Fidel. Do you know what is inside that dispatch case, Mr. Shayne?”
He said, “I haven’t the faintest idea… and why don’t you call me Mike at this point?”
“All right, Mike. It’s a complete and detailed plan for the take-over of Guantanamo. They’ve got key men infiltrated into our Navy personnel there. It’s all worked out, and
“Where is it?” he asked curiously, looking around the room as though he expected to see a dispatch case standing there.
“It’s hidden on the other side of the Border… where you and I are going to get it tomorrow and
Her composure broke suddenly and she twisted her hands together in front of her and tears appeared on her cheeks. “Who can you trust today? I had a contact in Mexico City. He was murdered before I could reach him and there was a trap laid for me that I just escaped by the skin of my teeth. I miraculously escaped death twice more before I managed to reach the Border. I didn’t dare try to bring it across with me. I didn’t dare try to turn it over to anyone, because how do you know whom you can trust today? They’ve got their agents everywhere. That’s one of the things I learned in Cuba. What do you suppose went wrong with our carefully planned invasion a year ago? They knew all about it beforehand from trusted and high-up agents of the CIA. I’ve heard them boasting about how stupid and complacent Americans are.”
She stalked back to her end of the sofa and dropped down, lifted her glass of watered cognac and took a long drink. “All right, Mike. You didn’t come all the way to Los Angeles to listen to a lecture on the danger of communist infiltration here. But I’ve been hounded and deviled ever since I crossed the border from Mexico. My hotel room and bags have been searched twice. I can’t make a move on the streets without one of them right behind me. You may think I’m imagining all of it, and I don’t care what you think if you’ll just go down to Tijuana tomorrow and recover that dispatch case and see it gets into the right hands in Washington. That’s all I ask. Then let me go back to being Mary Devon and forget there ever was a woman named Marianne Devlin.”
He sucked the last drops of cognac from his glass, got up and went across to pour out some more. With his back to her, he observed mildly, “I think you’ll do all right as Mary Devon. You impress me as being quite a competent actress.” He turned back with an approving smile. “How much rehearsing did you do on that story before you tried it out on me?”
“Mike!” she cried in a stricken voice. “Don’t say that! You’ve got to believe me and help me. You’re the one person in the world I could think of whom I could call on.”
“I may be willing to help you,” he told her, reseating himself and pleasurably taking a sip of cognac, “after you tell me the truth. There may
“If any of this wild story were true why the devil haven’t you gone to the police here in L.A.? Or the local office of the FBI? You didn’t have to send for a private detective from Miami to help you prevent a communist takeover of a Naval base in Cuba.”
“But I’ve told you,” she appealed to him tremulously. “How do you know whom you can trust these days? Even Mr. Hoover boasts publicly that about half his agents are members of the Communist Party.
“I know,” said Shayne with withering sarcasm. “Not even the local taxi drivers. A guy like Joe Pelter, for instance, who delivered your note to me today. You think he’s a commie and read your note and sent a cable to Moscow warning them that you planned to meet me at the Brown Derby. Nuts! What kind of a simpleton do you take me for?”
Mary Devon put her hands over her face and began crying quietly. “What am I going to do?” she sobbed. What am I going to
“Start telling the truth,” he advised her coldly. “I don’t know what you’ve got yourself into, but it’s evidently something you can’t go to the police with. Maybe you have been sleeping with Fidel Castro. I wouldn’t blame you… and I certainly wouldn’t blame him. If you come clean with me and it’s something I can touch without losing my Florida license, I’ll be glad to consider it. Otherwise, I’ll finish up this glass of excellent cognac and be on my way.”
He raised the glass to his lips and grinned over the top of it at her.
She pulled her hands away from her tear-stained face and regarded him with a strange look of near- exaltation. “Will you, Mike?” she breathed hopefully. “Will you truly promise to help me if I tell you the real truth?” She got to her feet and glided toward him as though in a sort of trance.
He said gruffly, “If I can. Practically anything short of murder.”
She dropped to her knees beside his chair and clutched his thigh with both hands while she looked up at him imploringly. “I’m going to trust you, Mike. I’ll tell you the real truth this time. But it is a long story, and we might as well be relaxed. Do you mind if I… slip into the bedroom and get into something more comfortable?”
He said, “I don’t mind at all,” and pretended to hide a yawn while he glanced at his watch. “As a matter of fact, I’ll use your phone to make a collect call to my secretary in Miami while you’re doing that.”
She got up and said simply, “You won’t be disappointed, I promise you,” and he watched her go toward the bedroom and wondered fleetingly just what he was getting himself into.
He shrugged the question away, got up and carried his cognac over to the telephone stand where he sat down and put in his call to Lucy.
While the operator repeated the Miami telephone number, he glanced across the room and noticed that Mary had carelessly neglected to close the bedroom door all the way and that a full-length mirror set in a closet door inside the room afforded him an excellent view of the juicy body of the honey-haired blonde emerging from a black sheath dress.
She didn’t face the mirror directly so he wasn’t sure whether she was aware that he could see her in the glass or not, and he struggled with his gentlemanly instincts while he waited for Lucy to come on the line.
His baser instincts won the struggle without much difficulty. Actually, he thought, a woman who had been Castro’s mistress… or who had calmly claimed to be his mistress for purposes of her own, would think it pretty childish of him if he called out to warn her to close the bedroom door.
And he wondered with a grin how Lucy would react in Miami if he told her he was sitting up in a woman’s hotel room watching a disrobing act being put on for his special benefit.
Then he realized, suddenly, that Lucy still wasn’t answering her phone. He had been too absorbed in other things to count the number of rings, but now the operator was announcing crisply, “That number does not answer, sir. Do you wish me to try again in…”
He growled, “Cancel the call,” and hung up. When he looked up at the bedroom door with a scowl, Mary was walking through it placidly, bare-footed and wearing a long, full-skirted silken robe of pale yellow that was belted tightly at the waist and rustled suggestively against her limbs.
She stopped short at sight of his scowling countenance. “Don’t you like it?” she asked anxiously. “I thought…”
“I like it fine,” he told her shortly. “I’m just worried about my secretary. Her telephone doesn’t answer.”
“But, goodness, what’s that to worry about?” She glided sinuously to the sofa and patted the cushion beside her. “Why don’t you bring your drink over and relax?”
“But it’s after ten o’clock in Miami. Lucy wouldn’t normally be out so late.”
“Pooh! What’s ten o’clock? I bet she’s an attractive doll, isn’t she? I can’t imagine Mike Shayne having a secretary who isn’t. You know the old saying: When the boss is away the secretaries play. Come on, darling, and this time I’ll tell you the real truth about that old dispatch case.”
Shayne shook his head stubbornly. “You don’t know Lucy Hamilton. She was expecting me to call. She just wouldn’t do this.”
He picked up the telephone book and ruffled through it, found the number for the Plaza Terrace Hotel and gave it to the switchboard.
