs were hard to get when I met this lawyer at a party. He and Jim Lacy worked it together—getting divorce evidence for his women clients. Sometimes there was collusion and the men co-operated in setting up evidence of adultery that would hold in courts, but more often the husband was just a sucker whose wife was tired of him and wanted alimony.”

She took a sip from her glass and compressed her lips, then went on bitterly. “I was the come-on girl. I got a commission for each bedroom scene I staged—each time I set things up for Lacy and a photographer and the indignant wife to burst in on. A professional corespondent, one judge called me.”

“All right,” Shayne said. “I don’t need a diagram. Lacy was never too choosy about the sort of work he did. So what?”

“So then—a couple of months ago I was introduced to a new fall guy. His name was—well, you might as well know everything—his name was Charles Worthing. He was nice—so damned nice that as soon as I met him I couldn’t understand why any woman would want to divorce him. It seemed to me it would be—heaven—to be Mrs. Charles Worthing.

“So—I was the sucker.” Helen was sitting erect now, leaning forward tensely, talking fast. “I fell for him like a ton of brick. Funny! Me, the decoy girl! But it wasn’t funny because he, God help me, fell for me, too. I should have backed out right away. I saw it happening to us. I should have run like hell, but I—I couldn’t.

“He was married to a woman who didn’t deserve a swell guy like him. And I kidded myself into believing I’d be right for him. I went ahead with it just like any other case. He came to my apartment one night. When we were in what the papers would call a compromising situation, Lacy and Worthing’s wife and the photographer busted in—just like the script was written.

“Well, there was the usual scene and Charles was wonderful. He never suspected me for a moment. Poor darling, he wanted to protect me—protect my name from being smirched by a divorce suit. My name! Get it? That was a laugh, but I—I couldn’t laugh. He made me promise to marry him as soon as the divorce went through.”

“And you agreed?”

“Sure I did. What else could I do? Tell him the truth? Smash the last thing he believed in? He loved me. And I loved him. I didn’t see why it wouldn’t be all right—why he’d ever have to know the truth.”

A single tear from beneath each of Helen’s eyelids rolled down her cheeks while she stared fixedly at the detective.

He said, “Finish your drink and I’ll pour you another.” He lifted his own glass and emptied it. Helen turned hers up, too. She made a wretched attempt to smile as she held it out to him. She breathed, “Now you know the truth. Do you despise me? Do you think I should have thrown away the only chance I’ll ever have for happiness?”

Shayne shrugged and poured cognac over the half-melted ice cubes in her glass. He splashed soda on top and handed the glass back to her. “Who am I to pass judgment? Everyone has to play the cards dealt them the way they see it.” He refilled his glass and sank back into his chair. “You haven’t told me anything very dreadful yet. What’s troubling you? Threats of blackmail from someone who knows about your career as a marriage buster-upper?”

“Worse than that. You see—I’m already married.”

Correctly interpreting Shayne’s look of astonishment, Helen explained, “I’m not as young as you probably think. I’m twenty-six. I married when I was seventeen—a heel named Mace Morgan.

“We lived together only a short time. I found out he was a small-time crook after we were married. I left him and changed my name and went to work in the chorus.

“I’d almost forgotten about Mace. About being married to him. Then, when Charles insisted that we get married as soon as his divorce went through, I realized I’d have to do something about Mace. I asked Lacy about it and he told me Mace was in the penitentiary on a long rap. I decided to come to Miami and get a quick divorce—no publicity—and Charles would never have to know.”

“Now,” said Shayne patiently, “we’ve finally reached Miami. I’m still wondering what drove you to the verge of suicide yesterday.”

“It’s Mace. He’s here. In Miami. He escaped from prison and found out about Charles and me. He followed me here. I came home one night last week and there he was in my apartment. He’s still there.”

“Finding out what he’s been missing all these years?”

Her eyes blazed at him. “It’s a terrible situation. I don’t know what to do. Mace wants money and he knows Charles Worthing is very wealthy. He refuses to let my divorce go through here without his entering a counteraction and making a lot of publicity.”

“That’d be a fool stunt,” Shayne grunted. “If he’s an escaped convict—”

“But he’ll do it,” she argued. “He’s vicious enough to do anything. He threatens to bring out all the truth about me in New York. There’ll be a scandal and Charles will know—he’ll realize I was just hired as sucker bait by his wife. He’ll never be able to believe I actually do love him. It’ll be—well, it’ll be the end of everything for me.”

“Turn your husband in,” Shayne growled. “All you’ve got to do is call a cop.”

“No! He’ll tell everything if I do that. Don’t you see,” Helen pleaded with trembling lips, “that he has the whip hand and I’m helpless?”

“What alternative does he suggest?”

“That I go ahead and marry Charles without getting a divorce from him. Then he’ll have a real hold on me—on both of us—and can bleed Charles for money the rest of his life.”

“Nice guy,” Shayne muttered. “Making a bigamist out of his wife for a blackmail setup.” He paused thoughtfully, then asked, “What do you and Jim Lacy figure I can do to ease the situation?”

Helen lifted her glass and gulped twice. She wet her lips and asked, “Couldn’t you—that is, Mr. Lacy thought maybe you could arrange to get rid of him.”

“Bump him off?” Shayne’s gaunt face was expressionless but his eyes were hard and bright. “That’s why you came to me?”

“Well—Mr. Lacy said that you could do it without getting into any trouble. That you had the authority to arrest him, and if he resisted arrest, well—” She spread out her hands, looking at him hopefully.

“Sure,” Shayne muttered. “It could be fixed all right, but no matter what Lacy told you about me, I’m not a torpedo for hire. On the other hand there are plenty of trigger boys in town who’d take care of him for a hundred bucks. Hell, I might even put you in touch with a gunsel—”

“But he won’t leave my apartment,” Helen said with a catch in her voice. “He stays there—locked in—all the time. Lacy said that you, being a detective, could get to him without any trouble, and then—and then—”

She stopped, moistened her lips. Her eyes glittered strangely

“And then rub him out while I’m taking him to jail on the pretext that he tried to escape,” Shayne supplied for her evenly. “It has been done. You mean it, don’t you? Just like that?” He snapped his bony fingers. “The job you came here to see me about is having your husband murdered—in a nice quiet way so there won’t be any stink raised.”

Helen shuddered and averted her eyes from his searching gaze. “You make it sound so horrible. It wouldn’t be murder. Not really. No more than an official hanging is murder. He’s got it coming. It’s the only way to prevent him from wrecking two lives.”

“Women,” said Shayne angrily, “have the damnedest way of rationalizing the ugliest facts into something quite sweet and lovely. He’s your legal husband and you’re offering money to have him killed. Those are the facts. Why don’t you face them squarely?”

“All right,” Helen cried. “That is what I mean. Stop torturing me. Will you do it, or are you going to sit up here and pretend to be shocked? Everyone in Miami knows you’ve done worse. They say you’ve never touched a case that you didn’t frame somebody—sit back and pull the strings and watch men die—at a profit to you.”

Shayne’s lips came away from his teeth. “That,” he told her, “is an important point. At a profit. I always make death pay me dividends. The first question I ask about any case is what’s in it for me.”

“You needn’t worry about that.” Helen fumbled in her large leather handbag. She withdrew a roll of bills. “I’ve only a few hundred right now,” she faltered. “Take it as a sort of retainer. I can get more from Charles later. I’ll pay you a thousand dollars after we’re married.”

Shayne shook his head. He said, “Put your money away. I don’t want a retainer from you. At least, not yet.” He got up and went to the window, stood with his back to her, looking out.

The sun was low in the west and the haze of early twilight was cloaking the whitewashed houses and swaying palms. There was a clean smell of flowers and the salt tang of the sea in the air. Michael Shayne breathed it deeply into his lungs, gazing toward Biscayne Bay with brows deeply furrowed. This was one of the times he wished he had chosen another profession.

He turned back after a time and found Helen’s eyes pathetically intent upon him. He said, “Leave me your address and I’ll do some checking up. I’m not promising a thing, but I’ll see what I can work out.”

She gave him the address of an apartment on the Beach. He wrote it down, then took her by the arm and led her to the door, saying, “I’d rather you weren’t seen leaving here. Go down that hall to the stairs and out the side exit.”

She faced him in the doorway, put both her hands on his arm while her eyes searched him. “You won’t let me down,” she said simply, “I know you won’t.” She lifted herself on tiptoe and swiftly pressed her lips against his mouth, then turned out the door and hurried toward the stairway.

Shayne turned back into the room slowly. There was the lingering scent of heliotrope perfume in the air. He went into the bathroom and rubbed a trace of rouge from his mouth, then came back tweaking the lobe of his left ear.

He went out after a moment’s hesitation, walked to the end of the corridor and down the stairs to the ground floor and a private side entrance.

He let himself out onto the sidewalk, strode briskly to the front of the building. Two police cars and an ambulance were parked in front. One of the police cars was from Miami’s sister city across the bay, Miami Beach.

Shayne stalked into the lobby, whistling cheerily. The desk clerk tried to signal for his attention, but Shayne waved to him and went on to the elevators.

The elevator boy’s eyes bugged at him when he stepped into the car. He breathed, “Gee, Mr. Shayne, what d’yuh think? The cops’ve been lookin’ all over for you.”

Shayne grinned and said, “That’s nothing new, Henry.” He got out and strode down the hall toward the open door of his office.

Two harness cops stood outside. He frowned and asked them, “What the hell’s going on?”

One of the uniformed men said, “It’s Mr. Shayne himself,” and jerked his thumb toward the open door, muttering, “Watch your step, Mike. It’s Peter Painter inside and he’s on the warpath for sure.”

Shayne winked at him and strode in. He stopped just inside the door, staring down at the corpse of Jim Lacy which lay just where it had fallen.

In a pained voice, he asked, “Why doesn’t someone tell me these things?” He looked up and saw Phyllis pushing forward between a couple of Miami detectives, and he stepped over the body to gather her into his arms.

CHAPTER THREE

“WHAT’S THIS ALL ABOUT, ANGEL?” Shayne had his arms tightly about Phyllis’s shaking shoulders. “Who’s the stiff messing up my office? Did you blast him? For God’s sake, Phyl, what is this?”

She relaxed against him, sobbing, pressing her face against his chest. He looked over the top of her head wonderingly at a group of detectives from the homicide squad, at the medical examiner who sat lazily in a deep chair with his physician’s bag beside him, and lastly at a slim, erect figure who strutted forward with an unpleasant gleam of triumph in his snapping black eyes.

This was Peter Painter, chief of detectives from Miami Beach, and Michael Shayne’s pet aversion in the form of a law-enforcement officer.

Painter stopped in front of the detective with both hands thrust deep into the slash pockets of a belted sport coat. The threadlike black mustache on his upper lip quivered exultantly as he said:

“It’s up to you to do the explaining this time, Shayne. You can’t kill a man and then just duck out—”

“Wait a minute.” Shayne carefully kept his voice to a normal level. He looked past Painter to a Miami detective and asked, “Where’s Will Gentry?”

“Gentry was out when the call came in. I left word for him to come up.”

Shayne growled, “What’s Painter horning in for?” continuing to ignore the spruce detective chief. “This isn’t his territory.”

The homicide man from Gentry’s office spread out his hands placatingly. “But it looks like it’s pretty much his case, Mike. He was in the office getting out a local pickup on the corpse when your wife phoned in.”

Shayne transferred his gaze to Painter. “You wanted this guy?” He jerked his head toward the corpse.

“For the FBI,” Painter told him with malicious relish. “I have a wire from J. Edgar Hoover saying that it’s a matter of supreme importance to detain him for questioning for a special agent who’s flying down from Washington.”

Shayne looked down at Jim Lacy with no show of recognition. He demanded, “Who the devil is he? What’s he doing here? Who shot him full of holes?”

“Those,” said Peter Painter precisely, “are the same questions we’ve been asking your wife. She has yet to give us a satisfactory explanation.”

Shayne drew in a deep breath. He held Phyllis away from him and looked into her eyes. “Give it to me, Phyl. The truth. I’ve got to know where I stand.”

Her eyes were frightened but she held her voice steady. “I’ve told them the truth, Michael. I was sitting here at my desk—” She stopped speaking as another man entered the room. It was Will Gentry, chief of the Miami Detective Bureau and a long-time warm friend of Shayne’s.

Gentry was a big, stolid man with a beefy face which concealed a keen intelligence. He glanced at the corpse casually, then at Shayne and the others. “I came up as soon as I got the report. What is this, Mike?”

“You know as much about it as I do. I just got here myself. Phyllis was starting to tell me about it. Go ahead, angel.”

“I was sitting here at my desk,” she began again, “when the door opened and this man stepped inside. He had his coat hugged about him and he looked—awful. Like a walking dead man, if you know what I mean. He—took one step and then fell to the floor.” She paused to shudder, then went on valiantly. “I unbuttoned his coat and vest and saw the blood. I knew—he was dead. So I called the police.”

Shayne said, “That’s all we need right now.” He steered her back to a seat on the day bed, gave her shoulder a pat, and said, “Sit tight while I straighten things out.”

As he turned back to the others, Painter was explaining to Will Gentry, “It simply doesn’t read the way she tells it. He has three wounds in his chest, and any one of them would be fatal. No man could walk around with those holes in him.”

Shayne stepped forward angrily. “If Phyllis said he did, then, by God, he did.”

Gentry shook his head soothingly at the redhead. “Keep out of it, Mike.” He asked Painter, “What’s your interest?”

“The FBI wanted this man for questioning,” Painter told him. “I was on the verge of picking him up when he was killed here in Shayne’s office.”

Shayne thrust his lean jaw out and started forward again, but Gentry interposed, “Let’s hear what the M.E. has to say about it. What’s your opinion, doc?” to the professional man who sat comfortably in his chair.

“Each of the three wounds would probably be fatal. They are small-caliber, not more than a .32. If you want a snap opinion, I don’t believe any man could walk a hundred feet with those three holes in his chest.”

“There you are,” Painter said. “And I’ve talked to the help here. Neither the clerk nor the elevator operator saw any sign of a wound when he came up.”

Shayne jutted his lean jaw at the doctor. “I’m not an M.E., but I have had a speaking acquaintance with gunshot wounds. I’ve known guys carrying enough lead to sink a battleship who stayed on their feet for half an hour before keeling over.”

The doctor nodded. “It will require a P.M. to pass definite judgment.” He explained to Gentry, “A lot of factors enter into it—the exact course of the bullets after they entered the body, what vital organs were touched or missed. There have been some remarkable cases of auto-anesthesia in which mortally wounded men have even remained unaware of their own wounds.” He shrugged. “On that score, I can only say this is one for the record if yon cadaver ambled into this hotel and up here under his own power.”

Painter began, “You see, Gentry,” but Shayne cut him off savagely.

“Even the doc admits it could be possible. What are you trying to prove, Painter?”

Painter smoothed the thin line of silky mustache with his thumbnail. “I think you know a lot more about this man than you’re telling.”

Shayne said, “How can I? I just walked in here.”

“Where have you been during the last half hour?”

Shayne hesitated. He turned to Gentry. “Do I need an alibi, Will?”

Gentry said, “I don’t know, Mike. Haven’t you got one?”

Shayne said, “I’ll take that matter up when you get ready to make a charge against me. In the meantime, why don’t you have the corpse carried out? I’m fastidious about dead men cluttering up my office.”

“Wait a minute,” Painter said importantly. “Suppose you identify him for us first.”

“Am I supposed to know him?”

“Don’t you?” Painter shot at him.

Shayne took time to look at Jim Lacy’s body again. He shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“That,” said Painter happily, “is what I expected you to say. Why lie about it?”

Shayne turned to Gentry. “Is it my fault that all dead men look alike to me? What’s the angle?”

Gentry said, “Remember, I just got here, too.” To his fellow detective chief he said, “Give it to us, Painter.”

“Do you think it was just coincidence that he was killed here in Shayne’s office?” Painter parried.

Gentry fended off Shayne’s angry rejoinder. “We haven’t any proof that he was killed here. Is that all you’ve got?”

“No. I’ve got plenty more. If he didn’t know Shayne, why did he telephone that he was coming up shortly before he arrived?”

Shayne’s lean face showed surprised interest. “Did he do that, for Christ’s sake?”

“Your wife says he did.”

Shayne rumpled his red hair and growled, “I never was any good at riddles.” He crossed to Phyllis’s side and sat down beside her. “You tell me, angel.”

“There was a telephone call,” she admitted. “About half an hour before—he came. A man’s voice said it was Jim Lacy and he had to see you at once. He was cut off before I could ask any questions or—anything.”

Shayne said, “Jim Lacy?” He furrowed his brow, tugged at the lobe of his ear, then brightened. “By God, is that Jim Lacy?” He jumped to his feet and strode forward to look down at the dead man.

“As if you didn’t know it all the time,” Painter scoffed.

Shayne swung on Gentry. In a weary tone, he said, “If you don’t stop that little twerp’s yapping I swear I’m going to muss up his pretty clothes.”

Gentry’s stolid face remained unruffled. “Who’s Jim Lacy?” he rumbled.

“I used to know a private op by that name. A long time ago. Ten years, I guess. We worked together for Countrywide in New York. Later I heard Jim had muscled into the racket on his own.”

“Is that him on the floor?”

Shayne said, “How do I know? After ten years. If it is, I give you my word, Will, today is the first time I’ve laid eyes on him since I quit Countrywide.”

“It’s Lacy, all right,” Painter told them. “We found his private license and other papers to identify him. What I want to know, Shayne, and what the G-men are going to want to know, is why he wanted so desperately to see you this afternoon.”

“It’s too damn bad,” Shayne said sourly, “that you can’t ask him.” He went back to sit by Phyllis.

Painter said, “I’m asking you.”

Shayne lit a cigarette and patted Phyllis’s hand. “Don’t pay any attention to our Petey, Phyl. Nobody else does.”

Will Gentry sighed and elbowed Painter back. For years he had been acting as buffer between the redheaded private detective and his co-worker from the other side of the bay, and for years it had been a nerve-racking task. He addressed the officer in charge of the homicide detail.

“Have you got everything you need here, lieutenant? Prints, pix, everything?”

The lieutenant nodded. “We’ve got everything there is, chief.”

“Okay. You boys can beat it. Send some men up for the body. And—doc, I want an autopsy right away. You know what I want—and how important it is.”

The M.E. said cheerfully, “You’ll get it, Will,” and followed the detectives out.

When only the two detective chiefs were left in the room with Shayne and his wife, Gentry said in a reasonable tone, “Let’s all have a drink and get down to cases.”

Shayne said, “That’s the first sensible remark I’ve heard since walking in here.” He got up and went to the cabinet for a glass, glancing over his shoulder at Painter, who remained stiffly erect in the center of the floor. “Are you joining us menfolks in a snifter?”

Painter said, “You know I never drink while on duty.”

“Yeh,” Shayne mused, “you always were hell on duty.” He went to the table and picked up the bottle of cognac, poured himself and Gentry a drink.

Gentry accepted the glass with a nod and lowered his bulky frame into a deep chair. Shayne went back to sit beside Phyllis. Painter remained obdurately standing.

“If you boys,” said Gentry, “would forget you hate each other we might be able to straighten this thing out.”

Shayne said, “Look, Will. Is it my fault that a guy whom I haven’t seen for ten years gets a sudden yen to look me up? Can I help it if he gets bumped on his way to my office and just makes it to the door before he falls flat?”

“But why?” snapped Painter. “If that is what happened, why was it so desperately necessary that someone prevent him from reaching you? You were cooking up something together. He was another fly-cop like yourself.”

Shayne turned his glass around in his big hands, regarding it morosely. He spoke to Gentry without lifting his head.

“I don’t know any more about those things than you do, but I intend to find out. Hell,” he went on irritably, “do you think I like the idea of a man being killed while he’s on his way to my office? It’s lousy publicity. And by the way, can we keep this thing out of the papers until I have a chance to check some angles?”

Gentry began, “I’ll see what I can do—”

But Painter took a step forward to interrupt. “It’s too late for that. A News reporter came up with us. He dashed out with the story to make the final edition. It’s probably on the street now.”

Shayne nodded. “With Painter’s name in headlines. All right, you have to do something once in a while to kid the City Fathers into thinking you’re earning your keep.”

Gentry said wearily, “You just can’t lay off riding him, can you, Mike?”

“Why should I? He rides me every chance he gets. That’s not so bad. I can take it. But I don’t like him starting on my wife, too.”

“I haven’t been riding her.” Painter’s voice became almost shrill with anger. “I simply said—”

“That she was lying about our visitor,” Shayne cut him off.

“You heard the doctor’s opinion.”

“Yes and, by God, you heard Phyllis’s story.” Shayne swung to his feet.

Painter faced him with equal anger. “Don’t bluster at me, Shayne. This isn’t a local matter, you know. Our country is at war and if your friend Lacy was mixed up in some scheme that interests the federal authorities, you had better give us any information in your possession.”

Shayne grinned infuriatingly. “So you’re going to sick Mr. Hoover’s boys on my trail? All right. I’ll do my talking to them, Painter. Drop back in to see me when you have a couple of special agents to back you up. In the meantime, get out. I’m tired of restraining myself and I’m sick of listening to you.”

He swung toward Gentry. “And for you, Will, I’ll give you this. I did know Jim Lacy ten years ago in New York. I haven’t seen him since—until I looked at him lying dead here in my office. I haven’t heard from him nor of him—until Phyllis received the telephone call while I was out. I don’t know why he wanted to see me today—nor who didn’t want him to see me.”

“Be sure you’re not holding out anything, Mike,” Gentry advised. “No fast stuff on this one. If the FBI is interested it must be too hot to handle locally. With the nation at war, the public isn’t going to stand for any monkey business along that line.”

Shayne shrugged. He said, “I’ve always been able to take care of myself.”

“Yeh.” Gentry got up, setting his empty glass down. “Be sure you can this time, Mike.”

Shayne said, “I’ll manage.” He turned back to sit by Phyllis again, put his arm around her waist. “Suppose you two birds get on about your detecting. My wife is still upset from having a corpse calling on her.”

“Come on,” Gentry advised Painter. “We’ll get nothing more out of Mike right now.”

Phyllis turned a frightened face to Shayne when the door closed behind the two detective chiefs. “Are you making a mistake, Michael? With the G-men coming—”

He laughed and ruffled her lustrous black hair. “I’ve made mistakes before—and paid for them.” He went to the desk and rummaged in a drawer, drew out a small memorandum book and rifled through it.

“Get long-distance, angel. I’ve got to talk to New York.”

He found the number he wanted and gave it to her when she got the operator. He drew a chair up to the desk and took the telephone when the connection was ready. He said:

“Hello… Murphy. How’s the boy? That’s good. This is Mike Shayne calling from Miami, Florida. I’ve got a couple of jobs for you and I want them fast. Get hold of a pencil and take this down: First, Jim Lacy. New York private license—in Miami at present on a job. Find out what job, his Miami address—anything else pertinent. Next: Check on one Mace Morgan. Sent up the river a few months ago from your town. I want Morgan’s present status—the dope on his conviction, whether he’s married, to whom, when, his wife, if any—her description, everything about her. That’s number two. Number three is Charles Worthing. Supposed to be wealthy, divorce action pending in New York. Get the facts on him and the divorce—corespondent if any; all the dope on her, any rumors about his present love life. That’s all, Murph… Sure, I know it’s a hell of a big order. Wire me on each one as you get anything. That’s it—and the bill comes to me. Start jumping.”

He hung up and smiled when he saw the perplexed expression on Phyllis’s face. “Don’t ask me any questions, angel. I’ve got to move fast to stay ahead of Mr. Hoover’s lads.”

“But I don’t understand any of it,” she wailed.

“Neither do I—yet.” The grin faded from Shayne’s face. He reached in his pocket for the irregularly shaped piece of cardboard he had removed from Jim Lacy’s stiffening fingers. “This least of all,” he muttered, laying it on the desk. “Take a gander at it and see what you see.”

It was little more than an inch square, with ragged edges showing it had been torn on both sides and the bottom.

At the top of the strip, in printed letters, was part of a word without beginning or end: NSYLVA, and directly below was a W and YOR. Below that were rubber-stamped single letters and fragments of words which seemed completely meaningless. At the very bottom, just above where it had been torn, were two large figures, block-printed in red ink, an 8, and a 2.

“It looks like—” Phyllis began, but broke off, shaking her head. “It looks like part of something, but I don’t know what. If there were only a little more of it I have a feeling I’d know.”

Shayne nodded. “Exactly. It strikes some chord in my memory but doesn’t come clear. The other side isn’t any more helpful,” he added, turning the torn scrap over.

He read fragments of printed words aloud:… ice to pa… o avoid pay… ge it shoul… tely on arr… all ord… He stopped, shaking his head. “To hell with it. If it’s a code, I still wouldn’t know. Maybe Lacy just collected such small items as a hobby, treasured them even in death. All we can do right now is to treasure this one as though we intended to start a screwy collection of our own.”

He hesitated with the scrap of cardboard in his hand, frowning in deep concentration. “Wait a minute. I know what this thing is. It’s a piece torn from the middle of a baggage receipt—a railway or express claim check. Both sides and the bottom have been torn off this fragment. But that still doesn’t tell us why Lacy was treasuring it unto death.” He leaned forward and tilted the typewriter up, lifted a corner of the sponge-rubber pad, and deposited the bit of cardboard underneath.

He caught Phyllis’s arm and lifted her from her chair. “We’re stymied until I get a reply from Murphy. Let’s go up to the apartment and change to go out for dinner. And remind me to send this rug to the cleaners,” he ended as they went out. “That splotch of fresh blood might not make a favorable impression on new clients.”

CHAPTER FOUR

As SOON AS SHE ENTERED the upstairs apartment Phyllis stopped and sniffed the air. She turned to Shayne, puckering her nose in distaste. “Heliotrope perfume. In the excitement, I forgot all about the female you were interviewing while Mr. Painter was proving me a liar. Was she pretty, Michael?”

“Ugly as a mud fence,” he assured her. “She had a dripping nose with a wart on the end of it. She tried to hide a bad case of B.O. with heliotrope perfume, but—”

“Stop being funny. I know when you’re trying to throw me off the scent. What did she want? Did she know anything about Jim Lacy?”

Shayne said, “U-m-m,” and strode past Phyllis toward the bedroom. She hurried after him, grabbed his arm. “No secrets, Michael. I’m already in it as an accessory before or after the fact or something.”

Shayne grinned down at his wife’s serious face. “You know I wouldn’t hold out on you. Oh, she was pretty enough, I guess. Big blue eyes and platinum hair and one of those figures that melt into a Lastex bathing-suit. But I girded up my loins and held her at arm’s length. Even if you aren’t very pretty, angel, you’re my wife. I’m stuck with you for better or worse, so I just told the gal—”

“Really, Michael, I’m serious. What did she want?” Phyllis went past him to a dressing-table where she fluffed out her hair, leaning forward to peer at herself in the oval mirror.

“You’re not going to believe this,” Shayne warned. He loosened his tie and tossed it aside, began unbuttoning his shirt. “She pleaded with me to murder her husband.”

“Murder her hus—” Phyllis whirled, open-mouthed with horror. Then she scoffed, “I see. She fell madly in love with you at first sight, I suppose.”

Shayne grinned, peeling off his shirt. “You ought to understand that, angel, the way you acted the first time you met me.”

