taxi.
Shayne helped Charlotte in, gave the Brighton Beach address to the driver with a dollar. She leaned out to smile and wave as the taxi pulled away and made a U-turn in the middle of the block.
Shayne turned back toward the private entrance of the hotel with a sigh of relief. The sedan nosed up, and a hand came out of the right front window. Moonlight glinted on blued steel, and a. 45 automatic spurted orange flame four times in rapid succession.
Shayne staggered, half turned back toward the street, then slumped down on the concrete sidewalk.
The sedan lurched away in a screaming circle, darted north to mingle with the midnight downtown traffic.
A crowd gathered, and Shayne lay still. Police whistles shrilled through the night, and an ambulance siren shrieked, and the shriek died to a moan as brakes squealed and white-coated young men leaped out. After a hasty examination Shayne was placed on a stretcher, and the siren rose to a shriek again as it tore off toward Jackson Memorial Hospital. The crowds dissolved. There was only a red stain on the concrete to show where Shayne had lain. Then the hotel porter came and washed that away, and there was nothing.
Shayne stopped groaning and began joking with the ambulance riders as they drew up at the entrance. They stripped his long-muscled body and found that two. 45 slugs had ripped through his right shoulder, smashing the collarbone. Another had grazed the ribs on his right side, and the fourth bullet had bored cleanly through the flesh just below his right ribs. He asked for a cigarette while they cleansed and dressed the wounds, and cursed amiably when he was informed he would have to wear a cast for at least two weeks and must avoid strenuous exertion.
He had lost a lot of blood, and the doctor in charge of the emergency ward said he had better spend the night there and go home in the morning.
Shayne said he’d be damned if he’d sleep on one of those cots. He winced with pain but sat up doggedly and asked someone to call him a taxi.
Another ambulance came screeching up with an accident victim. No one paid any attention to Shayne as they gathered about the stretcher to see whether fate had been kind and delivered them an interesting case to practice on.
An orderly who had been on the second ambulance sauntered over to Shayne and asked him for a light.
Shayne gave it to him. The orderly said, “You’re Michael Shayne, the detective, aren’t you?”
Shayne admitted his identity. The orderly was a young fellow with an agreeable smile. He said admiringly, “They can’t kill you, huh?”
Shayne said they hadn’t so far but he didn’t want to take any chances on getting sliced up by staying in the emergency ward all night.
The orderly thought that was very funny and he had a good laugh. Then he said, “Business seems to be picking up in your line, Mr. Shayne. Two murders in two nights. Miami’ll grow up into a city if we keep on.”
Shayne said, “Yeah,” without much interest, but the orderly wasn’t to be put off.
“Funny about them having another killing up at the same place where that woman was murdered last night.”
Shayne stiffened. His tongue licked out to wet his lips. “Brighton’s?”
“Yeah, that’s the place. I was talking to one of the fellows from a Beach hospital downtown, and he said it just happened a little while-”
Shayne interrupted hoarsely. “Who was it tonight?”
“Some girl.” The orderly wrinkled his brow and tried to remember.
“A girl?” Shayne’s left hand reached out and got hold of the young fellow’s shoulder.
“Yeah.” The youth winced and looked at him curiously. He started to say something jokingly about Shayne not breaking his shoulder, but he didn’t when he saw the detective’s face.
“I remember now. It was a nurse that’s working there. I guess she had been stepping out and was just coming in. I think they said her name was Hunt-something like that. She had just stepped out of a taxi and was going up to the door when someone bopped her twice through the head with a. 25 automatic.”
Shayne exhaled slowly. His fingers loosened their grip on the white-coated shoulder. He sank back on the hospital cot as the attending physician came to him briskly, saying, “Of course, if you feel you’ll be more comfortable in your own bed we’ll be glad to arrange to have you taken there.”
Shayne shook his head. “Thanks, doc. I’ve changed my mind. I believe I’ll feel more comfortable with some company tonight.”
CHAPTER 10
An intern helped Shayne get his clothes on the next morning. His wounds had been freshly dressed, and it was evident that no complications were likely. His collarbone and shoulder were in a plaster cast, his right arm in a sling.
With the exception of a painfully stiff right side Shayne felt pretty good. He bummed a ride in an ambulance to the corner of Flagler Street and Second Avenue, where he bought a morning Herald and sauntered up to Child’s Restaurant for breakfast. Ordering bacon and eggs, buttered toast, and lots of coffee, he spread the newspaper out with his left hand and began to catch up on the events of last night.
The murder of Charlotte Hunt had pushed the attack on Michael Shayne out of the headlines, for which he was duly grateful. He read the account of her death slowly and with great care, grimacing at the repeated mention of a possible love angle and the reiterated assumption that she was returning from an assignation in Miami when killed.
The only real basis for this assumption was the small caliber of the “death weapon,” which suggested a woman and probable jealousy. It wasn’t much but it was all the authorities had to work on. At the time of going to press the taxi driver who brought her home had not been located, having driven away from the estate before his passenger was murdered. Peter Painter was prominently quoted as positively asserting the murder would be solved as soon as the driver was located and it was learned from him where he had picked up the nurse for her last ride.
There was nothing at all in the front-page story to indicate the police believed there was any connection between the murders of Mrs. Brighton and Charlotte Hunt, but merely a brief paragraph commenting on the apparent coincidence of the two deaths. Another brief item on the front page mentioned that Phyllis Brighton had not yet been apprehended and was still being sought for questioning in connection with her mother’s murder.
The waitress brought Shayne’s order as he began reading a somewhat casual account of the attack upon him. According to the story, newspaper reporters had been turned away from the hospital where he lay at the point of death. There were no clues to the identity of his attackers except their method, which pointed to a gang reprisal. Mention was briefly made of his anti-criminal activities, and it was suggested that he had been put on the spot by persons whose enmity he had aroused in the past.
Shayne munched a piece of toast and ate a strip of bacon as he turned to the second page which was given to pictures of the Brighton estate and photographs of the various persons involved in the two killings, together with statements by local and state officials. The state, it appeared further, offered a thousand-dollar reward for the arrest of Mrs. Brighton’s murderer or murderers. Shayne chuckled aloud as he read another lengthy, obviously dictated statement by Peter Painter promising an immediate arrest and offering two hundred and fifty dollars as a personal reward for information leading to the apprehension of the miscreant or miscreants. But his face was grim as he laid the paper down and belatedly went on to eat the rest of his breakfast. He reflected that things were beginning to get interesting. There had been over a grand laid on the line so far. And those offers, he reminded himself, had all been made before the second murder. If they hooked the two killings together and still didn’t get an arrest, he calculated the chances were good for the amount of the rewards being doubled.
When he had finished his eggs and ordered more coffee he turned to the editorial page. A scathing editorial there took cognizance of the double murder on the Beach; asked pointedly if there might not be some connection between the two; and sarcastically inquired what, if anything, the man in charge of the Beach detective force intended to do to make the lives of the other residents safe.
