When she came close, Shayne relaxed his grip on Charles’ collar and the chauffeur slumped forward with his face to the macadam. Anita dropped to her knees in front of him and crouched there with her hands on his head and cheek, and cried out tearfully, “Charles! Answer me!”
When Charles didn’t answer, she looked up fiercely at Shayne and demanded, “What have you done to him?”
Shayne looked down at the skinned knuckles of his right hand and said, “He’ll be all right, Mrs. Rogell. Do you greet all your guests with a double-barrelled shotgun?”
Charles moved his head and groaned thickly. Anita bent over him again, crooning softly, and he twisted his body and got the palms of both hands flat on the pavement and hoisted himself up to a half-sitting position. His black eyes were wild and the front of his face was smeared with blood, and the red stuff dribbled off his blunt chin in a slow stream. He spoke groggily through mashed lips and a hole where two front teeth had been, “’S Mike Shayne, Nita. I tol’ you…” He choked on a clot of blood and hacked it out of his throat and then slumped down on his side again.
The older woman had reached the scene and Anita got to her feet, ordering her sharply, “Call Dr. Evans at once, Mrs. Blair. Charles is badly hurt. And tell Marvin to come out here if he’s sober enough to help. We must get Charles inside.”
While the housekeeper scurried away toward the back door, Shayne dropped the shotgun and said, “We don’t need any help for that.”
He stooped and got his right arm under Charles’ thighs, put his left behind the man’s lax shoulders and heaved upward with a tremendous effort, lifting the body that weighed fully as much as his own and holding it in his arms with feigned ease while he grinned down into Anita’s eyes and asked, “Where do you want him?”
For a moment there was electric silence between them while their eyes locked. Anita trembled slightly and sucked in her upper lip and there was a look in her eyes like a young child contemplating a forbidden delicacy. She said softly, “You’re very strong, aren’t you?”
Shayne forced himself to swagger forward as though the heavy burden were no effort at all, deriding himself inwardly as he did so with the knowledge that he was acting like a teenager flexing his muscles in front of his first love. “Which way?” he ground out through set teeth.
“Here. Through the back door. You’d never get him up to his apartment over the garage.” She hurried in front of him, and Shayne followed, his knees almost buckling under the strain, but grimly determined to carry it off.
He was halfway across the parking space and was becoming increasingly aware that he couldn’t possibly make it, when Charles fortuitously gurgled something deep in his throat and began making feeble efforts to free himself from Shayne’s arms.
The redhead thankfully lowered his right arm to let the chauffeur’s dangling feet touch the ground, and got Charles’ left arm around his neck where he levered it down over his own left shoulder. The man was conscious enough to support part of his weight on rubbery legs, and Shayne half-carried him on to the back door where Anita was waiting.
“In here.” She went through a gleaming modern kitchen to a small room directly off it fitted up as a comfortable sitting room. The housekeeper was talking excitedly into a telephone in one corner, and Shayne thankfully let Charles down on a chintz-covered sofa where he lay very still, glaring up at Shayne balefully.
Mrs. Blair replaced the phone and bustled forward, saying cheerfully, “Dr. Evans will be right here. Now you just lie easy, Charles, and I’ll get a cold cloth for that face of yours.”
She hurried through the connecting door into the kitchen and Shayne slowly turned his gaze away from Charles’ venomous glare to catch a queer look on Anita’s face as she stood back and to one side, studying him and not paying the slightest heed to the chauffeur.
It was a melancholy, questing look. At once frightened and somehow exalted. Compounded, Shayne thought, of sheer, lustful desire and passionate hatred. Fragments of Lucy’s description of Anita Rogell went fleetingly through Shayne’s mind as their eyes locked for a second time within a space of minutes.
Without taking her eyes from him and without change of expression, Anita slowly licked her pointed tongue out over her short, upper lip exactly like a cat contentedly licking off cream. Shayne almost thought he heard her purr in the silence.
When she spoke it was not in a purring tone. Her voice was throaty and had a little catch in it. “You’re Michael Shayne.”
He said, “I’m Michael Shayne. Does that give your man license to hunt me down like a mad dog with a shotgun?”
From the sofa, Charles uttered garbled words. Neither of them paid him the slightest heed. They were warily measuring each other like antagonists in a duel to the death.
She sucked in her breath and said, “He warned me you would come tonight. To try and dig Daffy up and take her away.”
Beside them and a few feet away, they were conscious that Mrs. Blair had returned from the kitchen and was ministering to Charles with little clucking sounds of sympathy. Neither of them looked in that direction.
