them from suspicion of either the Syndicate or the police.”
“But that involved a way of getting the pick-up information through spirit messages-”
“The shrewdest trick of all. They knew they’d be watched by both the police and local Syndicate representatives, and this way they took no risks of tapped phone wires, opened letters or observed meetings. And still one other thing occurs to me.” Shayne’s thumb and forefinger gently massaged his left earlobe. His eyes were speculative.
Grain waited.
“Let it ride for the moment,” the redhead said. “It’s only a hunch and it won’t, in any way, affect your operations on the high seas. I’ll know in another three hours if I’m right or wrong.”
He rose and stood looking down at Grain with a penetrating stare. “Here’s what I suggest as a first step. Talk to Peter Painter at the Beach-he’s too mule-headed to listen to me-and find out if he’s got a police guard on the Santa Clara. If he has, get him to take it off. Make it easy for that boat to go out tonight.”
“I see.” Grain pushed back his chair.
“They’ll take a chance on this one last pick-up, I think, figuring to come ashore somewhere far up the coast and then skin out for good, so you’ll have to make your pick-up good. There won’t be another opportunity.”
“We’ll take care of it. I’d better start making arrangements with the Coast Guard.”
A slow grin spread over the detective’s lean face.
“Now what have you got up your sleeve?” Grain asked.
“I’m considering making some arrangements of my own. You wouldn’t object to wiping out the loan-shark racket in Miami at the same time, would you?”
Grain grinned back. “It’s a little out of my line, but if it wouldn’t hamper the main operation-”
“Won’t hamper it at all. In fact, I’m thinking of enlisting somebody to do the heaviest part of your work for you. It may well be that all the Coast Guard and the Narcotics Bureau will have to do is stand by and pick up the pieces.”
“It sounds easy, but I don’t get it.”
“I’ll give you a hint. There’s a gentleman once involved in narcotics smuggling who has been forced, as a result of pressures put on him by your office, to take recourse to the loan-shark racket.”
“De Luca?”
“Right. So what do you think would happen if he received a discreet tip that somebody was muscling into his old racket and would be at such a place at such a time tonight taking on a cargo?”
“Mayhem!” Grain said. “An absolute massacre.” He walked around the desk and clapped Shayne on the shoulder. “Too bad you can’t be with us to watch the smoke.”
“It is, but I’ve some voodoo business to clean up tonight. While you’re watching two dope smugglers trying to blast each other’s boats out of the water, I’ll be listening to Madame Swoboda pull voices out of the Great Beyond.”
15
Shayne drew up in front of Madame Swoboda’s at quarter to eight and found Tim Rourke batting mosquitoes and waiting for him outside on the damp and sinking flagstones. The same aura of decay hung over the yellow house and the same diffused green glow seeped from beneath the drawn drapes.
A few tourists straggled up the steps. Shayne motioned Tim to wait and followed them to the door, the cloyingly sweet odor catching his nostrils as he neared it. Among the devotees he saw Percy and Mabel Thain, Dan and Clarissa Milford and the thin, gray woman. The redhead met Dan’s troubled glance until Dan looked lugubriously away, then suddenly Shayne suppressed a start as a petite girl craned her neck from behind a bulky tourist and gave him a gamin grin. She strolled over to him.
Under his breath Shayne asked, “What in hell are you doing here, Lucy?”
“I came to protect you. Besides, I always wanted to go to a seance.”
Shayne snorted and walked back to Rourke. “Lucy’s here, of all things. Sit next to her at the table, Tim, and keep an eye on her, will you?”
“You’re expecting fireworks, I judge.”
“Maybe. Anyway, do what I say.”
“I will. But this is the one hell of a hard way to write a story. I don’t even know why you wanted Swoboda to hold another seance tonight.”
“For the obvious reason-to keep her on tap for police questioning after the Coast Guard and Steve Grain have cleaned up the Santa Clara affair. Also, there’s the voodoo angle. I thought this might provide an opportunity for the person who is threatening Clarissa Milford to reveal himself.”
“You know who it is yet?”
“No, but I’ve sorted some of it out. I’m pretty sure there’s no connection between the threat to Clarissa Milford and the things that happened on Sylvester’s boat. And I know De Luca’s involvement with the Milfords. But the voodoo doll is still as live a threat to Clarissa Milford as it was to Henlein.”
“A live threat ending in death maybe?”
“Let’s hope not.” Shayne looked at his watch. “Things ought to be popping pretty soon in the forty-eight outer worlds.”
“By the way,” Rourke said, “my office has a helicopter within telescopic sight of the Santa Clara. We ought to get the feed-back about the time we get out of the seance.”
“Good. Let’s go in now.”
On the rickety steps, Rourke asked, “Are you going to tell Dan Milford you’ve pulled De Luca’s heat off him? He looks like death warmed over tonight.”
Shayne shook his head. “I’m letting it ride until after the seance. I don’t want to risk upsetting the balance. If anybody has anything planned, I want it to go on-as planned.”
In the narrow hallway a little crowd of people was dammed up in front of the sliding doors to the seance room. Shayne moved close to Clarissa and said, in a guarded voice, “Sit next to me at the table.”
The crowd was larger than last night and there was a delay while the secretary with the brown horn-rimmed glasses brought more chairs. When the doors were finally opened Shayne pushed forward into the nearly dark room and, by holding fast to Clarissa Milford and ignoring the rights of others, managed to locate himself at the table directly across from Madame Swoboda. Dan Milford took a chair on the other side of his wife and Percy Thain sat at Shayne’s left.
As before, Madame Swoboda sat erect in an armless chair, one hand flat on the table on each side of the palely-lit green ball. As before, her eyes were open, fastened unblinkingly on a point ahead, the eerie light shining upward into her face. She wore the same silver gossamer veils trailing from the tiara on her head. Behind her, the unadorned cabinet was closed and the windows draped in funereal black velvet.
Her showmanship was perfect and her beauty appeared more ethereal now than sensual.
When everyone was seated and the last whisper of noise had died away, Madame Swoboda spoke in the darkened room.
“For those new among us… link your own thumbs. Link the little finger of each hand with that of the person beside you. The circle travels, never ending… Wait… wait… wait… The journey is long… We stand in a timeless void… The spirits resolve out of space and nothingness…”
A rustling went around the table as they found each other’s hands and linked fingers. Then the hushed quiet settled in again.
He hath done marvelous things… His right hand and His holy arms… Three times she intoned the Ninety- eighth Psalm, her voice weirdly monotonous in the dark.
After another silence she closed her eyes. Although Shayne knew the performance was trickery, he could not help admiring the conviction with which she did it. Almost visibly her mind seemed to be willing the spirits to speak.
She shivered and then was quiet. Her face above the weird green light might have been carved from stone.
