Had the anchor been there when he looked over the boat last night? Shayne couldn’t be sure.
As Slim moved in from the dock edge with the bucket of water, Shayne stepped in ahead of him, took off his hat and mopped his forehead. The handkerchief slipped from his hand and landed in the fish blood.
“Too bad,” Slim drawled as Shayne bent to pick it up. “Better throw it away. It’ll smell like hell of fish.”
“It’ll wash out.” Shayne folded the handkerchief so the blood was inside and returned it to his pocket.
Slim tossed the water forcefully from the bucket onto the bloody planks and turned back to dip up some more.
“Funny how things go,” Shayne said. “I ran into Ed last night.”
“Yeah? Where?”
“Seance. At Madame Swoboda’s.”
Slim laughed shortly. “Yeah, his wife goes for that stuff. Sometimes she drags him along.”
“You ever go?”
“Once, for kicks. There weren’t any.”
“You staying at Ed’s hotel?”
“Yeah. Blue Grotto.”
“What about Vince?”
“He’s at the Mirador.”
“What’s his last name?”
“Becker.” Slim gave him a probing look. “Why you so interested all of a sudden?”
“I’m not sure I am, yet.” Shayne turned abruptly and started walking back to his car. “See you around.”
“O.K.” Slim sloshed more water on the wharf.
Before starting the motor Shayne sat staring off over the water, his gray eyes bleak, his face deeply trenched. His feeling of depression had not abated, and now a slow fury grew within him. He thought of Sylvester’s neat cabin and of his love for the boat and a lump choked his throat. Still… there was nothing rational to go on yet.
He gunned the engine and moved out into the traffic stream headed for the Causeway to Miami. His two tails stayed with him, but they were the least of his worries now. On Biscayne he slammed on the brakes in front of a just-opened bar, parked and went in. He ordered a Hennessy from a pale and disinterested-looking bartender, downed it in one gulp, strode to a phone booth in the rear and scanned the yellow pages of the directory. Only a few blocks away, he found a medical laboratory run by a William Fox.
He heeled out to the car, slid behind the wheel and drove the short distance, stopping in front of a modern white stone and glass building. The tails drove past, averting their eyes with elaborate casualness.
The day was growing hotter. Sweat seeped down inside the redhead’s collar, wetting his shirt. It felt icy. He got out of the car and stalked up the walk into the building, went down the hall and through a door marked William Fox, Laboratories.
The blond receptionist, startled by his peremptory entrance, looked up from a roll and a paper container of coffee.
“I’d like this blood analyzed.” Shayne took the wadded handkerchief from his hip pocket.
“Certainly, sir. But no one’s in yet.”
“Get someone in! This is urgent!”
Shayne’s inner tension and barely-leashed fury, communicated itself to the girl. She stared hypnotized into his stark eyes and her own face whitened. Her fingers tightened on the paper coffee container and she half rose. “I think I just heard Mr. Fox come in. There’s a door to the laboratory from the other side.”
Before she could protest, Shayne strode past her, thrust open the door behind her desk and entered the laboratory. A stout, graying man, just struggling into a white coat, eyed him with acute disfavor.
“No one’s allowed back here. Please wait outside.”
Shayne dropped the wadded handkerchief on a bare, white table top. “I’ve no time for formalities. Analyze this blood.” While the man stammered, Shayne added, “I’m investigating a murder.”
The technician’s eyes bulged. “Are you from the police?”
“What difference does it make? No, I’m not. I’m a private detective.”
“I only asked.” Fox picked up the handkerchief gingerly and carried it to a laboratory table in front of a window, looking back uneasily. “I don’t want to get in any trouble.”
Shayne’s hands clenched. “What trouble could you get in? If I were the murderer I’d know whether my victim was a man or a fish. And that’s all I want you to tell me-whether that’s human or fish blood.”
Fox turned to the table and began working with tubes, liquids and eyedroppers.
Shayne lit a cigarette and blew smoke in a blue cloud toward the window. After working silently for a few minutes, Fox looked around. “There’s more than a trace of human blood mixed with the fish blood,” he said.
“Have you typed it?”
“From first examination, I’d say ‘O.’”
“That limits it, anyway. What do I owe you?”
“Ten dollars. Pay the girl, please.”
Shayne gave him a bleak nod, turned and went through the door, dropping a ten-dollar bill on the receptionist’s desk.
9
From the drugstore downstairs, Shayne called his office.
“I’m dreaming!” Lucy said. “Or are you? Talking in your sleep, I mean?”
“It’s the shank of the day, angel.”
Sensing the depression beneath his glib words, she asked anxiously, “What is it, Michael?”
“Phone Mrs. Santos and find out Sylvester’s doctor. Phone the doctor and see if he has Sylvester’s blood type and if he has, if it’s Rh. Then phone the information to Peter Painter’s office where I’ll go from here. Got it?”
“Got it. Michael, is something the matter with Sylvester?”
“I think he’s been murdered.”
She gasped. “Oh, Michael, I know how you-”
“One thing more,” he broke in, keeping his voice matter-of-fact, “has Bill Martin called in a report on Clarissa Milford?”
“Yes. Nothing’s happened. She hasn’t left the house and no one has gone in.”
“Not even her husband?”
“No one, he said.”
“Next time Bill phones in, tell him to hang on till I can get somebody to relieve him.”
“All right, Michael.” She paused. “Whatever it was with Sylvester, is it part of the voodoo doll business?”
“That’s something I have to find out. The only connection now is that one of the men I met on Sylvester’s boat turned up at Swoboda’s seance last night.”
“Then there might be-”
“Yes, there might be,” he said bleakly and hung up.
Peter Painter had just taken off his coat when Shayne burst into the office. The Detective Chief turned irritably at the early morning intrusion.
Shayne asked humorlessly, “Something bad you ate, Petey? Or is it me?”
Painter sat down behind his desk with bristling officiousness, lifted one hand and traced the thin line of his black mustache with his thumbnail. He did not invite Shayne to be seated. “It’s you,” he said.
Putting his knuckles on the desk, Shayne leaned toward Painter. “Did you get a phone call this morning that concerns me?”
“I think I’ve had two. One from your secretary, and one from a William Fox of the William Fox Medical Laboratories. I’m sure Mr. Fox was describing you. ‘Paranoiac type,’ he said. ‘Delusions of grandeur. Probably homicidal.’ In fact, he thinks you’ve already murdered somebody. So do I. Henry Henlein.”
“No, it would be William Fox,” Shayne said, “except that I didn’t have time. What did my secretary say?”
