“I’ll be safer without it,” the redhead said. “You may be surprised to hear that private detectives hardly ever shoot anybody.”
He grinned at her and dialed his secretary’s number.
He could hear the pulse of the ringing phone in Lucy’s living room across the bay. As the rings were repeated, his grin faded. He clicked for a dial tone and fingered the number again, on the chance that he had made a mistake in dialing. He felt a stir of apprehension. His appointment with Lucy had been iron-clad. He had told her he would come there from the airport, whether or not he brought Rourke and his mysterious blonde. There was no chance that she had gone out. He knew her too well for that.
The phone rang and rang.
“Is something wrong?” Carla asked anxiously.
Shayne said slowly, “I don’t know. I’m trying to get my secretary.”
He broke into the sixth ring, dialed the operator and gave her Lucy’s number.
“Will you check for trouble on that line?”
“I’ll dial it for you, sir,” the girl said. Again Shayne listened to the monotonous repetition of rings until the operator reported: “Your party does not answer.”
Shayne hung up with a muffled curse, and jammed his hat down on his bristling red hair.
“Perhaps she’s just gone out for a minute?” Carla suggested.
Shayne grunted a negative. “She knew I’d be calling her. When I want her, I want her in a hurry. She’s had enough experience with my methods so she wouldn’t leave the phone. But whatever it is, it can’t connect with this.”
“Then it can’t be serious, Mike. Every minute you delay will make it worse for Tim. Couldn’t I—”
“You stay put,” the redhead growled. “I’ll stop in on the way, to see if she left a note.”
Suddenly Carla stopped, holding herself very still. A glance told Shayne that her mind was turning over rapidly, but he had lost his curiosity about what thoughts were forming inside that blonde head. It was a puzzle he would have time to consider later. Right now he was thinking only of Lucy.
“Did you stop anywhere on the way in from the airport?” she asked.
Shayne was on his way out the door, his head down. He didn’t pause.
“Mike, it’s important!” she called after him.
He slammed the door, taking the steps three at a time. He heard Rourke’s door open, but she didn’t call out again.
Shayne was asking himself savagely, for the hundredth time, if it was fair to Lucy to let her go on working as his secretary. She had figured in so many of his cases that even casual readers of the newspapers knew her name, and could find out her address by looking in the phone book. Inevitably, Shayne’s enemies had come to regard them as a team. In consequence, Lucy had had some close calls—much too close for the detective’s comfort. She had been threatened. She had been held as hostage. When Shayne had a piece of information that was dangerous to a criminal, the criminal assumed that Lucy had it too. She was in increasing danger the longer she worked for Shayne. A time was rapidly approaching when he would have to fire her, for her own protection. He had broached the subject once, thinking he was doing it delicately. She had pinned his ears back.
He grinned briefly, thinking of the unladylike language she had employed on that occasion.
His long legs, in the meantime, were eating up the blocks. He didn’t succeed in flagging a cab until he turned onto Collins Avenue. The driver U-turned and swung smartly into the curb.
Shayne lost no time in jumping in. He shot out Lucy’s address, wishing that he was at the wheel of his own car, and could put the gas pedal on the floor. The driver lowered his flag and drifted in leisurely fashion up to a stop light as it turned red. With a little more alertness, he could have slipped through.
“Come on, let’s hustle,” Shayne told him through clenched teeth. “Your tip’s going to depend on the driving you do in the next ten minutes.”
The driver looked back over his shoulder. “I abide by the law, Jack. They threw enough tickets at me already.”
“I didn’t ask you to break any laws,” Shayne snapped. “Just don’t be all day.”
The light changed and the driver gunned away from the intersection, going momentarily into one of the left-hand lanes to overtake a truck. He swept around the traffic circle onto the causeway.
“Fast enough for you?” he said caustically, looking around at Shayne.
“You’re doing fine,” Shayne told him. “Keep your eye on the road.”
