There was movement all around Shayne’s roadster. People surging back and forth excitedly, talking loudly and asking questions which were not answered.
A man leaned across the door on Shayne’s left. Shayne turned his head and looked into Hymie’s eyes, not six inches from his own. Melvin stood a foot behind his companion. Both the lad’s hands were bunched in his coat pockets. His eyes were sultry and venomous.
Hymie said, “The boss wants to see you. Come on.” He spoke the words so softly that Matrix did not hear them.
The detective looked past Hymie at Melvin. He laughed. “So you’re on the junk again? You’re pretty young to go for that stuff.”
Melvin’s breath hissed out and he said three words which brought Shayne out of the car with his gray eyes blazing and his big fists doubled.
Hymie said, “Shut up, Melvin,” and caught Shayne’s arm with one hand while the other jammed a gun in his ribs. “Melvin gets like that,” he continued mildly. “Let’s go, Shayne.”
Melvin circled Shayne and came up behind him. His hands were still clenched on the guns in his coat pockets. Hymie led Shayne toward a bright blue sedan parked on the east side of the road south of the death scene. The round end of a cigar glowed from the rear seat.
Shayne waited until Hymie leaned forward to open the door. He took a quick backward step, swinging his right arm high in the air and backward while his left arm circled Hymie’s neck.
His right arm settled around Melvin’s neck and he swung the two heads together. They made a loud thud, and Melvin wilted to the ground. Hymie ducked and backed away, but Shayne’s right fist caught the point of his retreating chin. Hymie collapsed against the side of the sedan.
Shayne dropped to his knees as Hymie fell. He unclasped Melvin’s fingers from two heavy-caliber guns with barrels sawed off close to the cylinders, stood up and hurled them over the blue sedan into the thick growth of palmettos beyond the roadside.
He then thrust his head inside the rear door of the car and growled to Max Samuelson, “Next time you want to see me, come yourself,” slamming the door shut as he finished speaking.
When Shayne stalked up to his roadster, Matrix was sitting where he had left him. The editor greeted his return with a surprised smile. “I hadn’t quite made up my mind what I should do. Those fellows appeared quite determined.”
Shayne growled an unintelligible reply as he got into the car and started the motor. He pressed the horn down and held it while he jockeyed right and left through the crowd and passed beyond the scene of the accident.
Hymie was sitting up by the blue sedan rubbing his jaw, but Melvin lay still on the ground when they passed.
Shayne smiled grimly and pressed his big foot on the accelerator, and Matrix asked, “Where are we going now?”
Shayne answered morosely, “To the dogs.”
Matrix subsided against the cushion and didn’t ask any more questions.
Chapter Twelve: A JUMBLE OF SIGNPOSTS
At the Greyhound Track Shayne swung into a floodlighted parking-lot where rows and rows of sleek automobiles were parked in precise ranks. He disregarded the importunate gestures of a uniformed attendant who waved him toward a vacant spot far in the rear of the lot. Instead, he made a circle and parked his roadster near an exit, blocking it so that he couldn’t be blocked from getting out through the gate.
The attendant hurried toward him, exclaiming in a shocked tone, “You can’t park there, sir. It’s against the rules.”
Shayne laughed, took the keys from the ignition and went with Gil Matrix toward the revolving entrance. The girl at the ticket window called Matrix by name, smiled, and waved them in without tickets.
A blast of sound welled up from the high-walled enclosure. It was the interval between the third and fourth races, and a ten-piece band was valiantly striving to make itself heard above the voices of the thousands of spectators who had won or lost on the third race.
The orchestra ceased for a brief interval while bugles sounded sharply, then resumed a swing march as tall young men caparisoned like Mexican generals began parading the entrants for the fourth race past the grandstands.
Shayne shouldered his way through the milling crowds about the jinny pit, his eyes darting over the throng, muttering to his companion, “My wife is supposed to be here somewhere.”
“Is that why you dragged me out here?” Matrix protested. “I thought you were on the trail of counterfeits.”
Shayne gestured impatiently toward the long lines of lucky bettors edging up to the pay-off windows. “A man would have one hell of a time picking a counterfeit ticket out of that mob. No,” he went on briskly, “I brought you along to stay out here and watch for my wife while I see Hardeman. After I see him I’ll have some more questions for you.”
“Go ahead,” Matrix agreed willingly. “I’ll nab on to your wife if she shows up. H-m-m, let me think, now. She was wearing a white sports dress with a flamingo scarf-unless she changed.”
“And a white fur jacket.” He nodded and left Matrix standing on tiptoe searching the sea of faces around him.
He shouldered through the lines at the pay-off windows and past lines already beginning to form at the selling-windows. A hectic and jovial informality characterized the night crowd as distinguished from the air of hauteur which pervades the scene at the horse races, for greyhound racing is truly a sport for the masses.
An arrow said Offices and pointed underneath the grandstand. Shayne followed the arrow and opened a door onto a narrow hall with offices on each side. He stuck his head into the first office and asked, “Where is the manager?”
A blond young man stopped rattling a calculating machine long enough to say, “Third door on your left.”
Shayne went to the third door on his left and knocked, then turned the knob and walked in. John Hardeman swung about in a swivel chair and looked at Shayne across a littered flat-topped desk. The track manager had been typing with one rubber-covered forefinger at a typewriter stand behind him. He slowly peeled the rubber tip from his finger and said, “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Shayne,” in a tone of fretful annoyance.
Shayne pulled a straight chair close to the desk. It was comparatively quiet in Hardeman’s office, though a dull and unceasing rumble of sound rolled in through an open window behind the desk.
“What progress are you making?” Hardeman leaned back in his swivel chair, putting his palms flat on the desk. “I hope you have something to report.”
Shayne shook his head. “I’m not ready to make a report yet.” He lit a cigarette and spun the match away. “Did Max Samuelson find you?”
“Yes, he-What’s that? Mr. Samuelson? Why, yes. He was in to see me a short time ago. I thought at first I hadn’t understood you. I didn’t think of you two being acquainted.”
“Oh, yes. Maxie and I are old enemies. What did he want?”
“Well, really, Mr. Shayne-” John Hardeman pursed his lips. “I don’t see how that can possibly have any connection with your work up here.”
“Maybe it hasn’t,” Shayne growled, “but I’m playing a hunch.”
“Of course, I don’t mind telling you. It’s an open secret that Mr. Samuelson is much interested in the camera invention Ben Edwards has perfected. I happened to be the means of introducing them some weeks ago, and Mr. Samuelson came to confer with me before seeing Edwards again tonight.”
“What sort of an invention is it?”
“It’s quite complicated. I don’t profess to understand the details. An instrument for long-range work with a new type of telescopic lens developed by Edwards over many years of research. I believe there are also many other novel features of automatic precision focusing.”
