playful and bounced some chinaware at me. I got sore and tied her up in a chair until she cooled off. The phone was knocked over in the excitement and the desk clerk heard the goings-on and sent Clancy and Bates up. I hated to air my family troubles to a couple of harness bulls, so I gave them a song and dance about a couple of thugs escaping by the fire escape. The boys chased after them, but when they didn’t see anyone they got suspicious and came back to check up. I stuck to my story, but I don’t mind having you know the truth, Will.” Shayne laughed hollowly.
There was a moment of silence at the other end of the wire. Then Will Gentry sighed wearily. “More hocus- pocus. All right, Mike. I’ll kill the report if that’s what you want.”
“You sound,” Shayne complained, “as though you don’t believe me. You don’t know Phyl when she goes on a rampage. She’s got the damnedest temper.”
Gentry said, “Shut up,” and hung up.
Shayne replaced the telephone and looked up, startled. Phyllis was regarding him belligerently from the bathroom door. She wore an old kimono and a fresh-scrubbed look.
“Who were you talking to,” she demanded, “about my fierce temper?”
“It’s this way, Phyl. That was Will Gentry. I didn’t want any headlines about our playful visitors so I stalled him with a yarn about you getting sore and throwing things at me.”
“You-you lug. What will Mr. Gentry think of me when he sees you all battered up?”
“I don’t think it’ll change his opinion of you, angel. He didn’t sound completely convinced,” Shayne admitted ruefully. “Hurry and slide into some glad rags. We’ve got a dinner date.”
Phyllis’s expression softened. “Let’s have something sent up-or I can open a can. You look like the wrath of God even if you don’t realize it. If you’re going around telling people I did that to you, you’d better stay home until you heal up.”
Shayne grinned. “People are used to seeing me pasted together. I feel like going out for dinner.”
“You’ve got something up your sleeve,” Phyllis charged. “You never want to go out when I want to.”
Shayne poured a small drink from the decanter which had been refilled since the melee. He took a sip and explained. “I’ve got a hankering to take on a load of hasenpfeffer. You know how it is when you get a hankering for some special dish. Nothing else will do. And the only place they really know how to make it is at the Danube Restaurant on the Beach. Come on,” he cajoled. “Slip into something and let’s go.”
Phyllis studied him a moment with compressed lips. “You’re still up to something,” she asserted. “But I may as well go along to pick up the pieces as to stay at home worrying myself sick.”
“You may as well,” he agreed cheerfully. The side of his face and jaw was swollen and the lobe of his ear was taped down with a bit of adhesive, but otherwise he felt pretty good. He sipped his cognac and waited until Phyllis was nearly ready, then fastened his soft collar and put on a tie, meekly let her persuade him to wear a double-breasted blue coat with his flannels, and they went down through the lobby and out into the springlike softness of Miami’s tropical night.
The perfume of flowers and of lush tropical foliage blew in from Bayfront Park as Shayne drove north on Biscayne Boulevard, and when he turned east on the winding causeway across the bay there was the tang of salt air to lift a man’s spirits and make him know it was good to be alive.
Sitting silent beside him, Phyllis shuddered and relaxed against the back of the seat with her cheek pressing against his shoulder. In a low voice she said, “Michael! I don’t think I’ll ever forget that horrible moment this afternoon when you kept going toward the man while he backed away threatening to shoot you. Why didn’t he pull the trigger?”
“He didn’t want to shoot me any more than I wanted him to,” Shayne scoffed. “He knew one shot would end the party-bring someone to investigate-and I wasn’t any good to him if I couldn’t talk.”
“This is the kind of case you’re crazy about, isn’t it?” Phyllis demanded after a moment of silence.
“It’s beginning to look interesting,” Shayne hedged. “I like to find out things as I go along-stay one jump ahead of the other fellow.”
“I mean the danger. The continued imminence of death. Pitting yourself against murderous forces. That’s what you really like about it, Michael.” She shuddered again.
He was thoughtfully silent for a time. “Maybe so, Phyl. I never put it into words before.” His voice roughened. “I’m sorry if it’s tough on you, but you knew my business before you married me.”
“I’m not kicking,” she disclaimed quickly. She sat up straighter, reached over, and got two cigarettes from a pack in his shirt pocket. She lit them both, inserted one between his lips. “Let it be a short life and a merry one,” she went on with mock bravado. “Only-it is fun being married to you, darling. I’d like to have it last another month or so.”
“I lasted a lot of years before I had you to worry about me. And you’d better be glad,” he went on, “that I’m not flying a bomber or riding a submarine tonight. Bucking a couple of New York gunsels isn’t half so dangerous as taking a whack at the Nazis.”
“That would be different. At least, I think it would,” Phyllis said slowly, seeking to rationalize a thought that wasn’t wholly rational. “It seems to me I wouldn’t mind that half as much.”
“A man is just as dead,” said Shayne sententiously, “from an enemy machine gun as from a sawed-off. 45 in the hand of a hired torpedo.”
“Oh, I know.” Phyllis shivered and pressed against him. “War and death seem so far away. It’s sacrilege to think about such things on a night like this.”
That, Shayne realized with a sense of shock, was in line with what he had been thinking a short time before, only in an entirely different way. He remained silent, driving down the last incline off the causeway and turning abruptly south on the peninsula.
A few blocks more and he pulled up in front of the Danube Restaurant, a low, inconspicuous building facing Biscayne Bay.
There were not many cars in the large parking lot, and as they got out, Shayne explained casually. “The war has practically ruined Otto’s trade, I guess. He’s a nice, harmless old fellow but he had the misfortune to be born on the wrong side of the Atlantic.”
“It’s a shame,” Phyllis said warmly. “He’s an American citizen, isn’t he?”
Shayne said, “Yes. Otto’s naturalized, but he’s still a German to a lot of people who think in terms of headlines.”
He guided Phyllis through the entrance and gave his hat to a motherly Frau behind the check counter. A tall, heavy-shouldered man met them at the entrance to the dining-room. He had a long, horsy face and sad brown eyes. He wore dinner clothes and had a napkin neatly folded over his arm.
“Two, sir?” He did not bow, but there was servility in his tone.
Shayne said, “You’re new here,” as they followed him into the large dining-room where less than a dozen diners sat.
“Yes, sir. I’ve been here only a short time.” He spoke without a trace of foreign accent. “Will this be suitable, sir?” He led them to a table near the wall.
Shayne said, “This will do.” The headwaiter drew out Phyllis’s chair, then snapped his fingers loudly for a waiter.
Shayne ordered two sidecars and inquired about the hasenpfeffer. The moon-faced waiter beamed delightedly and assured him it was of the most delectable.
Phyllis leaned close to her husband when the waiter went away. “Now will you tell me why you insisted on coming here tonight?”
He told her, “I wanted to get a look at the head-waiter.”
She craned her head around to look at the sad-eyed man. “What about him?”
Shayne admitted he didn’t know. He gave her a brief resume of his talk over the telephone with Will Gentry. “It’s an old dodge,” he concluded, “reporting one’s car stolen while it is being used to commit a crime. So old,” he added ruefully, “that few of our better crooks use it except as a last resort. But it’s the only angle that’s turned up yet and I didn’t want to pass up any bets.”
The waiter brought the sidecars. As Shayne lifted his glass he turned his head slightly and saw Helen Brinstead following the headwaiter to a table for two against the opposite wall. She was alone and she still wore the dove-gray dress he had seen that afternoon. He set his cocktail down and said, “Don’t look now, but I think I smell heliotrope perfume.”
