Three o’clock in the morning rolled around and the phone had not jangled. Shayne went to bed. Bell’s absence rankled. If the Haynes papers were so damned important how come no one was making a pitch for them?
The detective was awakened by the snarling of his door buzzer, followed by a heavy fist beating on his door. He got into a robe and moved into the living room, where he snapped on a lamp. It was ten minutes before four o’clock. The pounding on his door continued. It had an urgent beat to it.
At the door, he growled, “Yeah?” without reaching for the knob.
“There’s a fire in the building!” an excited voice on the other side of the door rasped. “Everybody out!”
Shayne yanked the door open. He didn’t smell smoke or see fire. But he did see a large gun. It was held in the right hand of a beefy man who moved with the catlike grace of many large men. He popped his free hand against Shayne’s chest before the detective could react and slid inside the apartment, moving out of range quickly after kicking shut the door.
Shayne puffed and the gun muzzle moved up higher on his chest. Shayne became rooted, expelled air slowly. “What kind of games we playing, buster?”
The man had small dark eyes and a small, puckered mouth. His cheeks were heavy and his skin was a natural deep brown color. He had large hands, big fingers. The nails looked cared for, as did the blue suit and the black shoes he wore. He wiggled the gun.
“I don’t know who you are, mister,” he said in a voice that had rough edges, “but you have a briefcase I want.”
Shayne was alert to any trace of foreign accent in the voice. There was none. He decided to fish. “Pal, you’ve got the wrong door.”
The man shifted the aim of the gun to a slightly lower position. Shayne figured that if the man triggered the gun a private eye might not die, but he’d have one helluva gaping hole in his gut.
The man said, “I saw you chase the girl, I saw you come out of her place with the briefcase, drive here. Hand it over and you can go back to bed.”
“You’ve been waiting outside all of this time?” the detective said, stalling.
He wanted a step. One would do fine. From there he could land on the man, twist the gun from his grasp.
But the man said, “Don’t try anything!”
Shayne eyed him for a couple of seconds, decided the man was no rookie, then lifted his palms in a gesture of resignation. He went into his bedroom. The man was on him, didn’t let him out of sight. Shayne got the briefcase from the floor of the closet. The man stood framed in the doorway. Shayne flipped the briefcase at him.
The man was deft. He caught the briefcase without moving the gun, flipped it back at the detective. “Open it. I want to see inside.”
Shayne asked, “You got a name, pal?”
“Open it!”
Shayne opened the briefcase. The man’s expression didn’t change as he looked at the emptiness, but he said, “You better come up with what was inside that case.”
Shayne took a step toward him. The man stiffened.
“It’s in the front room,” the detective said.
The man was cagey. He gave Shayne plenty of room in which to move to the couch. Shayne doubled over the couch, lifted a cushion with his right hand. He could see the man in the corner of his eye. He whirled and flipped the cushion in one movement.
The man ducked and the cushion sailed over his head. He came up with the gun muzzle and nicked the edge of Shayne’s jaw. Then he jammed a foot between Shayne’s legs and sent the detective sprawling.
Shayne figured he was dead, except the man then made his first dumb play. He got down on one knee beside Shayne and rammed the muzzle of the gun against the redhead’s ear.
Shayne lashed out with his right arm. The man peeled away from him. He went back across the room and stopped as the detective flipped up into a sitting position. The muzzle of the gun was aimed directly at Shayne’s eyes.
Then the man turned and bolted from the apartment.
V
Mike Shayne continued to sit in the sprawled position on the carpeting for a long time. He stared at the door. Finally he got up with a growl and flipped the cushion toward the couch. He went into the kitchen, poured cognac, found a cigarette, lighted it. He pondered. The invader had had him dead. Why hadn’t he killed, found Haynes’ plans and departed?
There had to be a logical reason for why he had not.
Shayne took the cognac to his chair, sat, scowled in thought. The guy had to be Boris Poskov. The guy could be anybody else, any clouter, but for the purpose of finding reason and direction the detective had to assume the guy was Boris. And he had to assume that somewhere between Haynes’ house and the detective’s bed, Boris had picked up the action.
Where and how didn’t matter now. Nor did the fact that Boris had killed time before striking. The point was Boris knew Shayne had the Haynes plans, he had got the drop on the detective and then he had fled without the plans. Why?
The Russians had warned Boris: “No violence, no killing.” Was that it? But if violence, even killing, was a means to an important end, why the soft glove? Espionage, stealing secrets from another nation, preparing for missile war wasn’t a child’s game.
Shayne shook his head, went over the action in minute detail, looking for something that would explain. Boris had ducked a cushion, then had tripped the detective, followed him down to the carpeting and slammed the muzzle of the gun against the detective’s ear. He could have triggered the gun, killed the detective right at that point. But he hadn’t. And it was why the redhead had taken heart, had had no qualms about swinging on his assailant from the prone position. Shayne had realized Boris was not going to kill him. It wasn’t the way war games were played, not even cold war games, but then maybe Boris was a thinker.
Maybe Boris Poskov had reasoned that a large gun makes a loud noise, and a loud noise at four o’clock in the morning in an apartment building, especially a loud shout, would produce excited people, and the excited people would not leave time for a Russian agent to rip apart an apartment, looking for secret plans. Too, a loud gunshot could produce cops. Somebody would call the cops or the downstairs desk at the loud sound of a gunshot.
That had to be it. Boris had moved in on the apartment under the assumption that he would be dealing with an average John Citizen, a guy who had just happened to be walking a sidewalk when he saw a girl down a man and steal, a guy who had chased the girl and retrieved the briefcase because the guy still believed in law and order and right and all that jazz.
Yes, that had to be it. Boris had moved in under a wrong assumption. He’d hit the door of the apartment waving the gun because he’d figured that the guy who opened up wasn’t going to risk losing his life over a briefcase he had retrieved from a young, blonde thief. Boris had figured the mere sight of the gun would produce the briefcase. Then he discovered that he wasn’t up against just an ordinary John Citizen. He had discovered he was squaring off on a large redhead who didn’t go pale at the sight of a gun or start quivering over the threat of violence.
Boris Poskov had had to shift mental gears. And he had still been shifting when he had the redhead wide open to certain death. But the meshing had come swiftly. Boris had spotted danger, potential failure. Boris was a pro. He’d figured killing at that moment might get him the papers he wanted, but a gunshot could hamper flight, freedom to deliver. So he’d backed off. He’d think things over, reconsider his line of attack. And he would attack again. Of that, Shayne was sure.