He made himself sit back and leave the operation of the cab to the driver. Lucy was all right. She had to be. He didn’t know why he’d dismissed Carla’s suggestion so abruptly. Of course—Lucy had run out to a drugstore to get cigarettes or soda. Shayne was getting himself upset over nothing.
The driver watched the rear-view mirror. “If you want speed, Jack,” he bit off, “watch out for cops.”
“I’ll pay the fine if they stop you,” Shayne said.
“Oh, sure,” the driver commented, as the speedometer needle trembled at sixty-five, “he’ll pay the fine. Where have I heard that before?”
They had a series of breaks with the lights on the Miami side of the bay. The redhead dug the points of his nails into his palms. He had a bill ready when the cab rounded the corner from Biscayne Boulevard, tires protesting, and braked to a stop in front of Lucy Hamilton’s unpretentious apartment house.
Leaping out, Shayne made the lobby in two strides. He rang Lucy’s bell three times, their agreed-upon signal, but without waiting for a response he unlocked the inner door. The buzzer still hadn’t sounded as he raced up the stairs, key ready.
He fumbled the key into the lock, certain now that something very serious had gone wrong. He threw open the door, and immediately smelled something burning. The little foyer was filled with smoke. Shayne waved his way through.
“Lucy!” he shouted. “Damn it, where are you?”
Coughing, he made his way to the kitchen, where he found the source of the smoke: Lucy’s electric range. The detective’s eyes were smarting. He slammed open the oven door. Grabbing up a pot-holder, he removed a biscuit sheet dotted with what appeared to be smoldering lumps of coal. He threw it into the sink with a clatter.
“Lucy!” he shouted again.
He had burned his knuckles. He strode back to the living room, and for the first time he heard a strangled sob. At first he couldn’t discover where it came from. Then he went to the door of the bedroom and saw Lucy on the floor.
She lay on her side facing the wall, her wrists and ankles tied with a torn scarf. A second scarf had been knotted and forced into her mouth. She was writhing frantically, making small, terrible, incoherent sounds.
CHAPTER 12
Stooping quickly, Shayne pulled her to a kneeling position.
“It’s all right, angel,” he told her as she continued to twist frantically.
He was trying to untie the knot at the nape of her neck, beneath her soft brown hair. It had been pulled cruelly tight. Even after she stopped struggling he couldn’t work it loose. He found a pair of small pointed scissors on the bureau.
“Now hold really still, sweetheart,” he said cheerfully. “I don’t want to cut an artery.”
She was trembling, but the sobbing had stopped. He inserted one blade of the scissors between the scarf and her neck, and sawed through the fabric.
“Oh, Michael!” she cried, as soon as the gag was out of her mouth. “I was so scared!”
“Wait another minute,” he said, preoccupied with the knot at her wrists.
The instant her hands were free she threw her arms about his neck. “Oh, Mike, Mike.” She was laughing and crying at the same time, her wet cheek pressed hard against his muscular chest.
Her ankles were still hobbled, and he cut the second scarf and helped her up. She wobbled unsteadily. The circulation had been stopped, and one foot failed to hold her. She danced about on the other foot, chafing her numb ankle.
“Let m
e do that,” Shayne offered.
Lifting her easily, he carried her into the living room and put her down gently on the sofa. The air was still heavy with smoke. He moved a chair into the foyer and propped open the front door to increase the circulation. Coming back, he looked down at his secretary, his hands on his hips.
She was wearing tight black toreador pants, ending at the ankles, very high-heeled slippers, a black jersey blouse and pearls. Her short brown hair hadn’t been badly disarranged.
“What happened, angel?”
“Well, the doorbell rang and then …” She started up in alarm, and wailed, “My biscuits!”
“I took them out of the oven,” Shayne reassured her. “Burned to a crisp.”
She settled back. “It made me so mad to think of the biscuits burning up out there, without being able to do anything about it—and then there seemed to be so much smoke I got panicky. Tied up like that—it was just awful, Michael.”