Shayne said heatedly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I explained to your chauffeur that I got lost in the dark while fishing, and rowed in to the first shore lights I saw… hoping I could call a taxi to take me home. And he met me with a cocked shotgun.”
“Why did you send your secretary here this afternoon… if not to discover where Daffy is buried so you could come and take her away?”
“My secretary?” said Shayne in feigned astonishment. “Are all of you crazy?”
“She is named Lucy Hamilton, isn’t she?”
“That’s my secretary’s name,” Shayne admitted. “As a great many people in Miami know. What of it?”
“Do you deny she came here this afternoon pretending to be from a pet cemetery so she could find where Daffy is buried?”
“Of course, I deny it,” said Shayne vehemently. “Why on earth would Lucy do a silly thing like that?”
“Because Charles suspects that John’s crazy sister hired you to try and prove Daffy was poisoned by one of us here because she accused us of murdering her brother.” Anita spoke the words calmly and simply, as though they were of no consequence at all.
Shayne drew in a deep breath and shook his red head in what he hoped was a gesture of utter bafflement.
“You’re ’way beyond me. I don’t follow you at all.”
“I did call Haven Eternal after Charles came back from showing Miss Hamilton Daffy’s grave and told me he thought she was up to something else. They have no representative named Lucy Hamilton, and they don’t even send out people representing them. How do you explain that, Michael Shayne?”
Shayne said, “I don’t. Why should I?”
“And then,” Anita went on evenly, “Charles remembered reading in the papers that you have a secretary named Lucy Hamilton. You won’t deny that?”
“Certainly not,” Shayne said heatedly. “This conversation is utterly absurd. Don’t you have a drink handy?”
Anita tilted her head and considered him gravely for a moment. Then she put out her hand and Shayne took it in his and she said almost gaily, “Of course there’s a drink handy… Michael Shayne,” and her husky voice made rich music of the name.
With her hand in his, she led him past the sofa where Mrs. Blair was on her knees still making clucking noises over Charles. They went out of the room and through the kitchen to the wide, vaulted hallway that Lucy had described to Shayne, and some thirty feet down the hall toward the front door and through a pair of sliding doors on the right that stood partially open. It was a small conservatory, and the temperature inside was the same as Lucy had described the upstairs boudoir. Still holding Shayne by the hand, she led him to a gleaming refectory table in the center with a white lace cloth on it and a huge silver tray holding a cocktail shaker with a small amount of liquid in it, two long-stemmed cocktail glasses that had been recently drunk from, a bucket of cracked ice, a heavy, cut-glass decanter, marked creme de menthe and a quarter full, and another, larger decanter, unmarked, but containing an amber liquor that looked to Shayne’s avid eyes very much like long-aged cognac.
She said, “Marvin and I had stingers after dinner. Would you like to mix another batch?”
Shayne squeezed her hand hard and looked down at the top of her shining head which lightly brushed his shoulder. He released her hand and said, “I’d rather have a straight drink.” He reached for one of the cocktail glasses and she moved toward a silken bellcord, murmuring, “I’ll ring for a clean glass.”
Shayne said, “Please don’t. I’d much rather use one of these and be alone here with you.” He twisted the glass stopper from the large decanter and filled one of the cocktail glasses to the brim. She had moved back close to him when he lifted it to his lips. He breathed in deeply the clean, delightful bouquet from the distillate of sun-ripened grapes, and the tips of her taut, full breasts, behind the silky white of a loose blouse, pressed lightly against his chest as she moved even closer.
She stood rigid, just touching him, her arms straight down at her sides and both hands tightly clenched. Over the rim of his glass, he stared down into her uplifted face. Her eyes were tightly closed and a tear squeezed out of the inner corner of each one and trailed down her lovely, waxen cheeks. Her lips were parted and the tip of her tongue showed between them, and they moved almost imperceptibly, and, faintly as the sound of a muted bell, he heard the whispered words that seemed to well up from deep inside her and not from her vocal cords at all:
“I want you, Michael Shayne.”
He sat the cocktail glass down without tasting the contents. She stood rigid and unmoving against him. Very carefully, he put his right arm about her shoulders. Her flesh seemed to pulse against his as he put slowly increasing pressure against her shoulders, crushing her against his chest, and her head fell back farther and her lips parted more widely, and then her eyes came open as he lowered his head, and they were unfocussed and gleaming, the irises showing enormously large, and when his lips touched hers, her belly and her loins writhed against him and the suction of her mouth on his was avid and compelling.