“I certainly did not fall in love with you. I thought you were the most infuriating male I’d ever met.”

Shayne’s grin widened. “All right, angel. You asked me what the lady wanted and I told you. Do I get into the bathroom to shave or must I wait an hour or so while you soak the lovely body in bath salts?”

“Oh, go ahead and shave your ugly face.” Phyllis stamped her foot. “You make me so damn mad, Mike Shayne.”

“You should learn to curb that black Irish temper of yours,” Shayne reproved. He went into the bathroom whistling cheerily.

Phyllis made a face behind his back, then unzipped her linen frock and drew it over her head. As she put it on a hanger in the clothes closet she called plaintively, “All right, I’ll bite. Why did she want to murder her husband?”

“You haven’t been married long enough to understand,” he called back. “Wait a few years and you’ll know more about that angle.”

“I’m already beginning to get a good inkling,” she told him viciously, but Shayne began running water in the lavatory and it was difficult to carry on a satisfactory quarrel with a man who couldn’t hear her scathing remarks.

Phyllis stepped out of a white silk slip and hung it with her office frock, then caught up a chenille dressing-gown and carried it across to a low bench in front of the dressing-table. She performed a simple gyration which resulted in the unhooking of her brassiere, then rolled down a flexible girdle and sat on the bench to unsnap hose from girdle supporters. She kicked off her slippers and rolled down hose and girdle to the floor. She stood up and posed before the mirror nude, vibrantly young and vibrantly aware of the beauty of her body, then slipped the chenille robe over her shoulders and belted it around her waist.

She sat down sedately before the mirror and began removing her make-up, keeping one ear cocked toward the sound of running water in the bathroom. The instant Shayne shut it off she cajoled through the open doorway:

“Tell me more about the girl, Michael. Did she have something to do with your phone call to New York—the information about the convict and the divorce and all?”

Shayne showed a lathered face in the doorway. He waved his razor and mumbled, “Tell you all about it later. You’re getting hot, though.”

“But, Michael—”

He withdrew his lathered face and she gave up trying to get any more information from him. She finished cleansing her face, then idly ran a comb through her black curls while she waited for her reticent husband to finish shaving.

She got up after a time and wandered over to the bedside table, got a cigarette and match from a metal box that stood between a French telephone and a decanter of cognac.

With the burning cigarette between her lips and the robe trailing out behind her slim figure, she went to the closet and selected a dinner gown of sea-foam green which she had lifted from its hanger. When she turned away from the closet she was less than two feet from the doorway leading into the living-room.

A man stood in the doorway. He held a revolver carelessly leveled at her waist.

Her lips emitted a startled, “Oh,” while she dropped the dinner gown and snatched her robe together in front.

Shayne’s voice came from the bathroom, “Are you getting impatient out there? Give me a couple more minutes and you can parboil yourself at leisure.”

The gunman’s eyes darted toward the bathroom. He jerked his head negatively at Phyllis and his finger tightened suggestively on the trigger of his cocked gun.

“It’s a-all r-right, Mike,” Phyllis managed to stammer. “Take all the time you want. Don’t you want to—to shower before you come out?”

The man with the gun nodded his approval. He had thin lips and sharp, pallid features. He wore a belted coat and white flannels, neither of which had been recently pressed.

“What occasions this sudden change of heart?” Shayne asked suspiciously from the bathroom. “What about these weeks on end when I haven’t been able to take a bath because I could never get the bathroom to myself long enough?”

“D-Don’t be silly,” Phyllis reproved him shakily. “Go ahead and take all the time you want. I’m going to smoke a cigarette in the living-room.”

The gunman moved backward out of the doorway, motioning Phyllis to follow him. She took a step forward, then threw herself sideways with a desperate grab for his gun hand.

He threw her off with a surprised oath, driving his left elbow against her chin. She cried out sharply as she reeled back against the door casing.

“What the devil goes on out there?” Shayne called. “Sounds like you’ve been into my cognac again. You know you’re too young to get the habit.”

The man was crouched before her with a warning snarl on his thin lips. Behind him Phyllis glimpsed another burly figure moving forward. She forced herself to laugh and called out:

“How do you know I’m not up to some of your tricks? I might be entertaining a couple of men friends while you’re all lathered up and can’t come out.”

Shayne’s appreciative laughter boomed from the bathroom. “Just so you don’t let me catch you at it, angel.”

The burly man circled Phyllis and put a hairy hand over her mouth. He swung her off her feet and carried her to a deep chair while his slighter companion pocketed his gun and followed, unwinding a roll of adhesive tape.

Phyllis tried to scream but it was too late now. She was thrust down into the chair, where she kicked and squirmed helplessly while her mouth was being efficiently taped shut, her wrists bound to the arms of the chair, and her bare ankles taped back securely to the legs.

“Hey, Phyl!” Shayne’s voice drifted into the living-room placatingly. “Where the devil have you hidden my clean undershirts? Here’s a dozen pairs of shorts but I can’t locate a single damned undershirt anywhere.”

The two intruders straightened up and moved silently toward the bedroom door. Phyllis’s eyes rolled after them but she was utterly helpless.

When he didn’t receive an immediate reply, Shayne complained, “I used to have plenty of undershirts.” His voice came closer to the doorway. “And don’t crack wise by reminding me I’m supposed to be a detective and should be able to find my own clothes. I used to do all right before you came along and started hiding my things.”

The men had separated to either side of the doorway. The thin-featured man drew his gun, and his burly companion pulled a short blackjack from his hip pocket.

Phyllis had to watch in silent agony while Shayne walked into the trap. He growled, “Why don’t you answer me, Phyl?” as he padded through the doorway naked except for a pair of shorts clinging to his narrow hips.

He stopped with a grunt of surprise when the muzzle of a .45 was rammed into his belly. At the same instant, the blackjack chopped down viciously just behind and above his left ear.

He swayed and fell forward to his knees, getting the palms of his hands flat on the floor.

Both men stepped back and waited for him to go flat on his face. He didn’t. He remained bowed forward as though in silent genuflection, and his labored breathing was loud in the room.

His head began to come up in slow jerks, and the muscles beneath the bare skin of his back writhed as he fought to make them obey his will and lift his weight.

The man with the gun sucked in his breath and watched Shayne’s efforts to rise with professional interest. He said, “He’s tough, sure enough. Better sock ’im again, Joe.”

Joe leaned down and slammed his sap against the side of the redhead’s chin. This time Shayne went prone and stayed that way without moving.

CHAPTER FIVE

SHAYNE DIDN’T GO into a complete blackout. He kept drifting away toward nothingness and jerking himself back from the abyss. The thought of Phyllis, gagged and bound in the chair as he had seen her when he entered the room, kept him from going completely under. He knew both the men were strangers. His one glimpse of their faces before the sap cut him down told him they were not members of any local mob. They looked like big-time boys. And that reminded him of Jim Lacy. His disconnected thoughts told him there must be a connection.

They were rolling him over, shaking him roughly. He kept his body limp and quiescent. His jaw felt as though it was broken, but he didn’t think it was. His head ached like hell but that didn’t worry him. It was a good tough head, and had weathered harder blows in the past.

Then they left him lying sprawled out with his face pressed down into the rug. He could hear voices and the scraping sound of furniture being moved about. As though they were searching for something.

The scrap of cardboard he had taken from Lacy’s clenched fingers!

That must be the answer. He wondered what would happen when they didn’t find it in the apartment. He held himself there on the floor without moving, simulating unconsciousness, waiting for strength to come back to his body.

There was a long period of that drifting away and returning to partial consciousness. Then, surprisingly clear and close, he heard a thin voice say, “No use wasting any more time looking. How hard did you sap this mug, Joe?” A toe nudged Shayne’s bare ribs.

“I guess I musta cold-cocked him that last time right,” a thicker voice admitted. “From what they say about him around here he’s easier handled that way than when he’s still on his feet.”

“He don’t look so tough now.” The toe went away from Shayne’s ribs, then came forward with careless force. He sucked in his breath sharply under the impact but made no movement to indicate he felt the kick.

“We got to get him out of his dope and make him talk,” the thin voice complained. “The paper said Lacy was still alive when he got to Shayne’s office.”

“Yeh.” Joe chuckled with malicious good humor. “An’ the cops can’t figure anything but that Shayne or his wife musta been in on the kill. That’s a hot one, hey, Leroy?”

“Let them keep on thinking that. If Lacy got to him alive, he spilled the whole lay. There wasn’t anything in the paper about the cops finding a funny-looking piece of cardboard on Lacy. That means Shayne stashed it before he called the cops—and he wouldn’t have done that ’less he knew why Lacy was carrying it. Let’s go to work on him and make him sing a song.”

That settled the question that had been bothering Shayne. His mind was alert now, hitting on all cylinders. He listened carefully for a further clue to the enigma of Jim Lacy’s death.

But Joe sidetracked the conversation. “What about the dame, Leroy?” His voice held a hopeful leer. “It’d be lots more fun workin’ on her than on him. She ain’t wearing nothing under that fancy robe.”

Leroy snarled. “Lay off the dame. She’s just right like she is with her mouth taped shut. Dames ain’t got any sense. She’d start screeching her tonsils out if we took that tape off.”

“Yeah. Reckon you’re right, Leroy.” Joe sounded disappointed. He insisted, “But it would be fun.”

“We’re not here to have fun. Help me turn this mug over so we can go to work on him. He’s been around. He’ll know better than to start anything—as long as we’ve got his frail tied up where we can make passes at her.”

“That’s an angle,” Joe exulted. “We wake him up and make him watch us go after her while she’s tied up. Sure, that’ll snap him out of it.”

Four hands got hold of Shayne and rolled him over on his back. He kept himself limp, eyes closed. A beer and garlic breath flowed into his nostrils. Close to his face, Joe muttered doubtfully, “I dunno, Leroy. Sometimes I don’t know my own stren’th when I swing a sap.”

“He’s still breathing,” Leroy said crisply.

They drew aside and held a whispered conversation. Shayne braced himself for whatever was coming. They were afraid to question Phyllis, and as long as they thought he was unconscious they’d probably leave her alone. But there’d be hell to pay if they once got his eyes open.

He heard stealthy movement beside him, then a glass of cold water was unexpectedly dashed in his face.

“That did it,” Leroy chuckled. “I swear I saw him jump. He’s playing dead. I know how to fix that.”

Shayne heard the scratch of a match. Heat came close to his left eyelid, unbearably close, singeing his shaggy brows. His head jerked involuntarily. He sat up and opened his eyes.

Leroy stepped backward and produced his .45. The barrel was sawed off close to the cylinder, making it a handy and deadly pocket gun. Leroy’s eyes were ruthless, the eyes of a killer who delights in his work. He surveyed Shayne coldly and said, “I don’t want to use this. I won’t unless you make me.”

Shayne turned his head to look at Phyllis. She had stopped struggling to free herself. Her black eyes were dilated, luminous with encouragement. The top part of her robe had spread apart, revealing her smooth throat and the beginning swell of young breasts.

Shayne wrenched his eyes away from hers. Joe stood close beside him with a grin on his brutal face. He swung a short, leather-covered blackjack suggestively.

Shayne said, “All right. It looks like your party, boys. What the hell do you want?”

Leroy smiled thinly. “That’s using your head for something besides a target for Joe’s sap. All we want is what Jim Lacy handed you this afternoon.”

Shayne waggled his aching head and tenderly felt the lump on the side of his jaw. He muttered, “My brains still feel like hash. How’s for a drink to straighten me out? There’s a bottle on the table—and have one yourselves.”

“Sure. Pour him a drink,” Leroy directed. “But you lay off the stuff, Joe. This mug’s supposed to be pretty smart and we don’t want to make any more mistakes.” He moved back a pace and settled himself in a chair, balancing his baby cannon carefully on one knee and not taking his eyes off Shayne for an instant.

Joe went to the table and picked up the bottle of cognac. He scowled at the label and said, “Maybe there is a trick to it, Leroy. This ain’t no drinking liquor I ever heard of. Says cog-nack on the bottle.”

“That’s stuff the Frenchies make out of wine,” Leroy explained. “Pour him a slug of it.”

Shayne took the glassful Joe offered him and drank it down gratefully. He hunched forward and drew his feet up under him, sat cross-legged. He said, “A cigarette is all I need right now.”

Leroy nodded. “We’re not bad guys if you play it smart. Light him a cig, Joe.”

Joe gave him a lighted cigarette. Shayne inhaled deeply. Smoke trailed thinly from his nostrils as he said, “I haven’t seen you boys around before.”

“No,” Leroy agreed. “I guess you haven’t.”

“Sure you’re not making a mistake by barging in this way and getting rough?” Shayne persisted.

“We’re not making any mistake, shamus. You’ll be making a bad one if you don’t fork over that hicky Lacy gave you this afternoon.”

Shayne shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You better find out pretty quick.”

Shayne said, “Lacy was dead when he reached my office.”

“We won’t argue that angle. Maybe he was. Then you took it off him before the cops got there.”

Shayne shook his head again. “The cops got to him before I did. Read the papers.”

“Don’t stall us,” Leroy advised him with cold ferocity. “The cops found less than ten bucks on him. We know he was carrying folding money. Whoever lifted the jack lifted something else at the same time. We don’t give a damn about the money. We want that something else.”

“What?” asked Shayne with interest. Bare-legged and bare-torsoed, he looked peculiarly mild and harmless as he sat on the floor hunched forward, squinting at Leroy, but Leroy’s gun did not relax its vigilance for an instant. “What,” Shayne repeated, “did Jim Lacy have on him that you boys want so badly?”

“You know damn well,” Joe broke in heatedly. “We want his part of—”

“Shut up,” Leroy snarled. “If Shayne’s got it, he knows what it is we’re after. If he hasn’t got it, there’s no good in wising him up.”

“Try the cops,” Shayne suggested. “They’re the ones who went over Lacy and cleaned him.”

“The paper didn’t say anything about them finding what we want.”

Shayne laughed in Leroy’s face. “And the paper reported he had only about ten bucks on him, too,” he jeered. “Hell! get wise. Just because a man wears a uniform doesn’t mean he hasn’t got sticky fingers.”

“Maybe so,” objected Joe. “But the cops wouldn’t of known—”

“Shut up,” Leroy snarled again at his burly companion. “We didn’t come here for an argument,” he told Shayne. “Maybe you didn’t get to Jim Lacy first. Maybe you don’t know what we’re after.” He got up slowly, holding his gun level. “But we’re not leaving here till we’ve found out for certain. Stand behind him, Joe, and let him have it if he makes a move or lets out a yelp. Easy, though. I don’t want him passed out this time. I want him to keep his eyes open and see this.”

Joe took a spread-legged stance behind Shayne, his eyes glittering humidly as Leroy moved around behind Phyllis’s chair. Shayne’s head pivoted slowly, his eyes following the gunman’s movements.

Phyllis’s eyes were wide and staring. They implored her redheaded husband to remain calm and not consider her.

“She’s a cute little trick,” said Leroy softly. He patted Phyllis under the chin, then tweaked the top of her robe into a wider V.

“Mighty nice stuff for a lousy private dick to stake out all for himself,” he went on in a dangerously soft voice. “Why not divvy up with your pals, shamus? Maybe that’s what you’re going to do, huh? Joe and me, now, we don’t get a look at anything this nice very often.”

Sweat streamed from Shayne’s rocklike face. He remained hunched forward, motionless, but muscles writhed beneath the bare skin of his back like a litter of snakes in the hot sun. He could hear Joe breathing loudly behind him with a sharp, slobbering sound. Phyllis’s eyes held his. Without speaking, she was crying out to him that she didn’t matter, that they couldn’t hurt her.

“Watch him, Joe,” Leroy counseled sharply. “He’s not going to take much more of this. How about it, Shayne? Do you talk, or do I untie this gal’s belt and really give Joe a look? Joe’s funny. He’s not like you and me that can take a woman or leave her alone. Once Joe gets started—”

Shayne’s body lunged forward. Joe’s blackjack was a split second slow. It thudded against his shoulder as he whirled and drove a fist into Joe’s face. Joe stumbled backward, and Shayne swung toward Leroy.

The gunman stepped from behind Phyllis’s chair, crouched with the .45 in front of him. “Don’t do it, Shamus,” he panted. “I’ll blast you, so help me.”

Shayne’s lips came back from his teeth in a grin that was more animal than human. He took a step forward and his eyes were mad. “You’ll have to blast me, Leroy. There’s no other out.”

He kept moving, very slowly, directly toward the muzzle of Leroy’s .45.

Leroy moved backward. He panted, “Don’t come any closer.”

Shayne kept moving. He laughed shortly, and the sound vibrated eerily in the silent room. “You’ll have to pull that trigger, Leroy. I’m going to make you pull it. That’ll bring the cops—and the party will be over.”

Leroy took another backward step. Shayne was even with the center table when he saw the gunman’s eyes shift nervously and he sensed movement behind him.

He whirled and his hand shot out to get hold of the cognac bottle.

Joe was on his feet, circling forward. Shayne threw the bottle at Joe’s head. Joe ducked and the bottle sailed over him, through the open bedroom door where it smashed against the bedside table and toppled it over.

Leroy leaped forward as the bottle left Shayne’s hand. He swung his short gun in a vicious sideswipe against Shayne’s head. As the redhead swayed backward under the impact, Joe stepped close and measured him coolly. He swung the blackjack in a lazy arc and it tore the lobe of Shayne’s right ear loose from the scalp.

Shayne got to his knees with blood streaming from the side of his head. He teetered crazily back on his heels like a Russian dancer.

“What’s the matter with you bastards?” he taunted them.

Leroy called him a son of a bitch and kicked him in the face.

Shayne reeled back to the floor. Slowly he pushed himself up. He licked his lips and laughed again. “You lads had better tighten up your diapers and go to work. I can take a lot of this stuff.”

“Okay.” Leroy sighed. “He likes it, Joe. He must be one of these goddamned masochists you read about. Slug him, but easy. He wants us to knock him cold so he won’t have to watch his wife get raped. Cross him up—slug him easy so he don’t pass out.”

Joe slugged Shayne easy. The detective went flat on his face with arms and legs spread out. He drew in great gasping breaths, then painfully began to draw himself up again.

Running feet pounded down the corridor outside the apartment. A fist thundered on the door and rattled the knob. A hoarse voice shouted:

“Open up in there before we break the door down.”

Leroy said, “Sounds like cops—but how the hell? Come on, Joe! Out the fire escape.”

They ran through the kitchen to the fire escape while the pounding went on. Shayne was still working on the job of getting to his feet. He lurched to the door and jerked it open, sagged back against the wall while two red-faced policemen burst in, followed by the desk clerk.

Shayne pointed to the kitchen and muttered, “They went that way.”

The cops ran through the kitchen and a moment later were clattering down the fire escape.

Shayne drew in a deep breath and grinned weakly at the clerk. “The telephone, eh? When I threw the bottle it knocked the phone to the floor.”

“That’s right, Mr. Shayne. I was on the switchboard and I could hear noises and voices. I knew something must be wrong. There were two policemen still in the lobby, so I thought—”

“Didn’t a couple of thugs ask at the desk for me?”

“No, sir.” The clerk shook his head emphatically. “They must have slipped in the side door and up the stairs.”

Shayne nodded. He stumbled away from the wall and made the distance to Phyllis. He pulled her robe together, and the clerk helped him loosen the tape binding her mouth and limbs while he clucked solicitously and asked anxious questions which Shayne did not answer.

Phyllis tried to laugh and drew Shayne’s battered head to her bosom when she was released. Through lips that were sore and swollen from removing the tape she cried, “Oh, Michael! I thought I’d die. Sitting here unable to move—”

Shayne muttered, “I was afraid I wouldn’t” He lifted his head and said over his shoulder to the clerk, “Thanks a hell of a lot, bud. I guess you’ve done about all you can do right now.”

The clerk stammered, “Yes—I guess I have, Mr. Shayne,” and went out hastily.

It was very quiet in the apartment. Shayne was on his knees with his arms around his wife, and he kept his head pressed against her for a long time. Then he drew away and said, “I’m getting your robe bloody, angel.” He got up, steadying himself with one hand on the table.

Phyllis covered her face with her hands and began crying.

Shayne said, “It’s all right, Phyl. Some good cognac spilled—that’s all the real damage. And we’ve learned something important. A while ago we were wondering whether the scrap of cardboard meant anything. We don’t have to wonder about that angle any more.”

Phyllis took her hands away from her face. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. “C-Couldn’t you—have thought of an easier way to find out?”

Shayne fingered his swollen jaw, the lump on the side of his head, and his bleeding ear. “I’ve always done things the hard way. And,” his voice hardened, “I’ve never yet taken a beating that someone didn’t pay for later.” He leaned over and caught her face between his palms. “Don’t think those birds won’t pay for this.”

Phyllis shivered and caught his wrists. “Can’t you drop the case, Mike? Give the police that piece of cardboard—tell them the whole truth?”

Shayne stood up. He took a backward step and dragged air into his lungs. He asked, “Do you want me to quit, Phyl?”

She looked at him with tears still streaming down her face. His bare flesh was bruised and crimsoned with his own blood. Through her dimmed eyes she saw him as he had been when he inexorably stalked Leroy and the menace of his gun. It seemed to her that she could still hear the sound of his laughter ringing through the room. Terrible laughter. She shuddered and closed her eyes.

“Shouldn’t you—this time?” she pleaded. “You’re pitting yourself against the federal authorities, the police—and against those horrible thugs. If the G-men were after Lacy, don’t you suppose it was because of the piece of cardboard? Shouldn’t you co-operate—just this once?”

Shayne asked more gently, “Are you sure that’s what you want, Phyl?”

Against her will, she felt compelled to open her eyes. She saw his face, bruised and bloody, but still set in lines of grim determination. Her gaze wavered for a moment, then searched his eyes. Her tears stopped flowing and she shook her head slowly. A smile that had in it something of maternal anguish touched her lips briefly. She said:

“No, Michael. I don’t want you to quit—ever.”

He leaned over and kissed her lips. “Thanks, angel,” he said. “And now you’d better get the stickum from that tape washed off with alcohol. I’m going to the bathroom to see what cold water will do for my face.”

CHAPTER SIX

THE TELEPHONE RANG while Shayne was painfully getting into a clean shirt. Phyllis was in the tub having her long-delayed soaking, and Shayne sat on the edge of the bed to take the call.

Will Gentry said, “I’ve got some news for you, Mike. We’ve turned up a line on that Jim Lacy killing this afternoon.”

Shayne growled, “Painter won’t thank you if it takes the heat off me.”

Gentry made an uncomplimentary remark about the detective chief from Miami Beach. “A man and a woman appear to have witnessed the shooting,” Gentry explained. “They were driving across the County Causeway from the Beach about four o’clock when they saw a car ahead of them cut in sharply on another car headed this way, and force it to the guard rail. Two men jumped out of the first car and ran back to the one they had stopped. This couple drove past slowly and realized there was some sort of an argument going on, and they got the license number of the car with the two men, but didn’t stop. They didn’t want to get mixed up in anything because the woman is married, but not to her companion.”

Gentry paused, and Shayne asked, “Lacy was in the second car?”

“There was one man in it, and their description of him fits Lacy to a T. After they had gone on about a hundred yards they thought they heard two or three shots behind them, but weren’t positive it wasn’t a car backfiring. A few minutes later Lacy passed them, hunched over the wheel and driving like hell. So they decided it must have been backfires instead of shots, and agreed not to make any report of the incident. But when they read about Lacy’s death they realized they must have actually witnessed the shooting without realizing it. So they came in and told their story. It sounds straight enough.”

“What about a description of the two men?”

“Very vague. One was heavy-built and one was slim. Not much there.”

Shayne didn’t tell him how well the sketchy description fitted his two late visitors. He asked, “Have you had time to check the license number?”

“Yep. But it’s no good. A rental car that had been reported stolen from Miami Beach a little before four o’clock. And it was picked up a short time ago on Flagler Street. No prints. It was probably just snatched to pull the Lacy job, then ditched.”

“Who reported it stolen?”

“Fellow who had it rented. Name of Gorstmann—headwaiter at the Danube Restaurant on the Beach. It was stolen from in front of the restaurant.”

Shayne said, “Thanks for tipping me off, Will.” He hesitated, then asked, “Have Clancy and Bates reported in on the call they made to my apartment a short time ago?”

“Not yet. Something important?”

“Not a bit. That’s the hell of it.” Shayne forced a laugh from his bruised lips. “Just a family brawl. Don’t pay any attention to their report—and, for God’s sake, don’t let the newsboys get hold of it. As a matter of fact, Phyl felt playful and bounced some chinaware at me. I got sore and tied her up in a chair until she cooled off. The phone was knocked over in the excitement and the desk clerk heard the goings-on and sent Clancy and Bates up. I hated to air my family troubles to a couple of harness bulls, so I gave them a song and dance about a couple of thugs escaping by the fire escape. The boys chased after them, but when they didn’t see anyone they got suspicious and came back to check up. I stuck to my story, but I don’t mind having you know the truth, Will.” Shayne laughed hollowly.

There was a moment of silence at the other end of the wire. Then Will Gentry sighed wearily. “More hocus-pocus. All right, Mike. I’ll kill the report if that’s what you want.”

“You sound,” Shayne complained, “as though you don’t believe me. You don’t know Phyl when she goes on a rampage. She’s got the damnedest temper.”

Gentry said, “Shut up,” and hung up.

Shayne replaced the telephone and looked up, startled. Phyllis was regarding him belligerently from the bathroom door. She wore an old kimono and a fresh-scrubbed look.

“Who were you talking to,” she demanded, “about my fierce temper?”

“It’s this way, Phyl. That was Will Gentry. I didn’t want any headlines about our playful visitors so I stalled him with a yarn about you getting sore and throwing things at me.”

“You—you lug. What will Mr. Gentry think of me when he sees you all battered up?”

“I don’t think it’ll change his opinion of you, angel. He didn’t sound completely convinced,” Shayne admitted ruefully. “Hurry and slide into some glad rags. We’ve got a dinner date.”

Phyllis’s expression softened. “Let’s have something sent up—or I can open a can. You look like the wrath of God even if you don’t realize it. If you’re going around telling people I did that to you, you’d better stay home until you heal up.”

Shayne grinned. “People are used to seeing me pasted together. I feel like going out for dinner.”

“You’ve got something up your sleeve,” Phyllis charged. “You never want to go out when I want to.”

Shayne poured a small drink from the decanter which had been refilled since the melée. He took a sip and explained. “I’ve got a hankering to take on a load of hasenpfeffer. You know how it is when you get a hankering for some special dish. Nothing else will do. And the only place they really know how to make it is at the Danube Restaurant on the Beach. Come on,” he cajoled. “Slip into something and let’s go.”

Phyllis studied him a moment with compressed lips. “You’re still up to something,” she asserted. “But I may as well go along to pick up the pieces as to stay at home worrying myself sick.”

“You may as well,” he agreed cheerfully. The side of his face and jaw was swollen and the lobe of his ear was taped down with a bit of adhesive, but otherwise he felt pretty good. He sipped his cognac and waited until Phyllis was nearly ready, then fastened his soft collar and put on a tie, meekly let her persuade him to wear a double-breasted blue coat with his flannels, and they went down through the lobby and out into the springlike softness of Miami’s tropical night.

