gunmen checking their final plans for holding up the First National Bank in the morning. That blowsy old woman who tottered in front of him, wheezing as she walked and leaving a thick smell of stale beer behind her-what if that were a clever disguise to throw off suspicion while she carried out her cunning plan for kidnaping the mayor's young daughter whom she had lured into the park on some pretext?
In the meantime, until some of these hoped-for events happened, the young patrolman strode his post sternly and alertly, secretly amused to see the way young couples sprang apart at his approach, began talking loudly about inconsequentials, pretending not to notice his uniform as he passed, then melted back into one soHd lump in the shadowy darkness behind him as soon as he was ten paces away.
In the beginning, less than a month ago, Cassiday had paused often in his patrol to speak gruffly to such young couples, who hung their heads in abashed silence at his tone. Innocent love-making on a park bench was all right, and he had orders it was to be tolerated up to a point, but how was a young patrolman to know when that point was reached? It was safer by far, he had judged sternly, to nip such little affairs in the bud with a word of warning before they had a chance to go too far.
But that was weeks ago. Before he had met Ann Schwartz. Now he walked his beat as alertly as before, but with much more tolerance for the kisses and caresses under a Miami moon.
Ann Schwartz was a dark little Jewish girl, with elusive laughing eyes, lush breasts and a softly yielding body. He had first met her at a party at his brother-in-law's house two weeks before, and from that day onward his thoughts were all of Ann as he walked the park at night.
Sure she was Jewish, but so what? he argued happily with himself. She didn't really take her religion seriously. She wasn't kosher. She ate bacon with her eggs just the same as any good Catholic, and seemed to have a real yen for all kinds of shell fish.
That kind of Jewish didn't matter if a couple were in love. And he and Ann were. They had decided that the second night he dated her. She wasn't any more wrapped up in her religion than he was in his. A man could go to Mass occasionally, he thought, and his wife could go to a synagogue. Why not? At home it wouldn't matter. Not after the lights were out at night and a man was in bed with Ann.
Tolerance, that's what the world needed more of, he told himself wisely, looking the other way as he saw a dark mass off on the grass beneath a coconut palm writhe in a peculiar fashion. Three weeks ago he would have halted and rapped out a stem warning that would have brought the shame-faced young couple to their feet and out of the park in a hurry, but tonight he looked the other way and even smiled foolishly as he thought how it would be to writhe in the grass beneath a palm tree with Ann.
Not that she was that sort of girl at all. Not with any fellow except the man she was going to marry. But how did he know that couple back there weren't engaged, too? So, why should he interfere?
He pushed his peaked cap back on his forehead as he strode on, looking upward at the faint moon and feeling a great warmth of youth and vitality in his loins. Tomorrow was his night off and he was going to her home in Coral Gables to meet her family. He wasn't worried about the meeting. He felt he knew them already from Ann's ready descriptions of them. He would wear his new double-breasted orlon suit, he decided, with a white shirt and maybe a black tie to give the right sort of impression of sober conventionality in front of her parents.
The rippling water of Biscayne Bay was silver in the faint moonlight on his left through gaps in the shrubbery. Farther out, he could dimly see the riding lights of a few yachts anchored in the bay.
He turned sharply away, threading between double rows of palms whose fronds met over his head, heading westward now toward the end of his beat where there was a call-box for his hourly report.
He slowed his pace sharply as he followed the heavily shrouded path. He hadn't learned yet to curb his pace so he would come out on time at the call-box. The beat had been laid out for older muscles than his, and he always started out taking it slow and deliberate, but, when his thoughts turned to Ann, his stride quickened unconsciously and he was always getting ahead of himself like this.
He was passing the bench without noticing the figure huddled on it when the toe of his shoe struck something in the path. There was a tinkling sound in the gravel off to the side where his foot had kicked the object, and he stopped and thumbed his flash on to turn a circle of light downward.
The beam first picked out a gold lipstick and then a small hand mirror. Beyond them lay a lady's handbag, gaping open. He swung the light back swiftly and something gleamed wetly on the edge of the path beneath the bench.
The beam came up and he saw the girl lying there. TTie pallid face and sightless eyes, the gaping wound in her soft throat from which the red wetness beneath the bench had come.
He stood stricken and unable to move for at least twenty seconds. Time enough for the thought to flash through his mind that the dead girl was no older than Ann, and might well have been as pretty as she before the deadly knife had done its work.
Then awareness came to him, and he plunged headlong toward the call-box under the street light.
TWENTY: 11:38 PM
The report reached Will Gentry in his office just as he concluded reminding Shayne that if anything happened to the girl he had sent to Lucy's, it would be the detective's fault because he hadn't mentioned her whereabouts in time.
The inter-com buzzed, and Gentry leaned forward to hear the voice issuing from it.
'Murdered girl in park near Second Street and Second Avenue. Reported by Cassiday on beat. Throat is cut.'
Gentry jerked his head up to glare at Shayne. 'So it wasn't a forty-five after all. Another knife job.'
Shayne was already moving toward the door, and Gentry hurried after him. 'You don't know it's the same girl,' Shayne flung over his shoulder angrily.
'I'm betting,' Gentry challenged him grimly. 'You want to risk any dough on it?'
Shayne snorted loudly and went out the side door to his parked car.
He gunned it away fast, but by the time he reached the intersection an ambulance and two radio cars were already there. Spotlights made dazzling bright the cluster of men gathered about a park bench forty feet down the path.
Shayne pulled in behind the ambulance and got out. He stood for a moment beside his car as though nerving himself for the ordeal, then strode slowly down the path, his face set and expressionless.
Three policemen standing in front of the bench looked at him silently and drew back a little as he walked up. A white-coated ambulance attendant knelt beside the bench.
Shayne peered over his shoulder and saw the girl's face. He was steeled for the shock and there was only a faint grimace on his trenched face as he recognized her.
He stepped back and asked gruffly, 'How long ago. Doc?'
The kneeling intern shrugged and answered without looking up. 'An hour maybe.'
'You got anything on it, Shayne?' one of the officers asked, but Shayne turned away without answering him as Gentry hurried up the path.
The police chief looked at him questioningly, and Shayne nodded and said stiffly, 'I'm glad I didn't put up any money.'
Gentry's eyes probed at his face for a moment, then he nodded and stepped past him to confer with the young patrolman who had discovered the body.
Shayne walked on a few feet and stopped to lean his right shoulder against the smooth round trunk of a palm. He got out a cigarette and lighted it, controlling the shaking of the match so it was hardly noticeable. He drew in a deep lungful of smoke and expelled it slowly, and his body seemed to slouch negligently against the palm as though he had no interest at all in the scene behind his back.
He stayed that way and didn't turn around until Gentry called to him sharply. 'Shaynel Take a look at this.'
He took a last drag of smoke and spun his cigarette away, turned to see the chief holding a sheet of paper in his hands.
'It is Nellie Paulson after all. Here's a receipted bill from the Hibiscus for last week's rent on room three-six-
