The doors of rooms along the hall were closed except the one at the head of the stairs where the redhead had accosted him in the afternoon. He dragged the brim of his hat low on the left side of his face, tucked his chin down, and went down the stairs. He bumped into a man coming through the front door and the fellow squared off with a surly curse, but Shayne brushed past him and out to his roadster.
“What happened?” Phyllis asked eagerly as he got under the steering-wheel. “Was Mayme’s information worth coming for? Did she tell you anything important?”
Shayne moved his head shortly and negatively, then relaxed behind the wheel and shoved his hat back from his forehead.
A cry of dismay escaped Phyllis’s lips when she saw his face. “What is it, Michael? What happened up there?”
“Mayme Martin isn’t going to do any talking-ever,” he said harshly. “She’s dead.”
“Oh-” Phyllis pressed her hand against her mouth.
“It looks like suicide on the surface,” he went on slowly, “but I think it was fixed to appear that way.”
“You mean-murder?”
He nodded and leaned forward to turn on the ignition. “We’d better get away from here in a hurry.”
“But shouldn’t you tell the police, Mike? It might be hours before anyone will find her.”
“Mayme won’t mind,” he muttered.
“But, Michael! Just think-”
He said, “No,” with savage intensity and swerved around a corner toward Biscayne Boulevard.
Phyllis shrank away from him and he drove fast, looking straight ahead.
“She’s dead,” he said after a time. “Nothing can change that. Can’t you see the spot I’d be in if I reported it?”
“I suppose so. Still-no one could blame you.”
He laughed shortly, swinging into the boulevard northward. “I’m damned glad Mayme Martin wasn’t murdered on Peter Painter’s side of the bay. Of course, I know Will Gentry wouldn’t suspect me of murder. But he’d want the answers to a lot of questions-answers I can’t give him right now. I wouldn’t blame him for not believing me. My story sounds screwy as hell, and he knows I never tell anything if I think I can make a fee by keeping still. He’d have to hold me, Phyl, and in the meantime there’s a job to be done in Cocopalm. We’ve got to get back there so fast no one will suspect we’ve been away-and sit tight until this thing is cleared up.”
In a small voice Phyllis said, “All right,” and subsided against him.
Shayne nosed the roadster into the mad racing parade going north toward the dog track and held it at seventy-five.
Chapter Six: A GOOD PLACE FOR SNOOPING
The races had started when they approached the track for the second time. Shayne slowed the car and grinned at Phyllis, who sat up straight and intent, cocking her dark head toward the racketing sound of the mechanical rabbit and the gleeful yelps of the hounds pursuing it around the oval track.
He asked, “Want to stop and take in a few races while I go on into town and do some checking up?”
Phyllis shook her head regretfully. “It’s no fun to go alone. Maybe you’ll be coming out later to watch for counterfeit tickets and I’ll come with you.”
“It’s going to be lonesome at the hotel,” he warned her. “I’ll be too busy the next hour or so to have you trailing me.”
“Oh, I expect to be ditched,” she told him resignedly. “I’ll grow old and gray sitting around waiting and wondering whether you’ll come back under your own power or be carried in.”
Shayne grunted something unintelligible as he pulled up in front of the hotel and his headlights picked up two men standing together at the curb. They were Gil Matrix and Chief Boyle.
As he leaned forward to turn off the ignition, Shayne murmured. “Don’t let anything slip about our trip to Miami.”
She made a wry face at him and they got out together.
The fiery little editor greeted Shayne by saying, “We were wondering where you had gone. Chief Boyle was getting nervous waiting for the next shooting to start.”
“That ain’t so,” Chief Boyle said. “I just said to Matrix I reckoned you and your wife had gone out to the dogs.”
“A good guess,” Shayne assured him. He took Phyllis’s arm and led her into the lobby. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll be back to report presently.”
He rejoined the two men at the curb and asked, “Where could I find Grant MacFarlane this time of night?”
Gil Matrix chuckled. “You’d better have your gun greased for a quick draw with MacFarlane He’s not going to like what happened to those two punks upstairs tonight.”
“You shut up, Gil.” Chief Boyle worried his underlip with his teeth. “You can’t prove Leroy and Taylor were working for Grant tonight. They could’ve been hired by anybody that wanted Mr. Shayne out of the way. Grant can’t help it if fellows like that hang around his night club.”
“I reiterate,” Matrix returned ironically, “Shayne had better be ready to duck more lead if he insists on looking MacFarlane up tonight.”
Shayne said, “I haven’t asked for advice. I just want to know where I can find the man.”
“He’ll be at the Rendezvous, just north of the city limits,” Matrix informed him.
“But you better not go out there,” Boyle interposed. “No need to stir up any more ruckus. Besides, I calculate it’s my duty to see you don’t go out of this city until there’s a coroner’s verdict on those two killings.”
Shayne said, “The only way you can keep me away from the Rendezvous is by putting me in your jail.”
“Well, now, maybe I’ll do that.” Boyle stepped back a pace, his eyes shifting away from Shayne’s hard gaze.
The big detective laughed softly, his lips drawing back from his teeth. “It’ll be one of the toughest pinches you ever made, Boyle.”
“I don’t want any trouble with you, Shayne,” the big chief said. “But I guess I can round you up in case I want you.” He turned and hurried down the street.
“You’re what Cocopalm has been needing,” Matrix said to Shayne as the chief passed out of sight. “There’ll be more headlines after you and MacFarlane shoot it out.”
Shayne warned, “You’ll print one headline too many one of these days,” but the editor only laughed and trotted across the street on his thin, short legs.
Shayne stood beside his car and watched Matrix with narrowed, speculative eyes.
A sign in a lighted second story window directly opposite blatantly proclaimed: The Voice of Cocopalm. North from the two-story building were the three vacant lots which Hardeman had described.
A tall, stoop-shouldered man passed in front of the lighted window as Shayne watched Matrix begin climbing a stairway leading up from the sidewalk. The man moved back into view as the editor entered the office. Shayne stood on the curb and watched them talking together. Matrix was gesticulating excitedly and the stoop-shouldered man kept nodding. Presently he took off a canvas apron that was tied around his waist and put on a hat and coat.
Shayne strolled across the street and intercepted the man as he came hurrying down the stairs. The detective deliberately lurched against him, grinned widely, and put a hand on his arm. “Hiya, pal. Lishen, I got shome newsh-”
“Not now.” The man put him off impatiently. “Tell it to the editor upstairs.”
Shayne sagged back against the building and hiccoughed gently. He watched while the Voice employee got into a Ford parked at the curb and drove southward to the intersection where he made a sweeping U turn and drove swiftly north. When he was out of sight, Shayne muttered, “H-m-m,” and climbed the echoing wooden stairs. He pushed a door which opened into the lighted front office.
The office was small and untidy, with a littered desk, a steel filing-cabinet, and a typewriter stand in the