The perfume of flowers and of lush tropical foliage blew in from Bayfront Park as Shayne drove north on Biscayne Boulevard, and when he turned east on the winding causeway across the bay there was the tang of salt air to lift a man’s spirits and make him know it was good to be alive.

Sitting silent beside him, Phyllis shuddered and relaxed against the back of the seat with her cheek pressing against his shoulder. In a low voice she said, “Michael! I don’t think I’ll ever forget that horrible moment this afternoon when you kept going toward the man while he backed away threatening to shoot you. Why didn’t he pull the trigger?”

“He didn’t want to shoot me any more than I wanted him to,” Shayne scoffed. “He knew one shot would end the party—bring someone to investigate—and I wasn’t any good to him if I couldn’t talk.”

“This is the kind of case you’re crazy about, isn’t it?” Phyllis demanded after a moment of silence.

“It’s beginning to look interesting,” Shayne hedged. “I like to find out things as I go along—stay one jump ahead of the other fellow.”

“I mean the danger. The continued imminence of death. Pitting yourself against murderous forces. That’s what you really like about it, Michael.” She shuddered again.

He was thoughtfully silent for a time. “Maybe so, Phyl. I never put it into words before.” His voice roughened. “I’m sorry if it’s tough on you, but you knew my business before you married me.”

“I’m not kicking,” she disclaimed quickly. She sat up straighter, reached over, and got two cigarettes from a pack in his shirt pocket. She lit them both, inserted one between his lips. “Let it be a short life and a merry one,” she went on with mock bravado. “Only—it is fun being married to you, darling. I’d like to have it last another month or so.”

“I lasted a lot of years before I had you to worry about me. And you’d better be glad,” he went on, “that I’m not flying a bomber or riding a submarine tonight. Bucking a couple of New York gunsels isn’t half so dangerous as taking a whack at the Nazis.”

“That would be different. At least, I think it would,” Phyllis said slowly, seeking to rationalize a thought that wasn’t wholly rational. “It seems to me I wouldn’t mind that half as much.”

“A man is just as dead,” said Shayne sententiously, “from an enemy machine gun as from a sawed-off .45 in the hand of a hired torpedo.”

“Oh, I know.” Phyllis shivered and pressed against him. “War and death seem so far away. It’s sacrilege to think about such things on a night like this.”

That, Shayne realized with a sense of shock, was in line with what he had been thinking a short time before, only in an entirely different way. He remained silent, driving down the last incline off the causeway and turning abruptly south on the peninsula.

A few blocks more and he pulled up in front of the Danube Restaurant, a low, inconspicuous building facing Biscayne Bay.

There were not many cars in the large parking lot, and as they got out, Shayne explained casually. “The war has practically ruined Otto’s trade, I guess. He’s a nice, harmless old fellow but he had the misfortune to be born on the wrong side of the Atlantic.”

“It’s a shame,” Phyllis said warmly. “He’s an American citizen, isn’t he?”

Shayne said, “Yes. Otto’s naturalized, but he’s still a German to a lot of people who think in terms of headlines.”

He guided Phyllis through the entrance and gave his hat to a motherly Frau behind the check counter. A tall, heavy-shouldered man met them at the entrance to the dining-room. He had a long, horsy face and sad brown eyes. He wore dinner clothes and had a napkin neatly folded over his arm.

“Two, sir?” He did not bow, but there was servility in his tone.

Shayne said, “You’re new here,” as they followed him into the large dining-room where less than a dozen diners sat.

“Yes, sir. I’ve been here only a short time.” He spoke without a trace of foreign accent. “Will this be suitable, sir?” He led them to a table near the wall.

Shayne said, “This will do.” The headwaiter drew out Phyllis’s chair, then snapped his fingers loudly for a waiter.

Shayne ordered two sidecars and inquired about the hasenpfeffer. The moon-faced waiter beamed delightedly and assured him it was of the most delectable.

Phyllis leaned close to her husband when the waiter went away. “Now will you tell me why you insisted on coming here tonight?”

He told her, “I wanted to get a look at the head-waiter.”

She craned her head around to look at the sad-eyed man. “What about him?”

Shayne admitted he didn’t know. He gave her a brief résumé of his talk over the telephone with Will Gentry. “It’s an old dodge,” he concluded, “reporting one’s car stolen while it is being used to commit a crime. So old,” he added ruefully, “that few of our better crooks use it except as a last resort. But it’s the only angle that’s turned up yet and I didn’t want to pass up any bets.”

The waiter brought the sidecars. As Shayne lifted his glass he turned his head slightly and saw Helen Brinstead following the headwaiter to a table for two against the opposite wall. She was alone and she still wore the dove-gray dress he had seen that afternoon. He set his cocktail down and said, “Don’t look now, but I think I smell heliotrope perfume.”

Phyllis sniffed unconsciously. Her eyes widened and she glanced aside in the direction of his gaze where Helen was sitting down. Shayne hunched his chair around so that his back was partially toward the girl.

Phyllis breathed, “She’s—beautiful, Michael.”

He nodded and lifted his glass again. “Maybe that’s why she’s bored with her husband.”

“Michael! Are you sure there isn’t some mistake? She doesn’t look like that sort of girl.”

Shayne said, “Most of them don’t, angel. Take you, for example. Now who would think you were a dish-throwing female?”

Phyllis grimaced. “You knew she would be here for dinner,” she challenged. “That’s why you came.”

Shayne shook his head. “I’d have come alone if I’d been sure. But it isn’t strange that she’s here,” he added. “Her apartment is only a block away and this is the only decent restaurant in this vicinity.”

As they finished their drinks, the waiter approached proudly bearing aloft a tray holding huge bowls of the German dish prepared as only the Danube cook could prepare it. A short little man waddled in the wake of the waiter. He was almost as wide as he was tall. Deep lines of worry were etched in a moonlike face that was normally placid and beaming. Otto Phleugar’s round blue eyes held a hurt look of bewilderment like that of a child who has been unfairly punished by his parents.

He stopped beside Shayne’s chair and put a fat, moist hand on Shayne’s shoulder. “It is good to see you ordering the hasenpfeffer, mine friend. It is for wonder you do not fear so German a dish would be poisoned by the Nazi ideals.”

Shayne smiled up at the proprietor. “Is it really getting that bad, Otto?”

“Worse nor that,” he declared. “Those who were my friends in past years have declared the boycott. For yourself, you can see.” He waved a pudgy hand toward the almost deserted dining-room.

Shayne said, “It’s just the backwash of war hysteria. It will pass, Otto—if you keep on serving the same kind of food you have been.”

“I am sure of nothing,” sighed Otto Phleugar. “In America I have lived for twenty years yet, and now I am hated and threatened because once I lived in a land that is now at war with us.”

He hesitated, then ventured timidly, “Could I in my office see you after the dinner is ended, Mr. Shayne? There is somethings for talk in private that I your advice would ask.”

“Sure, Otto. You can’t drag me away from this dinner, but as soon as I’m full to the chin I’ll be in.”

“It is with the greatest thanks,” the rotund man said. He bowed from his enormous belly to Phyllis and turned away.

“Poor little fat man,” she breathed. “He looks so lost and heartsick, Michael I do hope you can help him.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“TURN YOUR HEAD and take a casual look at that girl for me,” Shayne directed his wife after they had topped off a heavy dinner with black coffee and thimble-like glasses of Otard Cognac. “I’d like to get into Otto’s office without her seeing me.”

Phyllis took a slow look in Helen Brinstead’s direction and reported, “She’s eating dinner and not paying any attention to anything else. She seems to have a remarkably good appetite for a woman with husband murder on her mind.”

Shayne grinned and said, “Feeding her nerves. You stay here while I see what Otto has on his mind. I won’t be long.” He turned sideways as he pushed back his chair, keeping his back to Helen. He sauntered out of the dining-room and turned to the right down a wide hall, pushed open a wooden door that stood slightly ajar.

Otto Phleugar sat behind a bare desk in a small, plainly furnished office. He got up when Shayne entered, bustled around the desk, and took the detective’s hand. “It is good that you come, mine friend. Sit here.” He drew up a straight chair and pressed Shayne into it, then tiptoed to the door with an incongruous show of caution, closed and latched it firmly. He returned to his chair and sat down, nervously wiping perspiration from his face.

Shayne watched him with narrowed eyes. “You act like the Gestapo was after you, Otto. What the hell is this all about?”

A shudder traveled from Otto’s three chins down to his protuberant stomach. “It is not good to make the joke.” He sighed, wagging his head from side to side mournfully. “I am on the—what you would call the spot.”

Shayne lit a cigarette very deliberately. “Gorstmann?”

Otto Phleugar gave a start of surprise, of fear. Beads of sweat began to form on his face again. “From how do you know about Herr Gorstmann?”

Shayne said, “I was guessing. He’s new here and—well, I don’t like the looks of his horse-face.”

The restaurant proprietor leaned close and asked in a conspiratorial whisper, “Did he—was he seeing you when you came to my office?”

“I didn’t notice. Suppose he did? What’s this head-waiter got on you?”

“It is of the most difficult. You must try to understand. It is not good to make the laugh about the Gestapo. Herr Gorstmann is not only the headwaiter. He comes with authority from Berlin.”

Shayne’s expression hardened. “Authority from Berlin doesn’t mean a damned thing in the United States. You’re a fool if you’re trying to ride both sides of the fence, Otto. A dangerous fool if you’re playing that game.”

“That I understand so well,” Phleugar moaned. “To you I must talk. It is not what I wish. The good citizen I am want to be.”

Shayne leaned back comfortably. “You’d better tell me all about it. But I’m not promising a thing. You can’t play your silly Gestapo games in wartime without getting your fingers burned.”

“That I understand. Hate I have for myself in here.” Phleugar tapped his stomach. “This I cannot endure longer. I will tell it to you and you will the advice give.”

“Get started,” said Shayne evenly, “but don’t expect too much sympathy from me. Damn it, Otto,” he exploded, “you’ve had twenty years of good living in this country. You don’t owe Germany anything. If you give me any information I think should go to the authorities, that’s where it will go. Start talking.”

“It is well.” Otto mopped his fat face again. “Herr Gorstmann to my restaurant came three days ago. Business was bad as you see it tonight. Since the war people remember I am German and do not come to eat. This is not fair, but what can I do?”

Shayne said, “I admit it’s tough, but it’s no excuse for you to turn against the country, Otto.”

“That I tell myself. So I tell Herr Gorstmann when he tell me I must hire him in my restaurant so he will escape the eyes of the law. There would be money for me each month—money I need if I do not close the Danube.

“But I liked it not, Mr. Shayne. To Herr Gorstmann I say that I am the American citizen and I must not do this.

“Then he is with threats for me. The eyes of the Gestapo, he relates, are everywhere. I have cousins in Germany. Of my good wife, there is her mother in Hamburg. If I refused Herr Gorstmann there would be trouble—death for those so unfortunate who remain under the Nazis. Could I say no to Herr Gorstmann?” He spread out his hands appealingly.

“Yes,” Shayne growled. “If there was an ounce of guts in that fat body of yours you would have refused. You should have called me or the police as soon as Gorstmann came to you with his threats. Good God!” he pounded out, “your relatives in Germany will have to take their chances. We’re at war, Otto. You can’t sabotage a whole nation to protect a few individuals in Germany. If you had been a real American citizen you wouldn’t have hesitated one moment. You had no choice except to throw him out.”

Shayne ground his cigarette out savagely on the floor and thrust his gaunt face close to Otto’s. His voice was harsh and uncompromising.

“I thought you were on the square, Otto. I’ve even pitied you because you’ve had hard going with your restaurant. And you sit here and calmly admit you’re actually a traitor.”

Otto Phleugar got to his feet with trembling dignity. All the color had disappeared from his rosy cheeks. “Harsh words are those, Mr. Shayne. I have been sick with fear and hate for the thing I was doing. I know not what Herr Gorstmann does. He has American friends who come and talk. I tell you this for you to decide. At night I do not sleep—I am awake with what is inside me and from it there is no escape.” He sank back into his chair and covered his face with fat palms.

Shayne fumbled for another cigarette, staring down at the pathetic little man with his lined face tight and drawn. After a time, he muttered, “Hell, I guess I don’t blame you too much. I can see the spot you were in. There’s only one thing to decide. How can we grab Gorstmann and his friends without them knowing you turned them in?”

“I do not count now.” Otto took his hands away from his face. His round blue eyes met Shayne’s with courage. “I have been weak and afraid. Now I am strong. What you say, it will be done.”

“There’s no need for you to take the rap if it can be avoided,” Shayne argued. “After all, you have come clean before any real harm can have been done.”

“Ach, but it is good to say out loud to you what has weighed in my heart.”

“This Gorstmann—is he the top man?”

“He has, I think, the high authority. From Herr Hitler even perhaps.”

“Does he appear to head quite a gang?”

“That I do not think. I do not see many come here. Some are those of your own American underworld.”

Shayne rubbed his bony chin thoughtfully. He carefully described Leroy and Joe, the pair who had entered his apartment earlier that evening. “Have you seen those two here, Otto? Contacting Gorstmann?”

Otto nodded his head vigorously. “Those two I have seen often.”

“I’ll see about rounding the whole gang up,” Shayne promised. “On the whole, you may have done the country a real service by letting them establish themselves here. There’s no reason for you to show in the roundup at all. Just go on as before. Pretend you’re completely cowed. Don’t try to contact me or anyone else unless something very important turns up.”

“You are mine good friend.” Otto Phleugar stood up with Shayne. He appeared to have gained inches in stature since the interview began. His blue eyes were watery but he stood stiffly at attention. “In you, mine good friend, I will trust.”

Shayne took his hand. “You’re all right, Otto. It isn’t your fault that a mad dog is running things in Germany.”

Otto went to the door with him and unlatched it. Shayne went back to the dining-room and stopped short when he saw that Phyllis was gone from their table.

Gorstmann came up to him and bowed stiffly, held out the dinner check folded twice. “The lady asked me to give you this, sir,” he said.

Shayne took it, noting that Helen Brinstead had also left the dining-room. He unfolded the check and read Phyllis’s hurried scrawl:

That man Leroy came in and spoke to the heliotrope girl. They went out together. I’m following them in a taxi.

Shayne’s big hands shook a trifle as he read the terse note. He asked Gorstmann, “How long ago did my wife leave?”

“Not more than five minutes.”

Shayne took a five-dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to Gorstmann. He directed, “Split what’s left from this with my waiter,” and slid the dinner check into his pocket. He got his hat and hurried outside.

There was no sign of either Helen or Phyllis outside the Danube Restaurant.

Shayne went to his car, swung out of the lot, and drove a block south. He parked in front of a two-story stucco apartment building and hurried into the small foyer. He had Helen’s apartment number, so he didn’t stop at the desk, but went up the stairway in long strides and down the hall to her apartment.

No light showed over the transom. He knocked and waited. There was no sound of movement beyond the closed door. Shayne knocked again, then got out a crowded key ring and began trying keys in the lock. The fourth one unlocked the door.

He stepped in and switched on the light, made a swift survey of the tiny two-room apartment without finding anyone at home. There was a man’s dirty shirt and underwear in the closet with Helen’s clothes, and the remains of a tray dinner was in the kitchenette sink.

Shayne went back to the living-room and switched off the light. He had hold of the knob when he heard footsteps stopping outside. He let go of the knob and stepped back softly.

A key turned the night latch, and the door opened. A hand fumbled along the wall for the light switch. When the light came on, Shayne said, “Hello,” to the man who was closing the door.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE MAN WHIRLED as Shayne spoke, his breath whistling explosively through a gap in his upper teeth. He was short, muscular, and dark, with close-cropped black hair growing low on his forehead. He backed away from Shayne, crouching a little, and his right hand crept upward toward the unbuttoned top of his sack coat.

He asked, “What are you doing here?” in a hoarse voice that quavered a trifle.

Shayne laughed shortly. “I was about to ask you the same question. And I’d like to know how you come to be entering Helen’s apartment with a key of your own.”

He watched incredulity, dismay, then bewilderment succeed each other on Mace Morgan’s face. The last emotion changed to relief as the escaped convict slowly took in the implication of Shayne’s words and his first fear that he had been tracked down as a fugitive began to leave him. He straightened out of his crouch and glanced down at the flat key in his hand as though surprised to see it there.

“You see,” Shayne went on equably, “I thought I had the only extra key to this dump. I didn’t know that Helen passed them out in wholesale quantities. But hell! A man never knows about a woman. They’re all chippies at heart, and what they give to one man they’ll generally give to another. Am I right?”

The paralyzing glitter of fear was leaving Mace Morgan’s eyes. He eagerly followed the lead offered him by Shayne.

“Yeh,” he said. “Yeh, I guess you just about hit it on the head, pal. I’m like you. I thought I had the only extra key. It’s funny, huh? Ha-ha. We’re both suckers.”

“Looks that way.” Shayne stepped backward, getting out a pack of cigarettes. He shook one out and offered it to Mace, took one himself, and lit them both with the same match.

“I just got back to town,” Shayne explained. “Thought Helen would be glad to see me and I came right over. But I guess she hasn’t been lonely while I was gone.”

“I hope you don’t blame me, pal,” Mace defended himself. “I didn’t know I was cutting in on anybody else.”

“That’s all right.” Shayne waved his hand amiably. “I always say a man’s a damned fool to get sore when some floozie throws him over for another guy. Hell, there’s plenty more.”

“Yeh,” Mace chimed in eagerly. “That’s what I say, too. What’s one got that another can’t give you?”

Shayne said, “I’m not complaining.” He let smoke trail lazily from both nostrils. “Where is Helen? She might be embarrassed if she walked in right now and found both of us waiting for her.”

“Not Helen,” Mace Morgan chuckled. “That gal would take anything in her stride. What do we do—flip to see which one of us stays?”

Shayne said, “To hell with that. I know when I’m getting cold-shouldered.”

“You’re all right,” Mace told him generously. “Yeh, you’re a right guy. I’m sorry I was jumpy when I walked in.”

“I don’t blame you.” Shayne laughed. He went to the door, saying, “You don’t need to say anything about this to Helen if you don’t want to. I won’t horn in again.”

He mopped sweat from his forehead as he went toward the stairs. It was a miracle that the escaped con hadn’t thrown lead first and then started asking questions.

Outside the apartment he got in his car and started back across the causeway to the mainland. Phyllis would probably be in when he got back, he told himself. He’d give her hell for walking out on him like that.

But he drove fast, with his eyes intent on the pavement, his thoughts puzzled by the connection between Leroy and Helen. What was the tie-up between them—between Gorstmann and Lacy? He knew that Lacy had never been choosy about the sort of cases he took—like the divorce racket Helen had worked with him—but it was difficult for Shayne to believe that Lacy would be mixed up in any subversive activities with his country at war. On the other hand, Lacy’s professional reputation was hardly the sort to tie him up with the FBI in combating such enemy activities.

He hadn’t reached any conclusion by the time he reached the mainland and turned into Biscayne Boulevard. He couldn’t reach any conclusion until he learned more about the scrap of cardboard he had taken from Lacy. He was quite sure that Gorstmann had sent Leroy and Joe after Lacy that afternoon to secure the piece of cardboard, and the pair had muffed the assignment somehow when they stopped Lacy on the causeway. Perhaps they had trailed him to Shayne’s apartment, expecting him to die at any moment and Lacy had foiled them by making the superhuman effort that took him to his destination before he died.

Shayne shrugged off all the questions that were bothering him as he reached his apartment hotel. The important thing right now was Phyllis’s safety.

The clerk said he had not seen Mrs. Shayne come back, and handed him a telegram that had just been delivered. Shayne read it as he went up in the elevator. It was from Murphy in New York, and read:

Lacy at Tropical Hotel Miami Beach registered as Albert James. On vacation as near as can learn.

Shayne thrust the message into his pocket and unlocked his apartment. It was dark and empty. He went into the bedroom and got the Tropical Hotel on the telephone. He was informed that Albert James was registered in room 416, but he did not answer the telephone when the operator tried his room.

Shayne went back into the living-room and moodily poured himself a drink. “You’d think,” he said aloud into the silence, “that Phyllis would have learned better last time.”

The subdued sound of evening traffic coming in the open window was his only answer.

He walked aimlessly around the room, sipping the glass of cognac. After a time he got the Danube dinner check from his pocket and smoothed it out on the table. He drew his eyebrows down as he read Phyllis’s note again. He stood frowning at the piece of paper for a long time, then rummaged in a drawer for an airmail envelope.

He sat down with a clean sheet of paper and wrote:

Dear John: You should be able to bring out three sets of prints on the enclosed slip. They are mine, my wife’s, and those of a third party. Disregard mine (which are on file) and the lady’s prints. Wire me collect, immediately, anything you have on the third set.

He signed the letter Michael Shayne and addressed the airmail envelope to John Bascom, Dept. of Identification, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, D.C.

He folded the dinner check carefully inside the letter and sealed them in the envelope, then finished his drink and went out

He stopped at the desk and got a special-delivery stamp from the clerk, put it on the letter, and directed the clerk to send it out to the airport at once by messenger to catch the evening mail plane north.

The clerk promised to attend to it, then asked Shayne, “Did I do all right when I brought the cops up to your apartment, Mr. Shayne? After that other man dying in your office this afternoon, I guess I was jumpy.”

“You probably saved me from getting bumped off,” Shayne told him, and then asked curiously, “How about that dead man? You got me in plenty dutch when you told Painter he wasn’t wounded when he started upstairs.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Shayne. I swear I didn’t know. I didn’t notice a thing when he stopped here and asked for your office. That is, he was hunched over and hugging himself and he looked sick, but I sure didn’t know he was practically dead. If you’d told me what to say, you know I’d have done it for you.”

“Sure, I know you would. You didn’t tell them I was in, eh?”

“No, sir. I knew that much, anyway. They asked me when I’d seen you last and I pretended I didn’t remember.”

“You didn’t tell them about the girl you had sent up to my living-apartment?”

“No, sir.” The clerk was emphatic. “You know I never tell anyone anything about your affairs. I’ve been here long enough to realize how important it is to keep my mouth shut.”

Shayne told him that was swell, and not to neglect getting the special-delivery letter off.

The clerk was calling a messenger when he left the lobby. Shayne drove across the bay again, stopped at the Tropical Hotel just a block beyond the eastern terminus of the causeway. He strode through the lobby to the elevators and went up to 416.

He hesitated in front of the door when he saw it standing ajar. There was no light in the room. He knocked lightly but there was no response. He inched the door open and stretched a long arm inside, finding the wall switch.

When the lights came on he pushed the door inward all the way against the wall, then stepped inside and looked around the empty hotel bedroom carefully.

The room had the normal appearance of having been occupied by a man for several days, one who had gone out expecting to return soon. There were toilet articles in the bathroom, a folded newspaper on the bed, and an open Gladstone in one corner.

The newspaper was the previous Sunday’s New York Mirror. It was folded back at page fourteen, and a portion of the page had been cut out. A piece two columns wide and about eight inches long.

Shayne picked up the paper and studied it, seeking to find whether any portion of the cut-out item had been left to give a clue to the nature of the clipping. There was nothing to help him identify the portion that was gone, and he was laying the paper down when he heard a noise at the door of the room.

He turned his head slowly, making no other movement.

The blued muzzle of a service automatic showed in the crack. Then a hand and an arm became visible. Finally the figure of a man wearing a neat gray suit. He had steady gray eyes that looked at Shayne from beneath the brim of a Panama hat, and pleasant, strong features. He held the automatic in a firm grip as he stepped toward Shayne. He spoke pleasantly enough, though his features were set in hard, uncompromising lines.

“Turn around slowly and put both your hands flat on the wall above your head,” he commanded.

Shayne turned around slowly and put both his hands flat against the wall above his head. He said, “I don’t know who you are but I have a hunch we might get together if you’ll let me do some talking.”

The man behind him said, “You can talk all you want to, but don’t make a move away from that position.”

Shayne complained, “I hate to introduce myself to a man when he’s holding a gun on me.”

The telephone rang stridently from its stand on his left. He turned his head to see his captor step forward and pick up the instrument.

He was not more than two feet from Shayne, but he watched the detective coldly, the heavy-caliber automatic steady in his right hand. He said a crisp “Hello” into the mouthpiece, listened a moment, then said incisively:

“Pearson talking. I’ve been watching Lacy’s room from across the hall and just caught a man ransacking it. I suggest that you send a man—”

Shayne dropped his body low and to the left. His shoulder struck the speaker’s hips. The automatic went off once as Shayne’s big hand closed over it and prevented the recoil mechanism from closing. The two men went to the floor together and the telephone bounced off to one side.

Shayne drove his left fist to the point of the man’s jaw. He got up with the automatic in his hand, and Pearson lay on the floor motionless.

Shayne picked up the telephone and said, “Hello,” simulating Pearson’s curt tone as well as he could.

He stiffened with surprise when Peter Painter’s voice nagged at him over the wire. “What the devil’s going on up there? Everything under control?”

Shayne said, “Perfectly,” and waited to hear more.

“It sounded like a struggle,” Painter’s voice was reproving, as though he didn’t care for struggles. “What were you saying about catching a man in Lacy’s room?”

“Your stooge caught the wrong man,” said Shayne in disgust, resuming his normal voice. “Those dumb clucks of yours ought to know me by this time. He’s out cold, and I’ve got his gat.”

“My—stooge?” There was horror in Painter’s tone. “My God! Is that you, Shayne? Have you knocked Pearson out?”

“Why not? He walked in here and stuck a gun in my face without giving me a chance to explain.”

“You fool,” panted Painter. “Now you have stuck your neck out, Shayne. That isn’t one of my men. That’s Mr. Pearson, special agent from Washington. You can’t knock the FBI around.”

Shayne laughed angrily. He said, “This is a hell of a time to be telling me that.” He dropped the receiver onto its prongs and stood on wide-spread feet looking down at Pearson with a frown.

He shook his head, worrying the lobe of his left ear. He glanced down at the automatic still gripped in his hand, then slid the clip out and ejected the loaded cartridge from the firing-chamber. He tossed the unloaded weapon on the bed, walked over to Jim Lacy’s suitcase in the corner, knelt down, and began pawing through it.

Heavy feet trotted up to the door and stopped outside. Shayne straightened warily, then grinned at the worried face of the Tropical Hotel’s house detective.

He said, “Hello, Bowman. Come in and join the party.”

Bowman opened and closed his mouth twice before he was able to stammer, “Sounded like a shot from up here.”

Shayne said, “It sounded like what it was.” He jerked his head toward the supine figure of Pearson. “That bird took a shot at me and I had to cool him off.” He turned the Gladstone upside down and shook its contents out on the floor.

Over his shoulder, he suggested, “You might start pouring some water over him. But don’t try too hard to bring him to because I want to get finished here first.”

CHAPTER NINE

HOUSE DETECTIVE BOWMAN was a paunchy man with a sagging dewlap of flesh under his chin. His complexion had the mottled look of one who suffers from chronic liver sluggishness, and his thick lips showed a tendency to pout.

He sighed mournfully and shook his head at Shayne’s back. “You shouldn’t do things like this, Mike. Honest to God, I don’t know what gets into you.”

“Things like what?” Shayne was on his knees going through the contents of Lacy’s bag.

“Like socking this guy in the puss. You know who he is?”

“Should I?”

“He’s a G-man. Straight from Washington.” Bowman went over and squatted down beside Pearson.

“So?”

