Ed shrugged and winked, probably thinking of the Demerara he had consumed that afternoon, then took his wife firmly by the arm and faced her toward the door, asking, a little brusquely, “What are you doing here, Mike? Casing the joint?”
“You might call it that.”
“As far as I can see, it’s harmless. I don’t go for this out-of-the-world stuff, but the Madame puts on a good show. If this is what they want, they get their money’s worth.” He propelled his wife to the door.
The desk in the arch next to the waiting room was now covered with voodoo dolls, boxes of pink, red, black and white candles, labeled Success, Love, Death and Immortality, small bottles holding Goofer Dust, amulets attached to bracelets and necklaces, and a stack of occult literature. People were crowding around the desk to buy souvenirs from the woman in the horn-rimmed glasses. The prices, Shayne noted, were not exorbitant.
At a touch on his arm, he turned.
“Mr. Shayne, someone has been following me.” Clarissa Milford stood behind him, her eyes wide and disturbed.
“I know. I hired him.”
“Then you must think I’m in danger!” she whispered.
“It’s only a precaution.” Shayne picked up one of the voodoo dolls and dropped a half dollar on the desk. Even without comparing this doll closely to the ones Henny Henlein and Clarissa Milford had gotten, he could tell they were all from the same lot.
“I’d like you to meet my sister and brother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Thain,” Clarissa said with a complete change of voice. “This is Michael Shayne.”
Shayne nodded to Mabel, took Thain’s limp hand and looked down into brown, hostile eyes.
“The detective?” Thain turned to Clarissa. “What have you to do with him?”
“Oh, you know, Percy,” Clarissa said offhandedly. “It’s about that doll.”
“I see,” Thain said distantly. “I didn’t know you had gone to him.”
“I decided suddenly-”
“If it makes her feel better, Percy-” Mabel said placatingly.
Relations between the Thains and Clarissa seemed a trifle strained. Did Percy Thain believe Clarissa to be more involved in the hit-and-run death of his son than she admitted? And was she?
The Thains left with Clarissa, and Tim Rourke walked over. The sensation-seekers had thinned out, most of them gone. “I’m afraid we wasted our time,” Rourke said. “There’s no story here.”
Shayne ran a hand over his angular jaw. “I’m not so sure. You think it came through O.K. on your pocket recorder?”
“Such as it is, I’ve got it.”
“I’d like to run it through a little later and listen again.”
“What for?” Rourke asked sourly. “It’s gobbledegook. By the way, Sharon, the person the first message was addressed to, was that thin woman. I was sitting next to her. She shook like a leaf.”
“She must be a regular. Otherwise the tape couldn’t have been prepared.”
“It was about the only message that made sense.”
“Maybe,” the redhead said slowly, “the others made sense to someone.”
“What do you mean? All that gabble about the forty-eight outer worlds couldn’t make sense to anyone except another ectoplasm. Maybe you don’t get around in occult circles, Mike. It’s old hat. This kind of thing’s done every day. If it were a con game-But I don’t see any racket angle. The Madame puts on a good show and folks get their money’s worth.”
It was the same thing Ed Woodbine had emphasized, and precisely what Shayne himself was thinking. “They got more than their money’s worth. That’s what bothers me. At five dollars a performance and fifty cents a doll, she’s damn near losing money.”
Rourke scratched his head. “You think it’s set up as a front for something? Could be. But I don’t see what.”
“I don’t either. But I’ve had two frightened clients today with dolls that came from here, and one was murdered this afternoon.”
“You talking about Henny Henlein? You’ve been holding out on me, Mike.”
“I’ll give it to you as soon as it can be printed.”
Rourke looked at Shayne through narrowed eyes. “Are the dolls the only thing that’s worrying you?”
“No. There was a man here I’m curious about. I met him this afternoon on Sylvester’s boat. He’s a vacationist-but not the type I’d figure to shoot a tropical evening at Madame Swoboda’s.”
“Hell. Mike, I think you’re straining. People do things when they get to Miami they’d never think of doing anywhere else. Maybe the sun gets them. Or maybe they just get tired of fishing and an ectoplasmic evening seems like a good change. Or maybe they get tired of communing with their wives and decide to give the spirits a whirl.”
“I’d rather whirl a real body-even if it was my wife.”
“So would I,” Rourke said, “Especially if it was your wife.”
Shayne grinned. “Speaking of that, I think I’ll go and find out what Swoboda’s like without her astral body.”
“I’ll run along then. Want me to burn a pink Success candle for you?”
“I’m sure it’s not necessary,” Shayne said.
6
The redhead walked down the hall past the seance room in the direction Madame Swoboda had taken. The hall ended at a kitchen, off which a narrow stairway led upstairs. He mounted the steps, purposely making his footsteps heavy, and found at the top another narrow hallway, dimly lit, and leading to the front of the house.
The first room he passed was an old-fashioned bath with a footed tub and a box over the toilet with a long chain dangling from it. The second was a bedroom, sparsely furnished and uninviting, and the third, a sort of den in which Madame Swoboda was sitting in a wicker rocker.
The gossamer veiling and tiara lay on the floor beside her, but she still wore the silver shawl crossed over her ample and worldly breasts. The lamplight brought out the red lights in her black hair and emphasized the extraordinary length of her lashes. A highball stood on a battered Victorian table at her elbow, and smoke wafted upward from the cigarette she held between slim fingers.
She turned, startled, as Shayne entered, asking coldly, “What do you want here?”
“To tell you how impressive you were.” Shayne toed a chair around to face her and sat down in it.
Accepting the compliment, she said, “I have the gift. I’m a born medium.” Picking up the drink she took a deep draught, then set it down and puffed on the cigarette.
“Are you the deep-trance type?” The redhead was amused at the contrast between hard liquor, tobacco and the spiritual claim. “Or are you semi-trance?”
“Deep,” she said in her timbred voice. She fastened enormous gray eyes on him, the black lashes spreading around them like spider legs. They looked bottomless, seeming to hold slumbering fire, feminine provocation and worldly knowledge-everything, in fact, but spiritual light. “In a trance I feel exhilarated, I feel profound, but-” she sighed heavily-“it is tiring. I need stimulation after it is over.”
Shayne grinned and abandoned the rarity he had been putting into his voice. “I understand. I’m not exactly a teetotaler myself.”
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” Her eyes narrowed.
“I don’t think so. How long have you been in this business?”
“That’s none of yours!”
“I’d like it to be,” Shayne said softly.
She looked at him speculatively, some of the hardness melting. “Why?”
“Beautiful women are a hobby with me.”
She smiled slowly, showing white, even teeth, let the smile die and raised her eyebrows aloofly. “Hobbies
