At a touch on his arm, he turned.
“Mr. Shayne, someone has been following me.” Clarissa Milford stood behind him, her eyes wide and disturbed.
“I know. I hired him.”
“Then you must think I’m in danger!” she whispered.
“It’s only a precaution.” Shayne picked up one of the voodoo dolls and dropped a half dollar on the desk. Even without comparing this doll closely to the ones Henny Henlein and Clarissa Milford had gotten, he could tell they were all from the same lot.
“I’d like you to meet my sister and brother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Thain,” Clarissa said with a complete change of voice. “This is Michael Shayne.”
Shayne nodded to Mabel, took Thain’s limp hand and looked down into brown, hostile eyes.
“The detective?” Thain turned to Clarissa. “What have you to do with him?”
“Oh, you know, Percy,” Clarissa said offhandedly. “It’s about that doll.”
“I see,” Thain said distantly. “I didn’t know you had gone to him.”
“I decided suddenly—”
“If it makes her feel better, Percy—” Mabel said placatingly.
Relations between the Thains and Clarissa seemed a trifle strained. Did Percy Thain believe Clarissa to be more involved in the hit-and-run death of his son than she admitted? And was she?
The Thains left with Clarissa, and Tim Rourke walked over. The sensation-seekers had thinned out, most of them gone. “I’m afraid we wasted our time,” Rourke said. “There’s no story here.”
Shayne ran a hand over his angular jaw. “I’m not so sure. You think it came through O.K. on your pocket recorder?”
“Such as it is, I’ve got it.”
“I’d like to run it through a little later and listen again.”
“What for?” Rourke asked sourly. “It’s gobbledegook. By the way, Sharon, the person the first message was addressed to, was that thin woman. I was sitting next to her. She shook like a leaf.”
“She must be a regular. Otherwise the tape couldn’t have been prepared.”
“It was about the only message that made sense.”
“Maybe,” the redhead said slowly, “the others made sense to someone.”
“What do you mean? All that gabble about the forty-eight outer worlds couldn’t make sense to anyone except another ectoplasm. Maybe you don’t get around in occult circles, Mike. It’s old hat. This kind of thing’s done every day. If it were a con game—But I don’t see any racket angle. The Madame puts on a good show and folks get their money’s worth.”
It was the same thing Ed Woodbine had emphasized, and precisely what Shayne himself was thinking. “They got more than their money’s worth. That’s what bothers me. At five dollars a performance and fifty cents a doll, she’s damn near losing money.”
Rourke scratched his head. “You think it’s set up as a front for something? Could be. But I don’t see what.”
“I don’t either. But I’ve had two frightened clients today with dolls that came from here, and one was murdered this afternoon.”
“You talking about Henny Henlein? You’ve been holding out on me, Mike.”
“I’ll give it to you as soon as it can be printed.”
Rourke looked at Shayne through narrowed eyes. “Are the dolls the only thing that’s worrying you?”
“No. There was a man here I’m curious about. I met him this afternoon on Sylvester’s boat. He’s a vacationist—but not the type I’d figure to shoot a tropical evening at Madame Swoboda’s.”
“Hell. Mike, I think you’re straining. People do things when they get to Miami they’d never think of doing anywhere else. Maybe the sun gets them. Or maybe they just get tired of fishing and an ectoplasmic evening seems like a good change. Or maybe they get tired of communing with their wives and decide to give the spirits a whirl.”
“I’d rather whirl a real body—even if it was my wife.”
“So would I,” Rourke said, “Especially if it was your wife.”
Shayne grinned. “Speaking of that, I think I’ll go and find out what Swoboda’s like without her astral body.”
“I’ll run along then. Want me to burn a pink Success candle for you?”
“I’m sure it’s not necessary,” Shayne said.
6
The redhead walked down the hall past the séance room in the direction Madame Swoboda had taken. The hall ended at a kitchen, off which a narrow stairway led upstairs. He mounted the steps, purposely making his footsteps heavy, and found at the top another narrow hallway, dimly lit, and leading to the front of the house.
The first room he passed was an old-fashioned bath with a footed tub and a box over the toilet with a long chain dangling from it. The second was a bedroom, sparsely furnished and uninviting, and the third, a sort of den in which Madame Swoboda was sitting in a wicker rocker.
The gossamer veiling and tiara lay on the floor beside her, but she still wore the silver shawl crossed over her ample and worldly breasts. The lamplight brought out the red lights in her black hair and emphasized the extraordinary length of her lashes. A highball stood on a battered Victorian table at her elbow, and smoke wafted upward from the cigarette she held between slim fingers.