Her eyes filmed over, but before the memory could make her cry again, Shayne reminded her, “The doorbell rang. Then what?”
She swallowed. In a voice that was determinedly businesslike she said, “I knew it wasn’t you, from the ring, but I thought it could be Tim. You hadn’t told me to keep the door locked, so I buzzed. I went out to look down the stairs. I saw somebody come in, and then somebody else grabbed me from behind, with one hand over my mouth. He rushed me back inside and into the bedroom. They didn’t hurt me until they tied the scarf so tight, and I suppose they had to do that so I couldn’t call out. They were really quite gentle with me.”
“Gentle!”
“Now, Michael. I knew you’d be coming before long, so I wasn’t actually worried. It was the smoke that made it so bad. Then the phone rang, and kept on ringing. I knew it was you, and I even knew when the operator rang back to check the line. Then somebody else tried to get me. After that I waited and tried not to worry about the smoke. Then I heard the tires squeal outside, and the three rings—well, I’m glad I work for you and not some other private detectives I could mention.”
“Did you get a look at them?”
“No, I just had a glimpse of the one at the bottom of the stairs before the other one whirled me around. The light was so bad, I’m afraid I couldn’t describe him for you, Michael. There was something about his face, though—something incomplete, or wrong. I don’t know what it was. Oh, I’m no good to you. You’d think that by now I’d be able to give you a simple description of a man’s face.”
Shayne asked thoughtfully, “Would it explain anything if he had a broken nose?”
“Why,” she said uncertainly, “I don’t—Michael, I declare I think that was it! Yes,” she continued excitedly, “it had a sort of squashed-in look. You mean you know who it was?”
“I have a pretty good idea. And I think I know where I can lay my hands on him.”
He promised himself grimly that any laying-on of hands wouldn’t be too gentle. This must be the same hoodlum who, dressed as an intern, had slugged Tim Rourke. “What about the second one?” he asked.
“I didn’t see him at all,” she said. “He was behind me all the time. I had the feeling he was nervous and frightened. The second one, the one who had rung the downstairs bell, started to say something, and he shushed him sharply. He said, ‘You fool,’ or something like that, with some sort of accent. I’m afraid that’s not much help,” she apologized.
“No,” Shayne reassured her, “considering the scare they gave you, I think you did damned well. What happened after they tied you up?”
“I forgot to say,” she added, “I twisted free for a second and bit the big one on the back of the hand. I think I hurt him, too. He gave a little yelp that was music to my ears.”
Shayne laughed. “I’ll have to remember never to tie you up.”
“I can laugh about it now,” she said, “but goodness knows I was scared enough then. I jerked around trying to get loose, and that only made it worse. They weren’t here long. Whatever they were looking for, my guess is that it’s something fairly large and solid, or else they thought there hadn’t been time to hide it well. They looked in the bureau drawers, but they just tumbled things around without doing any damage.”
Shayne looked around the pleasant, tastefully furnished living room. Only close scrutiny showed that the cushions of the chairs and the sofa had been disturbed. The dining table, in the little alcove next to the kitchen, was orderly and serene. The four place settings were exact, the centerpiece—of shells and a trailing vine—untouched. Tall candles were ready for lighting.
The desk, in the opposite corner near the front windows, showed some signs of having been ransacked, but the papers weren’t strewn about carelessly, the drawers hadn’t been wrenched out and turned upside down on the floor. Shayne had seen rooms that had been carefully searched for something small and well concealed. He’d undergone the experience once or twice himself, and it had always taken much time and money to put everything back as it had been.
“I think that’s good reasoning, sweetheart,” he said. “Now what the devil were they looking for?”
“I was waiting for you to tell me!” she cried in dismay.
“I don’t know any more about it than you do,” the detective confessed. “I’m completely in the dark. How’s the ankle?”
