Her lips curved into a smile that might have been mockery or might have been something else. She said, “And God have mercy on both of us.”
With his hands tightly on her shoulders, he pushed her away so there was at least twelve inches between them, and he demanded angrily, “What the hell do you mean by that?”
“I think you know what I mean, Mike.”
He shook her then, savagely, and she laughed deep in her throat and she moved her body forward against him so they were standing knee to knee, thigh to thigh, torso to torso, and her softly heaving breasts held their straining bodies apart.
Her red lips parted less than four inches from his, and she said, “There’s work to be done, Mike. You haven’t given me a chance to tell you. There was a telephone call not more than fifteen minutes ago… from someone who said he was Papa Gonzalez.”
Shayne’s fingers slowly released their grip on her flesh. He moved backward, almost imperceptibly, but enough so there was no longer the intimate pressure of flesh against flesh.
Shayne said, “You took a message?”
“I took the call,” she told him evenly. “I told him I was your secretary and he called me Miss Hamilton, and I am to inform you that the gun you are interested in is for sale at a cash price of one hundred dollars at the Liberty Loan Shop in Miami. The address is…” Molly turned away from him and his hands dropped from her shoulders to his sides.
She put her finger on a scrap of paper on the table and read off an address on N. W. Third Street not far from the railroad station. She turned back and leaned her hips against the table and put her hands on both sides of her to support her weight, and smiled up at him happily and said, “I knew my intuition was right and that I’d do well to stick by you, Mike Shayne. Shall we go out to the Liberty Loan Shop and find out what’s what? Maybe,” she added gently, “you’ll be able to pick up a dozen at the bargain price of a hundred dollars each. That would be a clear profit of… what? Almost five thousand dollars, isn’t it? Quite a sum for an indigent private eye who doesn’t get a check from Washington every month.”
Shayne grinned faintly and said, “Suppose you go to hell, Molly Morgan?” He moved around her to the table and looked down the cognac bottle and the two coffee mugs still sitting there from breakfast. He circled the table toward the wall liquor cabinet, saying, “I’m going to pour myself a drink of cognac before taking off. Do you prefer good clean American bourbon?”
She shuddered and said, “I hate the taste of it. That’s one reason why I got out of Tony’s when I did today. I was afraid I’d have to drink the one I ordered. Right now, cognac will be wonderful.”
Shayne came back with two wine-glasses and filled them both. “Why don’t you settle down here and relax,” he suggested. “I’ll take a run out to Third Street and see what’s what. Then maybe we can have dinner together, and… who knows? I still haven’t kissed you, Molly.”
“I’ve got a rain-check on it,” she assured him happily, lifting her glass and boldly downing half of it while her eyes watched him over the rim.
“But I’ll run out to Third Street with you, if you don’t mind. I’m as much interested in the source of those guns as you are.”
“Suppose I do mind?”
She said composedly, “I’ve got a rented car parked outside. Let’s not fence with each other, Mike. I had the address of the Liberty Loan Shop ten minutes before you got here, and I played fair, didn’t I? I could have gone out there on my own and never told you about the call I intercepted. Damn it, don’t I get any credit?”
“All right,” Shayne agreed lightly, “you get full credit, Molly. Bottoms up, and then we’ll go buy a Lenski twelve-oh-seven, and if you’re a real good girl I may get you an extra one to give to your boy-friend at the C.I.A. Eddie? Was that his name?”
Molly Morgan giggled and stuck out her tongue at him. Then she finished her drink with a flourish and ceremoniously set the glass on the table upside down, saying dubiously, “I suppose that’s the kind of bottoms-up you meant.”
“For the moment,” Shayne told her, “that’s what I meant. Let’s hope there’ll be time for another sort later on.” He tossed off his drink and set his glass upside down beside hers, then took her arm firmly and hurried her toward the door.
9
Shayne held her arm tightly as they went out through the lobby together, and he loftily disregarded the smirk on Dick’s face when they went past the desk.
On the sidewalk Molly gestured toward a sleek, late-model light sedan parked just beyond the entrance, and said, “We can take my car, Mike. It’s on the expense account.”
He shook his head, turning her in the opposite direction around the side of the hotel toward the row of garages. “You can pick it up later. It’s all right parked there… for all night if you want.”
“Do you think I will… want?” she asked lightly, squeezing his arm against her body and lengthening her stride to keep up with him.
“That probably depends on what sort of evening we have.” He led her around to the right side of his heavy car, opened the front door and closed it softly when she got in, then went around to the driver’s seat and backed out of the stall.
She stayed well over on her side of the wide seat and said nothing while he drove north to First Street and then west past the courthouse and Lummus Park. It was fully dark now and the downtown street lights were on and traffic was heavy with cars headed for the West Flagler Kennel Club, so Shayne turned north to Third Street and west again, through a dingy neighborhood of small shops and shabby dwellings.
He slowed after a short distance, checking the street numbers, and then parked on the right between a run-down garage and a brightly lighted delicatessen shop.
The Liberty Loan Shop had two grimy windows on the street with light showing dimly behind them, and living quarters overhead.
Shayne slid out and went around to Molly’s side of the car and pushed her door firmly shut as she started to get out. “I’ll go in alone,” he decreed. “No gentleman takes a lady along while he’s buying a pistol illicitly.”
She settled back resignedly and got a cigarette case and lighter from her handbag.
Shayne went up two scuffed wooden steps to the door between the two windows, and tried the knob. It opened easily and a bell tinkled in the back as he stepped inside. There was a narrow aisle between two long display cases littered with cheap watches, imitation diamond rings and such. A bare, fly-specked bulb hanging on a cord from the center of the room gave the only illumination, and the room was silent and empty.
Shayne walked slowly back between the display cases toward an enclosed latticework cage at the rear that had an arched aperture in front like a cashier’s window. A wooden counter on the other side of the opening was scattered with a jeweler’s tools, with a three-legged stool drawn up close behind it.
Beyond the stool was a big, old-fashioned iron safe with the door standing slightly ajar. Shayne stood there for a moment frowning in puzzlement, cocking his head to listen for some sound from the living quarters upstairs where the warning bell must have sounded when he entered.
There was only silence. An empty, deathlike sort of silence. There was a closed wooden door at Shayne’s right at the end of the aisle, and as he turned toward it from his position in front of the cashier’s cage the sole of his left foot was gripped slightly by some sticky substance on the floor.
He dropped to his knees to examine the floor, and drew in his breath sharply. He had stepped in a small puddle of blood that was seeping out from the latticework cage.
He took two steps to the rear door and threw it open and saw a dimly-lighted stairway leading upward in front of him and an open door on his left opening into the cage.