He poured a glass full and half emptied it, filled it to the brim again, and got up to pad across the room in his bare feet and close the window. He turned back toward the bed and took another drink, set the glass down, and tugged at the lobe of his left ear with right thumb and forefinger.
“It’s important, Michael, and you are worried,” Phyllis accused. “You always pull at your ear when-”
Shayne took the glass up and emptied it, sat down on the edge of the bed, and shook a cigarette from a pack on the table. Phyllis lay back and snuggled under the covers, one hand reaching for a cigarette. Shayne lit both from the same match, stood up, and unbuttoned his pajama coat. Shrugging it from his big frame, he said over his shoulder, “Huh. Worried about going out in the cold and leaving my warm bed and ditto wife.”
Phyllis said severely, “You’re just trying to put me off the track with your compliments. You can’t fool me, Michael Shayne. You are worried.”
“You’ve got nutty ideas about the life of a private detective,” he growled as he got dressed. “We don’t deal exclusively in bloodshed and murder, you know. Nine-tenths of a private dick’s work is stuff like-well, checking on hubby to see if he’s stepping out, or finding out why little Johnny played hooky from school yesterday, or digging up sister’s suitor’s dead past.”
“You’re not fooling me a bit, darling.” Phyllis’s voice was honeyed. “You know you turn down routine stuff like that.” She kicked back the covers. “I’m going with you and-”
Shayne whirled away from the mirror where he was knotting his tie. “Get back in bed or get spanked, angel.”
“I won’t sleep a wink,” she warned him defiantly. “I’ll be pacing the floor thinking about those times you got yourself all beaten to a pulp.”
“Be sure to pace before the mirror,” he chuckled. “You look good enough to eat in those red pajamas. Besides, speaking as a bridegroom, I promise not to get my handsome face scarred.”
He turned back to the mirror to finish knotting his tie and Phyllis wrinkled her nose at his reflection in the mirror. When he turned around she was out of bed and standing directly before him.
“Is it a new case?” she wheedled. She touched his tie with a pretense of straightening it.
“Sort of.” He kissed her black hair and put her aside and went to the bedside table for his watch. The time was 2:21.
“It had better be a case,” she warned him. “It’s immoral for a married man to go out at two in the morning for anything except business.”
He went to a closet for his hat and belted raincoat, grinning out of the side of his mouth at her. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, angel. What’s left of me after being married to you for two weeks couldn’t be anything but strictly business.”
He jammed a felt hat down on his coarse red hair and reached her in two long strides. Swinging her clear of the floor he kissed her hard, then dumped her on the bed. She held him fast with hands clasped about his neck and whispered, “Promise you’ll be careful.”
He said, “Go back to sleep and dream you’re married to a ribbon clerk,” with rough tenderness, unclasped her hands from his neck and went out through the living-room.
Ten minutes later Shayne was speeding across the causeway over Biscayne Bay to Miami Beach.
The light rain had turned to mist. Shredded clouds obscured the thin arc of the moon as he turned to the left off the beach end of the causeway. A wraith-like mist crept in from the bay, making foggy fingers of the light rays from a car behind him. A police car raced past him and he speeded up to follow it.
It swerved onto a side street, slowed, and lurched through an opening in a high wall of coral rock surrounding a three-acre estate. He followed, nosing his battered roadster in behind half a dozen official cars and an ambulance parked in front of a massive two-story house with lights brilliantly flooding every window.
A Miami Beach policeman guarded the front door. He looked at Shayne suspiciously, then recognized the private detective and grunted, “Go on in. The chief’s looking for you.”
Shayne went into an entrance hall where there were more cops. They regarded him with open hostility; two detectives officiously ranged him between them and escorted him up a wide curving stairway. The thin high sound of a woman’s hysterical wailing knifed downward at them through a low rumble of subdued voices.
Shayne climbed the stairs silently, his gaunt face expressionless, bushy red eyebrows crowding down over lowered lids.
A policeman pushed a young man across the thickly carpeted hall in front of them as they reached the top. The young man wore dinner clothes and his face was a ghastly yellow. He kept opening and closing his mouth as though he were talking, but no sound came out. The policeman was being firmly paternal with him.
Plain-clothes men were gathered at the door of the room from which the young man had emerged. Shayne recognized members of the Beach homicide squad and nodded but they didn’t nod back. They merely drew away stiffly to let him enter with his two escorts.
At the left of the entry was a luxurious dressing-alcove as large as an ordinary bedroom. Directly beyond was a silver and white bedroom as large as a living-room, and in the center of its rug a dead man lay on his back. Joe Darnell’s plump face held a look of boyish reproach; his lips were parted as though he were utterly relaxed. There was a round bullet hole in the center of his forehead. A black handkerchief was loosely knotted around his neck.
Beyond him, men were grouped about a four-poster bed. The detectives shoved Shayne past the corpse into the group. His left eyebrow shot up and a muscle rippled in his lean jaw as he looked down at the nude body of Leora Thrip.
In death she clung to the semblance of placidity which had served her well in life. She had been gagged and choked with her blue silk nightgown. Her eyes were open, glazed in death, her upper features above the gagging gown showed no contortion of resentment or fear. Like Joe Darnell, Mrs. Thrip appeared not to object to what had happened to her.
Her torso was as smooth and slender as a young girl’s. Her arms were outstretched with fingers clawed downward at the mattress, limbs stretched straight down and pressed close together with only rigidly down-curling toes to indicate the death agony which must have racked her body while she fought against the torture of strangulation.
Shayne looked at her for a long time, then lifted his gaze to meet the challenging black eyes of Peter Painter across the bed from him.
“Why drag me out of bed to look at this?” Shayne asked.
With a great show of deliberation the Miami Beach detective chief lifted a manicured finger and caressed the threadlike mustache of his mobile upper lip. Someone snickered behind Shayne. Painter glared in that direction with eyes that were like shiny black marbles, then said:
“I wanted to see how you would react to sight of your handiwork.”
Shayne snorted his disgust. He started to turn away but the two detectives tightened their grip on his arms. He shrugged and asked in a resigned tone, “What fool idea are you riding this time, Painter?”
“You don’t deny that you know her, do you?”
“Of course not. Is that any sign I murdered her?”
“Do you know the man lying on the floor behind you?”
“Sure. I didn’t kill him either.”
“We know you didn’t kill them, Shayne. Not with your own hands or gun.” Peter Painter was walking around the head of the bed toward Shayne. His hands were thrust deep in his coat pockets and there was an expression of supreme enjoyment on his delicately molded features.
“But you’re directly responsible for two deaths, Shayne. You and no one else. You sent that killer out here on a job. You knew what Joe Darnell was when you sent him out here. Don’t try to deny that.” The last five words came out a thin-lipped snarl.
“Yes,” Shayne said, “I knew what Joe Darnell was. If you’re intimating that he was working for me tonight you’re a damn liar.”
Painter had stopped in front of him on widespread legs. Breath hissed in between his teeth, wheezed out slowly. He was a full head shorter than Shayne and he had to stand on tiptoe to get a healthy swing.
Shayne’s head jerked back under the impact of Painter’s fist against his jaw. Pinioned on both sides by Painter’s men, he made no other move. He licked a trickle of blood from his lower lip and said, “That was a mistake, Painter.”