“I’m quite all right now, Michael, really.”
To prove it, she came to her feet and made a quick, graceful pirouette, ending with a deep curtsey.
“If anything, you’ve improved,” he said.
“You’re a flatterer, Michael,” she scoffed, and turned toward the kitchen. “You want a drink, I know. I have everything ready.”
“A short one,” Shayne said.
“Oh?” she said questioningly.
Without waiting for an explanation she went to the kitchen and came back with a loaded tray. Shayne was worrying the lobe of his left ear between his thumb and forefinger, looking around the room as though it had something to tell him if he only knew what to look for.
“Let me,” he offered, but he was too late; she was already setting the tray on the low table in front of the sofa.
In addition to glasses and bottles, there was a large platter loaded with lovingly-assembled canapés and hors-d’oeuvres. Shayne took a handful of the little things and popped them into his wide mouth.
“Michael!” she protested. “Won’t you ever learn that those are supposed to be eaten one at a time?”
“I’m hungry,” he mumbled. “If you don’t want me to eat, don’t put food in front of me.”
“Of course I want you to eat, silly. I just don’t want you to eat them all in one mouthful.”
She poured cognac into his wine glass and pushed it several inches toward him. Her own drink was a highball—cognac, water and ice.
“You don’t have to go right away, do you, Michael?” she said appealingly. “I was counting on—”
“I’m sorry as hell,” he told her moodily. “But Tim Rourke has disappeared, and you can see that—”
“Disappeared!” she exclaimed.
Swiftly, using as few words as possible, but without leaving anything out, he explained what had happened at the airport. She looked at him warily as he described his encounter with the blonde in Tim’s apartment. Her concern for the missing reporter overrode everything else.
“Is that the same blonde Tim was raving about in his cable?” she asked.
“I’m pretty sure,” he said, “but that’s about all I’m sure of. The point is, if the two guys who tied you up are the same two who put the snatch on Tim, what were they looking for, and why were they looking for it here?”
She moved her highball helplessly.
Shayne said, “I thought at first that this had to be something left over from some other case. But there wouldn’t be two different thugs with a broken nose. There has to be a connection, but what is it? It beats me, angel. There must be something obvious I’ve overlooked. Whoever’s behind this searchi
ng party must know about me and the way I work, and know that if I had anything to hide, I might very well drop it off here. That doesn’t sound like Latin American rebels. Broken-Nose doesn’t sound like one either. He sounds like cheap muscle, on piece work.”
Leaning forward, the redhead picked up the wine glass, examined the cognac briefly against the light, drank it and put the glass down empty.
“Get your pad and pencil,” he said.
Lucy moved swiftly to the desk while Shayne watched her admiringly. She brought back her working tools, and sitting down in a chair on the other side of the table, looked at him, her pencil poised. Her alertness over the stenographic pad contrasted strikingly with the stylish hostess costume. Shayne chuckled.
“You ought to come to work in that outfit,” he said. “It would make things more interesting around the office.”
She glanced down at the low-cut loosely fitting blouse, and blushed faintly.
“Michael,” she murmured. She added with a trace of asperity, “Getting the pad was your idea, remember?”
“Yeh,” he said, suddenly hard and driving. “I have to call on a certain Professor Quesada, who holds a chair at the University.” He gave her the address he had memorized. Lucy’s pencil flew across the page. “Carla says he was in the front seat of the kidnap wagon. Of course she may have been lying, or mistaken. I have a pretty good mental image of the geezer from Roberts’ description, and it won’t be long before I find out. Now.”
He sipped absently at the ice water in a second glass, and went on: “The business of the arms shipment may or may not be phony. Certainly they weren’t trying to find some missing machine guns in your bureau drawers. I’d guess it’s something a lot more portable. It’s clear that there’s some kind of deadline involved. They’re in a hurry, and that could be bad for Tim.”
“Michael,” she said, “isn’t there any other—”
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