his body was hidden from the bartender’s sight.
He said, “A double cognac straight,” and then motioned to the telephone behind the bar just out of his reach. “Would you push that a little closer, please?”
The bartender set the phone where he could reach it, and got down a bottle of cognac. Shayne dialed the Peralta number from memory. It rang six times before Freed’s unctuous voice answered, “Mr. Peralta’s residence.”
“Mrs. Peralta, please. Sergeant Olson from police headquarters.”
“One moment, Sergeant. I believe she just returned.”
Shayne held the receiver to his ear and gratefully sipped the body-warming liquor. When Laura Peralta’s voice said “Yes?” over the wire, he put the telephone down thoughtfully without replying. There was a black scowl on his trenched face as he toyed with his drink. Right now, Laura Peralta was a bigger question mark than before. He smoked a cigarette and had another, single, cognac without coming to any conclusion about her.
The scowl remained on his face when he finally clumped out in wet shoes and got into Rourke’s car. He drove to his apartment hotel and parked outside, grinned reassuringly at the expression on the desk clerk’s face as he crossed the lobby. “I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow, Dick. Right now I need some dry clothes.”
“Sure. That’s okay, Mr. Shayne. But I gotta tell you. That reporter friend of yours, Tim Rourke, and the chief of police, are up in your apartment… with some other guy I don’t know.”
Shayne stiffened. He asked with a frown, “How long ago?”
“About five minutes. Mr. Rourke’s got a key, you know.”
Shayne said absently, “I know.” He went to the open elevator wondering what in hell this visit portended.
TEN
Shayne had his key-ring out when he approached the door of his second-floor apartment, and he turned his key in the lock and pretended surprise to find the living room brightly lighted and Tim Rourke in the act of pouring a drink at the center table. He also pretended not to notice the presence of Chief Will Gentry and another man seated on the divan back against the wall on his right.
He turned slightly to the left to close the door, and said heartily, “Pour one for me out of my own bottle while you’re at it, Tim.”
“Hey! Where the devil have you been?” Rourke held a bottle tilted over a glass and stared at Shayne’s wet pants and shoes.
“Her husband came back unexpectedly. Thank God there was a swimming pool directly underneath the balcony off her bedroom.” Shayne shucked off hat and coat and started forward, reaching down to unbuckle his belt. He stopped with a start of surprise as though seeing his other visitors for the first time. “Will! Don’t tell me that’s the husband… come up to have me arrested for jumping out of his wife’s bedroom. If you are,” he told Gentry’s companion seriously, “and if I catch my death of pneumonia out of this, I’m going to sue you for not keeping your pool heated at night.”
“Cut out the gags, Mike,” Will Gentry said heavily. “This is Mr. Erskine and we’re here on a serious matter.”
Mr. Erskine was smaller than Miami’s Chief of Police, and at least ten years younger, built with the same solidity and wearing a look of portentous gravity. He wore a dark, neatly pressed business suit, a dark blue bow-tie, and dark, horn-rimmed glasses.
Shayne acknowledged the introduction with a breezy nod of his head. He said, “Let it wait three minutes, Will, while I get out of these wet clothes.” He went on toward Rourke at the center table, unbuttoning his shirt. “Pour the gentlemen a drink, Tim, and make mine straight.”
Timothy Rourke said, “Sure,” and Shayne passed him into the bedroom with a wink, stripping off his shirt and dropping it on the floor as he entered. He emerged in a moment with a bathrobe flapping about his bare shanks, went into the bathroom where he took a quick, warm shower.
Both Gentry and Erskine sat stolidly on the sofa with drinks in their hands when he came out wearing the robe again. He paused by the table to pick up a glass of cognac Rourke had poured, and sipped it as he went back into the bedroom.
The glass was half empty when he came out a few minutes later wearing dry slacks and slippers and a tan sport shirt. Tim Rourke was slumped down in a deep chair across the room from the others, his eyes half-closed and his cadaverous features relaxed while he nursed a tall glass of bourbon and water.
Shayne set his glass down on the table and went into the kitchen to bring back a glass of ice water which he set down beside it, then he sank into a chair and sighed deeply and said, “All right, Will. What is it?”
“Where have you been all evening?”
“Working. Ever since Tim’s lawyer sprang me from Painter’s jail.”
“On the Peralta case?” demanded Gentry.
“Sure on the Peralta case. Did you think I was going to let that little twerp scare me off it?”
“It might have been better if you had, Mike. If you and he would just talk together instead of butting your heads every time you meet.”
“Talk?” Shayne demanded angrily. “Listen. Has Tim told you how those two goons of Painter’s grabbed me off the street on phony charges and kept me locked up in a lousy cell for three hours before Tim could arrange bail?”
“I know all about that,” Gentry told him heavily. “But answer me this one question honestly, Mike. What would you have done if Painter had asked you nicely to stay out of the Peralta case?”
Shayne hesitated. “I expect I would have told him to go to hell. Why shouldn’t I take on a case he’s messed with for three weeks? Who the hell is he to tell me…?”
“That’s what Mr. Erskine is here to tell you, Mike. But before we get into that… have you seen Lucy or heard from her this evening?”
“Not since I left the office about four o’clock.”
“She was trying desperately to get in touch with you… I guess while Painter had you locked up. That’s the one place she wouldn’t think to try.”
“What did Lucy want?”
“She finally phoned me about eight o’clock, Mike. She talked fast and then the connection was broken before I could ask any questions. She said she was all right and would keep on being all right, if you’d stop trying to recover the Peralta bracelet. But that she wouldn’t be all right if you refused to lay off.”
“My God!” Shayne’s face was suddenly angry. “You don’t think that Painter…”
“No,” said Gentry scathingly, “I don’t think that Peter Painter would kidnap your secretary and threaten her with harm just to frighten you off. But this thing has ramifications, Mike. Mr. Erskine here is from the State Department in Washington. Painter sent him to me after your run-in this afternoon, to see if the two of us could pound some sense into your thick head.”
“Wait a minute.” Shayne’s face was deeply trenched and very grim. “What about Lucy? What have you done about her?”
“What can we do about her? I checked your office and her apartment. Both are in perfect order. Looks as though she closed up the office with her usual efficiency, but there’s no sign at all that she ever got home. Ashtrays clean… everything tidied up the way I’d expect Lucy to leave it in the morning.”
“What’s all this pressure from various sources to lay off the Peralta bracelet?” demanded Shayne.
“That’s what Mr. Erskine is here to tell you. What Painter should have explained to you this afternoon if you would have listened.”
The telephone rang at Shayne’s elbow. He scooped it up and said, “Shayne speaking,” and listened a moment before holding it out to Gentry. “For you, Will.” He sank back and picked up his drink moodily while the chief took the instrument and said, “Yes.”
He finished the cognac and took a sip of ice water while Gentry held the phone to his ear and listened. He finally said, “I got all that. Mike Shayne’s here now. I’ll probably bring him in.”
