She lowered long eyelashes, giving her face a demure look of youth and inexperience. “Yes.”
Deliberately, Shayne said, “I knew a Jim Lacy once. Ten years ago. From what I knew of him then, I wouldn’t expect a girl like you to be acquainted with him.”
She kept her eyelashes down. In a low voice, she said, “It must be the same man.”
“He used to be a private detective, too.”
“He still is.”
“Then why come to me? If you need the services of a detective.”
“Mr. Lacy advised me to. He explained that he had a New York license and had no authority in Florida.”
“Is Jim Lacy here-in Miami?”
“Yes. I just happened to meet him today. I–I knew him casually in New York.” Helen Brinstead lifted her long eyelashes. She took a step toward him, wringing her hands. “I’m so alone here, Mr. Shayne. So frightened. You must listen to me-help me. You must! There’s no one else.”
Shayne nodded. “Sure, I’ll listen to you. That’s my job. Relax.” He took her arm and steered her to a chair a couple of feet in front of him.
She crossed her legs and leaned forward imploringly. “It’s going to sound too utterly fantastic, but I beg you to reserve a decision until you hear me out. That’s all I ask. I’ve kept it bottled up inside of me too long. I can’t go on. It’s too utterly horrible to face alone.” She stared past him, panting through compressed lips.
Shayne offered her a cigarette. She shook her head and he lit one for himself. “You make it sound very interesting, Miss Brinstead. I like a case that offers possibilities beyond the dull routine of crimes motivated by lust and greed.”
Her eyes were a darker blue when she shifted her gaze back to him. She looked older, and her words sounded rehearsed.
“Before I take any more of your time, I’ve heard-well-that your fees are dreadfully high. I don’t know whether I can afford to pay what you’ll charge.”
Her fingers were writhing together in her lap. Her gray skirt slipped above her knees, but her eyes were intent on Shayne and she didn’t notice. He lifted a big hand reassuringly.
“Sometimes I manage to collect a decent fee, but it’s always in line with the job I do and never more than my client can stand. We’ll discuss the fee after you’ve told me what you want done.”
“One thing more. No matter what I tell you, you’ll keep it confidential? Will you give me your word of honor?”
“Hell,” said Shayne in disgust, “if you don’t think you can trust me, you’d better leave right now.”
A flush crept into her cheeks. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and lowered her lashes. She smoothed her skirt down over her knees and said tonelessly, “I guess I’m acting like a fool. I-you see-I–I tried to commit suicide yesterday.” She shuddered, with eyes downcast. “Everything looked so terribly hopeless. Then I met Mr. Lacy and he told me about you and, well-I was crazy enough to start hoping again.”
Shayne said, “This isn’t getting us anywhere. You’re talking in circles and now you’ve got back to the starting point. See if you can’t start making sense for a change.”
She glanced up angrily, then faltered, “I deserved that. The trouble is, I’ve been thinking in circles. I think I’ll take that drink you offered me.”
“What’ll it be? There’s practically anything you want in the cabinet.”
“Just-whatever you’re drinking.” Helen glanced at the cognac bottle timidly.
“This is pretty potent stuff to take straight unless you’re used to it.” Shayne heaved his rangy body up and went to the cabinet, where he got a Seltzer bottle and a highball glass. He went into the kitchen, returned with three ice cubes in the tall glass. The girl watched in silent absorption while he poured cognac over the cubes and squirted Seltzer in. She accepted the glass gratefully.
As Shayne settled back in his chair the wail of a police siren came through the open window behind him. It sank to a moan, then wailed high again, died to silence outside the apartment hotel.
The girl asked, “Is that a fire engine?”
“That, or the cops.” Shayne nodded toward her highball. “Does that taste all right?”
She drank some and said, “It’s wonderful.” She was relaxed now, her left hand lying against the arm of her chair, her head comfortably back against the cushioned headrest. Her legs were uncrossed and stretched out in front of her, and her skirt had again crept above her knees. Shayne smoked idly and waited for her to begin.
“You’re wonderful, too,” she told him suddenly. “I feel utterly tranquil sitting here. As though all my troubles were unimportant. How can you be so gentle and understanding when they say you’re tough and conscienceless?”
Shayne chuckled. “It’s my bedside manner. I lull you into a sense of false security and you find yourself telling me things you wouldn’t tell your priest.”
“That’s just what I’m ready to do now, but I can’t think how to begin.”
“Let’s begin with Jim Lacy. I’m interested because I haven’t been in contact with him for ten years. What is he doing in Miami?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know Mr. Lacy very well. That is-well, I did once. Some time ago. But we simply met here by accident. When he learned about my trouble he said if there was any man in the world who could help me it would be Mike Shayne.”
“I can’t do anything without a few facts to chew on,” Shayne reminded her.
“I know. It isn’t easy to get started. You see, I’m-not at all what I seem. Actually I’m terribly wicked underneath.”
“Just what form of depravity are you addicted to?” Shayne asked her, grinning.
“It isn’t funny.” Her voice was suddenly tight and harsh. “I’ve done some despicable things. And now they’ve caught up with me. Back in New York I was-what they call a decoy girl in a divorce racket.
“I suppose you know how the racket is worked,” she went on tensely. “I was a show girl and jobs were hard to get when I met this lawyer at a party. He and Jim Lacy worked it together-getting divorce evidence for his women clients. Sometimes there was collusion and the men co-operated in setting up evidence of adultery that would hold in courts, but more often the husband was just a sucker whose wife was tired of him and wanted alimony.”
She took a sip from her glass and compressed her lips, then went on bitterly. “I was the come-on girl. I got a commission for each bedroom scene I staged-each time I set things up for Lacy and a photographer and the indignant wife to burst in on. A professional corespondent, one judge called me.”
“All right,” Shayne said. “I don’t need a diagram. Lacy was never too choosy about the sort of work he did. So what?”
“So then-a couple of months ago I was introduced to a new fall guy. His name was-well, you might as well know everything-his name was Charles Worthing. He was nice-so damned nice that as soon as I met him I couldn’t understand why any woman would want to divorce him. It seemed to me it would be-heaven-to be Mrs. Charles Worthing.
“So- I was the sucker.” Helen was sitting erect now, leaning forward tensely, talking fast. “I fell for him like a ton of brick. Funny! Me, the decoy girl! But it wasn’t funny because he, God help me, fell for me, too. I should have backed out right away. I saw it happening to us. I should have run like hell, but I–I couldn’t.
“He was married to a woman who didn’t deserve a swell guy like him. And I kidded myself into believing I’d be right for him. I went ahead with it just like any other case. He came to my apartment one night. When we were in what the papers would call a compromising situation, Lacy and Worthing’s wife and the photographer busted in- just like the script was written.
“Well, there was the usual scene and Charles was wonderful. He never suspected me for a moment. Poor darling, he wanted to protect me-protect my name from being smirched by a divorce suit. My name! Get it? That was a laugh, but I–I couldn’t laugh. He made me promise to marry him as soon as the divorce went through.”
“And you agreed?”
“Sure I did. What else could I do? Tell him the truth? Smash the last thing he believed in? He loved me. And I loved him. I didn’t see why it wouldn’t be all right-why he’d ever have to know the truth.”
A single tear from beneath each of Helen’s eyelids rolled down her cheeks while she stared fixedly at the detective.
He said, “Finish your drink and I’ll pour you another.” He lifted his own glass and emptied it. Helen turned
