He called the Miami News office and got the morgue. Rourke came to the phone, and Shayne said, “You needn’t bother with the pix. It’s the Stallings girl, all right.”
“Hell,” Rourke exploded, “I’ve already collected a dozen back issues. How did you—”
“Bring them along anyway. I’m leaving right now. See you at the Wildcat in half an hour.”
“Mike,” Rourke yelled into the phone, “I’ve been doing some heavy thinking and—”
Shayne pronged the receiver with a bang. He went to the kitchen and found the door leading out to the fire escape already unlocked. He stared at it for a moment, shook his head, and turned away. After turning out all the lights, he took his hat and went out.
He stopped at the desk in the lobby to chat with the clerk, draping one elbow on the counter and letting his gaze roam around the interior while he talked.
“You’ve got me in the palm of your hand, Jack,” he said with a broad grin. “That girl who visited my office this afternoon — do you remember much about her?”
“What girl, Mr. Shayne?” the young man asked gravely, winking one eye at the detective. He was a well-groomed young man with sandy hair and freckles, a thin, intelligent face. An employee of the apartment hotel for five years, he had banked important largess from Shayne in the past, rewards for his inability to recall details which Shayne wished forgotten.
There were few people in the lobby. A couple of old ladies knitting, a giggling young couple partially hidden behind a potted palm, and a man who sat near the doorway reading the evening News.
Shayne said, “Swell,” out of the side of his mouth. “The girl is probably just an idle rumor.” He watched the man reading the newspaper by the door. The fellow was obtrusively uninterested in Shayne. He looked anemic. He was long of nose and short of chin. “Even if the girl’s body popped up in my room you wouldn’t have the faintest idea how she got there?” Shayne’s tone was extremely casual and low.
The clerk swallowed hard, displaying his Adam’s apple prominently. “N-No, sir. I — have such a beautiful forgettery.”
Shayne grinned and said, “Swell,” again. He turned his full attention to the clerk. “This is off the record. Did anyone ask for me while I was seeing my wife to the train?”
“No, sir.” The clerk was positive. “Mr. Gentry and that reporter were the first to come.”
“And you didn’t see any strangers going in or out who looked as though they might have lethal intentions?”
The young man’s eyes were wide and frightened now. He shook his head emphatically. “No, sir.”
Shayne nodded. “If you hear anything after a while — someone going up and down the fire escape to my office — don’t pay any attention and you’ll save the hotel some notoriety.” He lit a cigarette, then swung toward the door in a loose-limbed stride.
He passed within two feet of the man who was deeply interested in his newspaper. Glancing down, Shayne saw that the paper was folded back at the editorial page. The man impressed him as one who lacked the intellect to cope with a newspaper editorial page.
Going out the door without slackening his pace, Shayne glanced over his shoulder as he passed wide windows looking into the lobby. The anemic man was folding his paper and getting up.
Shayne continued to Second Avenue and swung around the corner where his car was parked. A small coupé was parked a discreet half block behind his shabby convertible. A man sat in the driver’s seat.
Shayne walked briskly on to his car, opened the door, and folded his long body in under the wheel. He adjusted the rearview mirror and watched with interest while the editorial reader hurried around the corner toward the coupé and got in beside the driver.
Waiting patiently, Shayne sucked on his cigarette, expelling great clouds of smoke through flaring nostrils. The coupé did not move away from the curb.
There was little traffic on Second Avenue. A lopsided moon and millions of brilliant stars shed silvery light upon the Magic City. A faint cooling breeze blew in from Biscayne Bay, salt-tanged and permeated with the perfume of flowers from Bayfront Park, bringing relief from the long sun-drenched August day.
Shayne threw his cigarette away and started his motor. He swung about in a U turn and drove slowly to Southeast Second Street. He smiled grimly when the coupé twisted away from the curb and made a U turn behind him.
He stopped wasting time watching the little car and angled over to Biscayne Boulevard. He drove north at a moderate speed, dragging in deep breaths of the cool, tangy air.
The coupé was a block behind him when he approached the traffic light at Seventy-Ninth Street. A line of traffic was piling up behind the little car trailing him.
Shayne gauged his speed carefully, reached the corner as the traffic signal changed from red to green, then pulled into a filling-station on the southeast corner of the busy intersection.
The driver of the coupé hesitated, slowed behind him. A furious medley of honking broke out as the drivers behind the coupé saw themselves about to be held up while the light changed.
Reluctantly, the coupé drove into the intersection, hesitated about turning right or left, drove on across and pulled to the curb half a block ahead.
A courteous attendant was standing smartly at attention beside the detective’s car. Shayne grinned at him and said, “Sorry, bud, I just remembered an important appointment. Guess I’ve got enough gas to make it. Back later.”
He slammed in the gears and drove on through the station into Seventy-Ninth Street, joining a stream of traffic flying across the northern causeway to the peninsula. He smiled happily when he saw, through the rearview mirror, that the coupé was taking a desperate chance to make a U turn on the boulevard and speeding back to the intersection to follow him.
Turning off Seventy-Ninth Street to the right, Shayne drove south one block, then west across the boulevard to Little River where he took Miami Avenue back to the downtown district of the Magic City. He felt quite certain that the two men in the coupé were vainly looking for him in the stream of traffic across the northern causeway.
When he turned into the Tamiami Trail, he slowed to a leisurely speed. The Wildcat was a well-known dance hall and open market place in the country beyond Coral Gables; a large rustic structure with a thatched roof, one of the last trading-posts before the trail dived headlong into the remote vastness and silence of the Everglades.
Shayne parked between two other cars in front of the Wildcat and got out. Snuggled-up youngsters and roughly dressed oldsters were dancing in a dimly lit pavilion, and the beer bar was getting a good play. The breeze sweeping over the open spaces bordering the redlands was soft and humid.
Shayne joined the unwashed, open-shirted crowd at the bar and was dawdling over his second beer when he saw Timothy Rourke’s lean body and tousled head in the doorway. A wild, stricken expression replaced the keen, searching look in the newshound’s slaty eyes.
Rourke leaped forward and grabbed Shayne’s arm and led him outside. “What the hell are you pulling on me, Mike?” he ejaculated nervously. “Maybe you think it was a gag, but I lost ten years off the other end of my life creeping up that damned fire escape and into your office.”
Shayne grinned. “You made it all right. What’s ten years off the other end?”
“By God, I’m through.” Rourke faced the tall detective angrily. “From now on you can handle your own bodies. I’m through.”
Shayne grabbed the reporter’s shoulder and shook him roughly. “You can’t let me down now just because we’ve got the girl out. Hell, Tim, this is just the beginning. I’d be sunk without your help. And don’t forget that the boys on the Herald would jump at the chance of one of my headlines.”