He walked swiftly, swinging his arms and gritting his teeth to keep them from chattering.
Headlights of a car going toward Miami showed in the distance. There was no place of concealment along the bare highway. When the lights were close, he slid over the edge of the pavement into the water until the car passed. Three times he hid himself by immersion, growing colder with each dip.
The chill gray of dawn was breaking when he neared the end of the waterway.
On either side of the canal in the marshes thousands of birds twittered of dawn. White herons flapped snowy wings and dipped into the shallow water of the marshland. Cranes, standing like statues on one foot against coral rocks, put the other foot down and lifted themselves in flight to the grain thickets. Blackbirds soared with raucous chatter. Quail scuttled away, fluttering in a loud whir as they rose in coveys. Silver-plumed gulls floated gracefully, circled, settled in the feeding ground.
Diverted by the beauty of winged creatures, Shayne was almost cheerful. He kept on walking swiftly, but when the headlights of another car showed behind him, he did not duck for cover. Instead, he stood in the center of the road and waved both arms frantically.
The car slowed cautiously, stopped about twenty feet from him. A straw-hatted head came out through the left window of the coupe and a voice called, “Hello, there. What’s up?”
“I am,” Shayne grinned. “Been up all night.” He walked slowly to the car, full in the glare of the headlights, arms swinging loosely at his side. “Can you give me a lift to town?”
The driver hesitated.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t,” Shayne said quickly, and smiled disarmingly. “I’ve been lost out in that goddamned swamp since yesterday. I’m wet and half-starved.”
The driver said, “Get in,” after looking Shayne over carefully. “There’s a raincoat here you can sit on.” He spread the raincoat out and Shayne got in.
As they drove toward Miami, Shayne recited a fabulous story about setting out on an alligator hunt in the Everglades with a Seminole guide-the Indian had deserted him, and he had been lost for eighteen hours, fighting his way through snake-infested swamps until he stumbled out on the highway.
Luckily, the man was a traveling salesman from another part of the state, and he knew as little about the Everglades as most people. He swallowed Shayne’s story with bug-eyed enjoyment, and let him out of the car on Flagler Street just as sunlight streaked the sky over the Atlantic.
Shayne walked to his hotel and found his car parked by the curb where he had left it a few hours previously. He went in the side door and up to his apartment without being observed.
Stepping over the threshold, he hesitated with his finger on the light switch. Daylight streamed through an east window, lay wraithlike upon the figure of a girl curled up in a deep, overstuffed chair.
He didn’t turn on the light. Instead, he catfooted into the room and looked down at Phyllis Brighton. She was sound asleep, right cheek cuddled on her crooked right arm, her breath coming rhythmically through half-parted lips.
Shayne shook his head and moved around the sleeping girl. He took up the bottle of cognac he had left on the table last night. There was a good two fingers of liquor in it. He tipped it up and emptied the bottle without taking it from his stiff, sore lips.
An ague seized him. He fought against it and went to the telephone and quietly gave the operator a Miami telephone number, waited for an answer.
He could hear the bell ringing monotonously in the home of Will Gentry, chief of Miami detectives. After a long time, Gentry’s sleepy voice said, “Hello.”
Shayne put his lips close to the mouthpiece and said, “Hello, Will. This is an anonymous informant.”
“What?” Gentry sounded puzzled. “Who is this?”
“An anonymous informant,” Shayne repeated in a low voice.
“It sounds like Mike Shayne. What is it, a gag?”
Once more Shayne said evenly, “This is an anonymous informant, Will.”
“Oh, all right, have it your way, Mike. What’s up your long sleeve? I thought Peter had you under his jail.”
“There’s been an accident out on the Tamiami Trail. A sedan went into the ditch with two men in it. A mile or so beyond where the roadside canal starts. The skid marks on the pavement and tracks cutting the shoulder will spot it for you, but the car’s all under water. It’ll take a derrick to hoist it.”
“Yeh, I’ve got that, Mike. I’ll send a crew out.”
“You’ll find a sub-machine gun and at least one forty-five automatic in the car or in the mud,” Shayne explained. “It’d be nice to do some awful close checking on the men and the car and the guns, Will.”
“You bet.” Gentry was wide awake now. “Thanks for the tip, Mike.”
“From an anonymous informant,” Shayne cautioned him.
“Sure. I get it.”
“Thanks.”
Shayne hung up softly.
When he turned away he saw Phyllis sitting up, staring at him with dazed, half-open eyes. There was a red blotch on her right cheek where it had rested too hard and too long on her arm.
“Wha-a-t-?” she stammered, but Shayne cut her off abruptly:
“Go on back to sleep or something. I’m getting out of these wet clothes and into a tub of hot water pronto.”
He turned his back on her and strode to the bedroom, unbuttoning his soggy coat and stripping it off, dropping it on the floor behind him.
Chapter Seven: THE GIRL WHO WAS GROWING UP
The tiled bathroom was clouded with steam and Shayne was blissfully relaxed in a tub filled to the overflow outlet with water near the scalding point. The door opened a cautious crack and Phyllis’s voice came timidly through the steam.
“Can I do anything? That is-”
“You can stay out and let a man have some privacy,” Shayne shouted severely.
He snatched the shower curtain the length of the tub and slid farther into the water. As the door started to close, he yelled out, “Wait. If you feel domestic, put on some coffee water to boil.”
“Yes, Mr. Shayne,” Phyllis said meekly through the crack. “Is that all?”
“That’s all, Angel.”
He luxuriated in the hot water a little longer, then dragged his long, sinewy body out and turned on a stinging blast of the coldest water Miami affords. He stepped out and rubbed down briskly with a coarse towel. He then wiped the mist from the mirror and scowled at his marked face.
Passo’s backhanded blows hadn’t added materially to his looks. His upper lip was puffed, and there was an ugly, livid bruise on the left side of his jaw. He quit scowling and grinned ruefully when he thought about the damage the hoodlums might have done if their scheme had worked.
He applied witch-hazel to the bruises and wrapped a dry towel around his belly, then opened the door a few inches and peered into the living-room.
It was empty. He hastily negotiated the few steps to his bedroom door, and closed it behind him. Five minutes later he emerged wearing gray flannels and a white shirt open at the throat. His red hair was plastered to his head. He whistled an off-tune version of “Mother Machree” as he stepped out into the living-room.
There was an unopened bottle of cognac in the wall cabinet. He went to the kitchen carrying it by the neck.
Phyllis smiled at him from her position in front of the electric stove where she bent anxiously over an aluminum pot half full of water that was about to boil. She was wearing a yellow linen suit badly rumpled from her slumber, but the dark eyes that looked into Shayne’s were clear and purposeful.
Shayne stopped behind her and said, “Last time, I made the coffee. Remember?”
She nodded. “After harboring me for the night.”
“It’s getting to be a habit,” Shayne complained, “sleeping in my apartment. One would think you didn’t have a bed of your own to sleep in.”