himself available. They had been kind enough to give him dinner and offer him a room for the night when it became apparent that he was likely to miss his return flight.
In his irritation, Alonzo Sutter had drunk more cocktails than he was accustomed to before dinner, and had emptied his wine glass several times during the excellent meal.
Then had come the disgraceful shooting affair, with the house filling up with private detectives and reporters and the police, and with Sutter’s realization that he had failed to accomplish his mission in Miami.
And now it was one minute and thirty seconds until midnight, and he reluctantly began to slide out of the booth to keep his appointment with a blackmailer who was unknown to him. He had paid for his drink when it was served him, and he left a modest tip beside the still untouched glass. He nervously checked his watch again as he went from the dimness of the cocktail lounge into the well-lighted lobby, and he strolled toward the street door at a pace calculated to bring him out onto the sidewalk precisely at midnight.
There was no doorman on duty at this hour and Sutter walked to the curb and stood there in the bright light of a street lamp and looked to his left toward the taxi-stand. There were no empty cabs waiting, but as he stood there he saw one approaching, and he waved to it and it pulled in and stopped in front of him.
The attorney got into the back seat and closed the door, wondering nervously who was watching him from what vantage point, wondering if Michael Shayne was about, and where he was, and how he would manage his part of the assignment.
His driver was slouched behind the wheel wearing a vizored cap tilted down over his eyes and with the butt of a cigar clenched between his teeth. Without turning his head to look at his passenger, he spoke around the cigar in a Southern drawl, “Whereabouts you-all wanta go, Mister?”
“Uh… straight ahead driver. Due north to Sixty-seventh Street, and not too fast if you don’t mind. On Sixty- seventh I want you to turn west for a few blocks and I’ll give you further directions at that time.”
The taxi jerked forward away from the curb, and the driver threw back over his shoulder in a surly voice, “Tell me where you wanta go, Mister, an’ I’ll take you the quickest way. We got through streets in this man’s town an’ I know how to beat the lights.”
“Straight north to Sixty-seventh,” repeated Sutter firmly. “And not too fast, if you please. I’m a little early.” He turned to peer out the back window, wondering if the taxi was being followed, but he gave up the attempt after a moment, realizing that it really didn’t make any difference whether it was or wasn’t.
Actually, he told himself, if he were either the blackmailer or Michael Shayne, he wouldn’t bother trailing the taxi away from the hotel. The instructions he had been given specified a one-minute stop on 67th in the fifth block west of 3rd Avenue, and that was where contact could most easily be made. He settled back as comfortably as he could, sniffing the unpleasant aroma from the cheap cigar his driver was smoking, and got a Perfecto from his own pocket and lit it to help quiet his nerves and offset the offensive odor from the front seat.
The taxi moved steadily north at about thirty-five miles an hour. Sutter hoped and believed that pace would fit the “moderate speed” requirement given him over the telephone, and he congratulated himself upon having a driver who was willing to follow a fare’s instructions without argument. He shuddered to think what most New York taxi-drivers would do if asked to drive not too fast. He didn’t like Miami or anything he had seen of the city, but their taxi drivers, he thought, had a great deal to commend them.
They were well out of the business section of the city now, and into the northern residential district, and the driver mumbled over his shoulder and past the foul-smelling cigar, “Sixty-seventh, you said, Mister? And you want I should turn left there?”
“Left, yes. For a few blocks. I will tell you where to stop. And I appreciate the way you’re holding the speed down.”
“All the same to me, Mister,” said the driver philosophically. “I got all night behind this wheel. If you ain’t goin’ nowhere special it’s a cinch I ain’t neither.”
He slowed as he approached an intersection, made a left turn and Sutter saw the sign for 67th Street as they passed it slowly.
He leaned forward and carefully counted the blocks. As they slid past the fourth intersection, he said nervously, “Slow down please. It’s in this block. On the right-hand side. There. Up beyond those two parked cars. Pull in to the curb, please.”
His driver followed his instructions without comment, but as he reached forward to pull up his flag on the meter, Sutter said hastily, “Keep your flag down, driver. I’m not quite sure… that is… I’d like to wait here in the cab just a minute until I decide whether or not…” He let his voice trail off uncertainly, wondering what reason he could give the driver for pausing here and then driving on as he had been directed, but the man solved that problem for him by chuckling lecherously and ending his sentence for him, “… whether or not her husband’s home? Is that it, Mister? Lemme know when you make up your mind.” He belched comfortably and expelled a thick cloud of noxious smoke toward the rear of the cab.
When the attorney was certain they had been stopped at least sixty seconds, he said, “I think I’ll just ask you to go on, driver. Turn left at the next corner, please, and head back toward town. But not too fast, please. I may change my mind after all. I can’t quite decide…”
The cab pulled away from the curb slowly and evenly, but the driver’s good nature appeared to be lessening as he said in a surly voice, “Games we’re playing, huh? Okay by me. I got all night like I said.”
Sutter sat tensely looking back as they approached the next corner, and he saw lights switched on in a car that was parked on the opposite side of the street behind them, and it moved out as they made the turn and started southward.
But only one car had picked up the trail there. That would be the blackmailer, he had no doubt. Then where was Shayne? The detective had given his word to be present at the payoff, but Sutter was desperately afraid that Shayne had failed him somehow. He kept his head craned back, watching to the rear, and he saw the headlights of a single car swing around the corner behind them, also going quite slowly, but gradually increasing speed so it cut down the distance between them.
Still there was no sign of the private detective. There was no other car at all moving in either direction on the empty street, and the one behind them was moving up now, and Sutter clenched his Perfecto tightly between his teeth and resigned himself to handling the situation as best he could with no help from Michael Shayne.
The taxi continued to cruise south sedately in the righthand lane, and the following car was coming up fast. It swung out to go around the taxi on the left, and Sutter saw that the driver was a man, alone in the car. As he came abreast of them he honked his horn three times, shortly and sharply, and began to turn in to force the cab to the curb on the deserted street.
His driver exclaimed, “Hey. What the hell?” twisting his wheel to the right to avoid a collision, and Sutter leaned forward and said hastily, “It’s all right, driver. A… friend who wants to talk to me. Just pull in and stop.”
The taxi eased in to the curb and stopped, and the other car did likewise, nosed in at an angle in front of the cab.
It was a late model Pontiac, and the driver leaped out as it came to a full stop, circled the back of his car and came up to the cab and jerked open the back door.
“Is that you, Sutter?”
In the dim light of a street lamp half a block away, Sutter saw a thin black mustache across the young man’s face peering in at him, and recognized Victor Conroy, the late Wesley Ames’ private secretary.
He replied with some asperity, “Of course it is I. Who else do you expect to be cruising around this section of Miami at midnight in this fashion? Have you the documents we discussed over the telephone?”
“Right here.” Conroy withdrew a thick envelope from his pocket. “What have you got for me in exchange?”
“Exactly what I promised you I would have,” Sutter told him. He reached across the length of the back seat for the envelope Conroy held. “I’ll have to check the contents before we conclude our deal.”
Conroy drew back his hand and said grimly, “You can check mine while I check yours. Let’s see the color of your money first.”
At that moment the front door of the cab came open and the driver came out from behind the steering wheel all in one lithe movement. The man’s figure was no longer slouched, but was tall and broad-shouldered, and Sutter saw the glint of blued-steel in his right hand and heard a harsh voice come from his lips that held no trace of a Southern drawl:
