Another big question was Arch Bugler’s connection with the situation. His open intimacy with Helen Stallings stunk. Bugler was a known gangster. Did the girl know? They could not have met by mere chance. To Shayne it was inconceivable that a well-bred girl would deliberately choose the mobster for a companion.
The illusive sheen of a dying moon on Biscayne Bay was like a drug. The air pouring in the open windows was cool and moist. A nostalgic mood crept over him and caught him unawares, sweeping him back to his own youth — to the time when he played a cornet in the college orchestra. For a welcome moment his mind moved in a maze of memories, forgetful of the case at hand, but he could not long escape the mental picture which was haunting him — the dazed eyes and pallid, contorted features of Helen Stallings as he first saw her.
What was she like normally? She was young and possessed, no doubt, of all the illusions of youth. A saxophone player in uniform could easily represent a knight in armor with the added attraction of sensual, melodic strains from that wailing instrument. A saxophone could express a player’s sentiments without words. Shayne had known college boys who used that method. Had Helen regretted her marriage to a slight, anemic youth and taken refuge in the arms of a mature, strong-armed man years her senior? He recalled that Rourke had said that consorting with mobsters was a fad with youngsters.
A cloud sailed over the moon and a mist from the sea swam before Shayne’s headlights, snapping him back to reality and a consciousness of his destination. He picked up his thoughts where he had left off.
Suppose Stallings and Bugler had worked out a plan together to ensnare the girl? The terms of her father’s will made Helen’s marriage before her majority worth a great deal of money to Stallings. Did he arrange with Bugler to rush her off her feet into a hasty marriage for that purpose?
Still, why would he choose a man like Bugler for that purpose? There were thousands of men more eligible and more prepossessing in Miami.
He gave the problem up with a baffled shrug and hoped that Lucile’s information would supply at least a key to the puzzle.
He was approaching the bridge leading to the Stallings estate. His headlights showed the girl wasn’t there as he cut the motor and slid up to the bridge approach. He glanced at his watch and saw that it lacked five minutes of the appointed time. He lit a cigarette and settled back to wait.
Lucile was not there when he lit his second cigarette. Complete silence enveloped the remote section of the peninsula. Darkness covered the car as he waited for the maid to keep her appointment, for the moon was lost to sight. The heavy cloud on the western horizon obscured it.
Was he going to be stood up by the girl? It was beginning to look like it. His watch indicated fifteen minutes after two when he threw away his second cigarette and yawned. He had been stood up before but never by a girl who seemed as eager for a date as Lucile.
He got out of the sedan and stretched, then walked slowly up on the arched bridge, stopped at the top of the span where he could see the upper story of the Stallings mansion.
Everything was in utter darkness. Beyond was the placid glistening expanse of Biscayne Bay, and far beyond that a few vagrant lights on the mainland.
An odd sense of unease possessed him. He wasn’t kidding himself when he knew Lucile wanted to come to him when she made the appointment.
It was two twenty-three. He watched and listened intently, holding his racing thoughts in abeyance. The only sound was the plashing of ripples against the bridge piers beneath him.
The wry grin went away from his mouth, and his features hardened into a mask of anger. All at once he realized how much he had been counting on the information he hoped to get from the girl. Perhaps she had been caught when she slipped back into the house after leaving him earlier in the evening. Stallings must have seen his car parked there, might have recognized it. The housekeeper would have told him who the visitor was.
If the girl had been forcibly prevented from meeting him it would be an indication that someone was afraid of what she might divulge.
It was exactly two-thirty when he crossed the bridge and walked cautiously toward the unlighted house on the island.
NINE
SHAYNE STRODE STEADILY along the winding road in the shadow of interlaced fronds. He came to an abrupt stop at a turn in the road that brought the estate into clear view. Every window was dark, and the island stillness was queerly magnified when the sound of his footsteps ceased. The moonlight and shadows played odd tricks on his alert perceptions as he hesitated.
An eerie atmosphere of desertion enveloped the silent mansion. The night air was humid and heavy with the scent of garden flowers. At the corner of the house he could see the spidery outline of the wrought-iron railing of the outside stairway down which Lucile had come to meet him earlier. The small balcony above was deserted, the French doors leading into the house were closed.
Shayne grinned at his indecision while he stood there. This was a hell of a time for him to start getting jumpy, just because the entire household was asleep at two-thirty in the morning, and because a girl had failed to keep her date.
He shrugged off his hesitation and went across the concrete drive to the corner stairway, climbed the stairway firmly, perversely pleased with the faint clang of iron beneath his feet.
He tried the French doors and found them locked from within. He hesitated once more, scowling at himself for the skulking method he was employing. This was not his way of doing things, but he had to find out what had happened to the maid. A man didn’t have to be a complacent ass to be positive that she would have met him at the bridge unless forces wholly beyond her control had prevented it.
He turned and went down the stairway, walked around to the front door and leaned on the electric button. He could hear the faint ringing of the bell inside. He kept his finger on the button for more than a minute, and his scowl deepened to one of anger. Stepping back a few feet he shouted, “Hello! What does it take to wake you up?”
After a brief wait lights glowed behind curtained windows upstairs. The curtains parted, and Burt Stallings’s resonant voice answered, “Who’s down there?”
“Mike Shayne.”
“Shayne? What are you doing here at this time of night?”
“Come down and open the door.”
“I have no intention of doing that,” Stallings retorted sharply. Then, with less assurance, “What is it? Have you news of Helen?”
“I’ve got a lead. But I’m not going to stand here and shout it up to you.”
“Very well. If it’s so important I suppose I can’t refuse.” Stallings withdrew his head from the window, and the curtains fell back into place. Shayne moved forward and leaned against the threshold.
The door opened after several minutes. Stallings wore a silk dressing-gown, and his bare feet were encased in leather slippers. His silvery hair was awry and he demanded in an outraged tone, “What is it that won’t wait until morning?”
“Just this.” Shayne brushed past him into the small anteroom where he had interviewed the housekeeper. He swung about to face Stallings and in clipped accents explained, “I’ve got a hot tip that your stepdaughter Helen is right here in this house.”
“That’s preposterous.”