Phyllis laughed and sprang up. She put her hands on his wide shoulders and stood laughing. “Don’t say things-like that, Michael. When I’m old I’ll have-all this to look back on.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss him.
He put an arm around her and led her to the divan where he carefully set his glass on an end table and pulled her down beside him. She snuggled close and said, “It’s grand that you can do something for a woman like that. I felt like crying when she first came and told me how you had refused to take the case.”
Shayne lit a cigarette for each of them and put one between her lips. “And I suppose you promised to use your influence to get me to change my mind?”
“Not only that,” Phyllis admitted gaily. “I promised her you would. In fact, I collected a retainer in advance.” She zipped her hostess gown open a few inches and took out a folded check.
Shayne took it and spread it out on his knee, staring in open amazement at a check payable to Michael Shayne in the sum of one thousand dollars, signed by Leora Thrip.
“I told her your services came high but were worth it,” Phyllis explained guilelessly. “You can’t say I’m not starting out being helpful.”
“Yeh, a big help,” he muttered. He got up suddenly. “I’ve got to do some telephoning, angel.”
In the bedroom he called several numbers and asked for Joe Darnell. After half an hour without success, he stalked back into the living-room with a strange, set look on his face. He shook his head in response to Phyllis’s anxious queries and said dully, “We’ll keep our fingers crossed, angel. That’s all we can do now.”
Chapter Four: TWO DIE VIOLENTLY
Phyllis awoke to hear rain coming down softly outside the open window and the telephone ringing on the little table on her husband’s side of the bed. She nudged him and waited with a chill shivering through her as he groped for the phone. She sat up, urging him to hurry. It was the first night call that had come since their marriage.
It was like being a doctor’s wife, she thought confusedly, only worse. A doctor’s wife knew that an urgent call wasn’t taking her husband into danger, while a private detective never knew.
Shayne was saying, “Yep, Shayne talking,” then listened a full two minutes.
Phyllis could faintly hear a rasping voice that sounded excited, but Shayne finally ended the conversation by growling, “All right. Sure, I’ll be out but I don’t see what good I can do.” He clicked the phone down and Phyllis grabbed his arm.
“What is it, Michael? Do you have to go? It’s raining and you sounded hoarse this evening.”
Shayne patted her hand, then pulled the cord on a bed lamp. “It’s nothing important, angel. Mr. Painter just hates to think of me sleeping soundly while he’s out chasing down clues.” He yawned and flexed the muscles of his arms, threw the covers back, and grinned down at the absurdly little-girl features of his wife. “Nice of you to remind me of the danger of catching cold. Shows the true wifely instinct. To keep you from worrying I’ll fortify myself against the rainy night.”
He swung his pajama-clad legs over the edge of the bed and uncorked a cut-glass decanter by the telephone. He poured a glass full and half emptied it, filled it to the brim again, and got up to pad across the room in his bare feet and close the window. He turned back toward the bed and took another drink, set the glass down, and tugged at the lobe of his left ear with right thumb and forefinger.
“It’s important, Michael, and you are worried,” Phyllis accused. “You always pull at your ear when-”
Shayne took the glass up and emptied it, sat down on the edge of the bed, and shook a cigarette from a pack on the table. Phyllis lay back and snuggled under the covers, one hand reaching for a cigarette. Shayne lit both from the same match, stood up, and unbuttoned his pajama coat. Shrugging it from his big frame, he said over his shoulder, “Huh. Worried about going out in the cold and leaving my warm bed and ditto wife.”
Phyllis said severely, “You’re just trying to put me off the track with your compliments. You can’t fool me, Michael Shayne. You are worried.”
“You’ve got nutty ideas about the life of a private detective,” he growled as he got dressed. “We don’t deal exclusively in bloodshed and murder, you know. Nine-tenths of a private dick’s work is stuff like-well, checking on hubby to see if he’s stepping out, or finding out why little Johnny played hooky from school yesterday, or digging up sister’s suitor’s dead past.”
“You’re not fooling me a bit, darling.” Phyllis’s voice was honeyed. “You know you turn down routine stuff like that.” She kicked back the covers. “I’m going with you and-”
Shayne whirled away from the mirror where he was knotting his tie. “Get back in bed or get spanked, angel.”
“I won’t sleep a wink,” she warned him defiantly. “I’ll be pacing the floor thinking about those times you got yourself all beaten to a pulp.”
“Be sure to pace before the mirror,” he chuckled. “You look good enough to eat in those red pajamas. Besides, speaking as a bridegroom, I promise not to get my handsome face scarred.”
He turned back to the mirror to finish knotting his tie and Phyllis wrinkled her nose at his reflection in the mirror. When he turned around she was out of bed and standing directly before him.
“Is it a new case?” she wheedled. She touched his tie with a pretense of straightening it.
“Sort of.” He kissed her black hair and put her aside and went to the bedside table for his watch. The time was 2:21.
“It had better be a case,” she warned him. “It’s immoral for a married man to go out at two in the morning for anything except business.”
He went to a closet for his hat and belted raincoat, grinning out of the side of his mouth at her. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, angel. What’s left of me after being married to you for two weeks couldn’t be anything but strictly business.”
He jammed a felt hat down on his coarse red hair and reached her in two long strides. Swinging her clear of the floor he kissed her hard, then dumped her on the bed. She held him fast with hands clasped about his neck and whispered, “Promise you’ll be careful.”
He said, “Go back to sleep and dream you’re married to a ribbon clerk,” with rough tenderness, unclasped her hands from his neck and went out through the living-room.
Ten minutes later Shayne was speeding across the causeway over Biscayne Bay to Miami Beach.
The light rain had turned to mist. Shredded clouds obscured the thin arc of the moon as he turned to the left off the beach end of the causeway. A wraith-like mist crept in from the bay, making foggy fingers of the light rays from a car behind him. A police car raced past him and he speeded up to follow it.
It swerved onto a side street, slowed, and lurched through an opening in a high wall of coral rock surrounding a three-acre estate. He followed, nosing his battered roadster in behind half a dozen official cars and an ambulance parked in front of a massive two-story house with lights brilliantly flooding every window.
A Miami Beach policeman guarded the front door. He looked at Shayne suspiciously, then recognized the private detective and grunted, “Go on in. The chief’s looking for you.”
Shayne went into an entrance hall where there were more cops. They regarded him with open hostility; two detectives officiously ranged him between them and escorted him up a wide curving stairway. The thin high sound of a woman’s hysterical wailing knifed downward at them through a low rumble of subdued voices.
Shayne climbed the stairs silently, his gaunt face expressionless, bushy red eyebrows crowding down over lowered lids.
A policeman pushed a young man across the thickly carpeted hall in front of them as they reached the top. The young man wore dinner clothes and his face was a ghastly yellow. He kept opening and closing his mouth as though he were talking, but no sound came out. The policeman was being firmly paternal with him.