One of their boats had sailed from Miami for Havana the preceding morning, but the clerk could not recall any Miss Godspeed on the passenger list. At Shayne’s insistence, the list was checked with negative results.
Shayne then produced his photograph of the nurse, and the clerk immediately recalled selling her a ticket two days before. She hadn’t given him her name, of course, and there was no way of determining what name she had used if she was aboard.
The boat, however, was lying over in Havana that day, and Shayne arranged to have the picture flown over by airplane, and to have the crew asked to identify it. By this time his shoulder was worse, and his face drawn with pain as he went back to his hotel and in the lobby.
“Mr. Shayne!” The desk clerk beckoned to him. “I just took an urgent telephone message for you. You’re to call 614 at The Everglades Hotel as soon as you come in.”
Shayne thanked him and went to the switchboard and asked the girl to put him through. She did and he took the call from a booth.
Ray Gordon’s metallic voice said, “That you, Shayne?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got to see you at once.”
Shayne grunted, “Okay.”
“Come over here as quick as you can. I’ll be waiting.”
Shayne said, “Okay,” again, and hung up. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his left hand as he left the booth and went out into the hot sunlight. Agonizing currents of pain spread from shoulder downward. He walked swiftly to The Everglades, keeping to the curb and protecting his injured side from passers-by.
He went directly to the elevator and up to the sixth floor; down the corridor to 614 where he knocked. The door swung open, and Shayne walked in. Gordon closed the door behind him. The gunman, Dick, stood in the center of the room, his thin body slightly crouched. His eyes were yellow slits, and there was an expression of greedy triumph written all over his pasty face. His right hand held a silenced Luger automatic. It was pointed at Shayne’s belly, and the youth’s hand was steady.
Gordon said, “Get ’em up,” and Shayne lifted his left arm toward the ceiling.
Gordon stepped close and felt all over him for a weapon without finding one. He said, “Loosen up, Dick, this mug’s clean,” then stepped around in front of Shayne, treading lightly on the balls of his feet.
His face showed no trace of emotion, though lips were sucked back from his teeth.
He said, “You lousy double-crossing skunk,” and smashed Shayne in the face with a rocklike fist.
CHAPTER 13
Shayne’s head was snapped back by the smashing blow, hitting the wall with a dull thump. He put his left hand behind him and pushed himself erect. A trickle of blood ran from his split upper lip into his mouth.
He started to speak, and Gordon hit him again, a side-wise blow with his open palm. Shayne rolled his head with the blow and kept his feet. The youthful gunman slid down into a chair, stiffly watchful. He held the Luger carelessly trained on Shayne’s midsection, and there was an evil gleam of gratification in his yellow-tinged eyes.
Shayne said, “This’ll cost you, Gordon.” His tongue licked out over his bloody lip.
Another blow smashed him between the eyes, sent him staggering back.
Shayne planted his feet wide apart, shaking his head slowly. “I don’t know what the score is. You’d better get your dope straight.”
“I’ve got it straight.” Gordon slapped him with his open palm again. Shayne slumped back against the wall. Murderous rage flamed in his eyes, and his left hand was clenched into a fist, but he couldn’t disregard the covering Luger and the twitching lips of Dick.
Gordon stepped back, surveying him implacably. “That’ll give you an idea what you can avoid by talking fast.”
“What do you want me to do?” Shayne grunted. “Recite ‘Gunga Din’?”
“Wise guy, eh?” Gordon stepped in and sloughed him again. Shayne’s left hand groped about for a support and found the back of a chair to hold him erect.
He nodded jerkily. “Pretty wise.”
“You’re not wise enough to take Ray Gordon for a ride. Playing both ends against the middle don’t go, by Christ, when I’m in the middle.”
“If I knew what the hell you were talking about,” Shayne muttered, “we might get together.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were hooked up with the other outfit when I called you in? Suck me for two grand, eh? No man can do that and live to enjoy it.”
“I’m not,” Shayne told him, “hooked up with anybody.”
“You’re a liar. You were over at the Brighton house this morning.” Gordon drove his hard-knuckled fist into Shayne’s face again. The big body of the detective rocked back and slowly toppled to the floor. He hit on his right side, and his teeth bit back a groan of anguish.
Gordon drew back his right foot and kicked him in the belly. Shayne doubled up in agony, and Gordon kicked him in the face, saying flatly, “I’m just getting started.”
Blood oozed onto the carpet from a long split on Shayne’s cheek. His left arm groped out, and he painfully lifted himself to a sitting position. Through puffed lips, he said, “Be careful you don’t start something you can’t finish.”
Gordon sat down and studied him blandly. “I’d enjoy killing you, Shayne. But that wouldn’t do me any good. I can make you wish I had killed you if you don’t come clean with me.”
“I never was very good at riddles.” Shayne spit out a mouthful of bloodied saliva on the rug.
“Men don’t cross me up,” Gordon told him, “and live.”
“Men don’t beat me up,” Shayne replied, “without paying for it.”
“The hell they don’t. You’ve been playing around with lame-brains too long, you dim-witted cluck. Before I finish you’ll wish your mother hadn’t taken time off from work to lie down in a gutter-”
Shayne hunched forward, resting his weight on his left hand. His lips slobbered blood, and his eyes were mad. Without getting up, Gordon lifted his foot and ground the heel of his shoe in Shayne’s face, toppling him over on his side. Then he got up and asked conversationally, “Well?”
Shayne’s smashed lips drew back from his teeth. “About two more like that and I won’t be able to answer your foolish questions.”
Gordon reached down and twined strong fingers in the detective’s wiry red hair. Jerking his shoulders up, he slid him over and propped him against the wall, sitting up.
“What’s your hookup with the Brighton outfit?”
“None.”
“You’re still a Goddamn liar.” Gordon swung his foot back with an unpleasant smile.
Shayne said, “All right. What do you want to know?”
“That’s better.” Gordon sat down. “What have you found out about Henderson?”
“Nothing.”
“That kind of talk won’t keep you alive.”
“Would you rather have me think up some lies?”
“What arrangements have they made about the picture?”
“Who is ‘they’? And what picture?”
Gordon said, “Okay, mug. If you insist.” He leaned over and slugged Shayne with his fist. Then he stood up and deliberately kicked him into unconsciousness.
Dick got up and came forward with gleaming eyes as the detective’s muscles relaxed and he lay soddenly still.
“Go through him,” Gordon ordered curtly. He sat down and lit a cigar with steady fingers while Dick slid the automatic into a shoulder holster and knelt beside Shayne.
Deftly, the youth’s fingers went through Shayne’s pockets and piled everything he found on the rug in front of
