cream-colored Cadillac convertible and a long, dark blue limousine parked in front of the house, and Shayne pulled in behind them.
Twin porch lights illuminated a flagstone path leading to wide double front doors beyond a row of white pillars rising two full stories, and the front windows of all three stories showed light behind them.
There was the scent of hibiscus and bougainvillea in the soft evening air as Shayne went up the flagged walk to press the doorbell, and, as he stood there, he could hear the barbaric strains of a Stravinsky symphony coming from a second-floor window.
A maid opened the door for him. She wore a plain, dark uniform with a little, frilly white apron, and she tilted her head slightly to look up at the detective and ask, “Yes, sir?”
“I’d like to see Mr. Peralta.” Over the maid’s head, Shayne could see a wide empty hallway leading back to a magnificent curving stairway. Draperies were drawn back from a wide archway on the right of the hall, and soft light came through it together with the subdued clink of glasses and silverware.
The maid pursed her lips doubtfully and shook her neat dark head. “I’m afraid he couldn’t be disturbed just now. If you’ll give me your name, I’ll see…”
“Michael Shayne. If he’s at dinner, I’ll wait.”
“I’ll see,” she said again doubtfully, and started to close the door as she turned away. Shayne grinned down at her wearily and moved forward over the threshold, suggesting, “You might bring me a drink while I’m waiting.” He moved past her along the hall to a point where he looked through the archway at a long dining table lighted only with a dozen or more candles. Half a dozen people were seated at the table. Only one of them raised her eyes to notice the detective.
She sat at the opposite end of the long table, wearing a low, square-cut frock showing creamy, smooth shoulders and a considerable swell of breasts in the soft light. She had plump, even features, and a lot of dark brown hair piled in tight ringlets on her head. At that distance and in that light, her eyes appeared vacant and unseeing. Not a ripple of interest crossed her face as she looked at him.
The visual encounter with the woman whom Shayne recognized from newspaper photographs was very brief because the maid was almost instantly at his elbow, looking properly horrified and a little frightened by his intrusion, urging him past the archway with a hand on his arm and whispering, “Please! This way, please.”
Shayne allowed himself to be led down the hall and into a large square library on the left. He smiled at the agitated maid and assured her, “It’ll be perfectly all right with Mr. Peralta. I’m late for an important business appointment is all. You might let him know I’m here and that you’ve made me comfortable with a brandy.”
“Yes, sir. Perhaps I could give your card to Mr. Freed.”
“I haven’t any card,” he told her cheerfully, dropping his hat into one chair and sitting down in another. “My business is with Peralta, not with someone named Freed. Martell, if you have it,” he went on calmly, “though I won’t quibble over Courvoisier or Napoleon. With some ice-water on the side,” he added, taking out a pack of cigarettes and lighting one.
The maid hesitated momentarily, then went away. Shayne relaxed in the deep, leather-covered chair and looked about the library with approval. It had very much a lived-in look. The half dozen comfortable chairs were pulled around under reading lamps or in front of windows, an open book lay on the seat of one, and the low table beside another was strewn with three books and the current issue of the Saturday Review. The bookshelves lining two walls were filled with volumes that had not been selected for uniformity of binding and which mostly showed signs of handling.
Shayne was not aware that he was no longer alone until a voice spoke at his elbow:
“Annette tells me you forced your way in and refuse to leave.” It was a tenor voice with a note of grievance in it that sounded habitual. Shayne turned his red head slowly to squint upward through cigarette smoke at the man who had entered noiselessly on thick crepe soles of cream-colored loafers. He wore dark trousers which bulged tightly at plump hips, a white shirt with a neat blue and white polka dot bow-tie and a fawn-colored lounging jacket. He had a plump face and a petulant, rose-bud mouth which stayed slightly open to show the white tips of two protruding upper teeth. He appeared to be in his mid-twenties, though he was quite bald with only a fringe of hair at the sides of a darkly sunburned scalp covered with tiny fuzz.
