keyhole at the door across the hall.
It was tightly closed, and light showed around the transom. He stayed on his knees, watching through the keyhole for a long time. The door stayed shut and the light stayed on.
He got to his feet and removed the. 38 from under his belt, cocked the double-action weapon, and opened his door very softly.
With the cocked gun in his hand he took one long step across the carpeted hall and knocked lightly on the door, standing back against the wall in order not to be seen unless the door was opened wide. His eyes were very bright and a muscle quivered in the hollows of his cheeks as he waited.
He heard a chair being pushed back inside the room, then a gruff voice asked, “Who’s there… what do you want?”
Shayne muttered something that could be heard through the closed door without forming any definite words. There was a moment’s hesitation before the door started to open.
He hit it with his shoulder low and his legs driving him into the room. The man who had hold of the knob was flung violently backward, and another man in shirtsleeves sitting at a card-littered table looked up with a grunt of surprise.
Shayne plowed to a stop in a low crouch with his gun covering both men. He straightened slowly and said, “Well, I’ll be damned,” when he recognized two members of the Miami detective force. “Playing games, huh? For chrissake, McNulty, is this all you and Peterson have got to do?”
The man who had stumbled to the floor was long and gangling, with a bushy black mustache adorning his horse-shaped face. He got to his feet with a look of injured dignity, and Peterson growled, “Is that the way you always come into a room?”
“It’s God’s mercy you haven’t got lead in your guts,” Shayne snorted, heeling the door shut. “What the devil…”
“Can we help it if the chief has a crazy idea the world would be better off with you alive?” McNulty complained from the table. He scratched a four-finger area of his bald head. His square face was wholly expressionless. “We didn’t pick the job.”
“’Tain’t my idea of a good time,” Peterson grumbled. He stalked to the table and sat down opposite his partner.
Shayne uncocked his gun and dropped it in his pocket. He muttered, “You’d think, by God, I was still in rompers.”
“What’s it all about, Mike?” McNulty rolled a frayed cheap cigar around in his mouth, squinting through the smoke. “You been playing around in the wrong bedroom?”
“Nothing like that,” Shayne said ironically. “Hadn’t you heard? I just inherited a million dollars and the bad old kidnappers are after me.”
“How’d you know we was here, anyhow?” Peterson demanded. “Gentry told us to keep out of sight or you might try to shake us.”
“Will Gentry is a damned fool,” Shayne muttered. “With you two birds hanging around my neck I’ll never get a nibble. How’s for beating it and leaving me to hatch my own eggs?”
“We can’t do it, Mike,” McNulty said, shaking his bald head sadly. “It’s back to the beat for us if we let you out of our sight. Gentry didn’t stutter when he handed us this job.”
“C’mon, Mike, and make it three-handed,” Peterson urged. “You’re stuck with us whether you like it or not.”
“No thanks. You two go ahead and cut each other’s throats. I’m going to get some sleep.”
He went out and closed the door, re-entered his apartment and slammed the door loudly. Striding to a wall mirror, he swung it out, took a bottle of cognac and a glass from the built-in liquor cabinet on the reverse side. He poured a drink and set the bottle back, wandered into the bathroom and flushed the toilet. He came back and finished his drink, puffed on a cigarette for a few minutes, then turned out the lights and went into the kitchen.
Unlatching a rear door leading out onto a fire escape, he went out and down one flight to the kitchen door of his office-apartment. He unlocked the door with a key from his ring, went through the kitchen to the living room and lifted the receiver of the wall telephone. When Tommy answered, Shayne said:
“That was a false alarm, Tommy. Those boys are a couple of cops sent here to prevent something I don’t want prevented. They think I’m still in the apartment opposite them, but I sneaked down here. Now listen carefully, Tommy. I’m going to stay here, and I don’t want those bird dogs to be pointing at this door. But if anyone else comes, shoot them up here. But call me first, see? If you go off duty before anything breaks, tell the day clerk what the deal is.”
“Sure, Mr. Shayne,” Tommy breathed into the phone. “You don’t want the cops to know about the other apartment?”
“No. Let them amuse themselves up there. That’ll keep them busy and out of the way.”
Tommy chuckled. “And I’ll call you if anything happens.”
Shayne hung up and put his revolver on the center table. He looked at his watch. The time was a quarter to three. The ice cubes were melted in the water glass. After replenishing the ice cubes and pouring another drink, he settled himself in a chair and lit a cigarette, moving the gun so that the butt was in a position to be grabbed without fumbling. He stretched his legs out and relaxed, his head lolling comfortably against the cushion, lighting one cigarette from the glowing butt of another and sipping, alternately, cognac and ice water.
The procedure kept him awake. He did a lot of thinking without reaching any definite conclusions. There wasn’t much to go on. The facts and the theory of Clem Wilson’s death pointed to some kind of gasoline racket. Approached with any sort of proposition, Clem wouldn’t have left any doubt about his position.
It was a cinch his murderers weren’t professional killers. Men who lived by killing didn’t employ a. 32 for their work. There wasn’t anything else to put your finger on. They must have suspected Clem was reporting them, and they had no way of knowing how much he had told over the phone before a bullet silenced him.
That was his only trump card.
Blurred, grayish light pressed against the living-room windows. Shayne’s half-closed eyes stared as objects in the room swam into cloudy view out of the darkness. There was the desk near the door, the filing case for which he had no use. Sleepily he recalled that a man had died on the floor just inside the threshold, and at his left was the studio couch on which he had slept that first night while he hid Phyllis from arrest in his bedroom.
That was a long time ago.
The strident ringing of the telephone brought him to his feet. He reached it in two long strides.
Tommy said, “There’s a messenger boy on his way up, Mr. Shayne. He acted funny. Said he had a letter to deliver to you personally and wouldn’t leave it at the desk. I gave Joe the wink to stall him in the elevator while I called you.”
Shayne said, “Good work, Tommy,” and hung up.
He took his gun and went to the door, unlatched it, and left it open a crack. The elevator doors clanged in the hall as he pressed back against the wall beside the door. He held the cocked gun in his right hand.
Footsteps approached his door and stopped. There was a light, hesitant knock.
Shayne said, “Come in.”
Nothing happened for a moment. The immediate response appeared to have startled the messenger. Then the door was cautiously pushed open and a peaked face peered in.
Shayne gave a snort of disgust and lowered his gun. The boy was about nineteen, thin and ill clad, with a limp cap pulled low on his pimpled forehead. His teeth chattered when he saw Shayne’s grim visage and the gun in his hand. He gave a violent start and almost dropped a white envelope clutched in one grimy hand.
Pocketing the gun, Shayne said, “Come on in,” and closed the door.
“Gee, Mister,” the lad whined, “what was you pointin’ that gun at me for? I ain’t done nothin’.”
“I was expecting someone else,” Shayne explained, and held out his hand for the letter. “That for me?”
“Is your name Shayne?” The boy looked around the room with bulging eyes and ejaculated, “Gee, looks like you been settin’ up all night.”
Shayne took the envelope from his lax fingers. “Where’d you get this?”
“Feller give it to me on the street while ago. Give me a buck to deliver it an’ get a answer.” The boy strode insolently past Shayne to the table and clutched a cigarette which extended from the opened pack. He struck a match to it and wandered to the windows to peer out while Shayne tore the envelope open.