It was either a brief moment or an eternity that they stood like that, as close as two humans can get. Then Shayne heard the insistent ringing of door chimes from the front, and he slowly released her and stepped back to pick up the cocktail glass in a trembling hand, just as Mrs. Blair hurried past the open doors on her way to answer the front door.
Anita smiled dreamily at him and rested the knuckles of her left hand on top of the table. “I imagine that will be Dr. Evans come to see Charles. He’s always so prompt.”
Shayne took a gulp of cognac. It burned all the way down his throat to meet but not assuage another sort of burning in the pit of his stomach. He said, “That’s nice of Dr. Evans,” set his glass down and fumbled a cigarette out of his shirt pocket while Anita sauntered to the gap in the sliding doors and stood there looking out composedly until Mrs. Blair and the doctor hurried by, and said, “Let me know about Charles at once, Doctor. I do hope it isn’t serious.” She turned back to Shayne and asked serenely, “It isn’t, is it?”
“Just a few teeth knocked out, I’m afraid.” He looked down at his raw knuckles and drew in a deep breath. “You were giving me some absurd reason for his attacking me with a shotgun when…”
“When you decided you needed a drink,” she finished for him. “And it wasn’t absurd at all. I’m sure Charles was exactly right and Henrietta did hire you to dig up Daffy and try and prove she was poisoned.”
“Was she?” demanded Shayne.
“Poisoned? Of course not. Why would anyone want to do a cruel thing like that? Everyone loved her. Except Henrietta, of course. She hated everyone. If Daffy was poisoned, you can be sure that old bag did it. And maybe she did at that,” Anita went on slowly. “It’d be just like her. She could have, you know. Poisoned that chicken herself, and then fed a plate of it to dear Daffy out of spite.”
Shayne grinned sardonically. “And then went around and hired a private detective to disinter the dog and prove her guilt? You can’t have it both ways, Mrs. Rogell.”
“Please call me Anita,” she said absently, her forehead furrowed pensively in thought. “Maybe not, but you can be certain no one else in this household would have harmed Daffy.”
“How can you be so certain of that?” sneered a rather fruity voice from the hallway, and a fair-haired young man lolled between the parted doors. He swayed a little and clenched a highball glass in his hand, and his bloodshot eyes didn’t focus very well. “Nashty-tempered little bitch, I always said. Snapped at my ankle once and, by Jove, you were more worried about me kicking her than about me getting bit. What’s all the ruckus about anyhow, Sis?” He peered owlishly at Shayne. “Atom bombs going off in our backyard, doctors running hither and yon. You haven’t introduced us, you know.”
“This is Michael Shayne,” said Anita distinctly. “My brother, Marvin.”
“The noted private eye, eh?” Marvin blinked at him and moved closer to peer into his face with bleared eyes. “You don’t look the part at all, you know. Not like it is on television with all your beautiful blonde clients ripping off their clothes and crawling into bed with you first crack out of the box. Does he, Sis?” he asked her with a leer. “Can you imagine any beautiful blonde clients climbing into bed with this redheaded Mick? I ask you now. You’re a blonde and you ought to know. Would you climb in bed with his ugly mug?”
In a coldly vicious voice, Anita said, “Get out of here, Marvin. You’re drunk.”
“Coursh I’m a little bit drunkie.” He smiled vacuously and took one more look at Shayne, shuddered and almost feel over his own feet exiting.
She said, “So much for my brother, Mr. Shayne.” A dreamily contemplative expression chased the anger from her face. “I would, you know.”
Shayne said, “I know,” very matter-of-factly.
She closed her eyes and clasped her arms about her full breasts and shivered. Then she started gliding toward him with her eyes closed.
Shayne emptied his glass and set it on the table and waited for her to reach him.
The voices of Mrs. Blair and Dr. Evans came from the hall, approaching them. Anita stopped three feet from Shayne, unclasped her arms and opened her eyes. The hypnotized expression faded from her face, and she turned and went to the door and asked lightly, “How is Charles, Doctor?”
“As well as can be expected.” His enunciation was precise, with a studiedly genteel inflection. “I had to take six stitches and administer a sedative for the pain. Later, he’ll have to see a good dentist. I must have the straight of this, Anita. From Charles and Mrs. Blair I am given to understand that some hulking brute of a private detective forced his way onto your property tonight bent on desecrating the grave of your dog, and Charles was injured while defending the place. Have you called the police to lay charges against this ruffian? I am required to report the incident, you know.”
“Why don’t you discuss it with Mr. Shayne?” Anita moved aside and Dr. Albert Evans stepped through the sliding doors. He was young for a practicing M.D. Not more than his early thirties, Shayne thought. He was slender and of medium-height, with slightly protuberant eyes behind gold-rimmed nose glasses attached to a black cord around his neck.