She turned, startled, as Shayne entered, asking coldly, “What do you want here?”
“To tell you how impressive you were.” Shayne toed a chair around to face her and sat down in it.
Accepting the compliment, she said, “I have the gift. I’m a born medium.” Picking up the drink she took a deep draught, then set it down and puffed on the cigarette.
“Are you the deep-trance type?” The redhead was amused at the contrast between hard liquor, tobacco and the spiritual claim. “Or are you semi-trance?”
“Deep,” she said in her timbred voice. She fastened enormous gray eyes on him, the black lashes spreading around them like spider legs. They looked bottomless, seeming to hold slumbering fire, feminine provocation and worldly knowledge—everything, in fact, but spiritual light. “In a trance I feel exhilarated, I feel profound, but—” she sighed heavily—“it is tiring. I need stimulation after it is over.”
Shayne grinned and abandoned the rarity he had been putting into his voice. “I understand. I’m not exactly a teetotaler myself.”
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” Her eyes narrowed.
“I don’t think so. How long have you been in this business?”
“That’s none of yours!”
“I’d like it to be,” Shayne said softly.
She looked at him speculatively, some of the hardness melting. “Why?”
“Beautiful women are a hobby with me.”
She smiled slowly, showing white, even teeth, let the smile die and raised her eyebrows aloofly. “Hobbies don’t interest me—particularly other people’s.”
“Who are you?”
“Kyra Swoboda.”
“Nuts! Who were you before. Jenny Hopfstedder? Mary Murphy?”
“To you,” she said coldly, “I’m Madame Swoboda. And I think it’s time you were getting the hell out of here.”
Shayne rose, moved in front of her and rested one hand on each arm of her chair, completely fencing her in. She looked up provocatively, eyes quizzical and inviting, her moist lips slightly parted so that the tips of her white teeth showed. A movement went through her body—a movement wholly material and physical. Looking down, Shayne saw the mounds of her breasts outlined by the crossed shawl. They rose and fell as her breathing quickened.
“You could be a career,” Shayne said huskily.
“That interests me more.”
He was bending to kiss her when her eyes quickened with recognition. She drew back, forcibly removed one of his hands from the chair arm and squeezed past him, rising and walking across the room with a lithe animal stride.
“I thought I recognized you when I first saw you out there this evening. Your picture’s been in enough papers. You ought to start wearing a beard, Mr. Shayne.”
“It’s not becoming—”
“What do you want with me?” she asked harshly.
“Your background.”
“Why?”
“Let’s say it’s a matter of close personal interest.”
“That’s not true!”
“All right then. I’m investigating a murder. A man was found dead today. His name was Henry Henlein and he had received two of your little dolls, one stabbed, one strangled.”
She laughed humorlessly. “What have I to do with that? Hundreds of people have bought them. We don’t keep records.”
“You keep a record of those who attend your séances regularly. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to prepare the tape recordings in advance. Who does attend them regularly—besides the Thains and the Milfords?”
“I don’t know. There are no tapes and I don’t keep records!” There was venom in her voice.
“What about the Woodbines? Are they regulars?”
Her manner changed. She became softer, almost placating, as if she now wanted to co-operate. “I’m not sure who you mean.”
“A chunky, bald-headed man, blond. His skin’s peeling from sunburn. His wife’s dumpy and middle-aged.”
“It seems to me they’ve been here once or twice, but I’m not sure. Really,” she smiled in sweet reasonableness, “I hold a séance every night. Tourists come and go. I can’t keep track of them all and don’t try to. I have no reason to.”
“What were you—before this?”
“I had a mentalist act. I was a mind-reader on the stage. Not that it’s any of your business.” She recovered her assurance suddenly, turned her back, jabbed her cigarette viciously in the ash tray and took another from a box on the table.
“Who set you up here?”
“I took my own money and set myself up. Now, will you get the hell out?”
“I hate to leave on this note. We were getting along so beautifully.”
“We’re not any more.”
“One last question. Are you in love with Dan Milford?”
She swung around, her mouth set in a crimson line, her eyes flashing. “Now I get it! Now I know who sent you. Murder, indeed! It was that jealous wife of his! She came here, threatening to interfere with the way I make my living, throwing her weight around and upsetting me so I could hardly go into a trance that night.”
She flipped the ashes of her cigarette irritably in the direction of an ash tray, then using it as a pointer, shook it at him.
Unaccountably, despite the show of anger and indignation, Shayne had a feeling that her true feeling at the moment was one of relief, almost as if she had welcomed mention of Dan Milford.
