asked, “You still determined to clam up on Jane Smith?”
“I have to, Tim.”
The telephone rang and Shayne grabbed for it. Rourke paused to listen, halfway out the door.
The desk clerk’s voice said conspiratorially, “There’s a doll here to see you, Mr. Shayne. A real doll.”
He said, “Send her on up, Pete.”
“Sure. I would’ve, but I thought maybe you’d like a chance to get rid of that reporter first… for one like this here.”
Shayne said, “Tim Rourke is on his way out.” He hung up and stood up, moved toward the door telling Rourke pleasantly, “You are, you know. Down the stairs, Tim.”
He took his arm firmly and led him past the elevator. “You don’t need to give me the bum’s rush,” Rourke protested. “Is it Jane Smith?”
“I don’t know, but I’m hoping. Down the stairs with you, pal, and no peeking when I meet the elevator.” He heard it stopping behind him and gave the reporter a little shove down the stairs, then turned and strode back along the corridor as the elevator door opened.
A woman got out and paused uncertainly. She wore a low-necked ruby-red dress with a short-sleeved Angora jacket, and Harlequin glasses that were tinted a light blue.
7
She turned toward him as she heard his approaching footsteps, and smiled tentatively when she recognized him. Shayne stopped beside her and took her arm. She was taller than he had realized in the Crystal Room, the top of her head just level with his eyes. She said, “I am pleased to see you again, Mr. Shayne. I am in great trouble.”
Shayne said, “It’s an unexpected pleasure.” He turned her toward his open door and she walked beside him with a lithe, free-swinging stride, matching her steps exactly with his. Inside his sitting room, he closed the door while she moved across to the sofa against the wall and sat down. “I took the chance of coming directly to you without telephoning because I did not know what I could say over the telephone. How was I to explain that I… tried to pick you up in a bar earlier tonight and had you taken away from me by a prettier and younger girl?”
“Younger, certainly. I can probably whip up a better stinger than they gave you in the bar.”
“That would be nice.” She spoke with gravity and the same faint trace of a foreign accent which he had discerned in her voice earlier.
He picked up the cognac bottle from the center table, paused beyond the end of the sofa to reach for a squat bottle of white creme de menthe from a wall cabinet. In the small kitchen he half filled a quart measuring pitcher with ice cubes, poured in a brimming cup of cognac and a careful three ounces of the sweet liqueur. Stirring it leisurely with a tablespoon, he carried the pitcher back to the table and got two cocktail glasses from the cabinet. He filled both of them and crossed to hand her one, then returned to lounge into his chair by the table. She took a sip and nodded, “Yours is better, Mr. Shayne.”
He said, “You have the advantage of me.”
“My name is Hilda Gleason. Mrs. Harry Gleason. I was sure I recognized the famous private detective even when you said your name was Wayne and the pretty girl called you that.”
Shayne asked, “Is that why you came to my table tonight?”
“Yes. I sat at the bar, distraught and frightened and so alone. And I recognized you from pictures in the papers, and the thought came to me that Michael Shayne was the one person in the whole world who might be able to help me. So I got up my nerve to approach you, and then… pouf! You were otherwise occupied.”
“What sort of help do you need, Mrs. Gleason?”
“To find my husband before… before there comes a tragedy and it is too late to prevent it. He is in Miami and I cannot find him.” She was sitting very erect, taking short compulsive sips from her cocktail glass and staring at him over the rim from behind the blue-tinted glasses.
He said, “Relax and tell me about it. And for God’s sake, can’t you take off those glasses? I’ve got a hunch you’re hiding a pair of beautiful eyes behind them and it seems a silly thing to do.”
Dutifully she removed her Harlequin glasses. Her eyes were soft brown and luminous. Without her glasses, Shayne decided she must be in her late thirties.
“Harry came to Miami a week ago from our home in Illinois near Chicago. For some reason that he refused to tell me, but I sensed it had danger for him. Something to do with getting a large sum of money. He made big promises with hints about this and that, you understand, though I begged him to do nothing foolish. But he has become a changed man in the last two months. Silent and brooding much of the time, and with wild fits of anger against the unjustness of life that we have so little when others less deserving have so much. And it angered him when I said we were comfortable with his salary and mine, and that I could be happy with so little, and this thing grew and festered in his mind while he formed some plan for getting money which I think is dangerous.”
“This is all pretty ambiguous, Mrs. Gleason. Tell me more about your husband as a person. What does he do for a living?”
“He’s a bartender. He is a fine man,” she went on in a rush of words. “We have been married ten years with great happiness.”
“And now you’re afraid he’s embarked on some criminal enterprise in the hopes of getting a big wad of money fast?”
“That is what I fear, yes.”
“But you have no idea what sort of plan he has in mind?”
“No. He does not tell me this. Only in a note, that he is leaving for Miami and when he returns in a week or two we will have much money. I must find him in this city, but I do not know where to look. So when I see you in the bar tonight I think this is Providence. Michael Shayne is the man who will know. And now you sit so far across the room from me, and so cold. It is difficult to say things.” She smiled tremulously and, Shayne thought, seductively.
He emptied his glass and crossed to the sofa to sit close beside her. “How do you think I can find your husband? Do you have any ideas? Does he have any friends here?”
“Nothing. There is no one.” Her right hand, lying on the sofa between them, lifted to grip his forearm, softly at first and then with surprising strength. “I am a woman alone, Mr. Shayne. I must find Harry soon. If I can talk to him, I know I can make him see he must not do this thing he plans. I have not much money, but… I beg you will find him for me.” She was leaning close to him and her moist red lips were parted, her eyes humidly brilliant and imploring.
He said, “I don’t know what I can do.”
“But they say this is your city, Mr. Shayne. That you know the secret places and have ways of getting information that is not known even to the police. Without your help it is hopeless.”
“Unless you can give me some sort of lead it’s still hopeless. If you had any idea what he’s up to… what sort of contacts he has here…”
“There is that girl,” she said convulsively. “I know she is evil. That she has led Harry to this.” Her brown eyes became round and more luminous, staring into his. Her fingers hurt the hard flesh of his arm.
“What girl?”
“The one who spoke to you tonight. Who called you ‘Mike Wayne’ at the table. Whom you walked out with and went up in the elevator with. What did she tell you? What did she want of you? Did she say the name of Harry Gleason?”
“Jane Smith?” ejaculated Shayne in complete surprise. “What do you know about her?”
“That she is young and beautiful. That she can twist men around her little finger to do her bidding. As she twisted Harry and, as I have no doubt, she tried to twist you tonight. For what purpose, Mr. Shayne? Why did she take you to her room? To offer her young body in exchange for what?” She was against him suddenly, the cocktail glass dropping to the floor, sobbing in terrible anguish, burying her face against his shoulder, and he felt the seeping warmth of saliva from her open mouth and the wetness of tears through his shirt.
He put his arm tightly about her shoulders and held her until the paroxysm of weeping subsided, then