“There’ll be hell to pay,” Bowman grunted. “You know how these government boys are—specially now with the war going on.”

Shayne kept his back turned, disappointed by the negative result of his search. He asked absently, “How are they, Bowman?”

“Damn it, Mike, you can’t push ’em around like you do the locals.”

“Can’t I?” Shayne got up and turned away from the suitcase with a look of disgust on his face.

“You know damn well you can’t.” Bowman got up from beside Pearson. “He’ll be out of his dreams in a couple of minutes. What’s the angle on all this?”

Shayne stood in the center of the room, punishing the lobe of his uninjured ear and frowning. “I wish I knew. Give me your end. Maybe if we started from both ends and worked toward the middle we’d get something.”

“I haven’t got any end.” Bowman spread out thick hands. “Painter tipped me off that the feds were interested in this guy James and that this agent was coming over to check his room. That’s all I know.”

“What’s your dope on James?”

“Nothing. He checked in from New York a couple days ago. Been in and out, but that’s all. Damn it, Mike,” the worried house detective broke out explosively, “unbutton your lip and give me something to go on.”

Shayne asked, “When did you see James last?”

“He was in this afternoon. Until about four o’clock.”

“Are you positive of the time?”

“Yeh. Because he and some dame had an argument. I had to come and knock on the door to quiet ’em down. He went out pretty quick after that.”

“And the dame?”

Bowman shook his head. “I dunno,” he said evasively. “You know how it is here on the Beach. A man brings a skirt up for a drink or whatnot in his room. We don’t bother him as long as he keeps it quiet.”

Shayne said, “Sure, I know. And if the guy doesn’t know where to find the girl you can steer him right. Don’t tell me you weren’t laying for her to collect your percentage when she left.”

Bowman’s face became a mottled red. “She wasn’t a regular. Aw, Mike, you know I never—”

“House dick or pimp,” Shayne snorted. “What’s the difference?” His eyes searched the room carefully, saw nothing that he had not seen at first. His gaze stopped on Pearson’s face. An eyelid was twitching and he was beginning to make gurgling noises with his breathing.

Shayne stepped to the door, suggested, “Throw a glass of water in his face after I’ve scrammed.” He paused, grinning at the pained look on Bowman’s face. “You haven’t seen me,” he explained. “I’d beat it before you got here after hearing the shot. You don’t have to know anything.” He went out swiftly and down the corridor in long-legged strides.

An elevator was stopping to let out passengers. Shayne trotted past and around the corner as Peter Painter and two plain-clothes men got off and started for 416. He kept on to the stairway, went down swiftly, crossed the lobby to the switchboard, and said, “Hi, toots,” to a green-eyed girl who was wearing earphones and manipulating the plugs.

She started an impersonal smile in his direction, gave a start, and broadened her smile into the real thing. “For the love of Mike Shayne,” she caroled. “Look who’s here.”

“I’ve got to have something fast, babe. A record of the calls from four-sixteen around four o’clock. Quick before the law catches up with me.”

She said, “I might have guessed you were around when I saw the squad go trooping up a minute ago.” She consulted a large ruled sheet clipped to a board in front of her. “Four-sixteen? Here’s one to Miami at three fifty-seven. And—”

“Do you have that number?”

“Sure.” She gave him the telephone number of his hotel. “And there was a local call went out at four-oh-four. That was a couple of minutes after four-sixteen trotted through the lobby like he had to get somewhere fast. I noticed particularly, because I thought it was funny—”

“You don’t keep a record of the numbers on local calls?”

“No.”

“Man or woman’s voice—the last call?”

“Woman’s. I noticed that, too, because four-sixteen is single, and—”

Shayne said, “Thanks, toots. That’s just what I wanted.”

Shayne turned, glanced around the lobby, then went out to his car just as the elevator disgorged two harried-looking city detectives in plain clothes.

He gunned his car hard getting across the causeway, relaxed and breathed a little easier when he crossed the line dividing the city limits of the two municipalities. There was no telling what fool thing Painter might have done if he had grabbed him before he got over the line—and for the time being Shayne greatly preferred to stay out of jail.

In the lobby of his own hotel in Miami he lifted red brows as he strode up to the desk. The clerk turned and took a yellow envelope from Shayne’s box. “Here’s another telegram that just came for you. Business seems to be rushing tonight.”

Shayne nodded absently, tapping the envelope on the desk. “Mrs. Shayne hasn’t come yet—or called?”

“Not yet, Mr. Shayne. Is anything wrong?”

The corner of Shayne’s mouth twitched. “I’m afraid there is—afraid Phyl’s in trouble. Put a tracer on any calls that come in for me the moment you connect me,” he directed.

He stalked to the elevator, tearing the envelope open. It was a second message from Murphy in New York:

Mace Morgan now fugitive escaped Sing Sing last week doing five to eight rap for hundred grand holdup of Jim Lacy messenger for Gross Ernstine Gross and Barton Wall Street brokers. Morgan married to former Helen Dalhart Scandals thirty seven blonde with trimmings. Am working on her present whereabouts.

Shayne frowned over the import of the telegram as the elevator went up.

Lacy had been the bank messenger involved in the holdup for which Morgan was convicted. Helen hadn’t mentioned that point when he talked with her. Perhaps she had forgotten, or didn’t know about it, or thought it wasn’t important. Perhaps it wasn’t important. But it was a link between Lacy and Mace Morgan. It might serve to explain Lacy’s advice to her on how to get rid of her husband. Lacy had been a vindictive sort of cuss those years ago when Mike had known him in New York. If Lacy carried a grudge against Morgan for the stick-up, it was not surprising that he wanted to see the escaped con put on the spot.

But why the hell hadn’t Lacy taken the job himself? It wouldn’t hurt his reputation any to have tracked the fugitive to Miami and then been forced to kill him while making the arrest. Poetic justice, rather. It would have made headlines all over the country. But maybe Jim Lacy hadn’t wanted headlines. So he had steered Helen onto Shayne instead.

Shayne shrugged and put the telegram into his pocket as the elevator stopped. He went down the corridor to his door, selecting a key as he approached.

There was a rush of movement from around the corner as he inserted his key.

Helen Brinstead ran up to him, caught hold of his arm with both hands. Her face was taut and white, her blue eyes round and imploring. Pressing against him, she cried brokenly, “I’ve been waiting—hoping to God you’d come.”

Shayne pushed the door open, broke her grip with a shrug of his wide shoulders, and gave her a shove into the room. He entered behind her and switched on the light, his gaunt face expressionless.

Helen whirled to face him. She wore the same dress of dove-gray silk, but she no longer looked either cool or poised. Her full lips were tight, drawn apart, and thinned against her teeth. She said, “I’m frightened,” without separating her teeth, imparting a hard, nasal quality to her voice.

Shayne said, “I think you have plenty reason to be scared, sister.” He studied her for a moment, noting that the illusion of extreme youth and naïveté had disappeared under the impact of fear. Her flesh appeared less firm, and even the shimmering luster of her hair seemed dimmed. Her gloveless fingers nervously clutched a large leather handbag while her eyes searched his for some sign of pity or understanding.

He turned to the liquor cabinet and got a glass. When he came back to the table she had dropped into a chair, and again he noted that her legs were very nice. She leaned forward and gripped the arms of the chair with both hands, wetting tight lips with the darting tip of her tongue.

“You’ve got to help me, Mr. Shayne. I don’t know where else to turn. I know that Jim trusted you.”

Shayne laughed shortly. He poured cognac in both glasses and handed her one. She took it, her eyes rounded with terror, holding his as if spellbound.

He said, “But Jim Lacy is dead.”

“That’s it. As soon as I read about it, I knew—” She stopped abruptly and clamped her lips together.

Shayne leaned over her. “What did you know?”

She shook her head slowly, keeping her lips together tightly, avoiding his gaze by lowering her eyelids.

He put both hands on her shoulders. His thumbs found the soft hollows of flesh beneath her collarbone. “What did you know?” he demanded with grim urgency.

She sighed and her taut body went lax. She stared up at him, parting her lips to wet them with her tongue again. His grim face was only a few inches from hers.

“Stop,” she cried. “You’re hurting me—my shoulders.”

Shayne snorted and put more pressure on his thumbs.

She drew in a shuddering breath. “I knew Mace must have found out—what Jim and I planned. I knew—I was likely to be next.”

“Do you think Mace Morgan killed Lacy?”

“He must have. Don’t you see? It must have been Mace. Who else would have done it?”

Shayne straightened up and took his hands from her shoulders. He said, “Drink that liquor,” and stepped back to pick up his own glass.

She sipped the cognac, watching him fearfully over the brim of her glass.

“And you’re afraid you’re next on your husband’s list?” he asked after a moment.

“I’m sure of it. If he found out—” She stopped abruptly.

“That you and Jim Lacy were planning a way to get him bumped off,” Shayne finished for her lightly. “Yes. That is an angle. Some men are funny about things like that.” He emptied his glass and set it down, stretched his lean length in a chair, and took out a cigarette. Without looking at Helen, he asked:

“How could Morgan have found out what you had in mind?”

“I don’t know. That’s one of the things I don’t understand. He may have friends here—underworld contacts. Perhaps Jim spilled our plan to someone.”

Shayne said, “U-m-m.” He shifted his gaze to her through a cloud of expelled smoke. “Where did you go after you left the Danube Restaurant?”

She set her glass down so hard that some of the liquor slopped over the edge. “Wh-at?”

“After you finished dinner tonight,” he amplified.

She said, “Then he was one of your men?”

“Who?” Shayne’s eyes became very bright.

“The man at the restaurant. The one who said you wanted to see me.”

Shayne settled back. “Tell me all about it,” he directed. “Everything.”

She hesitated for only a second, then began rapidly. “A man came to my table as I was finishing dinner. I had never seen him before but he said he was one of your operatives and he was to take me to you at once. He had a car outside, and when he drove away he took great precautions to keep from being followed.

“He was disturbed and angry when a taxi swung in behind us. He drove around several side streets and wouldn’t tell me anything except that he had to get rid of whoever was trailing us in the cab. I—somehow it seemed to me that he acted very strangely, and I found myself beginning to doubt that he really was one of your men. I got scared. He finally stopped along a deserted street. The cab stopped half a block behind us and he got out and went back to intercept it, telling me to sit tight and wait for him.

“I was sure there was something wrong by that time. He acted more like a gangster than a detective. As soon as he left, I jumped out and ran up the street. I found a cruising taxi about half a block away and I came straight here. I’ve been waiting for you to come—hiding around the corner and watching your door.” She looked at Shayne with wide-open eyes as she ended. “Had you sent him to get me?”

Shayne shook his head. Her story sounded straight enough, and it tied in with Phyllis’s note. He asked, “You didn’t see who was in the cab behind you—nor what happened when your driver went back?”

“No. I didn’t look back. I was terrified. I don’t know why exactly, but there was something sinister about that man.” She shuddered. “Was he working for you?”

Shayne said, “Describe him.”

She described Leroy. Not too exactly, but with enough detail so that there could be no mistake.

Shayne rubbed his uninjured jaw thoughtfully. Helen waited for him to speak. After a moment he asked, “What about Gorstmann?”

Her look of bewilderment was good enough to convince Shayne that she had never heard the name before. “Who?”

He shrugged irritably. “Never mind.”

He got up and began prowling up and down the room. The girl sat relaxed, not looking at him. The bottom of her tight skirt had crawled above her knees and she didn’t seem to know or care.

She emptied her glass, and Shayne refilled it silently. Tonight, he noted, she wasn’t making any fuss about downing the hundred-proof cognac without a chaser.

He stopped near her chair and studied her for a moment, then asked, “Why did you come here tonight?”

She rounded her eyes at him. “To find out whether you had sent for me—and to get you to protect me from Mace.”

“I didn’t send for you.”

“But you knew about me being at the Danube,” she countered, puzzled.

“It’s my job to know things. Have you seen Morgan this evening?”

“No.” Helen shuddered. “When I read about Mr. Lacy being killed I was afraid to go back to my apartment.”

“What makes you so sure Mace Morgan killed Lacy? The police tried to hang it on me in the papers.”

“But I knew it couldn’t have been you.” She looked at him with wide, guileless eyes. “I was right here when it was happening.” She paused, puzzled again. “He died in your office, the papers said. But they gave this same address. I suppose they got your office address mixed up with your apartment.”

Shayne said, “The papers are always getting things mixed up.” He did not explain that he used an apartment on the floor below as an office.

“The papers made it sound as though maybe you needed an alibi for this afternoon,” she said eagerly and hastily. “I will swear where you were if it’s necessary.”

Shayne thought that her eyes challenged him. He said, “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.” He then demanded, “How do you know Lacy’s death had anything to do with you and Mace? Lacy was working on something else.”

“I don’t know what made me feel so certain,” she confessed. “Because I’d just been here talking to you about it, I suppose.”

“Because you had a guilty conscience and couldn’t see any other possibility,” Shayne snorted. He moved away restlessly. “It seems to me that this washes us up.”

“What—do you mean?”

He turned, gesturing widely. “Just what I said. If your husband is hep to your plan for getting him quietly bumped off, you’d better drop it.”

“Please, Mr. Shayne.” Helen’s face became chalky. “You’re not going to desert me?” She stood up, trembling.

“Count me out.”

“But you can’t,” she whimpered. “Don’t you see? I have no one else to rely on. It’s a thousand times more important now than it was this afternoon. If Mace does know—”

“Then you’re in a tough spot.”

“He’ll kill me. Without mercy. Just as he killed Jim Lacy.” She moved upon him, staggering as she approached. Shayne put out his arm, and she collapsed against him. She pressed her face against his chest and sobbed, “You’re the only one who can help me. He’ll kill me unless—”

“Unless I kill him first.” Shayne’s voice was harsh.

Her supple body quivered while one arm crept up about his shoulders. She lifted her head, crushed her breasts against him, and her eyes were hot with something more than mortal terror.

“Yes,” she whispered. “That’s it. You’ve got to kill him first You can’t stand by and let me be murdered. You know you can’t.”

Sweat beaded Shayne’s face. “Why can’t I?”

She tilted her head back. Her eyes were tightly shut. She strained her mouth upward to his. Her lips were parted, full and moist. She murmured, “You can’t, because you’re a man—and I’m a woman. Because you’re you and I am me. You’ll help me. I know you will.”

“Kill your husband for you?” Shayne asked implacably.

Her lashes fluttered up and her humid eyes held his. “It sounds terrible when you say it like that. But—yes. Yes. It’s the only thing that will save me now.”

Shayne’s jaw was set. The beads of sweat ran together, trickled down. A muscle twitched in each lean cheek. He obdurately kept his arms at his sides. “Why should I save you?” he asked hoarsely.

She clung to him tighter. Her eyes were not quite the same. “You know why,” she whispered. “You knew this afternoon. As soon as we saw each other—we both knew it would be like this with us.” Her breath came and went in little whimpering gasps. She nuzzled her wet mouth up to his lips. Both arms were around his neck, straining to drag his head down to bring their lips together.

The telephone rang loudly in the bedroom.

Shayne put two big hands on her shoulders and shoved her from him. She swayed back and dropped listlessly into a chair.

Shayne strode to the telephone, snatched up the receiver, and said, “Shayne talking.”

The eagerness went away from his lined and swollen face when a hearty voice rumbled, “Will Gentry, Mike. And this time you’ve got yourself in deeper than I can get you out.”

“What cooks, Will?”

“You’ll soon be, in a vat of oil—unless you can think of a lot of answers fast. There’s an FBI in my office.”

“Pearson?”

“Right. He’s got a lump on the side of his jaw and a yen to meet the guy who put it there.”

Shayne said, “Listen, Will—”

“You do the listening. For God’s sake, Mike, you can’t push Washington around. They’ll bury you under the Atlanta prison all wrapped up in red tape.”

“All right,” Shayne sighed. “What does he want—an apology?”

“I don’t think he’s interested in apologies. He wants to talk to you about Jim Lacy.”

Shayne said, “Why not? I’d like to hear what he’s got to say, too.”

“That’s fine.” Gentry sounded relieved. “We’ll be right over.”

Shayne said, “Hold it, Will. Can’t you stall him for a little while?”

“Why should I? You’ve got to come clean sooner or later.”

“All I want is a few minutes. Time enough to get rid of a caller before you get here. Give me fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll try. But no more than that. You can’t play hide the button with these guys.”

Shayne said, “Thanks, Will. Fifteen minutes.”

He cradled the phone and swung into the living-room. His eyes were hard and bright. He said, “Get up,” to the girl slumped in the chair.

Helen got up slowly. Her shoulders drooped and she avoided his gaze. She had put all of herself into her passionate appeal for his help and she knew she had lost.

“We’re having company,” Shayne said swiftly. “The law is coming up. Get in the bedroom and stay out of sight. Under the bed or in the closet. We’ll finish our talk after I get rid of my visitors. I’ve got a hunch I’ll have a lot of questions to ask you after I’ve talked to them.”

He stood aside for her to enter the bedroom, his face hard and inscrutable. She hesitated as she went past him, half turned, and parted her lips to speak.

When she met his unyielding eyes she compressed her lips and went into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

CHAPTER TEN

SHAYNE SWIFTLY SET HIMSELF to the task of getting rid of all traces of his visitor. He rinsed out Helen’s glass and set it back in the cabinet. He checked the ash trays for rouged cigarette butts, even went so far as to plump out the cushions of the chair in which she had been sitting.

When he finished he stood by the door and looked over the room with narrowed eyes. Everything was as it should be. The faint scent of heliotrope still hung in the air, and he opened the windows. Gentry would know damn well Phyllis didn’t wear heliotrope perfume.

When he was sure everything was in order, he poured a moderate drink and paced up and down while he drank it. The lines in his face deepened as he mentally went over Helen’s account of the incidents that had followed her departure from the Danube Restaurant.

Taken at its face value, which he was not quite sure was the right way to take it, Phyllis appeared to be in a bad spot. He was not certain, of course, that Phyllis had been in the cab that followed Leroy and Helen. But it seemed the only reasonable assumption. Nor did he have any real proof that Leroy had succeeded in grabbing Phyllis when he went back to investigate his tail. Helen professed not to know what had happened after she ran away.

The only real indication of danger to Phyllis was that she had not returned or called in. That meant that she was unable to do either, for she knew he would be tortured with worry over her.

So Leroy must have grabbed her on that deserted side street. Perhaps the driver of her cab was in cahoots with the gang. The senseless way in which he had tailed Leroy seemed to indicate collusion. Almost any driver with experience would know better than to pull in to the curb behind his quarry after Leroy parked.

The only logical deduction a man could make was that Phyllis was now in the hands of the gang who were after Jim Lacy’s piece of cardboard.

Sweat streamed down the deep trenches in Mike Shayne’s cheeks as he strove to put that thought out of his mind. He could not put it away. No man could. Not after what had happened in the apartment that afternoon. No man could forget the way Leroy had stood behind Phyllis’s chair, the lust in his voice as he had spread her robe apart, the glitter in his eyes as he started to untie the knotted belt holding the single garment covering her body.

Shayne sagged into a chair, clenching his fists and pounding the cushions helplessly. God help Phyllis if she was in the hands of Leroy and Joe. Why in the name of God had he played smart that afternoon and refused to give them the torn scrap of cardboard he had taken from Lacy? The gangsters were convinced that it was in his possession and they had shown clearly that they would stop at nothing to get hold of it Why the devil was he hanging onto it? If he had given it to them—

But no. He was tough. Too tough to be intimidated. A throaty snarl belched through his grim lips. He heaved himself forward and poured another drink. The stuff had no more taste than water as it trickled down his dry throat.

No. He was Mike Shayne. A tough shamus on the make. Too tough to be pushed around. So they had Phyllis—and he, by God, still had the scrap of cardboard. He had sacrificed his wife for something that might not be worth an ersatz mark.

Besides, he was bucking the local law and the FBI to keep possession of it, sticking his rough neck out all over the place—all because of a hunch. And because he didn’t like the idea of people getting shot on their way to his office.

Hell, Lacy’s death hadn’t actually meant much to him. He had known Lacy. Sure. Ten years ago. And they hadn’t really been friends. He couldn’t justify his conduct on the grounds that he owed Lacy anything. It was his damned stubbornness. Nothing else. And Phyllis was having to pay for it.

Michael Shayne sprang up from the chair and began pacing the floor again, lashing his thoughts away from his wife and her probable plight. Conversely, he lashed Phyllis with his tormented mind. The next time he had a case, by God, he’d lock her in a sanitarium for the duration.

His pacing took him close to the bedroom door. He stopped and listened intently, then jerked it open to see if Helen had obeyed his instructions and hidden herself safely.

He turned on the lights and a grunt of surprise jerked from his lips when he saw the outline of a body curled up beneath the bedcovers. He strode over with his jaw jutted and angrily demanded:

“Will you tell me what the living hell you mean by this stunt?”

Helen turned her blond head slightly. One eye came open and peered up at him. “I thought this was a swell idea,” she purred. “I’ll keep the covers up like this and you can tell them your wife is in bed with a headache, and if they’re gentlemen they won’t look too closely. Anyway, they don’t have to come in here, do they?”

Standing at the foot of the bed, Shayne saw her clothes carelessly tossed over the back of a chair. Sedately parked beneath the bed where they showed beneath the edge of the spread were her shoes with a neatly rolled stocking nestled in each.

Shayne put his hands on his hips and grated, “It was a bitchy idea. If I had time I’d roll you out of there and kick your naked pelt out my door.”

“But, Mr. Shayne. I’m not naked. What an idea!” She pushed the covers back to show him she had appropriated one of Phyllis’s silk nightgowns. She was laughing at him now, shakily triumphant over the success of her stratagem. “I thought you’d like me this way,” she pouted. “You will when you get used to the idea. You wanted a reason for helping me get rid of Mace. Well—I thought I’d give you one.”

He growled, “I told you to get under the bed, not in it.”

“But this is so much more comfortable.” She stretched out her bare arms and pretended to yawn. “Don’t you like me—even a little bit?”

“I’d like to choke you,” Shayne grunted. “If they see you here—like this—” He choked over the words.

“Don’t tell me you’re worried about your reputation. From what I’ve heard—”

“I’m married,” he said stiffly.

“Sure. Lots of men are. But that doesn’t keep them from—still being men.”

“I happen to be in love with my wife.”

She was frightened now. She tried to form her stiff lips into a contemptuous smile, but it was ineffectual.

A knock sounded on the outside door. He turned away and muttered, “Cover yourself up and keep covered up and quiet.”

He went out and closed the door firmly, then crossed the room to answer the knock. He stepped back with a sour grin and started to say, “Come in, Will,” but the grin faded away.

Mace Morgan walked through the door holding a gun in his right hand. His low forehead was wrinkled and his upper lip was drawn back to show the gap in his front teeth.

A look of incredulity, then of understanding flickered over Morgan’s face when he saw Shayne. He muttered, “So, it’s you again, huh? That was just a gag about Helen to cover up your snooping.” He paused, nudged Shayne with the muzzle of his gun. “Turn around slow while I frisk you.”

Shayne said, “Sure.” He turned around slowly, lifted his arms, and let Morgan feel over him for a weapon. “What do you mean by a gag about Helen?”

“That you was there to see her in her apartment. I might’ve known you were a lousy flatfoot. All right. I guess you’re clean. Walk on ahead of me and don’t get no funny ideas. I won’t trigger this gat if you don’t make me.”

Shayne walked on into the room. Morgan heeled the door shut and followed. Shayne swung around with a placating grin. “Sure, it was just a gag about Helen. What the hell? I had to think of something when you walked in on me. Nothing to get jealous about.”

“Skip that. Where’s Lacy’s hunk stashed?”

“Lacy’s hunk? Of what?”

“Don’t give me none of that. I know you got it. I know you had it here in this room not more’n ten minutes ago. It’s still here.”

A slight rustle of sound from the side of the room drew the quick attention of both men. Mace Morgan sucked in his breath sharply when he saw his wife standing in the bedroom doorway, her hair disordered, her body sheathed in a filmy blue nightgown. Her right arm was pressed tightly against her side, her hand hidden by a fold of silk. The knuckles of her left hand were pressed against her teeth. She said, “Mace!” in a frightened whisper that echoed in the silence.

Shayne said, “For God’s sakes, listen to me,” but neither Morgan nor the girl noticed him.

Morgan said gutturally, “So—it wasn’t no gag.” He took a step toward Helen. His gun was lax in his hand, muzzle pointed toward the floor.

Helen’s body became rigid. Her right hand swept up and flame spouted from it. The explosion of a small cartridge was loud in the room.

The tiny bullet struck Mace Morgan in his open mouth. He swayed under the impact, ineffectually tried to close his mouth while a look of dismay swept over his face.

Helen fired again as Shayne leaped forward. A red spot appeared in Mace Morgan’s forehead. He went down limply and blood oozed from the red spot.

Helen pulled the trigger a third time as Shayne reached her. The hammer clicked on an empty cylinder.

Shayne grabbed the short barrel of the gun and wrested it from her fingers. Her eyes were distended like those of a sleepwalker. Her body remained rigidly erect.

Shayne dropped the revolver on the floor and gave her a shove into the bedroom. He turned and looked down at Morgan. The escaped convict lay on the floor, very still. There was that look of dismay, of reproach, congealed in his open eyes.

Helen ran from the bedroom and flung herself upon Shayne, clinging to him. He fended her off as she sobbed convulsively, “I had to. Oh, my God, he’s dead, isn’t he? I had to do it. He would have killed us both.”

Shayne grabbed the girl’s shoulders and shook her violently, then let go with one hand and slapped her. She jerked back, her eyes screwed up, peering at him like a frightened animal.

Through set teeth, Shayne pounded at her, “There’s no time for talk. The cops will be here any minute. We can’t get rid of him.”

“I don’t care. Let the cops come. I had to do it. I’ll plead self-defense. They can see he was armed. You saw him coming at me with his gun. You can swear he would have killed us both.”

“That’s fine. That’s wonderful. Self-defense. Sure.” Shayne laughed bitterly. “Headlines! Wife Kills Enraged Husband Who Breaks Up Love Tryst. You in a nightgown! God in heaven, why didn’t you stay in there and keep your mouth shut?”

“I recognized Mace’s voice. I knew he must have trailed me here. I was trying to save you.” Helen’s voice was humble. She pressed against Shayne again, shivering. “Don’t you worry. I’ll tell the cops—”

“You’ll tell them nothing,” he raged. “The truth would be the worst damn thing that could happen. You’ve got to hide—and stay hidden.” He shoved her into the bedroom again and toward the clothes closet near the door. “Get inside and close the door.”

“There’s no need for you to take the blame,” she cried wildly. “I’m willing to—”

A knock sounded on the living-room door.

“Shut up,” Shayne whispered fiercely, and shoved her inside among the hanging garments. He closed the closet door quietly, then went out, closing the bedroom door behind him.

There was a heavier, more impatient knock from outside. He stooped and picked up the .22 revolver by the trigger guard, let it dangle carelessly from his forefinger as he went to the door.

He opened it and stepped aside to admit Will Gentry and Pearson. Will Gentry stopped after four steps, looked down at Mace Morgan’s body, then turned to Shayne, and said:

“Well, I see you got rid of your visitor, Mike.”

