Shayne smiled down at the governess and put her away from him gently. He turned on Freed and said in a curiously calm voice, “You stinking little hunk of pseudo-masculinity. Where is that clipping about Marsha?”
“What do you mean?” Freed shrank away from him. “I don’t understand…”
“You understand well enough,” growled Shayne. He took one step forward and struck the fat-butted secretary with a sweeping back-handed slap that sent him reeling across the hallway and crashing into the wall. “So you craved her fair, white, young body?” raged Shayne. He stood over Freed, glaring down at him implacably. “Where’d you get hold of the clipping from the New York Mirror?”
Freed cowered on the floor beneath him and began to sob. “When I checked her references. I knew there was something. And I checked back and I finally remembered. I didn’t mean to…”
Shayne swung away from him on his heel. He told Marsha, “You needn’t worry about the clipping. Everything is coming apart at the seams anyhow. The bracelet isn’t important any more. He didn’t steal it. He just seized the opportunity the theft presented.”
“When I made the telephone call…?” faltered Marsha.
“It was just the number of a bar he selected at random. All he had to do was pick up the extension a few seconds after midnight and hear you say ‘yes.’” Shayne looked at his watch. It was eighteen minutes past the hour. “Is Laura upstairs?”
“Yes. She’s… I’m afraid she’s not in very good condition to receive company.”
“She’ll receive me,” said Shayne grimly. He took a firm grip on Marsha’s elbow and started up the stairs with her, leaving Freed groveling in the hallway behind them. “Show me her room.”
Marsha climbed the stairs beside him, her cheeks flaming with embarrassment. “When I think about him writing that note…”
“Forget it,” Shayne advised her. “The twins are going to be needing you after tonight more than ever.”
They reached the second-floor landing and Marsha turned to the left and stopped in front of a closed door. “This is her sitting room. I’m afraid you’ll find her…”
“Passed out?” said Shayne cheerfully. “I hope not.” He pushed Marsha aside and knocked peremptorily on the door, and then opened it without waiting for a response.
It was a very feminine room, with two lighted boudoir lamps on either side of it. It was empty as Shayne strode in, but a door on the left was open into a dark room which he guessed was Laura’s bedchamber, and an alcohol-thickened voice came through it faintly, “Julio?”
Shayne walked to the threshold and felt inside the door for a wall switch. He didn’t find one, but as he groped, a pink-shaded bedlamp came on in the room, and he saw a bare, rounded arm and the lace of a black nightgown, and Laura Peralta’s face on a white pillow with her eyes burningly fixed on his.
She didn’t move as her eyes focused on his face and he knew she recognized him. The tip of her tongue came out to wet her lips, and she said wonderingly, “Mike Shayne. I thought you were… never coming to me.” She closed both her eyes and freed her other bare arm from beneath the cover and lifted them both toward him embracingly.
“You mean… you thought I was… dead,” said Shayne brutally. He walked into the room and stopped beside the bed and looked down at her outstretched arms and her closed eyes dispassionately. “You’re not that drunk, Laura. Cut it out.” His voice was savagely incisive.
Her eyes opened slowly and her bare arms dropped back to her sides. Two tears ran slowly down her cheeks. Her full lips opened and she pleaded in a blurred voice, “Kiss me, Mike.”
He said angrily, “I kissed you once before tonight. Tell me, Laura. Who told you to send me to Las Putas Buenas?”
She closed her eyes sadly before his intent gaze. “Mr. Tatum.”
“Who in hell is Mr. Tatum?” demanded Shayne fiercely.
She kept her eyes closed and moved her head slowly from side to side on the pillow. “Don’t you know Mr. Tatum, Mike? He’s Julio’s… friend. His… I don’t know, Michael. He frightens me. He came here tonight after you left.” Her voice rolled on like that of a mechanical doll that had been wound up and could not stop. Listless and devoid of emotion. As though she were in a mild state of hypnotism and knew not what she said.
“They had a terrible scene, he and Julio. And he came to my car as I was driving away… when I knew you would meet me at the Green Jungle, Mike. He frightened me. He said Julio had lost his senses and you must be… ‘taken care of.’ He said you would take me to a place called Las Putas Buenas if I told you the story about an anonymous letter. And so I did.” Her voice became low and dreamy and Shayne had to lower his ear close to her lips to make out the words. “But you went there alone, Mike. And I… got frightened and… came home. Now… kiss me again.” The final words were throaty and very low, and she turned her head slowly so her lips touched his and held hotly against them.
He didn’t think Laura Peralta was quite as drunk as she pretended to be. He straightened up and walked out of the bedroom, and didn’t look back as he strode through the sitting-room to the hallway where Marsha waited for him.
The front doorbell was ringing downstairs as he closed the door firmly behind him and Marsha seized his arm. He turned her toward the stairway and looked at his watch. It was just seven minutes since he had checked the time last. Five minutes until twelve-thirty. They started down the stairs and heard Nathaniel Freed’s voice saying petulantly at the front door, “Yes, I do remember you, but I don’t care whether you’re a reporter or not. Mr. Peralta is not at home, and it is far too late at night…”
“Tim!” shouted Shayne, going down the stairs two at a time and leaving Marsha behind him. “It isn’t too late at all. Just in time as a matter of fact.”
FIFTEEN
He ran through the hall and shoved Freed aside at the front door, pushing Timothy Rourke out onto the porch in front of him. His own car was parked there, but he led the reporter past it and down the driveway, saying urgently, “We’ve only got a few minutes, Tim. Talk while we’re moving.”
“That’s what I came out to tell you. There isn’t any rush. Painter refused to move until tomorrow morning.”
“Good for Painter.” Still holding Rourke’s arm tightly, Shayne pulled him impatiently down the street past the reporter’s own coupe parked in front of the iron gates.
“Will had quite an argument with him,” panted Rourke as he was rushed along, “but Painter absolutely refused to do anything until he could get hold of Erskine and give the State Department a chance to step in first if they want. Neither Will nor Painter knows you’re on the personal rampage, Mike. Though I think Will suspects it all right.”
They rounded the corner of the stone wall toward the service entrance, and Shayne looked at his watch. It was one minute until twelve-thirty. From the rear of the estate came the muffled sound of a gasoline-powered launch approaching on the canal.
“I don’t know what you’re up to, Mike,” Rourke said desperately as they stopped in front of the locked wooden gates under the archway, “but I wish to God you’d hold off.”
Shayne said, “It’s too late for that.” He let go of Rourke’s arm and said calmly, “I’m going over the gate and I’ll try to unlock it from the inside to let you in. Go back to your car and get out of here if you want,” he continued roughly, “but you’ll pass up a headline story if you do.”
He reached up with both hands and got a firm grip on the top of the gate, swung his body up and scrambled over, dropping to the ground on the inside.
He fumbled with the lock in the darkness, found a knurled knob which released the catch, and shoved the door outward just as the sounds of a melee came from the boathouse at the rear.
Rourke moved in, muttering hoarsely, “What the hell?” and lights came on in the rear and suddenly they were bathed in the beams of a bright searchlight mounted on the big house in front of them.