Then he jerked the door open and a body crumpled to the floor just outside when the pinioned arm was released. A burly man was running into the big room at the end of the corridor shouting Spanish words in a badly accented voice.
One glance at the man at Shayne’s feet showed him writhing on the floor, his face contorted with pain.
Shayne realized it would be utterly hopeless to face the roomful of excited and vengeful Latins at the end of the corridor. He drew back and slammed the door shut instead, throwing the latch on the inside to gain a few moments before they could break it in, and then whirled about to look at the cubicle in which he was imprisoned.
There was a urinary on one side and a wash-bowl on the other. Beyond was a sagging door leading into a toilet stall, and shoulder-high on the far wall was a window about two feet square.
There was an excited babble of voices and a rush of feet outside the door behind Shayne. It rattled and shook as angry fists began pounding on it.
Shayne hesitated one brief moment while he tried to orient himself and judge whether the rear window overlooked the river or not.
Before he could decide, he knew that the question had become academic. The door was straining inward now, and the latch would give way at any moment.
Shayne leaped forward and caught the crosspiece above the sagging inner door with both hands. Using the impetus of his leap, he swung his legs and lower body high off the floor and drove feet-first at the window, arching his body to carry him through the aperture and downward, accompanied by fragments of broken glass.
He went into the muddy water of the Miami River feet-first, and sank into soft mud before he was waist-deep.
Three strides carried him to the bank where he scrambled up behind the kitchen just as there was a crash inside the restroom and excited shouts came out the broken window.
Shayne loped around the side of the kitchen to the parking lot, darted to Rourke’s car and leaped inside. There was no Cadillac convertible parked in the lot.
He got the key in the ignition and the motor roared to life just as the vanguard of the angry mob poured out of the front door.
He went away with screaming tires and with his lights off, and drove several blocks before he eased into a stream of traffic and turned them on.
He drove west a dozen blocks, heard a siren racing in the opposite direction behind him, and then north a few blocks until he found a small bar with an empty parking space in front. He got out and went in with his muddy shoes and his clothing dripping from the waist down, and pushed up against the end of the bar where the lower portion of his body was hidden from the bartender’s sight.
He said, “A double cognac straight,” and then motioned to the telephone behind the bar just out of his reach. “Would you push that a little closer, please?”
The bartender set the phone where he could reach it, and got down a bottle of cognac. Shayne dialed the Peralta number from memory. It rang six times before Freed’s unctuous voice answered, “Mr. Peralta’s residence.”
“Mrs. Peralta, please. Sergeant Olson from police headquarters.”
“One moment, Sergeant. I believe she just returned.”
Shayne held the receiver to his ear and gratefully sipped the body-warming liquor. When Laura Peralta’s voice said “Yes?” over the wire, he put the telephone down thoughtfully without replying. There was a black scowl on his trenched face as he toyed with his drink. Right now, Laura Peralta was a bigger question mark than before. He smoked a cigarette and had another, single, cognac without coming to any conclusion about her.
The scowl remained on his face when he finally clumped out in wet shoes and got into Rourke’s car. He drove to his apartment hotel and parked outside, grinned reassuringly at the expression on the desk clerk’s face as he crossed the lobby. “I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow, Dick. Right now I need some dry clothes.”
“Sure. That’s okay, Mr. Shayne. But I gotta tell you. That reporter friend of yours, Tim Rourke, and the chief of police, are up in your apartment… with some other guy I don’t know.”
Shayne stiffened. He asked with a frown, “How long ago?”
“About five minutes. Mr. Rourke’s got a key, you know.”
Shayne said absently, “I know.” He went to the open elevator wondering what in hell this visit portended.
TEN
Shayne had his key-ring out when he approached the door of his second-floor apartment, and he turned his key in the lock and pretended surprise to find the living room brightly lighted and Tim Rourke in the act of pouring a drink at the center table. He also pretended not to notice the presence of Chief Will Gentry and another man seated on the divan back against the wall on his right.
He turned slightly to the left to close the door, and said heartily, “Pour one for me out of my own bottle while you’re at it, Tim.”
“Hey! Where the devil have you been?” Rourke held a bottle tilted over a glass and stared at Shayne’s wet pants and shoes.
“Her husband came back unexpectedly. Thank God there was a swimming pool directly underneath the balcony off her bedroom.” Shayne shucked off hat and coat and started forward, reaching down to unbuckle his belt. He stopped with a start of surprise as though seeing his other visitors for the first time. “Will! Don’t tell me that’s the husband… come up to have me arrested for jumping out of his wife’s bedroom. If you are,” he told Gentry’s companion seriously, “and if I catch my death of pneumonia out of this, I’m going to sue you for not keeping your pool heated at night.”
“Cut out the gags, Mike,” Will Gentry said heavily. “This is Mr. Erskine and we’re here on a serious matter.”
Mr. Erskine was smaller than Miami’s Chief of Police, and at least ten years younger, built with the same solidity and wearing a look of portentous gravity. He wore a dark, neatly pressed business suit, a dark blue bow-tie, and dark, horn-rimmed glasses.
Shayne acknowledged the introduction with a breezy nod of his head. He said, “Let it wait three minutes, Will, while I get out of these wet clothes.” He went on toward Rourke at the center table, unbuttoning his shirt. “Pour the gentlemen a drink, Tim, and make mine straight.”
Timothy Rourke said, “Sure,” and Shayne passed him into the bedroom with a wink, stripping off his shirt and dropping it on the floor as he entered. He emerged in a moment with a bathrobe flapping about his bare shanks, went into the bathroom where he took a quick, warm shower.
Both Gentry and Erskine sat stolidly on the sofa with drinks in their hands when he came out wearing the robe again. He paused by the table to pick up a glass of cognac Rourke had poured, and sipped it as he went back into the bedroom.
The glass was half empty when he came out a few minutes later wearing dry slacks and slippers and a tan sport shirt. Tim Rourke was slumped down in a deep chair across the room from the others, his eyes half-closed and his cadaverous features relaxed while he nursed a tall glass of bourbon and water.
Shayne set his glass down on the table and went into the kitchen to bring back a glass of ice water which he set down beside it, then he sank into a chair and sighed deeply and said, “All right, Will. What is it?”
“Where have you been all evening?”
“Working. Ever since Tim’s lawyer sprang me from Painter’s jail.”
“On the Peralta case?” demanded Gentry.
“Sure on the Peralta case. Did you think I was going to let that little twerp scare me off it?”
“It might have been better if you had, Mike. If you and he would just talk together instead of butting your heads every time you meet.”
“Talk?” Shayne demanded angrily. “Listen. Has Tim told you how those two goons of Painter’s grabbed me off the street on phony charges and kept me locked up in a lousy cell for three hours before Tim could arrange bail?”