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.
Plain-clothes men were gathered at the door of the room from which the young man had emerged. Shayne recognized members of the Beach homicide squad and nodded but they didn’t nod back. They merely drew away stiffly to let him enter with his two escorts.
At the left of the entry was a luxurious dressing-alcove as large as an ordinary bedroom. Directly beyond was a silver and white bedroom as large as a living-room, and in the center of its rug a dead man lay on his back. Joe Darnell’s plump face held a look of boyish reproach; his lips were parted as though he were utterly relaxed. There was a round bullet hole in the center of his forehead. A black handkerchief was loosely knotted around his neck.
Beyond him, men were grouped about a four-poster bed. The detectives shoved Shayne past the corpse into the group. His left eyebrow shot up and a muscle rippled in his lean jaw as he looked down at the nude body of Leora Thrip.
In death she clung to the semblance of placidity which had served her well in life. She had been gagged and choked with her blue silk nightgown. Her eyes were open, glazed in death, her upper features above the gagging gown showed no contortion of resentment or fear. Like Joe Darnell, Mrs. Thrip appeared not to object to what had happened to her.
Her torso was as smooth and slender as a young girl’s. Her arms were outstretched with fingers clawed downward at the mattress, limbs stretched straight down and pressed close together with only rigidly down-curling toes to indicate the death agony which must have racked her body while she fought against the torture of strangulation.
Shayne looked at her for a long time, then lifted his gaze to meet the challenging black eyes of Peter Painter across the bed from him.
“Why drag me out of bed to look at this?” Shayne asked.
With a great show of deliberation the Miami Beach detective chief lifted a manicured finger and caressed the threadlike mustache of his mobile upper lip. Someone snickered behind Shayne. Painter glared in that direction with eyes that were like shiny black marbles, then said:
“I wanted to see how you would react to sight of your handiwork.”
Shayne snorted his disgust. He started to turn away but the two detectives tightened their grip on his arms. He shrugged and asked in a resigned tone, “What fool idea are you riding this time, Painter?”
“You don’t deny that you know her, do you?”
“Of course not. Is that any sign I murdered her?”
“Do you know the man lying on the floor behind you?”
“Sure. I didn’t kill him either.”
“We know you didn’t kill them, Shayne. Not with your own hands or gun.” Peter Painter was walking around the head of the bed toward Shayne. His hands were thrust deep in his coat pockets and there was an expression of supreme enjoyment on his delicately molded features.
“But you’re directly responsible for two deaths, Shayne. You and no one else. You sent that killer out here on a job. You knew what Joe Darnell was when you sent him out here. Don’t try to deny that.” The last five words came out a thin-lipped snarl.
“Yes,” Shayne said, “I knew what Joe Darnell was. If you’re intimating that he was working for me tonight you’re a damn liar.”
Painter had stopped in front of him on widespread legs. Breath hissed in between his teeth, wheezed out slowly. He was a full head shorter than Shayne and he had to stand on tiptoe to get a healthy swing.
Shayne’s head jerked back under the impact of Painter’s fist against his jaw. Pinioned on both sides by Painter’s men, he made no other move. He licked a trickle of blood from his lower lip and said, “That was a mistake, Painter.”
Painter strutted backward, blowing on his bruised knuckles. “I don’t think it was a mistake, Shayne. You’re through in Miami. Washed up. I may not be able to hang a murder rap on you but you’re through as a private detective in this or any other state.”
Shayne shook his head from side to side. His eyes were very bright. “What’s the setup?”
“Here it is. Right under your nose.” Painter gestured triumphantly. “Joe Darnell was a known police character, yet you sent him out here as your employee to protect a client-”
“That’s twice you’ve lied,” Shayne interrupted in a remote voice.