Shayne chuckled mirthlessly. “Yeh. You’re just in time to take charge of the body for me, Will.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

PEARSON NODDED TO SHAYNE when Gentry said he thought they had met before, then stood quietly with arms folded and let Gentry take the lead. Pearson’s air of unruffled competence remained despite the ugly swelling on his jaw where Shayne’s fist had connected. A thoughtfully furrowed forehead was Pearson’s only outward reaction to the presence of the dead man.

“Isn’t this pushing your luck a little bit?” Gentry queried in a deceptively mild tone.

Before Shayne could answer Gentry’s thrust, a rush of footsteps came from down the hall. The redhead swung on his heel and glowered uninvitingly as Tim Rourke hurried through the open door. Lean and swivel-hipped, a reporter for the Miami News and an old friend of Shayne’s, Rourke had profited by many scoops in the past by following the detective’s cases.

Rourke grinned, unabashed by Shayne’s manifest displeasure at his presence. He said, “I figured it was a hot tip when they told me down at the station—” He broke off as his gaze strayed past Gentry and Pearson to the corpse.

“Looks like another birdie. What’s par for this course, Mike? And with a little toy pistol, at that.”

Shayne didn’t say anything. Helen’s small weapon still hung carelessly by the trigger guard from his forefinger.

Gentry thrust his hands deep into his coat pockets and, chewing solemnly on a fat cigar, strolled forward to survey the dead man. He shook his head and said, “I hope you’re not going to feed us another story about this one just wandering in and dropping dead, too, Mike.”

Shayne’s upper lip twitched. He said, “You’ll get the truth—as you always have, Will. Here’s the gun that killed him. You should have heard the shots while you were coming up. He came in asking for it,” he went on explosively. “I tried to stall him until you got here, but you can see by that gun in his hand that it was self-defense.”

Will Gentry sighed and stepped back from the body. He held out his hand and took the small revolver from Shayne by its two-inch barrel. He frowned at it. “A twenty-two, Mike. Where did you get this relic? They haven’t manufactured these since the Civil War.”

Shayne said, “I picked it up somewhere for Phyl. In my business you never can tell when she’ll need one. You know I never carry a rod. But it was lucky that thing was around here when he started throwing his weight around.”

From long habit as a homicide man, Gentry got out a handkerchief and folded the obsolete weapon in it so the fingerprints would not be spoiled. Shayne laughed shortly and protested, “You’ve got me cold, Will. I’m not going to deny I blasted him.”

Gentry shrugged and slid the gun in his pocket. “Two in one day is more than even your rep will stand, Mike. You’d better start coming clean.”

“What do you mean—two in one day?” Shayne demanded hotly. “You know damn well Lacy was a dead man when he reached my office.”

“But it looked bad,” Gentry complained. “Hell, we’ll have to set up a private shuttle system between your place and the morgue if this keeps up.” He sank into a chair and added, “Pour me a drink.”

Shayne went to the cabinet. With his hand on a glass he turned inquiringly to Rourke and Pearson. “Either of you join us?”

Pearson shook his head. There was a speculative light in his calm gray eyes, as though his thoughts were remote, totally withdrawn from the actual scene before him. He had not moved or spoken since entering the apartment.

Rourke nodded fervently and said, “Lord, yes. I can do with a stimulant, Mike.”

Shayne poured two drinks and handed them to Gentry and the reporter. He faced Pearson and hesitated, then said, “I suppose I should be sorry for what happened over in Lacy’s hotel room. If you’d told me who you were first—”

Pearson inclined his head soberly. “I quite understand that you’re the impulsive type, Shayne. That’s behind us now. No real harm done,” he ended genially.

In a wondering tone, Shayne said, “Hell, you’re not a bad guy after all.” He sat down near Gentry and asked, “Are we going to turn this into a wake?”

Gentry rumbled, “You’d better give out on this killing before we start anything else. I’ve got to decide what the charges are to be.”

Shayne snorted. “Charges? When a fugitive from the pen breaks into a man’s home and flashes a gat, hasn’t the householder a perfect right to protect himself?”

“A fugitive?” Gentry raised grizzled brows.

Shayne gestured toward the dead man. “His name is Mace Morgan. Recently escaped from the New York pen. I don’t know any more about it than you do,” he went on angrily. “He pushed in here and raved about me turning over something he seemed to think I’d got from Jim Lacy this afternoon. When I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about, he pulled that gun and threatened me. Well,” Shayne shrugged wide shoulders, covertly watching Pearson, “there he lies.”

Gentry’s heavy features became less morose. “An escaped con? Why didn’t you say so? I guess that puts you in the clear this time.”

Pearson turned his head. He spoke in a voice that was pleasant but held a ring of authority. “I’m glad to verify Mr. Shayne’s statement. The man is Mace Morgan. I rather expected him to turn up in Miami after we traced Lacy here.” He sauntered forward as he spoke and knelt beside the dead convict.

He unbuttoned Morgan’s coat and began methodically going through his pockets and clothing. The other three men watched him silently, with Shayne and Gentry evidencing professional approval for the thorough manner in which he made the search.

Pearson rolled the dead man over with no more show of feeling than he would have rolled a straw dummy, tested the lining of his coat, painstakingly covered every inch of the body, the inner waistband of his trousers, and finally removed the corpse’s shoes, examined the inner lining and the soles. He rocked back on his heels when he finished and turned his head to frown at Shayne. In a deeply worried voice he asked, “Did you take anything off him before we got here?”

Shayne set his glass down with a thump. He growled, “I’m tired of being accused of corpse robbing. First Jim Lacy and now Morgan. What’s missing?”

Pearson stood up and carefully dusted off his knees. In his precise, unruffled voice, he said, “I think I’ll ask you for that drink now.”

Shayne got another glass of cognac and handed it to Pearson. Pearson thanked him, sniffed the bouquet approvingly, and tasted it with a further nod of approval. He remained standing before the three seated men, and there was a hint of accustomed authority in his voice when he spoke directly to Will Gentry.

“I haven’t been introduced to this man yet.” He nodded toward Timothy Rourke.

“Tim Rourke,” Gentry said, “reporter for the Miami News. Mr. Pearson of the FBI, Tim. And Tim’s a right guy. Go ahead with what you’ve got to say.”

“It must be understood that my name cannot be mentioned in the press,” Pearson said. “You realize, Mr. Rourke, that our work requires the utmost secrecy. So I must ask you to leave us.”

Rourke scowled and hunched his shoulders forward. “If you chase me out of here now I’ll make up a story to fit the few facts I’ve picked up. Remember that beautiful word ‘alleged,’ Mr. Pearson? I guarantee my story’ll be a honey.”

Pearson’s deceptively mild features tightened. “I’ll have to demand your promise that you’ll print nothing—not a single word—about any of this.”

Rourke’s scowl deepened. “You can demand and be damned. We’ve still got a free press in this country.” He got up and started for the door.

Gentry restrained him. He warned Pearson as Rourke stopped, “You won’t get very far trying to push Rourke around.”

Pearson’s lips were compressed in a thin line. He said, “Your point about the free press is excellently made. But let me point out that one of the reasons it has remained free is because our newspapers have gladly co-operated with the government by accepting voluntary censorship over news that might be of value to the enemy.”

Rourke turned back to his chair. “Co-operation—now that’s a word I like. Hell, I’ll play ball if you quit treating me like a child who can’t be trusted with a secret.”

Pearson glanced inquiringly at Will Gentry. The detective chief nodded. “I’ve known Rourke a long time. He’s never printed anything I asked him to hold back.”

“Very well,” Pearson said. “I’m perfectly willing to accept your judgment.” He sat down and took a long, slim cigar from his breast pocket while Rourke resumed his seat. “It’s a rather long and complicated story,” he began, “with many points on which my information is somewhat sketchy.”

When he paused to light his cigar, Gentry got up and went toward the bedroom. “The phone is in here, isn’t it?”

Shayne nodded. His features tightened and his eyes were worried while Gentry opened the door. He relaxed when the bedroom lights came on and nothing happened. He got up and walked to the bedroom door. The door of the clothes closet stood open about an inch. Evidently Helen had decided to obey him and stay out of sight this time.

Gentry dialed a number and ordered the coroner and an ambulance around to pick up Morgan’s body. Shayne waited at the door, and when Gentry came out, leaving the door open, Shayne did not close it. Returning to their chairs, Gentry said, “I never feel good with bodies lying around.” He sat down and Pearson began talking in his quiet voice which made his words more impressive than if he had delivered an oration.

“Our country is at war, gentlemen, and as you know, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is devoting most of its time and personnel to the task of combating the activities of spies and foreign agents in our midst. It is a tremendous job, and one which we have, thus far, carried out with a great deal of success.”

He paused to frown at the glowing tip of his slim cigar. “I’m giving you this preamble to impress upon you the tremendous gravity of the present situation involving Jim Lacy and Mace Morgan. Lack of success on my part may prove more costly to our country than the loss of an entire battle, of a great military campaign.”

Pearson paused again to let his words have their full effect. Shayne lifted the cognac bottle and looked inquiringly at the others. Gentry and Rourke shook their heads. Pearson’s eyes were half closed, apparently in deep thought, and he did not notice the gestures of the others. Shayne set the bottle back.

Pearson went on. “A few months ago the plans of a new and secret military weapon were stolen from a government research plant in New Jersey. I cannot tell you what the weapon was. In fact, I know only this much—it was an epochal discovery. Something, I am told, that will revolutionize all the basic precepts of defensive naval action against enemy submarines.

“By dint of perseverance and painstaking investigation, it was eventually established that the actual theft had been accomplished by two men, a New York private detective named Jim Lacy and a petty gangster named Mace Morgan. Both of these men are American citizens. Both are traitors to their country. Actuated by the basest motive known to man—a willingness to betray their homeland for a few filthy pieces of silver.”

Pearson’s voice trembled with scorn and indignation. He lifted one fist and closed it tightly, then let it fall into his lap. With determined calm, he continued.

“We know, of course, that the theft was instigated and planned by the agent of a foreign power. Germany, doubtless. Possibly Japan. It does not matter. We know, too, that after Lacy and Morgan had completed the theft they met some third party at a secret rendezvous. The third party is, as yet, unknown. We believe they had been promised payment of a large lump sum upon delivery of the plans.

“Something miscarried, however. The foreign agent was evidently unprepared to make immediate payment. Lacy and Morgan were in a quandary. They were unwilling to let go of the secret plans without payment in hand, yet they were afraid to keep such valuable documents in their possession lest their crime be discovered.

“We do not know the details of the discussion which took place, but we do know this—a compromise plan was decided upon. A plan which clearly indicated the distrust with which each of the trio regarded the others—none of them being willing to leave the precious, though dangerous, plans in the possession of another while waiting for the financial arrangements to be completed.”

Pearson paused once more to consider his audience of three. Timothy Rourke was hunched forward, his nostrils dilated like a hound on the scent; Gentry gently chewed on his fat cigar. Shayne was relaxed in a deep chair, one big hand twirling an empty cognac glass. Three deep creases came and went in his forehead.

“The compromise was put into effect,” Pearson resumed, “by packing the plans in a suitcase or trunk, or perhaps merely wrapping them securely in a parcel. Our information is vague on this point, but the bureau concluded they were shipped to some distant city where it was agreed the trio would meet on a prearranged date to claim the parcel and complete the original transaction.

“The shipping receipt, gentlemen, was torn into three pieces, each party retaining one piece to make it impossible for the plans to be claimed unless all three were present to put the three parts together and form a valid claim check.”

Pearson looked over his audience with a grim smile. “Do you begin to understand the setup that has eventuated in two deaths today, gentlemen?”

The three men nodded. Shayne tugged at the lobe of his ear and demanded, “You say all this happened months ago? In a situation like that I’d say speed was an important element. Why the devil haven’t Lacy and Morgan got together sooner to reclaim the parcel and collect for it?”

“That,” Pearson told him, “is where fate stepped in to upset the best-laid plans of traitors and spies. Two days after the theft of the plans, Morgan was involved in a holdup in New York. He was convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary. Naturally, he held on to his third of the claim check—and Lacy and the foreign agent were checkmated without it.”

“And Morgan wouldn’t trust Lacy to collect his end of the payoff and hold it for him until he got out?” Gentry guessed.

“Evidently not. We’ve had Lacy shadowed and he’s had no communication with Morgan in jail. We’ve been gathering our evidence slowly and it hasn’t been until the past few days that we began to get a clear picture of the whole thing.”

“Then Lacy beats it to Miami under an assumed name,” Shayne muttered. “Morgan immediately makes a crash-out and also comes here. The plans must have been shipped here originally.”

“It seems likely, though we had nothing on that point except the meeting of the two men here. Lacy eluded our shadow in New York and we lost trace of him until yesterday. It appears definite, however, that Morgan’s escape was planned and financed by the foreign agent in a desperate effort to get the two men here together, each with his piece of claim check. A prison guard was heavily bribed to allow Morgan’s escape,” he added by way of explanation, “and he must have had further help in eluding the police and getting to Miami.”

The tramp of feet sounded in the corridor, and a knock on the door. Shayne got up to admit the coroner and two ambulance attendants with a stretcher. Gentry went over and conferred with them in low tones for some time, and then the body was loaded on the stretcher and carried out. Gentry came back to his chair, and the conversation was picked up where it had been interrupted.

Shayne said, “Granting that all your facts and deductions are correct, is it your idea that Lacy was killed on his way to my office this afternoon by someone who was after his part of the claim check?”

Pearson regarded him steadily. “Was Lacy killed on his way to your office? Mr. Painter appears to doubt your story about what happened.”

“Painter would doubt the word of Jesus Christ,” Shayne retorted. He turned impatiently to Gentry. “Give him the report you have on that, Will.”

Gentry repeated to Pearson the report he had given Shayne over the telephone earlier. “I questioned the couple carefully,” he ended, “and I think there’s little doubt they witnessed the actual attack on Lacy—subject to confirmation from the autopsy that Lacy could have lived with those bullets in him.”

“They must have got what they were after,” Tim Rourke interjected. “There wasn’t any piece of a claim check found on Lacy’s body, was there?”

“There was not,” Gentry replied.

“Then it couldn’t have been Morgan who shot Lacy,” Shayne put in quickly. “Morgan came here tonight demanding that I give him what I took off Lacy. He didn’t describe what he was after, but your story makes it clear enough, Pearson.”

“And now Morgan is dead.” Pearson sighed. “And his piece of the claim check is missing. If a third party was responsible for both deaths—has gotten hold of both missing pieces—then, gentlemen, I have failed. An enemy plot has succeeded. One which may possibly mean the winning or losing of a war.” Spoken soberly, with no attempt at dramatics, his words had far greater impact than if he had shouted or pounded his fist.

Shayne regarded Pearson thoughtfully. In a curiously soft voice, he asked, “What do you imply by suggesting a third party may be responsible for both deaths? You know I killed Morgan.”

Pearson looked levelly into Shayne’s eyes, disregarding the danger signal glittering there. He asked, “Why were you going through Lacy’s room this evening?”

“Because it was my business. Lacy died in my office. I wanted to know what the lay was. Lacy had called me just before he was shot. He was so anxious to see me that he refused to die before he reached me. Naturally I wanted to know what was behind it.”

“How did you know the number of his hotel room—the assumed name of James he was using?” Pearson’s voice had become hard and inflexible.

Shayne shrugged. “I’m a detective. Do I have to divulge my methods to an FBI man?”

“I think you had better,” Pearson said. “Otherwise we may suspect that Lacy did tell you something—that you searched him before the police arrived.”

Shayne turned to Gentry. “Tell him, Will, that I didn’t get to my office until after the police were there.”

“That’s right,” Gentry agreed. “His wife telephoned the report about Lacy. Mike wasn’t there.”

“All right. It could have been his wife,” Pearson pointed out. “How do we know what Lacy told Mrs. Shayne—what she may have found in the dead man’s possession?”

Shayne growled, “My wife doesn’t lie—unless I tell her to. If she had taken anything off Lacy, she would have told me.”

Pearson made an impatient gesture. “I’ve been checking on you this afternoon, Mr. Shayne. Your professional ethics are lax, to put it charitably. I think no one who knows your reputation will seriously doubt that either you or your wife would withhold an article of great value if a dead man stumbled into your office with it.”

Shayne got up slowly, doubling his big, bony fists. In a thick voice he said, “I don’t like that kind of talk from anybody, Pearson.”

Pearson remained seated, unperturbed. He said curtly, “You can’t intimidate an agent of the government, Shayne. You’re a fool to try it. Where is your wife? I’d like to question her.”

The redhead set his teeth together hard, staring down at Pearson. Then he relaxed and poured a drink. Over his shoulder, he said, “I don’t know where Phyl is.”

“Oh, come now, Shayne. There’s no use stalling.”

With his back turned to Pearson, Shayne took a sip of cognac. “I don’t know where Phyl is,” he repeated flatly. “If you can find her you’re welcome to question her.” He sank back into his chair and demanded, “Why don’t you accuse me of going over Morgan after I killed him? Hell! I might have both the pieces of claim check.”

“That,” said Pearson evenly, “is what I was about to bring up. With your reputation, it’s exactly what I would expect.”

Shayne said, “You’ve been listening to Peter Painter. He has been trying to throw the hooks into me for years, but I’ve still got my license to practice.”

“Lacy had a private license, also,” said Pearson. “That didn’t prevent him from double-crossing his government—his country—by selling them out to the enemy.”

“You’re accusing me of doing that?” Shayne grated.

“I’m accusing no one. On the other hand, I’m not taking anyone, a private detective least of all, on faith.”

Shayne started to his feet. Rourke grabbed his arm and soothed him. “Use your head, Mike. Pearson’s got a job to do. A tough job. He’s under a hell of a strain. You can’t blame him for checking every angle. You’d be doing the same thing, yourself.”

Gentry interrupted with a persuasive rumble. “I’ve known Mike Shayne for ten years, Pearson. He’s tough and he’s hell on wheels after the main chance, but he has never lied to me on a main issue. You’re crazy when you compare him to a cheap tin-badge like Lacy. Look, I’ll grant that under other conditions Mike might hold out something if he smelled a profit. But this dynamite of yours is something different. Shayne has been called a lot of names by a lot of people, but only a fool would suspect him of being a traitor. If he knows anything that will help recover those plans before they reach the enemy, he’ll give it to us. I swear he will.” He turned to Shayne. “How about it, Mike?”

“You’re damned right I would, Will,” Shayne answered.

“There you are, Pearson,” Gentry spoke with bluff cordiality. “Does that satisfy you?”

“It will have to,” Pearson said stiffly. He cleared his throat. “I apologize, Shayne, if my deep anxiety led me to suspect you wrongly.”

Shayne said, “That’s all right.”

“Let’s have a drink all around,” Rourke suggested, “to show there’s no hard feelings.” He poured four drinks.

Gentry asked suddenly, “If the stolen plans are as important as you say, Pearson, why are you fooling around taking a chance that they may be grabbed? The FBI certainly carries enough weight to search the baggage rooms for what you want. And it shouldn’t be difficult to locate a parcel or a bag or suitcase that has remained unclaimed for two months.”

“True enough,” Pearson agreed. “That’s the final expedient I’m prepared to take if all else fails. But that would allow the foreign agent who engineered the coup to remain free to continue his subversive work. I had hoped Lacy or Morgan would lead us to him. We didn’t know until yesterday that Miami was the city to which the plans had been shipped. Now, however, with all three pieces of the claim check missing and probably in the hands of the spy ring, I imagine an immediate search of the local baggage rooms is our best bet.” He hesitated, looking at Gentry. “If you’re willing to co-operate—use your local authority—”

“I don’t see any reason to do that yet,” Shayne interposed. “As you say, Pearson, you’d throw away months of labor—your chance to round up the spies. In a case like this it’s important to get the head man. Maybe you’re jumping to a hasty conclusion when you decide that someone has got both Lacy’s and Morgan’s pieces of the baggage receipt. Lacy’s perhaps, but you went over Morgan with a fine-tooth comb. It wasn’t on him. That’s logical enough. He wouldn’t be likely to carry anything that valuable and dangerous around with him. He’d have it stashed. If you can find where Morgan was holed-up—” He paused, his eyes looking from Gentry to Pearson.

Pearson’s face brightened. “That’s good, logical reasoning, Shayne. If we can’t get hold of one piece, we needn’t give up hope.”

“That’s something I’ll get my department to work on,” Gentry said. He finished his drink and got up. “Maybe you can help me, Pearson, knowing what you do about Morgan.”

“Gladly.” Pearson swung to his feet lightly. He looked at Shayne and Tim Rourke. “I have to trust you gentlemen to keep this entire matter absolutely confidential.”

Shayne nodded, and Rourke said, “Not a peep until you give the word.”

On his way to the door with Pearson, Gentry asked, “Coming, Tim?”

“I’m sticking around.” Rourke stretched out his skinny legs and grinned. “There’s more liquor in that bottle than Mike should drink by himself.”

There was a long period of silence in the apartment after the door had closed behind Gentry and Pearson.

Then Shayne yawned and ruffled his coarse red hair with knobby fingers. He said, “I’ve had a tough day, Tim. Two corpses in the space of a few hours is more than I’m accustomed to. Believe I’ll turn in.” He stood up, yawning again.

Rourke did not look at him. He said, “Why don’t you tell Phyllis to come on out, now that they’ve gone.”

Shayne swung around. “What prompted that crack?”

Rourke shook his head. “It won’t wash, Mike. Why did you tell them you didn’t know where Phyllis was?”

“I don’t.”

“Yet you’re going to bed—just like that—and you don’t know where your wife is. You were in love with the gal last week.” Rourke popped his fingers loudly.

“All right,” Shayne snapped. “I’ll admit I am worried about her. I thought maybe you’d beat it and let me go on about my business if I said I was going to bed.”

Rourke shook his head sadly. His eyes were anxious. He said, “Maybe I shouldn’t butt in—but I’m afraid you’re going over your depth, Mike. Damn it, this is different from the other cases you’ve horsed around with. We’re at war. Vital plans for our defense are at stake. According to Pearson, those stolen plans mean a hell of a lot to this country.”

Shayne stood very still. “What’s on your mind?”

Rourke sighed. “I know Phyllis is here. Where is she? Under the bed? In the closet? You’ve got her hid out and I admit I don’t like it. Why, Mike? In the name of God, why were you afraid to have Pearson question her about Lacy?”

“That’s what you think?”

“What else can I think? You lied about her not being here.”

“What makes you think so?” Shayne’s voice remained dangerously even and low.

“Hell, I may not be a G-man but I’ve got eyes.” Rourke pointed to the open door leading into the bedroom. “I’ve been in and out of this apartment a lot since you and Phyllis were married. She’s one of the neatest housekeepers I’ve ever known. She’d never go out and leave the bed mussed and unmade. And I’ve never seen her clothes thrown over the back of a chair before, as many times as I’ve been around.”

“Maybe she went off in a hurry.” Shayne was wearily vicious.

“Yeh—she might. But I don’t believe she did.”

Shayne said, “That’s not much evidence to call a man a liar on.”

“All right.” Rourke made a gesture of disgust. He stood up and faced Shayne. “Here’s something else. Morgan was killed with a toy pistol. A twenty-two. That’s not your kind of a gun. It’s the kind a girl carries in her handbag.”

“Have you seen Phyl carrying one like it?”

“No. But if there was one like that around the place she’d be the one to use it—or some other dame.”

“You’re talking a lot without saying very much,” Shayne told his old friend.

“All right, think of an answer for this. Morgan had two bullets in his brain, Mike. I’ve been around with you plenty. You’re going to have to talk fast to make me believe you wasted bullet number two when number one killed the guy instantly.”

“So?”

“So it reads that you didn’t have hold of the gun at all. You’re covering up for Phyllis. There wasn’t time for her to get out of the apartment before Gentry arrived, so you told her to hide while you took the rap. Hell, Mike!” Rourke raved wildly, “I don’t blame you. The guy probably busted in while Phyl was in bed. She had to shoot him. I don’t doubt that at all. And you’d naturally want to keep her out of the picture. That’s all right, too. But you know me. If that’s the way it was, why not say so? I can pull the zipper on my mouth any old time.”

Shayne hesitated. He said, “You’re going to wish you had gone on and not played detective, Tim.”

Rourke shook his head stubbornly. “The only thing I don’t like is the way you lied to keep Pearson from questioning Phyl. I’d hate to go on thinking there was anything phony about that.”

Shayne’s face was bleak. He said, “I’m getting tired of being called a liar.”

He turned and strode to the closet inside the bedroom. He jerked it open and said, “You might as well come on out now, Helen,” and stepped aside to let Rourke see her emerge from her hiding-place, wearing Phyllis’s blue silk nightgown.

CHAPTER TWELVE

TIMOTHY ROURKE’S EYES bulged when he saw the girl. He took a quick backward step and opened and closed his mouth without saying anything.

Helen was evidently unaware of Shayne’s visitor. She flung herself against the detective, sobbing, “Oh, I’ve been so frightened. Is—is everything all right? Did they believe you about—about Mace?”

Shayne thrust her back against the closet door. “Put on a robe—or something,” he commanded.

“But, sweet,” she pleaded in a whimpering voice. “Why, you’re angry with me. You know I’m all yours—”

Shayne slapped her on the mouth. She cringed away from him, sobbing.

He said, “Come in the living-room when you put on a robe,” and strode away from her, slamming the bedroom door shut.

Rourke stood in the center of the room with his back to Shayne. He was pouring himself a drink. He didn’t turn his head when Shayne walked up behind him and said, “All right. Are you satisfied now?”

Rourke kept on pouring liquor in his glass. The glass ran over, but he kept on pouring.

Shayne grabbed the bottle. “Why don’t you say something?”

Rourke turned troubled eyes to his friend’s face. He shook his head with the tight-lipped explanation, “You wouldn’t want to hear anything I’ve got to say.”

“Go on, say it.” Shayne was breathing hard. “I’m a heel. A lecherous louse with naked women concealed all over the premises.”

Rourke lifted the brimming glass and held it to his lips until it was empty. He muttered, “There’s no use going into things. I’d better be going. I should have gone with Gentry and Pearson.” He took a step toward the door.

Shayne’s hand grabbed his shoulders. Between his teeth, the detective said, “No, you don’t, Tim. You can’t walk out now. You did stay, God damn it. Now you’re going to hear the whole story.”

He swung Rourke back, gave him a shove that sent him down into a chair. The bedroom door opened and Helen came in. She was barefooted, wearing Phyllis’s chenille robe. Dried bloodstains showed on the robe where Phyllis had drawn Shayne’s head against her after the encounter with Leroy and Joe.

Shayne stepped back and said in a tight voice, “Let me present Mrs. Mace Morgan—Timothy Rourke.”

Rourke sagged back and stared at the blond widow. He repeated, “Mrs.—Mace—Morgan,” as though savoring the words and not enjoying the taste of them at all.

Helen stood silently in front of them with eyes downcast. Her face was reddened from Shayne’s sharp slap, yet a strange aura of dignity clung to her as she stood there.

Shayne said, “Sit down.” He rumpled his hair as she lowered herself into a chair and folded her hands in her lap. He got out a cigarette and stabbed it at his mouth with his gaze fixed on Rourke.

In a hushed tone, Rourke said, “Mace Morgan’s—wife.”

“Mace Morgan’s widow,” Shayne corrected. He got the cigarette between his lips and put fire to it, his brooding gaze still upon Rourke’s face.

“But she’s—Good God, Mike! Gentry and Pearson must be combing the town for her right now. She’s—she may be the key to the whole thing.”

