“I?” Shayne frowned. “I’m not a doctor. I can’t-”
“But you’re a man.” There was frenzy in her voice. “A normal man. You can tell. The books say normal men can tell and won’t have anything to do with girls like that. If you can’t-if you won’t-if you don’t want me, I’ll know. And I’ll kill myself.”
Shayne pushed his chair back and stood up. It was hot in the room, stifling. He loosened his pajama collar and went to the window, drawing in great drafts of fresh air, and tried to get a grip on himself.
When he turned about, she was also standing, trembling, her face white. “You are repulsed by me. Then-it’s so!”
“Don’t be a fool,” Shayne said roughly. “You’re just a kid. I can’t-Good God! I’m old enough to be your father.”
“I’m nineteen. And you’re only thirty-five. You said so this afternoon.” She was moving toward him, hope glowing hotly in her eyes.
There was a weakness inside of Shayne. Phyllis Brighton stopped very close to him.
She said, “Don’t you see I have to know? I have to. Nothing else matters. You promised to help me. You can. By proving to me that I’m a normal woman-desirable to a normal man.”
“You’ve been out with men before, haven’t you? Haven’t they-”
“Not with ones that are grown up, like you.” She held out her hands. “If you’d just kiss me I’d know,” she said, as if it hurt her to ask him.
“If I kiss you,” Shayne told her somberly, “it won’t end there.” He had hold of her hands and he didn’t realize that he was crushing them in his hard grasp.
“I don’t want it to end there.” Her voice was quiet, and she didn’t seem young any more. Shayne forgot that he had been thinking of her as just a kid who was trusting herself with him alone in his apartment. He was drawing her closer, hurting her cruelly, but she did not flinch. Exaltation shone in her eyes. She lifted her head, offering him her lips.
He said, “God have pity on us both if I kiss you, Phyllis.”
Her only response was to press close to him. The resilient warmth of her body against him was too much for Shayne to resist. There was a blaze flaming inside him now. He kissed her lips, and she gave herself to him, eagerly, utterly.
He put her away from him after a time, and his gaze was hungry, brooding. “I warned you. You can’t turn things like this on and off, you know-like an electric switch.”
“I don’t want to.” There wasn’t a trace of coquetry in her smile. It was a smile of sincere and honest gladness. “Where’s the bedroom?” She glanced about the room.
“That door.” Shayne’s forefinger stabbed at a closed door. “The bathroom is the door on the right.”
She patted his hand and went to the bedroom. Shayne stood there, and his gaze followed her until the door shut her from his sight. His mind was racing, trying to puzzle something through in spite of the clamor in his blood. Nothing quite like this had ever happened to him before. He poured himself a drink, held it up, and let light spill through the amber fluid. Then his eyes became abruptly intent, and he set the glass down without tasting it, went to the bedroom, and knocked.
Phyllis’s muffled voice called, “Come.”
Shayne saw that she was already in bed, the coverlet pulled up to her chin.
There was a loud thumping on Shayne’s outside door as he started to say something to Phyllis.
He whirled tautly. A heavy voice called, “Open up, Shayne.”
He turned to look at Phyllis. “No. They didn’t follow you. Like hell they didn’t. Stay in bed and don’t move. Don’t make a sound. I’ll try to stall them.”
He whirled and went out, switching off the light and closing the door quietly. “All right,” he growled as the thumping continued, “give a man time to get out of his bathroom.”
Stepping softly to the table he pocketed the. 25 automatic, set Phyllis’s wineglass upside down in the cabinet, and emptied his. Then he strode to the bathroom, flushed the toilet, sauntered to the door, and opened it. He didn’t bother to act surprised when he saw the heads of the Miami and the Miami Beach detective bureaus standing in the corridor outside. Instead, he scowled and said, “This is a hell of a time to come visiting,” stepped aside, and let them enter.
CHAPTER 4
Will Gentry came in first. He was a heavy man with a face the color of raw beef who walked solidly on the thick soles of square-toed black shoes and wore a dark suit and a black felt hat tipped back on his perspiring forehead. A stolid, persevering man who ran the Miami detective bureau as it had been run for thirty years. He said, “Hello, Mike,” and went past Shayne to stand by the table.
His companion was Peter Painter, “dynamic and recently appointed chief of the Miami Beach detective bureau,” as the press had been describing him. Shayne knew him slightly. He was medium in height and slender, a few years younger than Shayne, and his appearance at the moment was characteristic. He wore a double-breasted Palm Beach suit and a creamy Panama hat. White-and-tan sport shoes, a pin-striped tan shirt, and a brown-and-red four-in-hand tie completed his ensemble. Shayne’s eyes flickered as he took in this sartorial tour-de-force, but not from admiration.
Painter had flashing black eyes, a thin face, and mobile lips across the top of which there ran the narrow line of a beautifully trimmed and exceedingly black mustache. He had been a New York detective for three years, and had resigned to head the Miami Beach detective bureau. He nodded and followed Gentry into the room.
Shayne closed the door and moved toward the table. His eyes were hard but his manner affable. He stopped at the cabinet and took down two clean wineglasses, set them on the table, and unstopped the brandy bottle. “Have a drink?”
Gentry nodded absently, his eyes going around the room.
Painter drummed on the table top with hard finger tips and said, “I don’t drink while on duty.”
Shayne lifted shaggy eyebrows in quizzical inquiry as he poured two drinks. “I thought this was out of your territory.” He handed Will Gentry a glass and poured fresh ice water from the pitcher.
“That,” Painter told him, “is why I asked Gentry to come along with me.”
Shayne nodded and drank. Then he drew up a straight chair and motioned toward the two easy chairs close together in front of the table. “It isn’t against your principles to sit down, is it?”
He sat down, as did Gentry. The older man shook his head slightly at Shayne. Painter did not move. He said, “I want that girl, Shayne.”
Shayne shrugged and sipped from his glass. “There are lots of girls,” he said softly.
“I want only one of them. Phyllis Brighton.”
“Christ,” murmured Shayne, “you’re welcome to her.”
Painter’s eyes were fixed on his face. “Where is she?”
Shayne gravely patted the pockets of his dressing-gown and looked at Painter with guileless eyes, murmuring, “Gracious. I seem to have mislaid her.”
Painter’s dapper figure grew tense. He leaned forward angrily.
“Now, now,” Gentry interposed. “Cut out your horsing, Mike. Painter thinks you had something to do with her disappearance from her home.”
Shayne asked, “Has she disappeared?” His tone was noncommittal.
The Miami Beach man said, “That won’t get you anywhere, Shayne. Maybe you can get away with your kind of stuff on this side of Biscayne Bay, but you can’t on my side.”
Shayne grinned and said, “Can’t I?”
“No. By God, you can’t.” Peter Painter’s dark eyes flamed dangerously. “That girl’s guilty as hell, and I’m going to break that case tonight.”
“Fair enough.” Shayne lit a cigarette and smiled mockingly at the little man. “Cherchez la femme.”
“You,” said Painter, “have got her hidden out.”
“Want to search the dump?”