Painter stiffened and doubled his fist. Then he smiled. “I don’t blame you for trying to deny it but it won’t wash. You promised Mr. Thrip you’d send a man out. Darnell arrived at five and told the butler you had sent him to see Mr. Thrip. Accepting him in good faith as a legitimate, licensed, and bonded private operative, Mr. Thrip showed him over the house and grounds he was hired to protect. There was an unlocked window in the library. It was too good a chance for a man like Darnell to pass up. While the house slept, Darnell crept up here and into this bedroom-looking for loot perhaps, though probably he came directly to Mrs. Thrip’s bedroom for this.” Painter pointed a stern finger at the woman who had been brutally murdered in her bed.
“You’d make a good pulp writer,” Shayne grunted. “Skip the guesswork and tell me what actually happened.”
“Mr. Thrip was aroused shortly after two o’clock by a sound from his wife’s bedroom. He admitted to me that he felt a trifle uneasy about the type of man you had sent out and that may have accounted for the fact that he paused to get a loaded pistol from a bureau drawer before opening the connecting door and turning on the light. It was just as well for him that he observed that precaution, for he surprised this fiend bending over his throttled wife. Darnell leaped away toward the door, but Thrip luckily brought him down with one shot. Those are the unadorned facts, Shayne, and how do you think they’re going to look for you in tomorrow morning’s Herald?”
“They’re going to look like hell,” Shayne admitted. He frowned down at the dead woman, then around at Joe Darnell.
“Have you gone over Joe?” he asked suddenly.
“Of course.”
“Was he armed?”
“No, but-”
“How much money did he have on him?”
“Three or four dollars. If you think you can talk your way out of this-”
“Stop your yapping,” Shayne snapped without looking at Painter. He started forward and the detectives subconsciously relaxed their hold on his arms. Painter trotted after him as he strode into the dressing-room and moved from one piece of furniture to another, his gaze searching everywhere for the jewel case which Thrip had described to him. It was nowhere in sight.
Behind him Painter panted venomously, “My men have been over everything. There’s not the slightest question-”
Shayne stopped him with a savage gesture. “You’ve never been able to see anything that wasn’t under your nose. Something stinks around here. Even you should be able to smell it.”
“There’s a stink all right but nothing to compare with the stench that’s going to be raised tomorrow when the story comes out.” There was gloating triumph in Painter’s voice.
“I want to see Thrip,” Shayne cut in.
“He’s suffering from shock. His physician has ordered him to remain undisturbed at least the rest of the night.”
“Yeh,” Shayne muttered, “murder is an unnerving business. What about the rest of the family-the servants? I’ve got to find out-”
“I’ve questioned all the family and the servants as a matter of routine and there isn’t the slightest doubt that the affair happened just as I outlined it to you.”
“That’s what you say,” Shayne growled. “It’s what you want to think. It solved everything neatly-even to putting me out of your hair. I’m not taking this lying down.”
“But you’ll take it, Shayne. I’ve warned you time and again that you can’t play with fire and not be burned.”
Shayne turned his back on the dapper detective chief. There was a stir in the hallway outside, the babble of voices. The newshounds had arrived.
Shayne shouldered his way through them as they came trooping in. They shot questions in his direction and he answered them with a jerk of his head toward Peter Painter, who was waiting to be interviewed.
Outside the death chamber Shayne stood in the wide hallway looking down the length of it. The policeman whom he had seen pushing the young man across the hall now stood guard outside a closed door on the opposite side about halfway down.
The guard scowled and planted himself solidly in front of the door as Shayne approached.
“Can’t nobody go in here,” the man said. “Chief’s orders.”
“Your chief’s orders don’t apply to me,” Shayne told him. “These people are my clients and I have a right to see them.”
“Your clients, eh? Bad luck that is for them. The lady in the bedroom yonder-she was your client too, I’m told.”
Shayne said, “This is going to be tougher on you than on me,” without rancor.
His knotted fist came up smoothly and without warning from his side. It struck the cop’s jaw solidly with all of Shayne’s hundred and ninety pounds behind it. The man in uniform went down with a surprised look on his face.
He stayed down without moving.
Shayne glanced around swiftly to see that he was unobserved, then dragged the policeman up to a slumped sitting position against the wall, opened the door silently, and went inside.