He knocked twice again before he heard the sound of heels clacking on the floor inside. He kept on waiting and presently the door opened inward a few inches.
He put his shoulder against the door and went in past a woman wearing a rich red and yellow silk kimono of Oriental design who was pushed back by the opening of the door but who made no great effort to hold it against him.
Little light filtered into the living-room past the drawn curtains of two wide south windows. The atmosphere was heavy with the sweetish odor of perfume or incense, overlaid with a peculiar scent that was irritatingly familiar to the detective but one which he couldn’t immediately name.
He strode directly across the room and drew back one of the draperies, then lifted the window to let in fresh air.
Mona Tabor was closing the door as he turned back from the opened window. She was a tall woman with a willowy grace which bespoke firm flesh and inward poise. She looked an assured thirty-five and there was a hint that some of her earlier years might have been tough ones. She wore no make-up on her strong regular features but there was deep natural color that tinted her smooth cheeks, and full lips took color from the flaming crimson of her robe. Coppery hair was brushed directly back from a wide, smooth forehead and the same metallic glint showed in thick eyebrows and long lashes above the brown eyes which calmly appraised this intruder.
Shayne took off his hat before her cool appraisal and rubbed a calloused hand over his coarse red hair, waiting for her to speak.
She didn’t say anything. Her attitude was wary though not hostile. She stood facing him with an impersonal directness which simply questioned his presence.
Shayne grinned disarmingly after a time and said, “You’re okay, sweetheart.” He lounged down on a padded window seat and tossed his hat on a brocaded divan.
Mona’s left shoulder lifted slightly and her lips curved in a not unfriendly smile. She said, “Maybe you are too,” her gaze catching the reflected flame of sunlight on his red hair. She added, “Maybe not,” as an afterthought and moved across to the divan.
When she sat down, Shayne saw that she was short-waisted with a pair of the longest legs he had ever seen.
She leaned back gracefully, letting her head lie so that chest muscles lifted high breasts against the silken fabric. She looked down her straight, nice-sized nose at Shayne with a hint of mockery in her eyes.
Shayne held her gaze unwaveringly. He said, “I’m okay, all right. I’m a friend of Carl’s.”
She showed no sign of being impressed. Her expression did not change when she said, “That doesn’t prove a damned thing.”
Shayne asked, “Doesn’t it?” He was digging in his pocket for a cigarette and he looked away. When he got the pack out she was holding flame-tipped fingers toward him.
Shayne stuck a cigarette in his mouth and shook another from the pack for her. She didn’t move and he had to take three steps to give it to her. She looked up searchingly into his face while he lit a match and held the flame to her cigarette.
Her brown eyes were slumbrous, conveying the same hint of passion in repose that her body and position cried out. There was no odor of perfume about her, and Shayne liked that, but her parted lips exuded that half-familiar scent he had noticed strongly when entering the room.
He took a step backward to light his own cigarette and her gaze lingered on the strong, harsh lines of his face. She patted the divan beside her. “It’s more comfortable here than by the window.”
Shayne shook his head and muttered. “Thanks.” He retreated to the safer position and sat down, reminding her, “I told you I was a friend of Carl’s.”
She said, “How nice.” Her tone was mocking, and it was as though claws had been momently unsheathed.
Shayne knew that she was a dangerous woman. Dangerous as hell. An intelligent woman with no scruples. A woman who could easily destroy a man. He recognized the tantalizingly familiar odor from her lips now. It was the strong unnerving smell of absinthe, and he knew now that Meldrum had been under the influence of the green stuff that morning.
He drew the cognac bottle from his pocket and worried the cork with his teeth while she watched. Perfunctorily, he asked, “Have a drink?” then tipped it to his mouth when she shook her copper-colored head as he had known she would.
The drink steadied him. He set the open bottle on the floor beside him and growled, “Carl sent me to get things straight with you. You know the spot he’s in.”
She didn’t reply. A tawny glint came into her eyes and went away while she waited for him to go on. She took a deep drag on her cigarette and smoke flowed smoothly out of her nostrils. She was as quiescent and as dangerous as a sulking tigress.
“You know all about it,” Shayne insisted. “He told me you were fixing him an out for last night.”
Mona Tabor’s tongue came out and wet the outer surface of her lips. She said, “Then he hasn’t anything to worry about, has he?”
“He sent me over to get the whole thing straight. So there won’t be any mix-up in the stories you and he tell the cops.”
“You’re lying, redhead.” She said it without rancor. “I don’t know what your game is but there’s something about you that does things to me-if you know what I mean and I’m damned sure you can guess in three tries.” She was languorous, her words were faintly slurred, and the tawny glint was in her eyes again. They were not so dark a brown as he had thought at first
Shayne shook his head impatiently. “That sort of thing isn’t going to get us anywhere. What I want-”
“I can make you want me, redhead.” She made no physical movement.
“You’re not guessing,” he agreed harshly. Sweat was standing on his forehead. He stared across the room at the wall, which he discovered was stippled in rose and blue and yellow. His hand groped for the bottle beside him. He lifted it and drank and there was perfect silence in the room.
Shayne broke the silence. “I’m a married man,” he said.
“I’m married, too, but I’m not working at it right now.”
“I’m told it lasts longer that way,” Shayne said, “but right now I’m working at it.”
“You’re the kind that would be,” Mona Tabor agreed with an undertone of bitterness.
He turned his head slowly to look at her. She had not moved a muscle of her relaxed body, yet beneath the surface tension was apparent to his wary scrutiny.
“You’re going to come over here close to me in a minute,” she told him. “You can’t help yourself, redhead. We haven’t anything to do with it. Neither of us. I think we’ll get drunk together. God! I love getting drunk in the daytime. You know what I mean-drunk!”
Shayne crossed his knees and stared down at the tips of his big shoes. He could get everything out of Mona if he went at it right. Less than three weeks ago he would have seen his job clearly and worked at it.
He lurched to his feet, grabbing his cognac bottle by the neck. “Yeh, I know what you mean,” he repeated thickly, “but I’ve got to see a dog about a man.”
“Not until you’ve had a drink with me, redhead. Just one drink and then you won’t care whether you ever see a dog or a man either.”
She was standing close to him, body muscles curved beneath the clinging silk of her robe. He dragged his eyes away from them, set his jaws hard.
She nodded triumphantly and moved away in a long-limbed stride. Shayne watched her go into an inner room and presently she reappeared with a small liqueur bottle and two gold-rimmed glasses. He watched her pour green absinthe into one glass and strode forward to put a big hand over the other glass to stop her from filling it.
“I’ll stick with my own brand,” he said, dangling the bottle before her eyes. “And before you take that drink you’d better tell me what I should say to Carl.”
“Damn Carl,” she said. She caught his wrist to pull his hand away. He gripped the glass tight enough to crush the fragile rim. The pieces dropped to the floor. Shayne looked down at blood oozing from his palm. He was too drunk to cope with this sort of thing, and he knew it.