He said harshly, 'Snap out of it. No one's going to bother you while I'm here.'
He could just as well have slapped her. She cringed away from the impact of his voice like a cur that has just been kicked resoundingly. Her mouth worked soundlessly and there were bubbles of spittle on her lips.
Shayne put his hands on her shoulders and turned her about. 'Go in the kitchen. There's a latch on the inside. Lock it and stay there until I call for you to come out.' He gave her a gentle shove, stood there and watched her scurry back to the kitchen and close the door.
The knocking and demands for entrance continued at the front door, and he turned and stalked to it grimly, jerked it open to confront a tall young man with a scarred face who stood on the threshold.
SEVEN: 10:20 P.M
The scarred face, almost level with Shayne's, was red and contorted with anger or some other emotion, but it was not fearsome or hideous as the girl's description had led Shayrie to expect. Indeed, discounting the scar on one cheek and the evidence of undue emotion, Shayne perceived it would have been a pleasant, almost handsomCj face of a well set-up man in his early thirties.
The scar ran diagonally from the left comer of his mouth upward to the point of a rather high cheek-bone, and Shayne guessed that normally it would not draw too much attention. But now it was a white weal against th (suffused flesh and stood out clearly.
Shayne stood flat-footed and immobile in the doorway, glowering at his visitor who moved to push forward, d(manding furiously, 'Where is she? What's happened t‹ Nellie?'
Shayne put a big hand against the younger man's chest and pushed him backward. He growled. 'You haven't been invited in. What the hell do you mean by this ruckus?'
'You're Shayne, aren't you?' The young man glared back at him defiantly and his hands balled into fists. 'I'm coming in whether I'm invited or not, and no two-bit private dick is going to keep me out.'
Shayne studied him speculatively, his gray eyes bleak and trenches deepening in his cheeks. He said, 'Whenever you're ready to try your luck, bud.'
For a long moment their eyes locked and held. The younger man's blood-shot and humid, Shayne's coldly challenging. Then with a supreme effort of will, his visitor forced his body to relax. He unbailed his fists and blinked a couple of times, wet dry lips with his tongue. He said hoarsely, 'I'm sorry I tried to barge in. I'm Bert Paulson and I'm so goddamned worried about Nellie I'm just about off my rocker.'
'So, that makes two of you,' Shayne thought to himself. Aloud, he said, 'That's better. Keep it that way and maybe we'll get along.' He swung abruptly on his heel to let Paulson enter, walked back to the tray holding his cognac glass still half-full. He made no attempt to conceal the bottle of sherry and the glass the girl had used. He took a sip of cognac and turned to see Paulson striding belligerently in, looking suspiciously all about the room and at the three closed doors leading to bathroom, bedroom and kitchen.
'So her name is Nellie?' said Shayne pleasantly. 'Funny, but I just now realized she didn't tell me.'
'Where is she? What's happened to her, Shayne? What in the name of God made her act that way when she saw me?'
'What way? Have a drink, Paulson?' Shayne waved his hand toward the open liquor cabinet.
'No, thanks. Didn't she tell you? What kind of crazy story did she cook up to explain why she came here?'
'She told me several things.' Shayne dropped into a chair with his glass. 'I assure you she's perfectly okay and I will produce her whenever you convince me it's safe to do so.'
'Safe?' snorted Paulson angrily. 'Why in the name of God is she afraid of me?'
'Suppose you sit down and tell me.'
With another lingering look at the three closed doors leading off the sitting room, Paulson sat stiffly on the edge of the chair in front of the redhead.
'I don't know. Unless she's really slipped a cog this time.' Paulson's eyes burned into Shayne's. 'How did she act? Is she completely insane?' His voice was strained and hoarse and he thudded his right fist into his palm. 'Damn it, man! Don't you see-'
'I don't see very much right now,' Shayne interrupted him. 'So far as I could tell she made at least as much sense as you do right now. Calm down and try to give me a coherent story.'
'Did she tell you about screaming and running from me in the hotel the moment she saw my face?'
Shayne nodded, taking a sip of cognac. 'And about you chasing her down the back stairs and through the alley, and how she escaped from you by the skin of her teeth by hailing a cab. How'd you manage to trace her here, by the way?'
'I got the license number of the cab and found the driver and asked him. But why is she afraid of me, Shayne? She knows I'd never do anything to harm her.' Bert Paulson looked younger than his thirty years at that moment. Young and hurt and completely bewildered.
'That's not the way she gave it to me,' Shayne told him dryly. 'She claims she doesn't know who you are. That she never saw you before in her life. She suspects that you murdered her brother, and-'
'Her brother?' Paulson's look of astonishment was ludicrous. 'I'm her brother. Didn't she tell you that?'
Michael Shayne sat very still holding his cognac glass inches from his lips, staring into it as though he had never seen the amber stuff before and was fascinated by it.
'No,' he said, slowly. 'She didn't tell me that, Paulson. In fact she assured me she had seen the body of her murdered brother in room three-sixteen at the Hibiscus Hotel no less than ten minutes before you jumped at her in the corridor as she came out of the room.'
Paulson's body went slack in his chair. He closed his eyes tightly and put his left hand over them as though he had to shut out the glaring overhead light. In a strangled voice, he muttered, 'I guess I could use a drink after all.'
Shayne poured cognac into the sherry glass on the tray. He pushed it into Paulson's hand, asking matter-of- factly, 'Is it all right straight?'
Paulson sloshed a little as he got it up to his lips. He emptied the glass without taking it away, shuddered and blew out a long breath.
'I'm Nellie's brother,' he told Shayne slowly. 'I'm not dead, as you can well see. Now do you realize the condition she's in? Why I'm so worried? Why I have to find her and take care of her?'
Shayne said, 'I can see that all right. If you are her brother and are telling the truth. But you see, I got a completely different story from her. She came here and hired me to protect her from)'ow-describing you perfectly, including the scar. And she also wants me to find out who cut her brother's throat tonight and how they got rid of the body. So you can see,' he ended reasonably, 'it puts me in a dilemma. Until I find out which one of you is telling the truth-'
'But I can prove it,' said Paulson vehemently. He reached in his hip pocket for a wallet, opened it and began pulling out cards. 'I've got identification. I can prove I'm Bert Paulson. You look. I don't see too well without my glasses.'
Shayne didn't glancis at the cards. 'And I can easily prove I'm Mike Shayne. But if I told you I had a sister named Nellie who had suddenly gone crazy and thought I was going to kill her, that wouldn't prove I was her brother. Pour another drink if you like, and let's htfar your end of this gobbledegook.'
'No, thanks. One is enough right now.' Paulson put his empty glass back on the tray. 'Nellie and I live in Jacksonville. That is, we did live there until I got pulled into the
Korean war. Mother died while I was overseas, and when I came back I found Nellie living alone and apparently liking it. She had a good job in Jax and seemed to be enjoying being on her own.'
He paused and looked down at his hands for a moment, resuming with apparent effort. 'Maybe I was wrong, but I thought maybe it was just what she needed. Mother was always-sort of over-possessive, I guess you'd call it. Even with me. And Nellie never had been able to call her soul her own. She had a nervous breakdown when she was sixteen,' he went on fiercely, 'and spent several months in a sanitarium. I always felt it was entirely mother's fault. So when I came back and thought I'd settle down in Jax and Nellie could sort of keep house for me, I saw she resented it. In fact,' he went on slowly, nibbling his lower lip in concentration, 'she blew up all over the place when
