if you don’t come clean-”
“I can’t. Not yet. Not until that wire comes through from Illinois. Let me know as soon as you get it, Will.” He stood thoughtfully tugging at the lobe of his ear, then muttered, “I’ll be in my room,” and hurried toward the elevator.
The door of the hotel suite was locked. Shayne knocked loudly. After a time he heard movement in the room, then the knob turned and the door opened a cautious inch.
Shayne shoved the door wide open.
Phyllis backed away from him. Her eyes were enormous and stared at him with hot rebellion. She wore a hostess gown of blue silk taffeta which swept to the floor in swinging fullness, rustling at her slightest movement. She folded her hands and stood straight and slim and outraged before him.
Shayne grinned. “Are you practicing up for something, angel?” His gray eyes were laughing. He took a step toward her, pushing the door shut with a hand behind him.
Phyllis put out a restraining hand. “Don’t touch me,” she ordered shortly. “Don’t even so much as lay a finger on me.”
The smile went away from Shayne’s eyes, from his deeply lined face. Slowly, as though he willed it to remain but could not make his facial muscles obey.
He said, “What the hell, Phyl?” looking down at himself appraisingly, sniffing to assure himself he hadn’t inadvertently become smeared with a stench.
“Don’t try to be smug about it,” she flung at him. “I’ll never let you touch me again. Never-as long as I live.”
“Hell’s bells,” he remonstrated, “I’m not being smug. I’m only being confounded. I never felt less smug in my life. What’s the matter with you?”
Phyllis sniffled and there was a catch in her throat when she said, “I just happen to have some pride left. That’s all. I suppose you thought you had crushed it when you married me.”
Shayne put his hands on his hips and studied her with narrowed eyes. She mimicked him by planting her hands on her hips and narrowing her eyes right back.
He laughed, but it was a feeble attempt at humor. “Are you sore because I couldn’t get back sooner? I’ve been busy as the devil, and-”
“I certainly am not,” she stormed at him. “If you had never come back it would have suited me better.”
Shayne sighed. “If you’d only be reasonable, angel.”
“Don’t call me angel,” she snapped. She stamped her small blue satin slipper on the rug. “Reasonable? Acquiescent is the word you want.”
Shayne said, “Hell!” in a bitter, wondering tone. He turned away from her and went into the bathroom, where he uncorked his cognac bottle and splashed a water glass half full of the high-proof liquid.
“That’s right,” Phyllis called in a high-pitched, hysterical voice, “soak yourself with brandy.”
Shayne had the glass halfway to his lips. He held it there, scowling at the clear amber liquid. Then he tipped it up and took two big swallows.
He set the glass down and examined himself carefully in the mirror. His hair was every which way and the scratches on his left cheek did not enhance his doubtful good looks. His eyes stared back at him with a weary expression. The stiff bristle on his face had grown unbelievably since morning.
For the thousandth time he wondered how he had been lucky enough to marry a young, beautiful girl like Phyllis; wondered, with a fierce tingle of actual fright, how long she would be satisfied to remain married to him.
Maybe this was the beginning of the end. A situation like this was something he didn’t know how to handle. He had had experience with hysterical women of an entirely different type. But, hell, a man couldn’t slap his wife around.
He cocked his ear toward the partially open bathroom door. He could hear her wild sobbing, hear the choking in her throat.
He closed the door silently, stalked back to the lavatory, and took another long drink, looking away from the unpleasant ugliness of his reflection.
He poured more liquor into his glass and drank it. Then he looked around him, saw a cake of Phyllis’s complexion soap. He hurriedly took off his tie and turned his shirt back at the throat, rolled up his sleeves, and doused himself with soapsuds and hot water. He found his razor, spread shave cream over his face, and shaved hurriedly, carefully edging the ugly scratches. He doused his bristly hair with hot water and combed it down sleek.
Replacing his tie, he took a last look at his reflection in the mirror and strode into the living-room.
Phyllis was sitting in a deep chair rocking back and forth with her hands covering her face. Her shoulders were shaking uncontrollably and the sounds of suffering from behind her fingers were unendurable.
Shayne dropped on his knees before her and put a long arm around her. “Don’t, Phyl. For God’s sake, I can’t stand this.” He tugged gently at one of her hands to get it away from her face.
Suddenly she lifted her head. There were no tears in her eyes. Convulsed with mirth, her eyes were wickedly bright, her young face radiant.
“Michael Shayne,” she choked out, “how you ever got to be the world’s best detective I don’t know.”
His arm tightened around her. Abruptly he swung her up from the chair and sat down in it, laying her neatly across his knobby knees. He cupped his palm to make a resounding noise as it came down.
“I should have done this long ago,” he said grimly and in a tone which rang with sheer relief. “Say ‘’nuff’ when you’re ready.”
“’Nuff,” she cried through her hysterical laughter.
He swung her upright and caught her close in his arms. “Now, tell me, what’s the occasion for all this burlesque? You scared me out of my wits.”
“Oh, Mike,” she caroled, “you looked so-so woebegone-so damn funny when I started in. I didn’t mean to keep it up, honest.”
He muttered, “Yeh, I guess it was funny.”
Phyllis drew back from him and looked at his hair. She ran soft fingers over his cheek, then she ran both hands through his hair and left it standing on end.
“I’m sorry, Michael. It was a lousy trick. But I–I got started and couldn’t stop. It was-the first time I realized I could handle you.” She gazed at him with round, dark, wondering eyes.
Shayne let his legs down and dumped her on the floor. “Next time you pull a stunt like that I’ll whale hell out of you.”
Phyllis turned her bright smile into a pout. “Well, I really had cause to put on a scene. You certainly looked as if you were playing for keeps in that picture.”
Shayne looked down at her sitting with her knees doubled up and her arms clasping them. “What picture, angel?”
“Why, the one of you and that Taylor girl.” She swung to her feet and ran across the room to a small table. She picked up a photographer’s envelope and came back, opening the flap and drawing out a glossy print.
“There,” she said, handing it to him and dropping again to the floor in front of him. “If that isn’t the most shameless thing I ever saw.”
The photograph was, as Conway had gloatingly predicted, a honey. Three lines of blood showed on Shayne’s cheek and the camera had caught a perfect expression of guilt as he jerked his head toward the flash of the bulb. His arm was tightly around Midge’s waist as though he hung on doggedly while she sought to wrestle away, and the fingers of his other hand were curved suggestively close to the torn bosom of her dress as they might have been had he ripped the fabric.
Midge Taylor was drawn back from him tautly, a look of real terror and of maidenly anger on her face.
Shayne studied the print from several angles, nodding gravely. “Playboy Shayne at his best,” he commented. “That’s an example of the technique I had just perfected when you slipped up on my blind side and married me.”
Phyllis laughed scornfully. “That’s your innate modesty. You know you never had to tear the clothes off women.”
“How did you get hold of this?” He reached for the envelope and read the printed legend: Ace-High Studio,