Shayne nodded somberly. His nostrils widened and smoke trailed from them. He grunted, “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s the key to a lot of unpleasant things.”

“And you let them walk out of here without telling them—” Rourke stopped and swallowed hard.

“It would have been a sweet mess if I had told them,” Shayne argued.

Rourke was just beginning to absorb the full impact of the girl’s identity, of her presence in the apartment wearing only a nightgown. His jaw sagged and his expression became uncertain. “Yeh,” he muttered. Then: “Gentle Jesus—that was her husband.”

Shayne’s lips twitched away from his teeth. “That was her husband lying dead on the floor, Tim,” he finished for his friend. “Does that spell out any of the right words for you?”

Rourke nodded. His uncertainty was swept away by a look of revulsion. “She did it, Mike. I wasn’t so far wrong in my theory about you not wasting two bullets when one would have done the job.”

Shayne made a savage gesture of dismissal. “What difference does it make which one of us blasted him? Can you see my trying to explain this setup to Will Gentry? You know how he is about Phyl—how it would look to anybody. You’ve covered enough sex crimes in your time. This was, outwardly, the apex of all perfect sex crimes. Not a detail missing. Beautiful wife in another man’s bed with the outraged husband intent on avenging his honor. Hell, Tim, we’d both be locked up this minute if I let them get a gander at Helen.”

Rourke shuddered and closed his eyes. He put both hands over his face. Helen leaned forward and started to speak, but Shayne kept her silent with a warning glance. He watched Rourke warily, sensing the struggle that was going on inside of him.

After a time Rourke took his hands from his face. He was haggard, looked years older than when Shayne had opened the closet door and told Helen to come out. He wet his lips and began talking in a monotone without looking at Shayne.

“I’ve known you a long time, Mike. I’ve admired you. I’ve liked your ability to pull yourself out of tight holes. I’ve played ball with you when things looked damned black—when I had to take you on faith.” He paused, wetting his lips again.

“And you’ve never regretted it. You’ve had your headlines and they’ve been right,” Shayne reminded him.

“No. I’ve never regretted it,” Rourke admitted. “I’ve watched you play fast and loose with the law and with every outward appearance of honesty and decency, and you’ve always come out on top. But this is different, Mike. This isn’t cops-and-robbers stuff. Every minute they waste trying to find this woman may be vitally important. You took advantage of Will Gentry’s friendship, of his faith in you, to get them out of here without seeing her—and you tried to get rid of me, too.”

Shayne argued, “But you can see the spot I was in. If I shot Mace Morgan—an escaped convict—in self-defense—that was one thing. There won’t be any questions asked. But you know what would have happened if they had found her here. That changed everything. I’d never beat that rap, Tim.”

“Maybe not,” Rourke agreed huskily. He took a long drink of cognac and went on. “But this is war. You’re one man, Mike. Do you think your personal problem is important when weighed against the lives of a nation? From the way Pearson told it, that’s how important those secret plans are to our country. Remember the troopship that was torpedoed last week? Twelve hundred men lost. Those plans may be the remedy to stop submarines. This thing is bigger than you or me, Mike. It’s bigger than any one man.” Rourke took another drink and continued his impassioned plea. “You can’t block it, Mike. You can’t hold out information that might help Pearson recover the plans so vital for our defense.”

“Isn’t it about time to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner’?” Shayne asked wearily. “Phyl saved the words out of the paper last Sunday.”

Rourke’s lean features hardened. “I know you’ve always pretended to laugh at such things, Mike. Patriotism, decency, honor. But I’ve always thought that was just a hard-boiled pose. I’ve always believed that, deep inside, you were decent and honorable.”

“Now we should have a flag to wave,” Shayne said ironically.

“Now, by God, I’m beginning to wonder if it was all a pose,” Rourke continued shakily. “It’s an ugly feeling, Mike. A nasty, crawling sensation inside of me that I’m ashamed to talk about. But—there it is.” Rourke finished off his drink and made a gesture of disgusted dismissal.

Shayne’s gaunt and swollen features twitched. He dropped into a chair. “You’re taking a lot for granted, Tim, and you’re half drunk.”

“What?” Rourke lifted himself from his chair by pushing on the arms, then settled back.

“The importance of the stolen plans,” Shayne said. “All we have, actually, is Pearson’s unsupported word. Isn’t it possible that he’s exaggerating the whole thing—subconsciously perhaps—just to make himself appear important?”

“You’ve always sneered at the FBI. A lot of people have. Called them rah-rah boys. But it’s an unfair prejudice. Personally, I was impressed by Pearson.”

Shayne nodded. “All right. Granting the importance of the stolen plans—how do you know this woman is important to the investigation? You’re taking it for granted that she was working with Morgan—had his piece of the claim check in her possession. I admit I don’t know. But we can find out.”

He swung to his feet and brushed past Helen into the bedroom. She turned her head to watch him. Both men had been acting as if she were not there, had treated her as though she were an inanimate object to be discussed with strict impersonality.

Shayne came back carrying the clothes she had taken off. He dumped them on the floor in front of the reporter. “Go through her stuff yourself. If the thing is there I won’t lift a finger to stop you from telephoning Gentry.”

Rourke shook out the dress and underthings. He examined her slippers as he had seen Pearson examine Morgan’s shoes, then tossed them all down with an oath. “All right. It isn’t here.”

Shayne said, “There you are.” He nudged the pile of clothing toward Helen with his toe. “Go into the bedroom and get dressed.” He turned back to Rourke as the girl started to speak. She compressed her lips and gathered up her clothes, went into the bedroom, and closed the door.

“Does that save me from being branded a traitor?” Shayne asked. He reached for the bottle and held it over Rourke’s glass.

“You haven’t proved anything,” Rourke argued. “She probably knows where it’s hidden. At least she could take the police to Morgan’s hide-out.”

“All right.” Shayne nodded affably. “As soon as she gets dressed we’ll take her down to headquarters and let Gentry and Pearson go to work on her. I’m not trying to throw a monkey wrench into the works,” he went on earnestly. “All in God’s world I wanted was to get that girl dressed and out of this apartment before I had a murder rap hung around my neck.”

Rourke mumbled, “Maybe I was too quick on the trigger. But it burned me up to think you’d hold out a clue on the sort of thing Pearson is trying to run down.” He hesitated, then asked awkwardly, “What’s the real dope on your tie-up with it? What was Morgan’s wife doing here—in a nightgown?”

Shayne grimaced. “That was her idea. She was trying to talk me into doing something I didn’t like, and she had an idea she could be a lot more persuasive in bed.”

“What was she after, Mike?”

The bedroom door opened behind Shayne. He pretended not to notice Helen’s entrance. “She wanted me to get rid of her husband for her.”

Rourke choked over his drink. He rounded his eyes at Helen. “I don’t get it,” he ejaculated.

“That was before I’d heard Pearson’s story on the FBI angle,” Shayne explained. “She was here when Gentry phoned and I told her to get into the bedroom and stay out of sight.” He continued to ignore Helen, went on as though he didn’t know she was listening.

“When she undressed and got in bed I thought maybe it was a simple symptom of nymphomania. Now, I don’t know. The way Morgan turned up on the dot and caught her looks as though she might have planned it that way. It certainly worked if she did plan it. Morgan’s dead—and I’m officially marked down as his killer. She’s rid of her husband—and in the clear.”

“You beast! To even think such things!” Helen took a long step to the side of his chair and spat out the words. Her hands were curved into claws, long nails reaching for his face.

Shayne laughed shortly and caught both her wrists in one big hand. “Don’t waste time pretending to be shocked. You could have planned it that way. You wanted Mace out of the way badly enough.”

She struggled to free herself, sobbing with rage. He gave her a shove that sent her reeling back, and remarked to Rourke, “I’m always suspicious of a floozie who crawls into a man’s bed without an invitation.”

Rourke nodded. He said, “We’re wasting time. We ought to turn her over to Gentry and Pearson. They’ll sweat the truth out of her.”

Shayne said, “Sure. Let’s take her down to headquarters. We’ll think up a story about how we managed to get hold of her so fast. Just say she came here looking for Mace. That’ll sound okay.”

“What about her? If she tells them the truth—”

“That’s the last thing she will tell,” Shayne said scornfully. “With Mace dead—”

He was interrupted by a knock on the door. He got up and opened it to admit a uniformed Western Union messenger. The lad asked, “Mr. Shayne?” looking from him to Rourke.

The redhead said, “I’m Shayne.” He took a plain white envelope from the boy’s hand. He got between the boy and the door as he ripped the envelope open and took out a folded sheet of paper.

The message was typed. There was no salutation or signature. It said:

We’ve got your wife where we want her. We’ll trade for the strip of cardboard she says you got from Jim Lacy. We’re not fooling and you’d better not if you want to see her alive again. Put a personal ad in the morning HERALD saying “Okay. M.S.” and you’ll hear from us again.

Shayne read the message without change of expression. He caught the messenger’s arm and demanded, “Where did you get this?”

“Fellow stopped me on Flagler. Gave me a buck to bring it up to this here apartment.”

“What did he look like?”

“I didn’t even get a good look at him,” the lad said, frightened by Shayne’s harsh interrogation. “He was inside the arcade where it was dark and he called to me as I was passing by.”

Shayne let go of his arm and stood aside. The boy went away.

Shayne closed the door and stood staring at it, the typewritten threat hanging lax in his fingers. Rourke came over and took the paper from his fingers while Shayne went on gazing at the door, staring fixedly, as though he were seeing through and far beyond the wooden barrier.

Rourke read the note and whistled shrilly. He crumpled it in his hand and began cursing Shayne in a low tone of fury.

Shayne turned his head and looked at Rourke as if he looked at a complete stranger.

Rourke panted, “This washes you up, Mike. You lied from the beginning. You’ve got Lacy’s piece of the claim check.”

Shayne nodded and said dully, “Yeh, I’ve got it.”

Rourke stood before him on wide-spread legs. “I’m not going to dirty my mouth with what I think of you,” he told the detective bitterly. “Get out of my way. I don’t want to be defiled by touching you as I go out.”

Shayne lifted shaggy red eyebrows. “Aren’t you being a trifle melodramatic?”

“Melodramatic?” Rourke’s voice trembled. “You’d play ball with the devil himself if you smelled a cent of profit in the transaction. I’m through listening to your lies. Get out of my way.”

Shayne didn’t move from the door. He asked, “Where are you going?”

“To Pearson.”

Shayne wet his lips. “Did you read that note?”

“I read it.”

“Do you realize what it means? They’ve got Phyllis.”

“And you’ve got the one piece of cardboard that’s between a foreign spy ring and the plans of an important American military secret.”

Shayne nodded. “I’ve got what they have to have. It’s my only ace. Phyllis will be safe as long as I keep it. If you tell Pearson and I’m forced to give it up—” Shayne left the rest of the sentence unsaid.

Rourke was breathing hard. He said, “Phyllis wouldn’t want to pay that price to keep on living. She’d hate you forever, Mike, if you bargained with those rats.”

Shayne said, “You don’t know what you’re saying, Tim. We’re talking about Phyllis. My wife.”

“She’s one woman,” Rourke told him quietly. “One woman who happens to be married to you. Other wives are dying tonight. All over the world. Being blown to bits by bombs. The husbands and the sons of other women are dying by thousands. If you think Phyl would appreciate—”

“I’m not thinking about Phyl,” Shayne interrupted gruffly. “I’m thinking about myself.”

Rourke’s lip curled upward. “Get out of my way.”

Shayne stood solidly in front of the door. “Can’t I say anything to change your mind?”

“Nothing. I’ve heard enough lies. I wouldn’t be able to believe a word you said now. I’m going to Pearson.”

Shayne said, “I’m sorry, Tim.” He sighed and stepped aside. “If you won’t listen to reason—”

Rourke said, “None of your reasons interest me.” He started through the door.

Shayne swung his right fist in a looping uppercut. It struck the point of Rourke’s chin. The reporter tottered backward and went down to the floor.

Shayne stepped over him and went into the bedroom. He called the want-ad desk of the Miami Herald and ordered a personal advertisement inserted in the morning paper: Okay. Plus one grand. M.S.

He came back to the living-room and poured a drink. He did not look at Helen or at the unconscious figure of Timothy Rourke lying in front of the door.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

HELEN STARTED TO SPEAK, but he shut her up with an angry, “You got me into this mess. Keep your mouth shut while I think my way out.”

She bit her lip and subsided into silence. Shayne sat without moving for a long time, then sighed and took Murphy’s second telegram from his pocket. He smoothed it out and read it again, seeking some new significance in the light of the story he had just heard from Pearson.

Pearson hadn’t mentioned that Jim Lacy was the victim in the holdup that had sent Mace Morgan to prison. Perhaps he didn’t know—or thought it an unimportant detail.

But it seemed terrifically important to Shayne. If Lacy and Morgan had worked together stealing a government secret only a couple of days before the robbery—why had Morgan turned on his partner immediately afterward?

To Shayne, a more plausible explanation was that Morgan had not turned on Lacy—that the holdup had been another partnership deal between the two men. It wasn’t a new wrinkle in the annals of crime. There were plenty cases of collusion between a crooked messenger carrying a large sum of money and a confederate who pretended to hold him up. In fact, when the sum of money was particularly large as in this case, there had to be a tip-off somewhere along the line.

But this holdup had backfired. Instead of getting away with the swag, Morgan had been caught and sentenced. Shayne wondered whether Lacy had testified at the trial—whether he had identified Morgan on the witness stand. The answer to that might be the answer to a lot of things.

The telephone called him into the bedroom while he was still musing over a lot of diverse possibilities.

The desk clerk reported the arrival of a telegram. Shayne told him to send it up. He went to the door and tipped the boy who brought it. This was another message from the energetic Murphy in New York:

Charles Worthing reputed wealthy. Divorce case pending New York. Adultery with girl named Helen Brinstead named corespondent. Worthing and Brinstead being seen together openly. For picture of both and full details see page fourteen last Sunday MIRROR photo taken at Stork Club Saturday night.

Shayne folded this telegram with the other one and put them both into his pocket. As he sauntered back to his chair, Helen stamped her foot and demanded:

“Isn’t it time you started telling me something about what’s going on?”

He looked at her with a show of mild surprise. “Why should I?”

“Do you think I’m not half crazy with curiosity? Do you think I’m made of wood? You haven’t told me anything.”

“I didn’t think you were interested in anything—except getting Mace Morgan bumped off. You got that. What the hell more do you want?”

“I want to know what all this mystery is about. Who were those men that came while I was hiding in the closet? Who’s he?” She indicated Rourke lying on the floor. “What did you two mean when you talked about the law wanting me? What were you looking for when you searched my clothing?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I don’t know anything.” She stamped her foot again. “You sit here like a bump on a log acting as if you thought I was deaf and dumb.”

“Didn’t you hear what was said out here while you were in the closet?”

“Only a mumble-jumble that I couldn’t understand. What was in that letter you got from the messenger? Why did your friend go haywire after reading it, and what did he mean by Lacy’s piece of the claim check? What claim check? What’s all this mysterious stuff about the war and spies and stuff?”

Shayne leaned back and crossed his legs in a more comfortable position. “You’re putting on a pretty good act. Are you sure you didn’t do some dramatic bits when you were in the Scandals? You couldn’t get that good just by showing your legs in the chorus.”

“What do you mean by an act?”

“The whole thing,” Shayne growled. “The story you handed me this afternoon.”

Helen’s jaw sagged. The luster went out of her eyes. “You mean about—Charles Worthing?”

“And Helen Brinstead.” Shayne nodded. “That was a gag you and Lacy figured out together over in his hotel room—to provide a logical reason for coming here and persuading me to gun Morgan.”

“What makes you think it was a gag?”

“Your name isn’t Helen Brinstead,” Shayne told her in a reasonable tone. “It was Dalhart before you married Morgan. Why should you want to change it to Brinstead?”

“Oh, that.” She sucked in her lower lip and contrived to look quite innocent and girlish. “I admit it isn’t my real name. I didn’t want to go back to my maiden name after I separated from Mace, so I just, well—tagged on Brinstead for want of something better.

“You’re a fast-on-your-feet, rough-and-tumble liar,” Shayne said. “But you’ll have to really think fast to talk yourself out of this one. How did Helen Brinstead and Charles Worthing get their picture taken at the Stork Club in New York last Saturday night while you were in Miami?”

“How do you know they did?” she asked weakly.

He patted his coat pocket. “The telegram I just got. The picture is printed in Sunday’s Mirror—page fourteen—a two-column spread with all the dirt about Worthing’s divorce and his plan to marry the corespondent. That’s the piece clipped out of the paper lying on Lacy’s bed,” he reminded her. “It’s what gave you the idea for the sob story you thought might work on me.”

Helen Morgan sat with her eyes downcast, pulling and twisting a handkerchief in her lap.

“All right,” she began breathlessly. “It was a lie. But I was frantic, Mr. Shayne. You’ve got to understand that. My life was in danger every minute Mace stayed alive. You’ve got to believe me.” Tears sprang from her lowered lids and ran down her cheeks. She made no effort to check or hide them.

“So you and Lacy thought up that story together—after happening to see the picture and the item in the Mirror?”

“Yes. It—oh, I admit it was a terrible thing to do. But I was desperate. I didn’t know what to do. Jim Lacy was afraid to go up against Mace. If you only knew the agony I’ve been through—” She was sobbing openly now, and she lifted her head to let him see her distorted face.

“And you tried to sucker me into killing Morgan for you. Then, when I was cagey, you figured another out. You came up here and undressed, so when Morgan came I’d be in a jam and either be forced to kill him myself or keep you in the clear if you did it. And it worked out just the way you figured it.”

“No! I swear I didn’t know Mace was coming. That’s a terrible thing to accuse me of.” She shuddered. “As though I’d planned it.”

“Yeh. They call it premeditated murder in front of a jury.”

“I didn’t do that. No matter what you think of me, I didn’t. But when Mace came and caught us—”

Shayne made a savage gesture to shut off her protestations. “That’s beside the point now. It worked out that way whether you planned it or not. Why don’t you turn off the waterworks and tell me the truth about a couple of things for a change?”

She sniffed loudly, trying to dry her tears with a wispy handkerchief. Shayne handed her a big linen handkerchief. He settled back and lit a cigarette, waiting for her to stop crying. When she blew her nose and gulped back a final sob, he asked matter-of-factly:

“Why did you think Mace would kill you if you didn’t get him first?”

“He threatened to. He had a terrible temper.”

“You were going to tell me the truth,” Shayne reminded her. “You were double-crossing him. You and Lacy. He found out about it and crashed out of stir to follow you here. You were afraid to turn him in as an escaped convict because you knew he’d turn canary and spoil the deal you and Lacy were working on together. That’s the way it reads—and that’s the only way it reads.”

Her face screwed up for crying again, but after studying Shayne’s stony features for a moment, she nodded and said, “It was—sort of like that. But I didn’t intend to double-cross Mace. I would have saved his part for him until he got out of jail.”

“But you couldn’t make him believe it?” Shayne prodded her relentlessly.

“No. He—he wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell him I was doing it for him.”

Shayne laughed. “Knew you too well to swallow a lie like that, eh? I suppose he gave you his part of the claim check when they sent him up the river?”

“Yes. He gave it to me to keep for him. But I didn’t know what it was. He wouldn’t tell me—except that it was something important.”

“Where is it now?”

“I don’t know. That is—well, not exactly.”

“What did you do with it?”

She sprang up suddenly, a wild look in her eyes. “Give me a drink,” she begged. “I’ll tell you everything. I know I can trust you. There’s no one else now—with Jim and Mace both dead.”

Shayne poured her a drink in Rourke’s glass, glancing down at Rourke’s limp body as he handed it to her. Rourke’s thin lips purled out at regular intervals, making a soft, snoring sound.

Helen seized the glass avidly, slopping some of the cognac as she raised it to her lips. She drank half of it in two gulps, then sputtered, and her eyes watered. But the strong potion gave her a lift, and her voice was quiet and resolute as she began her story.

“Like I said, I didn’t know what the little strip of cardboard was when Mace gave it to me to keep for him. He thought he’d draw a short rap, but they hung a five-to-eight on him. Well, I didn’t think much about it—I couldn’t make out what the parts of words and figures meant—until a couple of weeks ago.

“Then a man came to see me in New York. His name was Harry Houseman. He said Mace had sent him. He’d been Mace’s cellmate and was just released after doing his time. He said I was to give him the piece of cardboard—that Mace had said for me to. So I did.”

“For how much?” Shayne asked caustically.

She widened her eyes. “What?”

“How much did you get for it?”

“What makes you think—”

“You’re not the type to pass it over for nothing. You knew it must be valuable. How much did you charge Houseman?”

Color spread over her face. She took another drink of cognac, then said defiantly, “Well, why not? Sure, I knew it must be valuable. I deserved anything I could get out of Mace. God knows he never supported me. Most of the time I had to support him. And he didn’t leave me a dime to live on—”

“Don’t justify yourself to me,” Shayne interrupted impatiently. “How much did Houseman pay you?”

“A thousand dollars. And he haggled about it for two days. The lug. He swore it wasn’t worth that much.”

“One grand?” Shayne whistled. “You evidently didn’t know what it represented.”

“No. That’s what Jim said. Jim Lacy. He came around a couple of days later raving about me practically giving it away. That was the first time I knew—that Lacy knew anything about it. And he hadn’t known until then that Mace had left it with me.”

“Houseman had gone to Lacy to arrange the payoff,” Shayne surmised.

“That’s right. That’s exactly the way it was. Well, Jim said I might as well come down to Miami with him and maybe I could persuade Houseman to give me a bigger split—or we might work on him together—refuse to go in with him unless he agreed to take a smaller cut. Like Jim said, Houseman really didn’t deserve any of it. He’d just horned in and sold me a bill of goods.”

“And Houseman’s in Miami, too?” Shayne asked softly.

“Yes. He’s here.”

“Where?”

“I—why should I tell you everything?” Helen suddenly became defiant. “How do I know you won’t take the whole thing into court?”

“You don’t.”

“Well, then—”

“You’re out anyway,” Shayne argued. “What have you got to lose? You’re on the outside. Lacy’s dead—”

“And you’ve got Lacy’s piece,” she charged. “I heard you admit it to your friend there.”

“Maybe I have. Tell me where I can find Houseman and I’ll see if I can fix a deal with him.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“I tell you, you’re out in the cold. Hell, I covered you in Morgan’s murder. Isn’t that enough?”

“I can’t live on that.”

“You’ll keep on living,” Shayne reminded her. “Which is more than you might have done if I’d turned you over to the law tonight.”

“But that’s already done,” she pointed out. “You can’t change your story now. And it’d be just about as tough on you as on me if you did tell the truth.”

“So,” said Shayne slowly, “I don’t get any credit for that?”

“Credit?” She spoke with a strident note of scorn. “You can have all the credit you want. All I’m interested in is the cash.”

Shayne studied her for a moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t need your information. Houseman has already come to me. He had to.”

Helen hesitated, turning the glass around in her fingers. “That advertisement I heard you phone to the paper—was that it?”

Shayne nodded.

“You’re a fool if you sell out for a thousand,” she cried.

“You sold him Mace’s part for that.”

“But that was before I knew what it was worth. Can’t you see that you’ve got Houseman where you want him? He’ll pay ten—maybe fifty times a thousand if you hold out.”

“I’m not in a position to hold out,” Shayne said tonelessly. “He’s got my wife.”

“Your wife? You mean—”

“So he’s got me where he wants me, too,” Shayne explained. “I took a chance by demanding a grand extra—a little something to pay expenses.”

She looked tragically disappointed. “You’re a fool if you don’t collect big. Suppose he has got your wife? She’s no good to him.”

“Except to make me come across.”

“Oh, he’ll bluff with her, of course. But you can bluff right back. All you’ve got to do is make him believe you don’t care what happens to your wife. That won’t be hard for you. You know what they say about you in Miami—that you’d sell your own mother out for enough money.”

Shayne’s gaunt features tightened. “Yes,” he admitted. “I know that’s what they say about me.” He frowned, then asked, “What about the third man in the deal?”

Her hands stopped twisting the handkerchief in her lap. They started again after lying quiet for a moment. “What about him?” she asked with seeming casualness, but Shayne was aware of a note of caution in her voice.

“Is he here—ready to co-operate with us?” Shayne asked.

“I don’t know anything about him.”

“You weren’t going to lie to me,” Shayne reminded her once more.

“I’m not lying. I’ve told you all I know.”

“Who killed Lacy?”

“I don’t know that either. Houseman, I suppose. Or he had it done. He wanted to horn in and take all the profits.” She drained her glass and got up. “I’d better be going.”

Shayne stayed in his chair. “Where?”

“To my apartment.”

“The local law,” Shayne warned her, “will likely have that joint covered by this time. They’re going to ask you a lot of questions if they find you.”

She hesitated. Her lips trembled piteously and her eyes were downcast. “I suppose—you don’t want me to stay here?”

“And have you found here—after I’m supposed to have killed your husband tonight? Some women,” said Shayne wearily, “have the damnedest ideas.”

“I guess it would look—funny.”

“Have you got any money?”

“A little.” She clutched her bag nervously.

“Better go to a hotel under an assumed name. The Tidewater is right down the street. Clean rooms at three bucks a throw. Register as—Ann Adams,” Shayne directed. “And stay in your room. I’ve got enough to do without worrying about you. I’ll get in touch with you as soon as anything breaks.”

She sidled up to him as he sat in his chair. She timidly touched his shoulder. “Don’t forget what I told you about bluffing Houseman. He’ll pay plenty if you make him. And when he does, don’t forget who put you wise.”

Shayne said, “Beat it to the Tidewater. I won’t forget. If you’ve got anything coming after this is all over, you can trust me to see that you get it.”

“I’ll have to trust you. I feel that I can trust you now. You’re the first man I ever felt that way about.”

Shayne grunted. “Swell. I’m all puffed up with pride over your opinion of me.” He continued to sit in his chair without looking at the girl, and after waiting a moment she went to the door and let herself out quietly.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

AFTER HELEN HAD LEFT the apartment Shayne sat in the same position for a long time. Then he got up and went over to Rourke. The reporter was still breathing with the even cadence of the unconscious.

Shayne sighed and lifted the limp body in his arms. He carried Rourke into the bedroom and stretched him out on the bed, got a roll of adhesive tape from the bathroom, and taped his mouth shut firmly. He then bound his wrists tightly to his sides, fastened his feet together to one of the bed posts, and carefully moved the telephone table away from the bed as far as the cord allowed.

When the job was completed to his satisfaction, Shayne took a belted trench coat from the closet, tugged a hat down over his unruly red hair, and went out of the apartment.

He walked down one flight of stairs and unlocked the door of his office. Everything was in order, as he and Phyllis had left it that afternoon.

He closed the door and went to his wife’s desk, lifted a corner of the typewriter pad. The piece of claim check lay where he had placed it.

He picked it up and studied it with furrowed brow. Torn irregularly on both sides, this was the center portion of a baggage receipt. But he saw, now, that it was no more than half of a center portion. If it had been torn into three pieces as Pearson said, Lacy’s third should have been twice as long as this piece.

Still, he saw at once this was the most important half. It had been torn directly below the row of identifying figures making up the serial number which was the only means by which a piece of baggage could be claimed by its owner.

