The fishing trip this afternoon had left him with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction, too, of things hinted at but not explained. Was it coincidence or connection which had caused a man from the boat to turn up at the seance? In any case, since murder unaccountably was breathing down the necks of some people, a talk with Sylvester was strongly indicated.
The redhead picked up speed, hit Biscayne and turned north. He found a corner that was police patrolled and when the yellow light flashed, sped through it and turned west at the next corner. Through the rear-view mirror he saw that the gray Buick had not made the light.
Still speeding, he turned south on Miami Avenue, circled back and headed toward the Causeway to Miami Beach. Across the Causeway he turned south toward the slip where Sylvester’s boat was docked.
The Santa Clara was there all right, squeaking gently against her rubber fenders in the slow swell of the water, but Sylvester wasn’t. Shayne put a beam from his small pocket flash around the cabin, located the light switch and flicked it on. Everything looked shipshape. Sylvester must have slept off his overindulgence in Demerara rum, roused himself and gone home. It was a quick recovery and that was good. Maybe Sylvester wouldn’t be as hung-over as he deserved.
On impulse the redhead opened the ice box. The big grouper he had caught this afternoon was still there. He slammed the door shut and prowled the cabin for a few minutes, looking at the charts, the cuddy and the gear compartment forward. There was nothing that didn’t belong on a fishing boat and everything was in place.
Taking off the engine housing he probed with his flashlight at the new Gray Marine, dirtied up “to fool the tax collector,” which had never been let out, Sylvester said. Still, the power was there if he needed it. Or if they needed it? Why would they need it? The three jolly vacationers liked Sylvester. That’s the only reason they had bought him the new, very expensive engine for his boat. They had helped him to make a fast boat faster.
Leaving the Santa Clara Shayne slammed into his car and drove swiftly to a waterfront area, inhabited mostly by Cubans. He parked in front of a two-story wooden tenement, went up two steps and pressed the bell button under the name that read Sylvester Santos.
A little, ample-bosomed, gray-haired woman wearing a pink-flowered housedress came to the door, her fleshy arms protruding from the short sleeves. Her face looked drawn, but her worried brown eyes kindled with pleasure when she recognized the redhead.
“Michael Shayne!” Her full lips spread in a welcoming smile and she stood aside. “Be so good to come in, Mr. Shayne.”
Shayne walked into an apartment as neat and shipshape as Sylvester’s boat, the woman following him, talking volubly.
“You look for my husband, no? Well, I tell you. He came home maybe one half hour ago, then go out again. To look for you, he say. But now you look for him. Mr. Shayne, what is the matter? These days I am most unhappy.”
“Why does Sylvester look for me, Mrs. Santos?”
“He does not say. He says nothing to me but to talk of his new friends who are so good to him. But I do not like these new friends, Mr. Shayne. He is now drunk with them all the time and it is not like Sylvester to drink so much. Every day he comes home drunk and goes to bed dead. But tonight he comes home drunk and bleeding. One eye is black, and blood is on his face from fighting. I have to wipe it off and the cuts are deep. This is not like Sylvester, to fight-”
“Did he say he was in a fight?”
“No, but I can see he has been beaten and his clothes torn.”
From the way Sylvester had been staggering around the deck this afternoon, his fight might have been only with the Demerara. Perhaps he had gotten up too quickly and fallen on his face a few times, or maybe he had been jackrolled on the way home. If that had happened it would explain why he had left home to look for his friend, “the detective who heads only the big cases.”
“What does Sylvester say about his new friends?” Shayne asked.
She shrugged elaborately. “Only that they are so good to him. But I think they are drunk bums, Mr. Shayne, good only to get my husband drunk and in trouble and to spoil his health.”
“May I use the phone, Mrs. Santos?”
“Sure. Help yourself. You’re good man.”
Shayne dialed and got his answering service. There had been no calls. Then he phoned Lucy and learned from her that Sylvester had not tried to reach him at her apartment either.
“How about a moonlight drive, angel?”
“Why, Michael, I’d love it,” she said huskily. Suddenly, her voice changed. “Except that I know from past experience that your moonlit drives usually end up at some place like the morgue.”
“Nothing like that tonight, Lucy. This will be sheer romance. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”
He hung up and walked back to Mrs. Santos, who had seated herself in an old-fashioned wooden rocker.
“Will you have Sylvester phone me when he comes in, no matter what time of night it is?”
“Sure, Mr. Shayne. Be glad to.” She wiped her perspiring forehead with the back of her hand.
“And don’t worry,” he said. “Sylvester will be all right. Just like he was before, when these new friends go home.”
“Bueno,” she said. “I hope so.”
Lucy was ready when Shayne rang her apartment bell. “Won’t you come in, Michael?”
“Sorry, I can’t, angel. Let’s get going.”
“Not even for a spot of Hennessy?”
“Not even for Hennessy. I’ll take a brandy-check, though.”
She closed the door and fell into step beside him. “What’s the rush? Is the moon waning?”
“Time is. It’s nearly midnight and I want to get out to Clarissa Milford’s before she goes to bed.”
“You’re taking me with you to see another woman? I thought you said on the phone this was sheer romance.”
“It is, for me. You’re the chaperone.”
“Oh, good! Just what I’ve always yearned to be.”
As Shayne wheeled out from the curb, a gray sedan started up down the block.
Noticing how the redhead stared bleakly into the rear-view mirror, Lucy asked acutely, “Why should anyone tail you, Michael?”
“I don’t know. Percy Thain found out at the seance that his sister-in-law, Clarissa, had hired me. He didn’t like it much, but I don’t think he could have rounded up a tail this fast. It was on me when I left Swoboda’s, but I ditched him. He must have staked out here on the chance that I’d see you.”
“Then it’s somebody who knows that I’m-your secretary, at least.”
“At the very least.” Shayne smiled a wry, warm smile.
“You don’t seem worried.”
“About your being-at least-my secretary, or about the tail?”
“About the tail, of course.”
“I’m not. I’m not going anywhere tonight that I give a damn if anybody knows.”
Lucy fell silent a moment, then said, in a small worried voice, “I don’t see why it would be Percy Thain.”
“I don’t either. What’s he got to gain by knowing where I go?”
“Nothing-unless he’s the one who sent Clarissa Milford the voodoo doll. If he’s really planning to kill her, he’d want to do it when you weren’t around.”
“Good figuring, but at this point I don’t think it’s Percy Thain. I can’t figure what connection he’d have with a cheap hood like Henlein, and it’s a good bet the same person sent dolls to both Clarissa and Henlein.”
“Why?”
“Too much of a coincidence otherwise.”
It was a moonless night and out in the country the dew was thick. The windshield clouded and Shayne started the wipers, listening to the rhythm of their faint, regular squeak as they swept across the glass.
After a while he slowed, turning his spot on the mailboxes. At the one reading Milford, he entered a long driveway.
A half a block in, the Milfords’ house faced the Thains’ across about an acre of untended ground. They were identical one-story, red-brick, L-shaped houses, with a small front stoop and detached garages, and they looked out