He stopped and looked severely at Shayne, but the detective could have sworn there was the suggestion of a twinkle in his eyes as he asked, “What did you hit Charles with? He insists you attacked him with a large rock.”
Shayne held out his right hand with the fist doubled. “If you’ve any adhesive left you might put a little on my knuckles.”
“It’s no joking matter,” the doctor told him. “It’s trespassing, Anita. And assault and battery at the very least. This man should be arrested.”
“He claims he lost his way on the bay in a rowboat and put ashore to get help when Charles mistook him for a vandal and threatened him with a shotgun.”
“Can you prove that?” demanded Dr. Evans of Shayne.
“Can you prove I didn’t?”
“There’s still assault with a deadly weapon.” The doctor glanced at Shayne’s fist and the suggestion of a twinkle was back in his eyes.
“Assault?” snorted Shayne. “While the idiot followed me at six feet with a cocked double-barrelled shotgun loaded with buckshot? The slightest misstep on his part would have blown me into two pieces. If anybody lays any charges around here, it’ll be me.”
“I think Mr. Shayne is right,” said Anita sweetly. “Let’s be happy no greater damage was done.”
“Yes… well…” The doctor took off his glasses, blinked rapidly and fiddled with them. “I’ve done all I can for Charles tonight.” He turned to go, but Shayne stopped him.
“If you’re going toward town, Doctor, could I bum a ride with you? I meant to call a cab, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.”
“Why, yes. Certainly, if you like. I go down the Avenue to Flagler.”
“Right past my place,” Shayne told him genially. He walked past Anita and her fingers swung out to catch his hand as he went by. He pressed her fingertips hard and said, “Thanks for everything, Mrs. Rogell. I hope we meet again.”
She dug her fingernails fiercely into the fleshy part of his palm and then released his hand. He followed Dr. Evans down the hall, glancing through portieres on the left as he went by and seeing Marvin across the library at the bar intent on mixing himself another drink.
Dr. Evans opened the door and held it for him, and they went across the wooden porch and down stone steps to a neat dark sedan under the porte-cochere.
The doctor put his bag in the back and went around to get under the wheel, and Shayne slid in beside him. He put the car in gear, and as it moved smoothly down the winding drive, he said quietly, “I take it you are a private detective, Mr. Shayne?”
“Yes.”
“And I also take it you were attempting to disinter Mrs. Rogell’s pet dog to have its stomach contents analyzed?”
Shayne said, “I have no intention of admitting that fact, Doctor.”
“Yes… well…” The sedan turned north on Brickel. “I can only wish you had been successful,” the doctor said fretfully. “I confess I’m dreadfully bothered.”
“You think the dog was poisoned?”
“I have no opinion in the matter… not being a veterinarian. I do wish Mrs. Rogell had not been so precipitate in having the little beast buried. But she has a dreadful complex about death in any form. The result of some childhood trauma, I daresay, though I’m not a psychiatrist either. And the death of her husband, just two days ago, left her dreadfully upset, of course. A remarkable woman, though. She’s bearing up exceedingly well.”
Shayne said, drily, “Yes. I imagine Anita Rogell will survive okay,” with the memory of that tempestuous embrace still rocketing through his body.
“I understand you signed the death certificate,” he added.
“Certainly, I did. I had been attending him for months and was called immediately after his death was discovered.”
“Is there any possibility whatsoever, Doctor, that he could have been poisoned?”
“You’ve been listening to Henrietta,” he said bitterly. “Spreading her spleen wherever anyone will listen. Mr. Shayne, if you are an experienced detective, you must know that no competent medical man in his right mind can absolutely rule out the possibility of some kind of poison in any death. No matter how normal it may appear on the surface. If we took that fact into consideration, perhaps we should have an autopsy on every cadaver… no matter what the circumstances of death.”
“Perhaps we should,” Shayne said equably.
“Yes… well…” The doctor slowed as he approached the bridge across the Miami River. “Since that is not accepted practice, I can only tell you there was no scintilla of evidence to give me the slightest doubt that John Rogell’s death was the normal and natural result of his heart condition. That is the statement I gave the police, and I stand behind it.”
“Right here, Doctor,” Shayne said hastily as they drew abreast of his apartment hotel. “Thanks for the lift… and for the information.” He got out at the curb and lifted a big hand in farewell, waited until the doctor drove on and then trudged across to the side entrance where he climbed one flight of stairs and went to his corner apartment to wait for Timothy Rourke to show up or telephone him.