He closed his eyes for a moment, bringing back into focus that first scene in his office which had started the case off with a bang. He had withdrawn Lacy’s left hand from his coat pocket, discovered this small piece of cardboard tightly clenched in the dead man’s fingers. No portion of it had showed until he spread Lacy’s fingers apart.

Shayne nodded his head with satisfaction. That doubtless explained the missing bottom part, and explained, too, why Leroy and Joe had permitted Lacy to escape from them on the causeway without getting what they were after. They must have snatched the strip from Lacy’s fingers, but only succeeded in tearing off the bottom half. In their hurry, they did not realize that Lacy had retained the portion with the all-important serial numbers, and allowed him to drive on—thinking he was so badly wounded he would surely die before he got very far.

That was guesswork, but it fitted the facts as Shayne knew them. And it cleared up a point that had been puzzling him all evening—why a pair of tough killers like Leroy and Joe had let Lacy remain alive without finishing their obvious assignment.

He put the piece of cardboard back where it had been. That seemed as good a hiding-place as any for the moment.

Outside, Shayne rolled both front windows of his car down when he got behind the wheel. The air of the new-born day was soothing, almost soporific, as he rolled slowly north through the deserted business section of the city. It swept the maggots of worry from his mind, pleasantly eased the tension inside him. Even the fact that Phyllis was helpless in the hands of ruthless killers seemed not nearly so oppressive as it had a couple of hours previously. He was beginning to get his finger on the pulse of the baffling case and there was no action he could take until he received the answer to his advertisement in the morning Herald.

He lolled back against the cushion and welcomed the feeling of relaxation, yet at the same time he sensed an inner revolt against it. It was dangerous, this lulling of a man’s faculties. It was an insidious component of the drowsy tropical night, a virus that got into a man’s blood if he was long exposed to the deadly surface placidity of life in the resort city.

Shayne knew it was an unhealthy state of mind, yet he was as guilty as any of the other residents who refused to face the reality of war. Tonight, while listening to Pearson’s story of spies and secret weapons, it had all seemed a little absurd and fantastic. Rourke’s impassioned pleading that he forget the danger to Phyllis and serve a larger cause had left him untouched.

Shayne didn’t enjoy admitting that accusation against himself, but he could not deny it was true. It was the lethargic state of mind that the semitropics induced in a man, he told himself, and he was no better than the others who came to bask in the sun and the sea and escape the grim responsibilities of citizenship.

He was scowling darkly when he parked in front of the News Tower on Biscayne Boulevard. It was up to him, now, to justify the course of action he had chosen for himself in the face of terrific pressure from Will Gentry and Tim Rourke.

Nominally an evening paper, the News put out a noon edition, and when Shayne got off the elevator on the floor housing the city desk and editorial staff, it was already beginning to hum with a new day’s activity.

He sauntered in and nodded to a couple of rewrite men, was nearing an arched doorway marked Library when an irritated voice hailed him from behind. “Hey. Mike! Shayne.”

He turned and lifted a hand in greeting to a dyspeptic-looking man in his shirt sleeves. He said, “Hi, Grange,” and went toward the desk in response to a beckoning finger.

Grange wore a perpetual scowl that was the dual derivative of chronic indigestion and having to depend upon irresponsible reporters to help him get the paper out. His scowl was more pronounced than usual when Shayne rested an elbow on his belittered desk and inquired solicitously, “Something you et, Grange?”

“No, I feel fine. Never felt better in my life. Where’s Rourke? What’s he doing? Who the hell does he think he is?”

Shayne turned to survey the room in mock surprise. “You mean Tim isn’t here?”

“What else do you think I mean? Gentry told me Tim was with you. Maybe I’d better call headquarters again and—”

“I wouldn’t bother Gentry,” Shayne interposed. “That is, it wouldn’t get you anywhere. I happen to know Tim’s on the trail of a story. Something really hot. I wouldn’t worry if he doesn’t call in. You know how Tim is.”

“Yeh. I know how Tim is.” He pounded an authoritative fist on a pile of papers. “Are you covering for him, Mike? If he’s drunk again—”

“He’s not drunk. He was pretty well tied up when I left him, and he’s likely to stay that way until the story breaks.”

“Working with you?” Grange asked suspiciously.

“In a manner of speaking, yes. This is big stuff, and it ties in with the death of Jim Lacy yesterday.”

“The bird that kicked off on your threshold?” Grange grabbed a pencil and wad of copy paper. “Give.”

“Nix.” Shayne backed away, shaking his head. “It’s strictly off-the-record right now. You can trust Rourke to cover it as fast as it breaks.”

Grange grunted sourly. “The only thing I can trust Rourke to cover is any female who stumbles in his path.” He continued to regard the redhead with suspicion. “Give me enough of it so I’ll know you’re on the level.”

Shayne kept on backing away and shaking his head. “It’s a military secret right now. Honest to God, Grange. Ask Gentry if you don’t want to believe me.”

He swung around and went into the file-room, said cheerfully, “The top of a fine mornin’ to you, mom,” to a stout middle-aged woman who sat in a rocking-chair plying a pair of steel needles to a ball of wool.

She glanced up without slowing her knitting and snapped, “Don’t think I’m going to put my knitting down just to look up something for the likes of you, Michael Shayne. I drop a stitch every time I let go of the needles, and if I drop many more stitches I’ll end up with a sweater to fit one of those Japs instead of our own boys.”

Shayne grinned and said, “Maybe that’s the secret weapon I’ve been hearing about. Get enough of you women knitting sweaters with freeze holes for the Japs—”

He stopped and backed away as her black eyes flashed angrily. “’Tis a great kidder I am, mom. Pay no heed to me. Where do you keep your current New York file?”

“At the end of the third counter—to three months back.”

“That’s far enough.” He went to the end of the third counter and found the files of the Herald-Tribune and Times bound in monthly batches between stiff paper-covers. He pulled up a stool and selected the Herald-Tribune, turned back two months, and began scanning the daily headlines.

He went through four issues before coming on the headline he was looking for: Daring Daylight Robbery.

He hunched forward and ran over the account of the holdup. Jim Lacy, bank messenger for a well-known brokerage firm—attacked in broad daylight by a lone gunman—knocked to the pavement by a single blow that rendered him groggy—Lacy could give the police only a hazy description of his assailant.

There was nothing in the account to either prove or disprove Shayne’s half-formed suspicion of collusion. The gunman had been resourceful and well prepared, equipped with a pair of heavy steel shears with which he snipped the chain handcuffing the money bag to Lacy’s wrist. Then, menacing onlookers with a gun, he commandeered a taxicab and disappeared in the afternoon traffic.

Shayne turned to the next issue. A photograph of Mace Morgan confronted him on the front page. The cutline read, Identified as Holdup.

Shayne read the account of Mace Morgan’s capture carefully. He had been arrested in a rooming-house a few hours after the robbery as the result of a tip from an anonymous telephone call. He had vehemently denied any knowledge of the crime and attempted to prove an alibi, but it was checked and disproved by the police. None of the loot nor any physical evidence to connect him with the crime was found, but he was positively identified in a police line-up by three eyewitnesses. Lacy, confronted by Morgan, thought it might be the right man.

A lot of newspaper space was devoted to the large sum of cash and unregistered securities Lacy had been carrying when he was robbed. The total was slightly over one hundred thousand dollars according to figures furnished by his employers. The junior member of the firm had been hastily recalled by telegraph while en route to a vacation cruise in the Caribbean, and it was reported that his wife was bearing up well under the disappointment of having her trip canceled. The wife was a prominent member of the Junior League, and her reactions had made a good human interest story. There were printed reassurances from the brokerage firm that the loss was fully covered by Lacy’s bond, and that none of their clients need worry about the firm’s solvency.

Shayne lit a cigarette after reading the concurrent stories. There was nothing at all to indicate definitely whether Lacy had or had not been in cahoots with Morgan. Yet someone had fingered the job for Morgan. A hundred grand was an extraordinary sum for a bank messenger to be carrying. It was hardly coincidence that Morgan had chosen that particular afternoon for his daring robbery.

Yet that wasn’t a definite clue to Lacy’s participation either, for Shayne knew it was often a firm’s policy to keep its messengers in ignorance of the value of the parcels they carried, simply to prevent what he suspected in this case.

He turned the bound pages back slowly to an issue several days earlier than the robbery. Pearson had said the government plans were stolen two days before Morgan committed the holdup. To be on the safe side, Shayne went back four issues. He read through the complete papers carefully without finding any mention of any such loss in a government plant.

He cursed himself with mild exasperation when he finished wading through the many pages of newsprint. He knew damned well he wouldn’t find anything. With the country at war, there would be strict censorship over such news. The government couldn’t be expected to publicize the loss of an important military secret.

He hesitated for a time, sucking smoke into his lungs and weighing one angle against another in his mind.

After careful consideration of the known facts, he turned to the issue of the preceding week and began a careful study of less important local news items, quite sure that the story he sought had not been important enough to make front-page headlines at a time when American ships were being torpedoed up and down both coastlines.

He paused to glance through half a dozen accounts of burglaries and allied crimes in the great city before he found the one he was looking for: a two-column story on the second page, dated six days previously.

At 11:00 p.m., when returning to their Fifth Avenue apartment from the theater, the socially prominent Mr. and Mrs. J. Winthrop Barton had been accosted at the door by an armed thug wearing a handkerchief over the lower part of his face as a mask. He gruffly ordered them inside, promptly disposed of the lady with a handkerchief doused in chloroform, and threatened her husband with death unless he opened the small wall safe and gave up his valuables.

Mr. Barton had complied with proper celerity, explaining to the police later that the safe held only a moderate amount of cash, which the masked intruder had seized, departing immediately and without causing further trouble.

A set of fingerprints had been conveniently left on the doorknob, and from them the thief had been identified as one Harry Houseman, possessor of a long police record under many aliases, lately a guest of the State of New York at Ossining. Police promised an early arrest of Houseman, and there the affair ended as far as its publicity value was concerned.

After glancing through the next few issues to assure himself that the promise of “an early arrest” had borne no further fruit, Shayne closed the file and went out past the lady with her knitting, leaving a cheerful, “Thanks, mom,” behind him.

As he strolled out, he asked Grange, “Any report from Tim yet?” and received a blasphemous negative reply.

“And if you see that double-jointed no-good,” Grange bellowed, “tell him he’d better turn in a story before we go to press—and not one about pink elephants and mauve lizards.”

“I’ll probably run into him,” Shayne said with a wide grin. “And I’ll deliver your message if he’s in any condition to listen to it.”

He went out, took the elevator to the ground floor, and got into his car as the first faint streaks of crimson on the horizon preceded the rising sun.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

SHAYNE STOPPED on the corner of Flagler Street and bought a newly printed Herald from a yawning newsboy. He drove on to his hotel and went into the lobby, pausing to fold the newspaper back to the advertising section.

His advertisement was near the bottom of a short row of Personals. He tugged at the lobe of his left ear as he read the printed words. With his fountain pen he made a conspicuous ring around the one-line advertisement, then went to the desk and got a large envelope. He put the Herald inside, leaving it folded open at the marked advertisement, printed an address on the envelope, and gave it to the clerk with instructions to call a messenger and have it delivered at once.

Upstairs, he hesitated just inside the door of his apartment, listening for sounds from the bedroom. While he heard nothing from Rourke, he crossed the room and stopped in the bedroom doorway.

Timothy Rourke lay twisted up at the foot of the bed in a position which showed he had been unsuccessfully trying to make his finger tips reach the cord binding his feet to the bedpost. His eyes glared up at Shayne with a blaze of frustrated fury. His throat muscles worked spasmodically, but only a faint mumble was audible past the efficient taping job Shayne had done on his mouth.

Shayne took off his hat and angrily ruffled his red hair. He said, “God damn it, Tim, why do you make me do this to you? If you’ll agree to listen to reason I’ll let you up from there.”

Rourke shook his head violently.

“You’re a stubborn fool,” Shayne expostulated in a reasonable tone. “I’ve just been talking to Grange. He’s pretty sore because you haven’t showed up on the job.”

Rourke lay back and stared at him. He was breathing heavily through distended nostrils.

“I told Grange you were working with me on an important story,” Shayne went on cheerfully. “I fixed it with him so I don’t believe he’ll fire you this time.”

He stepped forward to sit on the edge of the bed, complaining, “Quit looking at me like that. It’s giving me the jumps. Damn it, Tim, if you’ll promise to listen to me—give me a chance to explain—”

Again Rourke shook his head violently.

“All right,” said Shayne, “even if you have decided I’m a complete heel and you won’t throw in with me—there’s no need for you to stay tied up like this. The whole thing will be over in a few hours—one way or another. All you have to do is give me your word you won’t interfere while I handle it my own way. I’ll untie you and we’ll have a drink together like a couple of rational human beings. Don’t be a sap,” he went on violently while Rourke continued to shake his head negatively. “You can’t do anything to stop me. It’s going to happen my way whether you like it or not. You might as well be comfortable while it’s happening.”

When Rourke’s headshaking became more rapid and determined, the detective sighed and got up. “All right. Go on and be a martyr. I’m going to have a drink—and some coffee.”

He examined the tape and cord on Rourke’s feet and hands, then went out of the bedroom without looking back at him. Daylight was streaming in the east window, making the electric light look yellow by comparison, giving the littered room an unhealthy appearance.

Shayne crossed to the table and emptied the cognac bottle into a glass. He tasted it and grimaced, walked to the window with the glass in his hand, and looked out over the mouth of the Miami River and Biscayne Bay.

The lush green of tropical shrubbery and the shimmery blue of placid bay water were as beautiful in the morning light as they had ever been, but Shayne found something repugnant in the scene he had hitherto admired. He took another sip of the evil-tasting liquor and fretfully wondered what was the matter with him. A feeling of revulsion and of craving was queerly blended inside him.

He had been content here in Miami for a good many years. Now, irrationally, he knew it could no longer be. It was not easy to analyze the sensation, quite impossible to justify it, but he recognized a recurrence of an inward urge that had kept him on the move during an adventurous past—an urge that was stronger than reason, that had kept him jumping from one job to another while he sought something that always eluded him.

He had believed that phase was ended after he settled down to a private practice in Miami—and after meeting Phyllis Brighton. Here was what he had been seeking, reason told him, a niche into which he fitted at last. His practice in Miami had given him the danger and action he had to have, with a sense of satisfaction each time a particularly difficult case was written off the books on the profit side.

Now he knew he had been a fool to think that his restlessness was a passing phase, to hope it could ever end for him. He had been determined that marriage should change him, but now he knew nothing could change him.

He moodily emptied his glass and found the taste of cognac good again. The round red rim of the sun was rising above the tiled rooftops of Miami Beach and the long night was ended.

He turned away from the window and went into the kitchen, drew a pot of hot water and put it on to boil, dumped a lot of coffee in the drip pot, and sauntered back into the living-room, consciously refraining from looking into the bedroom in order to avoid Tim Rourke’s accusing eyes.

He whistled a tuneless melody as he gathered up the empty liquor bottle and soiled glasses, emptied overflowing ash trays, setting the room in order for Phyllis’s return.

He heard the water boiling and went into the kitchen to pour it over the coffee in the dripolator. He took down an oversized china mug from a shelf and waited until the water gurgled through, then filled it to the brim with strong, clear coffee.

He settled himself in the living-room with the cup of coffee on the arm of his chair. All sense of unease had left him. He felt alert, yet emotionless. It wouldn’t be much longer. The blue chips were down and he had made his draw. He could do nothing except wait for the message that would mean the showdown had come.

He lit a cigarette and drank his coffee with complete enjoyment, his long frame relaxed and comfortable.

The mug was almost empty when the telephone rang. He went into the bedroom without haste, sat on the edge of the bed, and lifted the telephone without looking at Rourke. He said, “Shayne talking.”

A voice on the wire complained, “Why do you make things tough on yourself, shamus?”

Shayne said, “That’s the way I like things.”

“Well—on your wife, then? You can’t dig an extra grand. We trade even—or not at all.”

Shayne said, “Then we don’t trade.” He replaced the instrument and stood up. His only outward sign of strain was the sweat streaming from his furrowed forehead. He stalked into the living-room and picked up the empty mug, refilled it in the kitchen. The telephone rang again as he carried the full mug into the living-room.

He took time to set it down carefully, then answered the call. “Well?”

The same voice sounded less certain. “All right. I guess you know what that piece of cardboard is worth.”

“I have a fair idea—enough to know that a grand is damned little to ask.”

“Oke. You get Mrs. Shayne and one G. We get the piece of cardboard you lifted from Lacy.”

Shayne said, “Right. But before we do any more talking I’ve got to know that my wife is still in one piece. Put her on so she can tell me she’s all right.”

“I can’t do that, Shayne. Do you think I’d be fool enough to call you from where she is?”

“You’re more of a fool if you think I’ll make a deal without having her tell me herself that you bastards haven’t touched her.”

“I swear she’s all right.”

Shayne laughed harshly into the mouthpiece. “I’ll believe it when she tells me so.”

“But I haven’t got her here.”

“Then get her.” Shayne waited, the lines of strain deepening on his face.

After a long pause, he heard, “It’ll take ten or fifteen minutes.”

Shayne said, “I’ll be waiting,” and hung up. He went back to his coffee.

He smoked a cigarette and finished the second mug of coffee before the telephone rang again. He hurried in and snatched it up. Phyllis’s voice lilted over the wire.

“Darling—I’m all right. They treated me fine.”

“I suppose you’re talking with a gun in your back,” Shayne growled. “Just answer yes if you’re lying to me.”

She said, “No,” promptly. “Everything’s all right, but I feel terrible about them coercing you by threatening me. Don’t do anything—”

Her voice was cut off sharply. In a moment the original speaker asked, “Are you satisfied?”

“That was all I wanted to hear. Now the only thing is to arrange how the exchange is to be made.”

“Right.”

“As soon as you deliver Phyllis here safely, you can have what you want.”

His suggestion was met with derisive laughter. “I’d be a sucker to fall for that.”

“And I,” said Shayne, “would be a sucker to let go of it before my wife is home safely.”

“Neither of us is going to trust the other,” the voice on the wire agreed. “So, we meet some place. Me with your wife and you with your end. That’s the only way to do it.”

“And you with your two gunsels,” Shayne scoffed. “No soap, Gorstmann.”

“What did you call me?”

“Your name. The one you’re using here in Miami, at any rate.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Hell,” said Shayne wearily, “we’re wasting a lot of time talking in circles. Here’s the way it’s going to be. You set a time when you can deliver Phyl here to the apartment. I’ll leave here fifteen minutes before the time you say—”

“With the piece of cardboard?” Gorstmann asked.

“Yes. It’ll be in my pocket. But I’ll be in the open with lots of people around and it won’t be healthy for you to get any funny ideas about taking it off me.”

He paused for a moment, then went on persuasively. “Suppose I go down to the F.E.C. depot? That’ll be handy for you after I turn the piece of claim check over to you. I’ll leave a note in the apartment for Phyl giving her the number of one of the station pay telephones. I’ll be waiting at that booth, and the moment she phones to say she’s here, safe, with one grand in hand—then I’ll hand over what you want. You can have me covered while I wait at the depot for her call.”

“That’s giving you all the breaks. How do I know you’ll come across after she calls?”

“You don’t,” Shayne agreed promptly. “You’ve got to take that chance. But I’ll be where you can blast me if I don’t play ball.”

He waited tensely while Gorstmann considered his proposition. Finally, the headwaiter said, “Don’t think you’ll keep on living if you try to pull anything. There’ll be a gun on you all the time.”

“Sure. I expect that. Set your time.”

“Ten o’clock.”

“I’ll leave here on my way to the East Coast depot at nine forty-five.” Shayne dropped the receiver on its prongs and sat for a long moment without moving. His hand shook as he lit a cigarette. His belly muscles were drawn up in a tight knot. He had expected more trouble from Gorstmann. Still, the man had little choice in the matter. As Helen had pointed out, Phyllis was actually worth nothing to her captors. On the other hand, Gorstmann knew that if he forced Shayne’s hand and the detective went to the authorities he would lose everything.

He called Information after a time and got the telephone number of a pay phone at the station—the one nearest the baggage room.

He jotted down the number and went into the living-room, intercepting a look of loathing on Rourke’s face as he passed the foot of the bed.

Shayne got a sheet of paper and wrote:

Phyl: Call this number as soon as you read this. I’ll be at the other end. Call me BEFORE you untie Tim Rourke or untape his mouth. Let him go as soon as you’ve called me.

He signed the note and set it up in a conspicuous place on the table where it would be the first thing she would see upon entering the door.

He still had a long time to wait before the curtain went up on the last act. He paced back and forth restlessly, filled with torturing doubts, now that the die was cast.

If he was wrong—but he couldn’t be. There was only one definite pattern into which all the facts fitted. True, there were still a few facts missing. He could fill most of them in by guesswork. But there was one point he didn’t like to guess about. He needed a telegram from the fingerprint division of the FBI to reassure him on the one point of conjecture upon which his entire course of action was based.

His tension increased minute by minute. He went in the kitchen and started another pot of water boiling. He then dropped six eggs into it and timed them for four minutes. He cracked them into a cereal bowl, dropped in a hunk of butter, then crumbled two slices of bread into them.

Food eased some of the tension, but as the hands of his watch crawled toward 9:45, he was still pacing the floor and rumpling his hair fiercely. At 9:35 he grabbed his hat and went out. He couldn’t wait for the telegram any longer. There was no telling what Gorstmann might do if Shayne didn’t leave his hotel at the appointed time.

He hurried down to his office on the next floor and took the small piece of cardboard from its hiding-place. It was 9:42 when he reached the lobby.

He was striding toward the door when a Western Union messenger entered with a yellow envelope in his hand. Shayne stopped him and asked, “Could that be for Michael Shayne?”

The boy said it was. Collect from Washington. Shayne told him to collect the charges from the desk, seized the envelope, and ripped it open. A glance at the message sent him out to his car fast. He couldn’t afford to mess things up now by being late.

The fingerprints on Phyllis’s note which was handed to him by the headwaiter at the Danube Restaurant were identified by the FBI as those of Harry Houseman, wanted by the New York police. He didn’t have to depend on guesswork any longer.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A COUPE WAS PARKED across the street and up near the drawbridge when Shayne wheeled his car in a U-turn to go north. He saw two men in the coupe, slouched low in the seat with hatbrims pulled over their faces. As he straightened out after making the turn, a glance in the rearview mirror showed the coupe pulling away from the curb behind him.

He drove north across Flagler Street at a moderate pace, then left on Northeast 3rd Street. The coupe trailed him a discreet half block away, made the turn behind him. He drove on to the Florida East Coast railway station and parked. The coupe stopped behind him, and the two men were getting out as he went into the station.

Shayne strolled toward the baggage room without looking back, and glanced at the phone numbers in the booths until he located the one over which Phyllis was to call him.

It lacked three minutes of ten o’clock. He lounged in the open door of the booth and lit a cigarette. He hadn’t seen the faces of the men in the coupe, but was certain they were Leroy and Joe.

A man bought a newspaper and sauntered to a position twenty feet from Shayne’s right, ostentatiously holding the open paper in front of his face. He wore the same belted sport coat and wrinkled flannels that Leroy had worn the preceding afternoon when he visited Shayne’s apartment.

Shayne let smoke dribble from his nostrils while his incurious gaze drifted around the crowded waiting-room. A northbound train was due to leave soon, and there was a lot of bustle and movement.

There were two uniformed cops laughing together just outside the door leading to the men’s room. His gaze stopped and gauged half a dozen other men loitering about at what might be considered strategic points, but none of them were Leroy’s burly companion, nor did he see Gorstmann’s horsy face anywhere.

He glanced at his watch again. Thirty seconds to go. He took a last draw on his cigarette and dropped the butt to the floor. The telephone inside the booth rang sharply.

He stepped inside the cubicle and closed the door. Phyllis’s excited voice came through the receiver to him.

“Mike!”

“Yeh. Are you—”

“I’m all right, darling. I’m perfectly safe. But be careful, Michael, and—what about Tim? Why did you have to—”

“Untie him as soon as you hang up and tell him I’m at the depot,” Shayne cut her off. “Have you got the money?”

“Yes. A thousand dollars. Promise me you’ll be terribly careful and—”

“I’m always careful, angel. Keep the door locked and stay inside.”

He hung up. Sweat ran down his face and soaked his shirt collar as he opened the door.

Leroy stood in front of the door. His short-barreled .45 was concealed by the folded newspaper in his hand. His pallid features twitched as Shayne stepped out. In a hoarse whisper he said, “Walk straight ahead to the can.”

Shayne started walking toward the men’s room. The two harness men were no longer laughing in front of the door.

Joe came around a corner and joined Leroy behind Shayne. Everything was perfectly casual and no interest was aroused in the little procession.

Gorstmann stood just inside the door of the men’s room. His eyes glittered with excitement but his long, bony face was emotionless. He said, “All right, shamus,” and held out his hand.

Shayne said, “It’s in my right-hand coat pocket. Shall I reach for it, or—”

Gorstmann grated, “Keep your hands in sight.” He stepped close, reached into Shayne’s pocket, and got the small piece of cardboard. Leroy and Joe stood close behind the detective.

Gorstmann breathed heavily as he retreated a pace. He muttered, “Everybody hold it while I check to see if this fits my pieces.”

He got two longer strips of cardboard and a small piece from his pocket and began fitting Shayne’s piece with them.

The swinging doors burst inward and erupted men with guns in their hands. The two uniformed cops were in the lead. Behind them, Shayne saw Will Gentry’s beefy face and Pearson calmly moving beside him with a .45 automatic in his hand. Peter Painter was behind them.

Shayne dropped to the tiled floor as the shooting started. He saw Joe whirl with gun extended. A bullet in the burly man’s chest staggered him. A second slug in his chest cut him down.

Leroy found time to trigger his gun twice. Both bullets went wild as a slug tore away the back of his head and sent him to the floor on top of Joe.

Gorstmann had not moved. He stood against the wall as though held in position by invisible bonds. Both his hands were in front of him, holding the four pieces of cardboard for which the other men had died.

Shayne caught a glimpse of Pearson’s set face as he stepped forward with heavy automatic extended. The racketing echoes of gunshots were still loud in the room when Pearson’s automatic spoke twice.

Both bullets took Gorstmann in the pit of the stomach. He clamped his hands over the wounds and the four pieces of cardboard fluttered to the floor. A look of dismay spread over his face, then the strength went out of his legs, and he slid down to a sitting position. He tried to speak, but the shrewdly placed slugs had paralyzed a nerve center and all he managed was a low moan before his head sagged forward.

In the silence that followed the shooting, Shayne said, “Nice going, Pearson. Like shooting dummies at target practice.”

Pearson looked down at the detective with compressed lips. He said, “I wasn’t taking any chances,” and stepped around a pool of blood to pick up the torn pieces of claim check dropped by Gorstmann.

Shayne dragged himself to his feet. Will Gentry confronted him. He said, “You shouldn’t have tried to pull this off under our noses, Mike.”

Shayne shrugged. “You can’t shoot a man for trying.”

“Don’t be too sure about that.” Peter Painter edged forward as he spoke. “It’ll be a federal charge this time, Shayne.”

Gentry said quietly, “It’s up to the government. You’re under arrest, Mike.”

Shayne said, “I had to take my chance on that. How did you come to be here, Johnny-on-the-spot?”

