Shayne got out and circled the car. “Leave it here unless I send word to park it,” he said to the doorman. He took Miss Lally’s arm and they went into a small, ornate anteroom and past the check stand to the door.
A tall man in evening clothes hurried to greet them, frowning unhappily at Shayne’s informal attire, but his voice was pleasant when he said:
“Hello, Mr. Shayne. I’m afraid there isn’t a table right now.”
Shayne grinned disarmingly and said, “Don’t worry, Harold. I’m not going to embarrass you. Miss Lally and I are looking for her employer, Miss Sara Morton.”
“That’s quite a coincidence,” he said genially. “A friend of hers is expecting her. Been waiting for some time.” He nodded toward a man in impeccable white evening dress seated on a plush chair near the dining-room entrance. “She should be here soon,” he added.
The man’s profile was toward them. He was young and slender with a hint of arrogance in his aquiline features. His mouth was petulant, and he looked straight ahead as one determined not to look toward the entrance again for a woman who was late for a dinner engagement
Shayne felt Miss Lally give a slight start and tighten her fingers on his arm. He jerked his head around and looked at her just as she eased her glasses off.
“It’s Mr. Paisly,” she breathed. “He’s-”
She stopped when Mr. Paisly deigned to look once more toward the entrance. He came to his feet and rushed toward them, an anxious, hopeful smile lighting his face, and a large diamond glittering on the third finger of his right hand.
“Miss Lally!” he said vivaciously, the smile revealing a row of perfect white teeth. “Did Sara send you? What happened to her? I’ve been waiting since before seven.” He raised an arm gracefully and looked at a delicate platinum watch, trenched his brow with a row of frowns. “She’s generally so punctual. I don’t understand.” He let the frowns go and went on petulantly: “She might at least have telephoned me, don’t you think?” His big dark eyes held hurt and self-pity and gentle reproach.
“Miss Lally and I came here hoping to find her,” Shayne said quickly, before Beatrice answered.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Mr. Shayne, Mr. Paisly. Mr. Edwin Paisly. He’s Miss Morton’s-fiance.” The pause was definite and significant.
Paisly seemed to notice Shayne for the first time. His mouth tightened with disapproval and his brows went up. They stayed up while his eyes slithered all the way down to Shayne’s soiled sandals while Harold, the manager, hastily explained.
“This is Michael Shayne. Our famous detective.”
“Oh! That Shayne?” Paisly did a fast double-take and became agitated. “Is anything wrong? You say you’re looking for Sara-has anything happened? Tell me the truth at once, Miss Lally. I have a right to know.”
“She appears not to be at the hotel,” Shayne said casually. “I have a business matter to discuss with her. We are making the rounds trying to find her.”
“A business matter, you say? I wasn’t aware that she-that is, Sara hadn’t confided in me-what I mean is,” he stumbled on, “when she made this dinner date with me tonight she said nothing about expecting to talk business with a private detective.”
“At the time,” said Shayne blandly, “she probably hoped to be finished in time to keep her appointment. What time was she supposed to meet you?”
“Seven o’clock. She said she was meeting a reporter at her hotel for cocktails at six, but promised to get rid of him within an hour.”
“And you’ve been waiting here since seven?”
“Since before seven,” he corrected, coloring slightly at Shayne’s tone of doubt. “She doesn’t like for me to interfere with her professional duties,” he continued defensively. “She’s a very busy woman, and I kept thinking she would come as soon as she could possibly get away.”
“If we run into her within the next half hour,” he said kindly, “we’ll remind her you’re waiting.” He took Miss Lally’s arm and they turned to go.
“Thank you,” Paisly said with an inflection that indicated he would like to say something else.
As they drove away from the Golden Cock, Shayne said, “This Paisly isn’t exactly the sort of specimen I’d expect Sara Morton to go for.”
“He’s just the type she does go for,” she confided. “He’s years younger. I guess he brings out her latent maternal instincts. She always has someone like him dancing attendance.”
“Does she marry all of them?” Shayne asked with a hint of amusement as he circled the drive leading to the Boulevard.
“She has never gone that far. I don’t know about this time. Perhaps she really would have gone through with it. I’m sure he seriously expected her to.”
Shayne turned north, then east on 14th Street, and a few minutes later drove into a line of late evening traffic headed across the County Causeway to Miami Beach.
“The two places she’s known over here are the Green Barn and the Red House,” Miss Lally told him.
“They’re both Leo Gannet’s layouts,” muttered Shayne. “Does Gannet know what she’s after in Miami?”
“Oh, yes. She never wasted time being devious in making her investigations. I think she took a perverse pleasure in dropping into those two places often. I understand they have both closed their gambling-rooms since she started visiting them.” She spoke without rancor, with a touch of weariness or sorrow.
“Gannet must love that,” said Shayne with a chuckle. “The gambling concession in either of those joints would net several thousand dollars a night.”
“She told me four days ago Mr. Gannet had offered her twenty-five thousand dollars to get out of Miami and stay out,” Miss Lally revealed.
“She didn’t take it?”
“She laughed in his face and told him her professional integrity wasn’t for sale.”
“Your Miss Morton must have been quite a gal.”
“She was magnificent, Mr. Shayne.” Her voice was tremulous, but she steadied it and went on firmly: “That’s why there’s something you should know about. I didn’t want to mention it in front of Mr. Rourke, but now I suppose it’ll have to come out in the investigation.”
“The threatening letters?”
“Oh! You know about those? Then she did get in touch with you today?”
“She sat down in her room behind a locked door at six-thirty and wrote me a note that was delivered to my office by special-delivery some time before eight-thirty,” Shayne told her grimly. “After she had given up hope that I’d get her messages tonight.” He took the envelope from his pocket, handed it to her, and switched on the dome light.
Shayne’s face was impassive as he skillfully threaded his way through the three lanes of traffic, letting Miss Lally take her own time reading the last words her employer wrote before she was murdered.
The girl sighed when she finished, replaced the note and enclosures in the envelope. “She must have gone out and dropped the letter in the mail chute immediately after typing it. Why didn’t she tell me she took those threats seriously instead of sending me to the bar to meet Mr. Rourke? I could have stayed with her-had him come up-” Her voice broke gradually and ended on a note of despair.
“Then you didn’t think she took the threats seriously?”
“Of course not. Not really. She laughed at the first two, yesterday and the day before. You see, she’s had this sort of thing happen before on assignments like this. People try to frighten her away.”
“Like Leo Gannet trying to buy her off?”
“That-and the threats. She always laughed them off.”
“She showed you those notes?”
“I showed them to her,” Miss Lally corrected him. “I open all the mail and select whatever I think she needs to handle personally. That must be what she meant when she said I could tell you about them.”
“Go on,” urged Shayne. “Tell me.”
“There isn’t much. They came in envelopes bought at the post office. The addresses were typed. They were mailed locally, and nothing in them but the crude warnings, and no return address, naturally.”
“What became of the envelopes?”
“I imagine she destroyed them. All except the final one this morning. That may be in her room. I’m surprised
