Lasher looked from the pair of them to Michael Shayne with a thin smile, and asked, “You still feel like taking them in, Shamus, and charging them with murder and kidnapping?”
Shayne shifted his gaze away from them to the man behind the desk, and said evenly, “You’d better tell your hophead to be good, Lasher. He’s going out of control in a moment, and I don’t think you want your nice office messed up with my blood.”
“Why, no,” Armin Lasher agreed pleasantly. “No need for anybody to get hurt, I guess. You want to talk any more about Russian guns, Shayne? You suggested some kind of deal when you first walked in here.”
Shayne reminded him, “That was when I thought you could give me Molly Morgan. Now these two gunsels claim they didn’t grab Molly.”
“Don’t be calling me no gunsel,” growled Bull, taking a step closer. “Lemme slug him, Boss. It won’t make no mess.”
“No rough stuff,” Lasher told him. “You heard him asking about a dame named Molly Morgan. Either one of you ever hear of her before this?”
They both shook their heads solemnly, like schoolboys denying that they had written dirty words on outhouse walls.
“Sorry I can’t help you, Shayne. If I get any word on your missing twitch I’ll be glad to talk a deal with you.”
“Aren’t you taking one thing too much for granted, Lasher?” Shayne turned more away from the hoods and leaned forward with both hands resting on the desk.
“What’s that?”
“All you’ve got is their word for it that Ruffer was dead when they reached him. Maybe you don’t know how much money is involved in the gun deal, but if you had any idea you might well suspect that they’re holding out information on you. How the hell do you know they didn’t pull out his fingernails until he talked… and are clamming up in the hopes of cashing in without you?”
“Because I know my boys,” Lasher told him patiently.
Shayne said, “Nuts! I wouldn’t trust your hophead or that stupid ape if they swore on a stack of Bibles. I suggest you’d do well to…”
“I suggest you shut your big mouth,” Lasher told him. He jerked his head toward the men behind the detective. “Take him down… the back way. Put him in his car and see that he gets out of here.”
Shayne straightened up with a sigh. “If that’s the way you want it…”
“That’s the way it’s going to be.”
Shayne stood stiffly with his hands at his sides while Dixie and Bull moved in on each side of him and each took hold on an arm and turned him away to the door through which they had entered.
He went with them without protest and without looking back, through a small, unoccupied room and out to a narrow hallway that led along the back of the building.
There was a heavily-barred door at the end of the hall, and Bull unbarred and opened it to disclose wooden steps leading down to a small, unlighted private parking lot at the rear of the night club.
Each of them held an arm as they went down the stairs, and when they reached the bottom, Shayne stopped and said, “Okay. I can make it from here.”
“I guess not,” Dixie demurred in his flat voice. “Boss said we was to see you into your car. That right, Bull?”
“That’s right. We go around this way an’ avoid the front entrance. You show us where you’re parked, Shamus.”
They hustled him forward along the back of the building and along the other side toward the lighted parking lot, holding both of his arms tightly, and Shayne made no resistance.
He knew how high Dixie was wound up, and that Bull would enjoy nothing better than working him over with his sap if he gave them the slightest excuse for doing so.
So he walked stiffly and circumspectly between the two men to the front of the building, jerked his head toward the right-hand rear of the rows of parked cars, and said, “It’s over that way… if you boys still insist.”
“Boss wouldn’t like you to get lost on your way out,” Bull told him gruffly. “Which one is yours?”
Shayne led them to it and the three of them stopped beside the left-hand front door. Half a dozen other cars had pulled up since Shayne had parked there, and filled up that row, and the attendant was now busy down at the other end of the line directing late-comers into parking places.
They let go of his arms and stepped back and he reached for the door handle, and Dixie’s venom-laden voice hissed, “Sap him good, Bull. We’ll put him in his car like the Boss said.”
The blackjack whistled through the night air and took him cunningly on the side of the neck just below his right jaw-line, and as he went down he felt Dixie’s sharp fingernails raking the other side of his face while laughter happily gurgled out of the hophead’s mouth.
“That’ll learn him,” Bull said virtuously. “He’p me lift him up now and shove him in the front seat.”
Shayne had enough sense and consciousness remaining to keep his body perfectly limp as the two hoods lifted and wrestled him into the car beneath the steering wheel. He slumped back against the cushion and waggled his head gingerly to be sure it was still set solidly on his shoulders, and then put his left hand up to his face wonderingly and took it away sticky with blood.
Bull slammed the door shut and peered inside, snickering happily, “You sure marked him up good, Dixie. If he does find that dame tonight, he ain’t gonna be much use to her. Get that heap movin’,” he went on harshly to Shayne. “Next time you come around with a pack of lies, Dixie an’ me’ll work you over good.”
Shayne straightened himself behind the wheel and turned on the headlights and ignition. He was trembling with rage and there was a red mist before his eyes, but he had managed to stay alive a lot of years by knowing when discretion was the better part of valor.
This was one of those times, he told himself grimly, and he devoted all his energy and attention to the task of getting his car backed out and headed out of the parking lot and away from the Little Revue.
13
It was midnight when Shayne pulled up in front of his hotel again and got out. His legs were shaky and there was a lump the size of a duck’s egg on the right side of his neck and his entire head throbbed painfully, but the three diagonal scratches on his cheek had stopped bleeding while he drove back, and he decided he was in pretty fair shape considering everything.
The lobby was dimly-lit and deserted except for Dick, who stared at him with his thin face screwed up in an expression that was a peculiar mixture of awed sympathy and poorly-concealed mirth.
“Gee whiz!” he exclaimed, “You look like…”
“Like what?” demanded Shayne.
“Well, like… doggone it, did she do that, Mr. Shayne? I wouldn’t have believed it. When you two came in together that second time and went up to your room she looked like… well… like you weren’t headed for that restful evening with a bottle of cognac you’d mentioned earlier. But that was before your cop friend barged in, wasn’t it? Say, I’m all confused. I never did see her come back down. You went out a little later by yourself, didn’t you? Then how come…?” He broke off, looking embarrassed and turning his gaze away from the scratches on Shayne’s face. “It’s none of my business. You in for the night this time, Mr. Shayne?”
The redhead managed a lopsided smile. “I hope so, but I wouldn’t bet on it… the way things have been going around in circles tonight. Looks pretty bad, does it?” He touched the dried blood on his cheek gingerly.
“Not too bad,” Dick told him judicially. “I mean… I’ve seen you when you looked worse. But, gosh! That’s some lump you got on the side of your neck.”
Shayne nodded slightly, wincing and keeping his head tilted a little to the left. “Nothing a few drinks and a good night’s sleep won’t cure.”