Dora started to protest the desertion as Joe got up and Shayne silenced her by explaining, “A private detective’s business has to be private, Dora. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He and Joe strolled back to the men’s room, went in, and Shayne latched the door behind them.
“You really got somethin’,” Joe asked eagerly, “or you just tryin’ to cheer Dora up by makin’ her think so?”
“I’ve got something, Joe. I don’t know-” Shayne moved past a row of stalls to a frosted window which was lowered from the top for ventilation. He stared out thoughtfully at a refuse-littered back alley. “Still got your tools?” he asked without turning around.
“Yeh. They’re right where I cached ’em before I went up to Raiford.”
“I know a guy,” Shayne explained carefully, “who’s figuring on pulling a fast one. He’s laying a grand on the line for a fake burglary. I’ve got no use for a bird like that and you need that grand worse than he does. He’ll leave it lying handy tonight if you want to go after it.”
Behind him, Joe Darnell’s face registered amazement, then disbelief. “You mean-you’re puttin’ me onto pullin’ a job?”
Shayne whirled on him savagely. His eyes were sultry. “Why not? The twerp had the nerve to ask me to do the job. He deserves to get his ears knocked down. And he’s expecting to get plenty for having it pulled. I wouldn’t lie awake nights worrying about it if that mistake cost him a grand. He’ll be waiting at five o’clock to explain the lay to you. Take him while he’s ripe for the pickings, Joe. There won’t be any danger. He and his wife are both in on it. He wants an empty jewel case snatched and a jimmied window to prove to the police it was an outside job.”
Shayne paused. His nostrils flared widely. “He’s going to leave a thousand-dollar bill in the jewel case. Why not cross him up by leaving the case behind and not leaving any marks on the window? He’s dumb enough to believe you’re going to do the job according to specifications. When you go out there this evening get him to leave a window unlatched. Explain to him that a jimmy won’t open a locked window.” Shayne paused. His eyes were hard, like gray marble. “By God, I’d like to see him hoist on his own petard. If he tries to stash the jewel case after you leave it behind,” he went on hurriedly, “and puts up a holler that his wife’s jewels are missing, it’ll look like nothing but a plant to the cops and he’ll have plenty of explaining to do. Do you get the angle?”
Joe’s eyes were very bright. He licked his lips all the way around. “I’ll say I do. That’s a hot one, Mike. He can’t squawk about it without givin’ the whole plant away.” Joe stared for a moment, dumbfounded, then doubled over with laughter. “That’s neat, Mike. Neat, I’ll say. And it ain’t like he didn’t ask for it.”
Shayne smiled grimly. “Better not tell Dora,” he cautioned. “Women have funny notions sometimes. The name is Arnold Thrip. He’s got a place on Miami Beach. Be there at five if you want to take a crack at it.” He unlatched the door and they went out.
At the table Dora welcomed their return with a hopeful smile. “Did you get something fixed, Joe?” she asked eagerly.
“And how!” Joe was exultant. “We’ll get married tomorrow, honey. We’ll be in the money. Boy! What a setup!”
Dora jumped up and planted a moist kiss on Shayne’s cheek before he could back away. “I knew you’d help Joe. I kept telling him-”
“Sure, sure.” Shayne paused uncertainly, then shrugged his big shoulders. Half to himself and half to Joe he muttered argumentatively, “Hell, it can’t hurt anything.” He slapped Joe on the shoulder and wished him good luck, lifted his hat to Dora, and hurried out.
It was a little after four o’clock when Michael Shayne sauntered back into the lobby of his hotel where he had kept his old bachelor apartment as an office when he moved up into the new apartment with his new wife.
At the desk the clerk said, “There was a lady in here looking for you a few minutes ago, Mr. Shayne, She looked like class so I used my own judgment and asked her to wait in your new apartment instead of the old one.”
Shayne thanked him and went up three floors in the elevator. Down the hall to his left he stopped in front of a door and turned the knob.
He took a step forward and stopped on the threshold. His eyes widened in surprise. Phyllis and Mrs. Leora Thrip were sitting together at a coffee table chatting as though they had known each other for years.
Chapter Three: AN AMAZING STORY
Phyllis Shayne stopped pouring tea when her husband entered the living-room. She set the silver teapot carefully on the coffee table beside her and looked up with unaffected gladness in time to catch a humorous questioning in his eyes just before he turned his back and closed the door.
She wore a floor-length hostess gown of blue satin which made her cheeks look cool and gave dignity to her slim young body held primly erect. The sheen of her dark hair vied with the sheen of the gown and the illusion was of blue-black hair parted in the center, combed back in waves from a wide forehead. She wore a minimum of make-up. Phyllis Shayne was working hard at the job of being a suitable wife for her thirty-five-year-old husband, and when she remembered to be careful and not overexuberant, she looked almost her full age, which was twenty.
In the presence of a client Phyllis remained sedate and seated while Michael walked across the room to the coffee table, but aside from this she made no pretense of hiding the fact that she had been married only a short time and was hopelessly in love.
Shayne said, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Thrip,” as though he had expected her. He tossed his hat on a chair and went around the table to stand behind his wife’s chair.
Phyllis tilted her head back and Shayne cupped long bony fingers under her chin. For an instant they looked into each other’s eyes, then Shayne kissed her lips, wrinkled his nose at the steam floating up from her teacup.
“Good Lord, that smells like tea,” he exclaimed.
“Of course it’s tea,” Phyllis caroled. “We always have tea at four-thirty,” she said to Mrs. Thrip, “and Michael always jokes about it. Why, in Cuba-”
“Such a pleasant custom, my dear,” Mrs. Thrip agreed. She smiled. “It’s so seldom nowadays one actually has tea served when one is invited to tea.”
Phyllis said, “Excuse me a moment,” and took the squat silver teapot with her to the kitchen, explaining, “I’ll run some more boiling water over the leaves for Michael. He likes weak tea and that bitter taste you get from the used leaves.”
Shayne’s left eyebrow shot up apprehensively but he didn’t say anything. He sat down and took a cigarette from a pack on the table.
Mrs. Thrip wore the same carefully guarded mantle of placidity she had kept wrapped about her at the office. She wore the same somber dress. Against the gold-brocaded chair in which she sat, Shayne saw that it was dark blue. She took a sip of tea and appeared to relish it. She said, “My husband doesn’t know I’ve come to you, Mr. Shayne. He must not know.” She spaced the last four words evenly. Her gray eyes regarded him fixedly with that same intent quality of repose which he had noted earlier in the afternoon.
He said, “Of course not, Mrs. Thrip,” and lit his cigarette from a small lighter on the table, looking blandly across at Phyllis, who had tiptoed from the kitchen and, behind Mrs. Thrip’s back, stood before a built-in wall mirror which pivoted under her touch, revealing a compact and well-stocked bar on the other side. His gray eyes became languid as he watched her fill a teacup with amber liquid from a bottle and go quietly back to the kitchen.
Mrs. Thrip asked, “Did Arnold show you the notes, Mr. Shayne?”
Shayne was turning the lighter between his fingers as if studying its efficiency. He pursed his lips and set it on the table with a quick jerk, expelled smoke from his nostrils, and shook his head. “Notes? No, he didn’t show them to me.”
“He probably didn’t have them at the office, then.”
“I suppose not.”
Phyllis emerged from the kitchen with the steaming teapot and a tray bearing a cup and saucer and a goblet of ice water. The cup was full to the brim of something that looked like weak tea. She set it before her husband and