“You can thank Painter for that,” Gentry rumbled. “He tipped us off that you were planning to pull a fast one.”

“Painter?” Shayne frowned at the slim detective chief from the Beach.

“That’s right.” Painter caressed his mustache. “I suspected all along that you knew more than you were telling, Shayne. Someone sent me a marked copy of this morning’s Herald and as soon as I saw the advertisement I knew what it meant. So Gentry had you tailed when you left your hotel.”

Shayne nodded. His face was expressionless. He said, “Anyhow, Phyllis is safe—and she’s got a grand to hire a lawyer with.”

“Who are these three men?” Gentry demanded. He looked at Pearson. “Is this the complete roundup?”

Shayne answered first. He nudged the bodies of Joe and Leroy. “These are just a couple of hired gunmen—the same pair who stopped Jim Lacy on the causeway yesterday, but failed to get his piece of the claim check. They were taking orders from him.” Shayne nodded toward the slumped body of Gorstmann. “He’s the headwaiter at the Danube Restaurant on the Beach. I guess he’s the man you were really after.” He turned to Pearson.

“I presume so.” Pearson made the statement cautiously. He held the four pieces of cardboard fitted together in his hands.

“I’ve had my eye on the Danube for some time,” Painter broke in. “I felt that Otto Phleugar would bear watching. I’ll have it raided at once.”

“No need for that,” Shayne protested. “Otto is perfectly harmless. Gorstmann bullied him with threats about the Gestapo, but Otto came clean with the whole story to me last night.”

“I would say this closes the case.” Pearson spoke with quiet assurance. “These pieces of the claim check fit together perfectly and the serial number is intact. Checked through from New York to Miami.” He glanced at his watch. “There’s a train leaving in ten minutes. If I can get those plans and catch the train—” He hurried out, leaving the sentence uncompleted.

Shayne said, “Let’s tag along and see how things work out, Will. I’ve gone through a lot to get a look at those plans.”

Gentry nodded. He gruffly ordered the two policemen, “Bring him along,” and strode out behind Painter.

Timothy Rourke came racing into the depot as they emerged from the men’s room. His face was pale, his clothing disarranged. He slid to a halt in front of Gentry, demanding, “Am I too late? Listen, Gentry—I’ve got plenty to tell.”

“You’re in time to write the story as I promised your editor,” Shayne assured him. “I’m under arrest so you don’t have to worry about that angle, Tim.”

Rourke set his teeth and checked a scathing reply. He caught Gentry’s arm and began talking fast in a low tone as they went toward the baggage room. Shayne and his two escorts brought up the rear.

Pearson was waiting impatiently at the counter for reclaiming overdue baggage, glancing at his watch, and chewing his underlip. Outside the station a bell was ringing to warn late passengers that the train was about to depart.

A baggage man came from a back room carrying a shiny pigskin suitcase. He heaved it onto the counter and consulted a slip in his hand. “There’s some storage charges on this bag. Let’s see—”

Pearson grabbed the handle and swung around. “Take care of it for me,” he directed Gentry. “There’s not a moment to be lost getting this to Washington.”

Gentry said, “Sure,” but Shayne cut in:

“This is a lousy climax. How do you know the plans are in that suitcase?”

“Of course they are. They must be.” Pearson was hurrying to catch the train.

Shayne raised his voice. “Hold it, Barton.”

Pearson’s stride faltered. He half turned his head in response, then caught himself, and jerked forward in a trot.

Shayne said, “That does it.” He lunged away from the perfunctory grip of his guards, made a football tackle that brought Pearson and the suitcase down on top of him.

Pearson had his gun almost out of an underarm holster and they threshed around on the floor with Shayne getting a grip on his gun hand and another arm around his neck. He kept twisting and tossing, rolling about so that Pearson was first on top and then underneath. Hands grabbed at them and he heard Gentry shouting for someone to let him have a sap.

Then he heard the chuffing of the locomotive outside and knew the train was pulling away. He heaved himself on top of Pearson and wrenched the man’s gun away from his hand, ducked to avoid the vicious swing of a blackjack, and shouted hoarsely.

“Lay off, you fools!” He threw the gun away from him with a jerk of his wrist, reeled to his feet, and confronted Chief Gentry, who was boiling with anger for the first time since Shayne had known him.

“Put the cuffs on him,” Gentry ordered curtly. Then: “God damn you, Mike. I won’t lift a finger if they court-martial you for this. You’ve made Pearson miss his train with your grandstand play.”

“Not Pearson,” Shayne corrected, holding out his wrists for the handcuffs. He glanced aside and saw Pearson covertly edging toward the door.

“If you don’t grab him now,” Shayne said wearily, “it’s your own fault. His name is Barton and—”

The pseudo G-man leaped for the door as Shayne spoke. For once, Will Gentry acted before asking questions. He drew his own service revolver and bellowed, “Stop.”

Barton glanced over his shoulder at the leveled .38 and stopped running. He shrugged and came back, saying, “Washington will hear about this, Chief Gentry.”

Shayne said, “I don’t think Washington will be interested. But the New York police are going to be interested in the contents of that suitcase.”

Gentry sighed and asked, “What are you up to, Mike?” and soothed Barton by saying, “Your train has gone now. No use getting in a dither.”

“Don’t waste time being polite to him,” Shayne growled. “He’s no more a G-man than I am. His name is J. Winthrop Barton, junior member of the brokerage firm of Gross, Ernstine, Gross, and Barton, who helped Jim Lacy and Mace Morgan steal a hundred grand from his own firm. If the evidence isn’t in that suitcase I’ll turn in my license.”

“Not a fed?” Gentry expostulated. “But Painter sent him over to me.” He turned slowly toward Peter Painter, whose face showed an agony of indecision and doubt.

“Of course he’s a G-man,” Painter sputtered. “I don’t know what Shayne’s up to, but it won’t get him anywhere.”

Shayne laughed happily. He asked, “Did Mr. Barton show you any credentials to prove he was Pearson of the FBI?”

“N-No. But I had that official wire from Hoover saying he was sending a special agent named Pearson.”

Shayne laughed again. He turned to Gentry. “Painter had a wire from Hoover,” he explained witheringly. “That is, he received a telegram from Washington signed J. Edgar Hoover. I admit I don’t know how Barton worked it, but he sent that telegram. And Painter fell for it. As if Hoover were sending personal wires around to punk detective chiefs. Hell, the FBI has a branch office in Miami. If they’d wanted Lacy picked up they would have communicated with their local office.”

Gentry’s face was purple. He demanded, “Is that right, Painter? Good God! Did you introduce him to me as a G-man with nothing more than such a telegram to go on?”

“But the telegram must have been authentic. It carried the official government designation—and you know no telegraph office in Washington would accept such a wire from just anyone.”

Shayne laughed at the plaintive note in Painter’s voice. Before Pearson could speak, he cut in. “You should have been an actor, Barton. You played your role so well I would have been taken in if I hadn’t known the telegram was a forgery.”

The Wall Street broker smiled with pleasure. “I’ve always had a desire to go on the stage.” He caught himself up with a jerk as he realized the admission his vanity had trapped him into making, then shrugged and continued urbanely. “It seems useless to deny it now. No, Mr. Painter, I filed that telegram myself. It cost me exactly one hundred dollars to convince the telegraph operator it was a harmless hoax and to have it sent as an official message. Though I must confess I expected I would be called upon to produce credentials when I reached Miami, but I had to take that chance and it was the only way I could think of to stop Lacy from getting this suitcase. When you took me at face value and vouched for me to Chief Gentry, I could do no less than take advantage of the situation. It was what I hoped for, of course.”

Painter started to say something but choked over the words. He turned abruptly and stamped away with his shoulders squared and his head high.

“You played the part damn well,” Shayne said to Barton. “Your story about the stolen military plans was a masterpiece and I would have believed it if I hadn’t known you were a phony.”

“For God’s sakes,” pleaded Gentry, “say something that makes sense, Mike. You mean there weren’t any stolen plans?”

“For all I know, government plans are being stolen every day. But not in this case. This is merely the hundred grand swag from a holdup that was supposed to be divided three ways. Barton did a magnificent job of mixing fact with fiction in a desperate attempt to get hold of that suitcase. His spy story contained just enough of the truth to make it plausible.”

Shayne paused and laughed at the bemused expressions on the faces of Gentry and Rourke. Rourke’s lips were swollen from the tape. He wet them and started to say something.

Shayne urged, “Don’t take it so hard. You both had two strikes on you because you accepted Barton as an FBI. I knew he wasn’t, because Painter had told me about the telegram which was supposedly sent by Hoover. I don’t get any credit for figuring it out on that basis.” He looked straight at Rourke and added, “Past records don’t seem to mean much around here, anyway.”

Rourke again moistened his sticky lips and started to say something. His face was very red.

Shayne shrugged and turned to J. Winthrop Barton. “I suppose you have a key to that suitcase. It has the appearance of belonging to a Wall Street broker.”

“Yes,” Barton admitted. He fumbled in his pocket, studying Shayne through narrowed eyes. His lips were compressed. He said, “Your guesses seem to be quite correct.”

“It wasn’t all guesswork. You caught a train from New York the afternoon of the holdup—the paper said the junior member of the firm was recalled from a vacation trip to the Caribbean—and you were the only one connected with the crime who did leave New York. The money had completely disappeared.” Shayne spread out his manacled hands. “When you told the story of the claim check torn into three pieces I knew you and Lacy and Morgan must have planned the holdup and got the money out of town that way.”

Barton knelt by the pigskin suitcase with a small flat key in his hand. He showed the same composure now that had aided his masquerade as a G-man. He sighed as the suitcase came open. “There you are, Mr. Shayne.”

Rourke’s eyes popped out on stems. He stooped down with Gentry and Shayne to look at the contents of the suitcase. Nestled among rumpled clothing, a short length of bright steel chain was attached to the money bag, and it was still locked with two heavy padlocks.

Shayne nodded and told Gentry, “There’s supposed to be over a hundred grand there.”

He turned to Barton. “There’s only one thing I don’t understand. Why in the name of God did you and Lacy and Helen and Morgan sit around two months without doing anything about claiming this?”

Barton smiled grimly. “I doubt whether you will believe my explanation, but it happens to be true.” He sighed, “You see, I have a conscience.”

“Not enough of one to prevent you from helping plan and carry out a fake holdup.”

The broker compressed his lips. “That was entirely different. The loss was covered by Lacy’s bond. And I was desperate for cash. When one has a wife who—but I need not go into that. No, Mr. Shayne. I did not balk at tipping off Lacy when he carried an exceptionally valuable load, and helping to dispose of the loot. But my conscience simply would not allow me to help steal the money again from one of my partners who was in jail for a crime of which I was equally guilty. I started plans at once to effect Morgan’s release from prison—hoping to accomplish that before the suitcase was sold at auction as unclaimed baggage.”

“Lacy and Helen Morgan tried to get you to throw in with them,” Shayne guessed. “But you refused to double-cross Mace Morgan.”

“That,” Barton told him, “is correct.”

“And you held the whip hand with your third of the claim check—until an ex-con named Harry Houseman held you up and got the piece of cardboard from your safe. You knew he and Lacy were getting together to cut both you and Morgan out. So you got in touch with Morgan, bribed a guard to help him escape, and gave him money to come to Florida. But you were afraid Morgan might fail to stop Houseman and Lacy, so you went to Washington and bribed a telegraph agent to send a fake wire over Hoover’s name—hoping it would serve to hold Lacy until you got here.”

“I still don’t get half this talk,” Gentry rumbled. “Here, let me unlock those cuffs, Mike. Who is Harry Houseman?”

Shayne held out his hands. “Horse-face, whom Barton gut-shot in the restroom just now to keep the beans from being spilled. He used the name of Gorstmann in Miami,” Shayne went on, “and he faked a story of Gestapo terrorism to force Otto Phleugar to give him the job of headwaiter at the Danube Restaurant. He had a good reason for doing that because the New York police wanted him for robbery and he knew about the close check we keep on criminal haunts here in Miami. By getting a legitimate job at the Danube he had a much better chance of avoiding arrest while he arranged to grab the loot. Had me fooled for a time,” Shayne said ruefully, “because it seemed to tie up with Barton’s concocted spy story.”

“Gorstmann? The fellow whose car was used yesterday?”

Shayne nodded. “His two torpedoes were driving it when they stopped Lacy on the causeway.”

Gentry transferred the handcuffs to the Wall Street broker, who held his wrists out to receive them. There was a look of acceptance on Barton’s face, as though he was glad the whole thing was over.

Tim Rourke grabbed Shayne’s arm as the redhead started to turn away. “You knew all along this guy’s spy story was a fairy tale,” he charged. “Why in hell didn’t you tip me off, Mike?”

“And have you spread it on the front page? In the first place I wanted Barton to play his string out. I didn’t actually know where all the pieces of the claim check were until early this morning. And by that time it was too late to tell you anything. Neither you nor Gentry would have believed a word I said.”

“If that bag is what you say it is,” Gentry interrupted gruffly, “there’ll be a nice reward from the bonding company for you, Mike.”

Shayne grinned. “I’ll have to admit that playing it this way to the end I won’t have to split the reward money half a dozen ways. That might have had something to do with me keeping my mouth shut all along.” He swung away, adding, “I think I have a wife waiting for me at home—with another thousand I collected by being cagey.”

He paused, struck by a sudden thought. He turned back. “That reminds me of something, Will. I’ve got two hundred bucks that belongs to Jim Lacy or his estate. Now that I’ve managed to collect a fee from other sources, I’ll turn it over to you.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE EYES OF THE DESK CLERK lighted up when Shayne stepped into the lobby of his hotel. He leaned across the desk and called, “I’m glad your wife got back okay, Mr. Shayne. You looked worried last night.”

Shayne said, “I was worried. Did she come in by herself?”

“Well, I didn’t see her come in. But I was on the switchboard when she put in that call last night. I’ll tell you, her voice sounded good to me.”

Shayne halted on his way to the elevators. He frowned and went back to the desk. “Did you say Phyllis put in a call last night?”

“Sure. Not long after Mr. Gentry called you. I didn’t listen in more than enough to find out it was Mr. Gentry calling,” he added hastily. “But I knew something was up because you had told me to trace any calls.”

Shayne said, “That’s all right.”

“So when Mrs. Shayne made the call I knew she was home again. She must’ve gone up the service stairs.”

Shayne said, “She must have. But I appreciate your interest,” and went on to the elevator.

Phyllis met him with a rush when he opened the door. He caught her up in his arms and held her tightly for a moment. “Is everything okay, angel? Those mugs didn’t hurt you?”

“Not a bit. That headwaiter at the Danube—seemed to be the boss. Oh, Mike, did things turn out all right? I’ve been frightened. From the terrible things Tim said about you when I untied him—”

“Everything turned out swell.” Shayne interrupted her with a hearty laugh. “Is Tim’s face red! But he got his story and I got—what I wanted. But the next time I have a case you’re going to be locked in a padded cell. I’ll see to that.” He picked her up and carried her across the room and dumped her into a chair, stood over her with hands placed on his hips. “Tell me why the devil you disobeyed my orders and left the Danube. I had some bad moments on account of you last night.”

“I’m sorry, Mike. But it seemed like a good idea at the time. That girl—the one with the heliotrope perfume—kept watching me and I was sure she’d seen me with you before you left the table. Then I got the impression that she was planning to slip out while you were gone, so when that gunman came in and spoke to her and they left together I thought you’d want me to follow her.” She smiled up at her husband.

“You lie,” Shayne told her. “You know I never want you to do such a thing. Good God, angel, you’re not the type to cope with a gang of killers—guys like we were forced to entertain yesterday afternoon.”

“I found that out,” she confessed. “I’m pretty sure now that she told Leroy who I was and they acted as they did to decoy me outside where they could grab me. Because Leroy and that other man were waiting right outside the door and they threw a sack over my head as I stepped out. I didn’t see the girl again.”

Shayne stood very still. “You didn’t take any taxi ride? You’re sure Leroy helped grab you right at the door?”

“Of course I’m sure. They took me to a storeroom at the rear of the restaurant. What do you mean about a taxi ride?”

Shayne shook his head wonderingly. He said, “I’ve listened to so many lies in the past fifteen hours that I feel punch drunk, and I haven’t had a drink for hours.”

He tugged at his ear, then went into the bedroom and called the Tidewater Hotel. He asked if they had an Ann Adams registered, and was connected with room 212.

When Helen answered, he said, “Hi, toots. This is your redheaded boy friend. Remember me?”

He nodded, listening, cocked a shaggy eyebrow at Phyllis, who had followed him and stood by with a belligerent light in her dark eyes.

“That’s what I thought,” Shayne said into the transmitter. “Sit tight and I’ll be over to settle with you.”

He cradled the phone and swung around to face his wife. She sniffed the air of the bedroom with wrinkled nose. “The bed is mussed and I smell heliotrope,” she charged. “Mike Shayne, you had that female here last night.”

“Only a part of the night.” He put his hands on her shoulders and moved her out of the doorway. “I’ll tell you about it later. Right now, I’ve got a date with a blonde.”

“A date? When you’ve hardly even seen me after being locked up all night?”

“This blonde uses heliotrope perfume,” Shayne said. “You heard me promise I’d be right over. I owe her something, and you know how I am about paying my obligations, angel.”

Phyllis said, “Maybe I’d better buy a quart of heliotrope and a gallon of peroxide to blondine my hair. I could—”

Shayne was going out the door and she gave up in disgust. Sometimes Michael Shayne could be the damnedest man.

In the lobby of the Tidewater Hotel on Flagler Street, Shayne went directly to an elevator and said, “Two.” When he stepped out, he looked at the room numbers and strode down a corridor to 212.

He rapped on the door, and Helen opened it immediately. Her gray silk dress was wrinkled, as though it had been slept in. She swayed as she faced him. He smelled whisky on her breath and looked past her to see an almost empty bottle on the bedside table.

She pouted her lips and said, “Well, you took your time to come see me.”

He stepped past her. “You’re drunk,” he said.

“Well, why shouldn’t I be drunk. What else was there to do? Did you expect me to sit here and go nuts? I’m afraid to go out—didn’t know what might happen.” She swayed past him and sank down on her unmade bed.

Shayne didn’t answer her. He prowled through the room, peering into the bathroom and the clothes closet.

Helen lay back on the pillow and laughed at him. “A person would think you were jealous. Want to look under the bed, too?”

Shayne said, “I always check a hotel room when I’m visiting a female like you. Never know when you’ll think up a new variation of the badger game—like last night.”

“Last night?” Helen’s eyes didn’t quite focus on his face.

“Have you forgotten last night already?” He whirled toward her. “Good God, is that all a murder means to you?”

“Murder is an ugly word.” She tried to be coquettish with her eyelashes.

Shayne pulled up a straight chair and sat down. “Let’s go back beyond last night. Let’s go back to New York.”

“Damn New York,” she broke in pettishly. “I’m dying to know what’s happened. Did you make a cleanup?”

Shayne shrugged. “I did all right. A grand from Houseman. And I guess there’ll be a hunk of reward money from the bonding company.”

“Reward money?” She shrank back. “You double-crossed him—turned him in?”

“Suppose I did? Wouldn’t you call that smart?”

“Maybe it was at that. With all the heat on Houseman.” She laughed weakly. “Christ, but you’re a card. And I thought at first you were dumb. Reward money? Well, don’t I get my split? If I hadn’t told you how things were, you’d never have figured that angle.”

Shayne said, “If you hadn’t lied every time you opened your mouth, I might not have checked too closely. But don’t worry, you’ll get everything that’s coming to you. And I guess you do deserve something. You fingered Morgan for the New York rap, didn’t you—after he had given you his piece of the claim check? The papers said the police were tipped off by an anonymous informant.”

“Sure I did.” She giggled. “I helped him plan the whole job—shipping the money here and all.”

“But Barton crossed you and Lacy up,” Shayne said sympathetically. “He had a third of the claim check and he wouldn’t play ball—simply because you’d framed Mace.”

“That’s right. Can you feature a cluck like that? Claimed it wouldn’t be honorable as long as Mace was up the river. And a hundred grand sitting here in Miami to be picked up.”

“Some people,” said Shayne, “have screwy ideas about honor. So when Harry Houseman came along from the clink and made an offer for Mace’s piece of cardboard, you figured you were playing him for a sap by selling it to him—because you didn’t think it would be any more use to him than it was to you.”

“Look. How do you figure all these angles?” she asked suspiciously.

“I’ve just been adding things up the way I know your mind works. You must have been plenty sore when you read about Houseman robbing Barton’s apartment.”

“I’ll say. What a boob I was to sell him Mace’s piece for a lousy grand. When Lacy skipped town I knew he’d thrown in with Houseman and they were cutting me out. So I grabbed a train, too. And when I got here I found them arguing over the split. Houseman held out for two thirds on account of he had two thirds of the claim check, but Lacy held out for a fifty-fifty split.”

“And you threw in with Houseman,” Shayne guessed, “because he had two of his old mob with him and Lacy was playing a lone hand.”

“Wouldn’t you have done the same?” she asked thickly.

Shayne shrugged and pressed on. “In the meantime, Mace had got word of the double cross he was getting from his wife and buddy and he crashed out and came down.”

“Yeh. Frothing at the kisser. He was gunning for Jim and me—but wanting his cut of the money. He’d given us until last night to kick through.” She shuddered. “That’s why he had to be taken care of.”

“And that’s why you planned last night’s kill.” Shayne’s lips came back from his teeth. “Using me for a decoy and putting me on the spot so I had to cover up for you.”

“No. I swear I didn’t plan it. It was an accident—Mace coming there—”

“You got my wife out of the way to set the scene and hurried over with a long lie about not knowing what had happened to her. And I halfway believed you, God help me.”

“Well, I did want a chance to talk to you alone,” she admitted sullenly.

“You got a better chance than you expected. You crawled into bed and telephoned Mace to come to my apartment—not telling him you were there, but that I had Lacy’s piece of the claim check.”

“I did not,” she cried wildly. “I didn’t know he was coming. I was so scared when he caught me there. When I heard him talking—”

“With the bedroom door closed tightly,” Shayne cut in.

“Sure.” She widened her blue eyes. “I recognized his voice right away.”

“You’re still lying like hell. When you were in the closet later with the door cracked open you couldn’t hear anything that was said by Pearson and Gentry and Rourke.”

“All right, you—you devil. What of it? You fell for it, all right. You were stuck with a dead man and well knew it. You couldn’t afford to have that silly wife of yours find out you had another woman in her bed and got caught by the woman’s husband. You think you’re so damned smart. Think your way out of that one.”

Shayne lit a cigarette. He admitted, “Sure I was stuck. You outsmarted me. Just as you’ve outsmarted and double-crossed every man you’ve ever had any dealings with.”

She stretched her legs out on the bed and nodded, apparently greatly gratified. “But you were tough,” she returned. “You wouldn’t fall for my sob stories—and you wouldn’t scare when Leroy and Joe came after the piece of the check you had got from Lacy.”

“Houseman must have been plenty sore,” Shayne chuckled, “when they came back from stopping Lacy on the causeway with only a portion of Lacy’s piece—and the wrong piece at that.”

“He was fit to be tied,” she acknowledged.

“He probably blamed you—partly—because you hadn’t taken it from Lacy before he started for my office.”

Helen started to nod, but she stopped with a jerk of her blond and tousled head. “What do you know about that?”

“Everything. I know you two quarreled in Lacy’s room. When he telephoned me, you tried to stop him, and when he went out anyhow you put in a frantic call to Houseman to have Leroy and Joe intercept him before he reached me. Though I don’t imagine,” Shayne went on deliberately, “that you had any idea Lacy would get very far with three bullet holes in his chest.”

Helen stopped breathing for an instant. Her eyes blinked open and shut. She raised her head from the pillow on the bed and asked, “What—are you—talking about?”

“I’m referring to the three slugs you poured into Lacy after he telephoned that he was coming to my office.”

“You’re crazy,” she panted. “I didn’t do any such thing. Leroy and Joe—”

“Both carry heavy guns—heavier than the one you killed Lacy with,” Shayne supplied. “Nope. He was already a dead man when they stopped him on the causeway. That’s one reason they snatched the piece of claim check and beat it without seeing that they didn’t have all of it. They expected him to die any minute and didn’t want to be around.”

Helen laughed shrilly. She was apparently greatly amused. “You are a card. Where do you get such goofy ideas?”

Shayne hunched forward in his chair. His gray eyes bored into the girl lying on the bed. “Lacy’s coat and vest were buttoned over his wounds,” he said harshly. “He had been shot while his vest and coat were open. A man doesn’t drive around in a car with his coat and vest unbuttoned.”

“That’s—no proof,” she said angrily.

“It was enough for me to figure that he was shot in his hotel room. And I was certain your little peashooter had done the job when I heard it click on an empty the third time you pulled the trigger on Mace last night. It only holds five shots. You had used three of them on Lacy.”

“That’s still no proof. You’re crazy to think I shot him in his hotel room. Someone would have heard the shots.”

“A .22 doesn’t make much noise. Nobody heard the shots in my apartment last night. And Gentry was on his way up while you were murdering your husband.”

A spasm of fear contorted her face. She shrank away from Shayne’s gaunt, grim face. Then she began laughing as if to reassure herself. “You’re doing a lot of guessing. Even if it was that way you’d never make anyone believe it in a million years.”

Shayne said, “Maybe you never heard of ballistics. You’d better not make book on that.” He hunched around and lifted the telephone. He said, “Get me the detective bureau at police headquarters.”

Helen Morgan stiffened. Then, suddenly, she threw herself forward and was clawing at Shayne’s face. He fended her off with one hand until she sank back sobbing.

“You don’t mean it,” she cried. “I trusted you—you won’t do it. You’re bluffing to make me confess something I didn’t do.”

Shayne paid no attention to her. He said, “Hello, Will,” into the telephone. “Have you seen the slugs the doc took out of Jim Lacy?”

“You fool,” Helen cried.

“Haven’t you seen the ballistics test yet? I think you’ll find they’re twenty-two-caliber, Will.”

He paused, chuckling. “That’s right. Same as the ones that killed Mace Morgan.”

He paused to listen again, and Helen breathed, “You’re framing yourself, you fool. Can’t you see what you’re doing?”

He motioned her to be silent. He said, “That’s right, Will. A ballistics test will prove the same gun killed both men. But I wish you’d take the fingerprints off the butt of it before you mess them up taking a ballistic test. That’s right, Will. And send a couple of boys over to two-twelve at the Tidewater Hotel. You’ll find a set of prints here that fit the ones you get off the gun.”

He hung up.

Helen was having difficulty with her breathing. She ran her tongue out over her lips and sucked it back. “You’re still crazy. You handled that gun last. It will have your prints on it.”

Shayne stood up. He shook his head. “I grabbed it away from you by the muzzle. After that I only touched the trigger guard. No. You’ve pulled your last double cross, sister. Even southern chivalry isn’t going to overlook two murders in the same day.”

She cowered away from him, trembling and terrified. “Damn your soul to hell! You planned this all along. Ever since last night. You sent me over here—”

“To keep you on ice until I’d cleaned up the other details,” Shayne told her coldly. “That’s right. And you fell for it.”

He went out the door and slammed it shut to close out the noise of her sobbing from his ears while he waited for the police to come.

All Shayne could think of was that he needed a bath.