Shayne knocked ashes from his cigarette and said, “I’m waiting for a drink to keep me company until Peralta is free to see me. Don’t tell me there’s no cognac in a layout like this.”
“I’m Mr. Peralta’s secretary. Nathaniel Freed.” The secretary fluttered plump, white hands at Shayne with an expression on his face of shooing off a caterpillar. “I know you did have an appointment with Mr. Peralta this afternoon… made against my advice, to be quite frank… but after you failed to keep it, he made other arrangements. Mr. Peralta is not a man,” Freed went on severely, “to be kept waiting for hours without an explanation.” He did not add, “by a punk like you,” but the idea was implicit in his tone.
Shayne said, “I’ll let your boss do his own talking, if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind. Most definitely.” Freed’s upper lip quivered under Shayne’s amused gaze. “I am following his instructions in ordering you to leave.”
Shayne said, “I think you’re lying, Bud. I don’t believe he knows I’m here.” He came to his feet easily and Freed took a hasty backward step just as there was the sound of excited footsteps behind him in the hall and two youngsters trotted into the library.
These must be the Brats, Shayne realized, looking at them with a grin and wondering which was Edwin and which Edwina.
They were dressed exactly alike in slacks and short-sleeved seersucker sport shirts, and they looked exactly identical at first glance with fair hair cut boyishly short and eager faces studying him with unabashed curiosity. They were about ten, he guessed, and whichever of the two was Edwina hadn’t yet developed sufficient feminine traits to distinguish her from her brother.
“Hey,” one of them said to Freed. “Eddie says she heard Annette whisper to you that Mike Shayne was here. Is that right? Is this him?”
“Are you Mike Shayne?” Eddie, who was evidently the sister, looked at the detective in some disappointment. “Where’s your gat, if you’re a detective?”
“Aw, he doesn’t carry it out in sight, you nut,” said her brother in disgust. “But you don’t look so tough, either,” he added to Shayne. “All those newspaper stories are the bunk, I bet.”
“Ed,” said Freed fretfully, “you and Eddie should be back at the table. I’m certain your father wouldn’t approve…”
“Why not? Hey, Dad!” Ed turned and raised his voice in a shrill shout. “That detective’s in here. You gonna hire him to get back the bracelet?”
Freed clamped his pouting lips together disapprovingly and turned away hurriedly to go back along the hallway, his plump hips wiggling behind him.
Shayne sank back into his chair and grinned at the Brats. “Now you’ve upset him.”
“Oh, him,” said Eddie airily. “He’s always upset. He’s just a nance.”
“Hey,” exclaimed Ed, “why aren’t you guzzling cognac?”
“For the simple reason,” said Shayne, “that no one has brought me any. Most inhospitable house I ever visited.”
“Call yourself a detective?” giggled Eddie. She trotted around in front of Shayne, knelt before the smoking stand in front of his chair and pressed a button at the bottom. The front of the stand swung open showing a shelf holding a cut-glass decanter filled with amber liquid and six large snifters in a neat row. “Right under your nose all the time and you didn’t even know it.”
Shayne grinned appreciatively as he reached a long arm for one of the snifters and held it for Eddie to splash cognac in the bottom. He was holding it to his nose, warming it with the palms of both hands, when they were interrupted by footsteps in the hall and an angry voice saying, “… told you a thousand times you’re not paid to do my thinking for me. I don’t care what the chief of detectives told you…”
The footsteps stopped in the doorway and the voice softened somewhat: “You two youngsters run along now. Daddy has important business to discuss with Mr. Shayne.”
“Aw, heck,” they moaned in unison. “Can’t we stay, Dad? Can’t we watch him detect?”
Shayne took another deep inhalation of the fumes of ancient brandy and lowered the snifter to look at his millionaire host.
Julio Peralta was very tall and very thin. He appeared to be about fifty, and had a gaunt face and black eyes
