“Not so fast there. You haven’t said you’d stay.”
Shayne’s lips curled away from his teeth. He put Phyllis gently aside, but she clung to his arm, her face white with strain.
“Don’t dive in over your depth,” Shayne warned Boyle. “I’ll smash any man who stands in my way tonight.” His big hands balled into fists. He shifted his weight to a fighter’s stance.
Phyllis breathed, “Please, Michael,” and tugged at his hard arm. She appealed to the chief, “Don’t be absurd. My husband isn’t going to run away from any inquest. He has a job to do, and-”
“Don’t make it easy on him,” Shayne said angrily. “I’m not asking his permission to do anything.”
“Well, now,” Boyle said placatingly, “if the lady gives me her word I guess that’s good enough. You folks go ahead, but I can’t guarantee to give you protection if you don’t tell me what you’re going to do.”
Shayne snorted and strode past him with his wife clinging to his arm. She smiled up into his sultry eyes as he stalked to the elevator.
“Why do you insist on being so tactless, Michael?” she asked with a catch in her voice. “You could avoid all sorts of complications if you would just leave a man like that a little corner to back into. He’s sort of pathetic,” she ended thoughtfully.
Shayne laughed suddenly and in a wondering tone said, “You’re marvelous, Phyl. I’ll never understand how I got along all these years without you.” He squeezed her arm with rough tenderness, then lifted her into the elevator as it stopped in front of them.
Chapter Five: THE SMELL OF BLOOD
The sky was clear and duskily blue from the pale light of a quarter moon when they got into the roadster. There was little traffic going south, and in spite of the parade of racing cars traveling north toward the race track, Shayne reached the outskirts of Miami in thirty minutes. He glanced at his watch as he slowed for the traffic signal at 79th Street, then swerved to the right off the boulevard.
He said, “I’ve got to find some place where I can get a check cashed, angel,” in response to a silent inquiry in her dark eyes. “The Lucky-Seven Club will just about be opening for business and that’s my best bet to pick up a thousand dollars at this hour.”
They bumped across the F.E.C. tracks at Little River, turned left on Northeast Second Avenue. A dozen blocks farther south he turned into a graveled circle drive leading through tropical shrubbery to the front of a solid stucco structure set unobtrusively back from the street. The neon light was not on over the entrance, but curtained windows glowed with lights from within.
Shayne stopped in front of the door and got out. “I’ll only be a minute,” he promised, striding around the car and up flagstone steps.
He put his finger on the electric button and held it down. After a few seconds a bulb glowed above his head and a panel in the door slid back. A pair of black eyes set in white orbs rolled at him through the slit, then the latch clicked and the door came open.
Shayne said, “Hello, Foots,” to a fat Negro and received a nod and a white-toothed grin.
“You-all’s moughty early tonight, Mistah Shayne. Ain’t hahdly got the tables unkivered.”
“Is Chips in his office?”
“Yassuh, he sho is. Mistah O’Neil am busy right now layin’ out de money fo’ tonight’s play.”
Shayne went down a carpeted hall past an archway opening into a huge square room where men were taking covers from roulette tables, crap layouts, and curved blackjack set-ups. He went through an open door and at the end of the hall said, “Hi, Chips,” to a tall black-haired man who squatted on the floor in front of a large safe.
Chips O’Neil turned his head and said, “Hello there, shamus.” He stood up with neat bundles of bills in his hands, arching iron-gray eyebrows ironically. He complained, “Don’t tell me I’ve got to start paying off the private dicks along with the regulars.”
Shayne grinned. “This isn’t a jerkdown-unless my check bounces.” He took a checkbook from his pocket and sat down at a desk. “Can you let me have a grand?”
“Sure. How do you want it?”
“Make it twenties.” He made out a check to Cash and signed it.
“A ransom payoff?” O’Neil asked curiously as he counted out a stack of twenties.
Shayne smoothed the bills and folded them into a wallet. “Nothing like that. Just a little matter of business. Thanks, Chips.”
Chips O’Neil said, “That’s okay, shamus,” and Shayne went out to his car. He nodded to Phyllis as he stepped on the starter. “I got the money. When I spread this stuff out in front of Mayme Martin she’ll tell me everything she knows.”
He drove on down Second Avenue and parked opposite the Red Rose Apartments. When Phyllis started to unlatch the door on her side, he said, “Better stay in the car, angel.”
“But I want to come in,” she protested. “Why are you always trying to make me stay back or get out of the room when something interesting is about to happen?”
“In this case, because I’d hate to have anyone see me taking you in there. They might get the wrong idea. This dump,” he went on, jerking his head toward the flashy front lights of the building, “is what the Herald would chastely describe as a house of ill fame. After all, Phyl-unless you want to lose your reputation-”
“Oh!” Phyllis sank back against the cushion. “Why don’t people tell me these things?”
“Because you’re so sweet and innocent.” Shayne pinched her cheek and got out. “Mayme may still be so polluted she won’t be able to talk coherently. In that case I’ll be right back.”
He went across the street and into the entrance hall. Curtains were drawn across the brightly lighted lounging-room and loud voices and laughter followed him up the stairs to No. 14. The door was closed and no light showed through the transom.
He hesitated a moment with his knuckles doubled to knock, then tried the knob instead. The door opened easily.
A musty odor, part gin and part human, struck him in the face. Mingled with it was a stale smell of indefinable sweetishness which caused the hairs at the back of his neck to prickle. He fumbled for the light switch, found it, but stepped back to close the door before turning on the lights.
Light flooded a disordered room which was occupied only by himself. He stood back against the door while his eyes searched every nook and corner for the thing he expected to see.
It wasn’t there. He went forward warily, glanced into the empty kitchenette, then went to the closed bathroom door. He hesitated for a moment, standing back from a little pool of blood that had seeped under the door. His face hardened into grim, gaunt lines as he took out a handkerchief and covered the doorknob.
The sweetish smell of fresh human blood was strong when he opened the door. He found the bathroom light switch and snapped it on, stood staring somberly down at the corpse of Mayme Martin. Her body lay twisted on one side and there was something indecent in the sight of her naked legs below the hem of her slip.
He stood rigidly in the doorway and took in every detail of the scene with cold, searching eyes. Mayme Martin’s throat was slit from ear to ear and the pool of blood on the floor was turning brown.
There was an odd look of contentment on her features, which had been so distorted with anger and fear a short time before. There was nothing to indicate that she had struggled while the lifeblood drained from her body. A safety razor blade lay on the tile floor beneath the un-flexed fingers of her right hand.
Shayne left the light on and closed the bathroom door with his handkerchief-filled hand. He mopped sweat from his face and stood staring around the living-room. His toe struck an empty gin bottle on the floor and it rattled loudly against the leg of a chair as he moved slowly forward.
The hatbox which had been half packed on his previous visit was now empty and toilet articles and clothing were scattered over the floor as though thrown aside by someone hastily searching through them.
Shayne went to the door without touching anything. He used his handkerchief to rub the inside knob clean, scrubbed the electric switch, then turned out the light and stepped into the hall. Here he carefully removed his fingerprints from the outside knob. There was no use trying to preserve the fingerprints of whoever had entered the room before him. His own prints had obliterated them.