Ostensibly still holding to her anger, Swoboda said, “Whoever murdered that Milford woman would be doing a good deed.”
“Is that why you sent her a voodoo doll—to scare her to death?”
She stopped, honestly surprised, her mouth agape, her aquiline nose uptilted, the flush of anger slowly receding. The respite was only temporary, however. On the next instant the fury returned.
“It’s none of your damned business, but I didn’t. Now, for the last time, get out! You’re invading my privacy!”
“I’d like to. The idea’s tempting. You’re not going to answer my question about Dan Milford?”
“I am not.” She threw herself into the wicker chair and rocked violently, staring sullenly ahead, the cigarette sending a wavy stream of smoke up from her moving hand.
Reaching out, Shayne touched her bare arm lightly with one finger.
She jumped. “What are you doing?”
“I wanted to see if you’d burn me. Dan Milford’s wife says you’re on fire.”
“If I had my way, I would. The less Shaynes in this world, the better.”
“And the more Swobodas?”
“What do you think, Shayne?”
“I don’t know yet. Dan Milford’s wife says you’re soulless, too.”
The moment of softness was gone. “Will you stop quoting that woman? And get out of here!”
“I’m on my way—but I’ll be back. I think I’m a mystic, too.”
She opened her mouth to release a flurry of abuse.
He ducked out fast.
7
When Shayne reached the street he found all the other cars gone except his own and a big gray sedan which he assumed belonged to Swoboda. It seemed a trifle incongruous for someone on familiar terms with the spirit world to be operating a contrivance as unethereal as a Buick, but of course even delvers into the occult had to get around some way, broomsticks being outdated in this age of rockets.
He opened the front door of his own car and slid behind the wheel. He had covered only a few blocks before he became aware that the gray Buick was behind him. The trenches in his lean face deepened, and he turned experimentally off Southeast Third Avenue, heading toward Biscayne Boulevard. The gray sedan turned too. He swung south, circled the block. The sedan followed.
No doubt about it, he’d picked up a tail.
He cruised slowly, his face bleak. He could play along with the tail and find out who it was—but that would take time.
Two pressing errands faced him. He wanted to see Clarissa Milford and the Thains and find out why, among other things, Dan Milford, who purported to take the séances so seriously, had stayed away tonight.
But even more compelling was the need for a clarifying talk with his little Cuban friend, Sylvester. Ed’s presence at the séance was disturbing and the interview Shayne had just concluded with Swoboda had deepened his concern, for it was obvious that Swoboda had been on guard. She had sweet-talked when he brought Ed’s name up and overacted her anger at mention of Clarissa and Dan Milford. The real object of her concern would seem to be the man from the fishing boat.
The fishing trip this afternoon had left him with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction, too, of things hinted at but not explained. Was it coincidence or connection which had caused a man from the boat to turn up at the séance? In any case, since murder unaccountably was breathing down the necks of some people, a talk with Sylvester was strongly indicated.
The redhead picked up speed, hit Biscayne and turned north. He found a corner that was police patrolled and when the yellow light flashed, sped through it and turned west at the next corner. Through the rear-view mirror he saw that the gray Buick had not made the light.
Still speeding, he turned south on Miami Avenue, circled back and headed toward the Causeway to Miami Beach. Across the Causeway he turned south toward the slip where Sylvester’s boat was docked.
The Santa Clara was there all right, squeaking gently against her rubber fenders in the slow swell of the water, but Sylvester wasn’t. Shayne put a beam from his small pocket flash around the cabin, located the light switch and flicked it on. Everything looked shipshape. Sylvester must have slept off his overindulgence in Demerara rum, roused himself and gone home. It was a quick recovery and that was good. Maybe Sylvester wouldn’t be as hung-over as he deserved.
On impulse the redhead opened the ice box. The big grouper he had caught this afternoon was still there. He slammed the door shut and prowled the cabin for a few minutes, looking at the charts, the cuddy and the gear compartment forward. There was nothing that didn’t belong on a fishing boat and everything was in place.
Taking off the engine housing he probed with his flashlight at the new Gray Marine, dirtied up “to fool the tax collector,” which had never been let out, Sylvester said. Still, the power was there if he needed it. Or if they needed it? Why would they need it? The three jolly vacationers liked Sylvester. That’s the only reason they had bought him the new, very expensive engine for his boat. They had helped him to make a fast boat faster.
Leaving the Santa Clara Shayne slammed into his car and drove swiftly to a waterfront area, inhabited mostly by Cubans. He parked in front of a two-story wooden tenement, went up two steps and pressed the bell button under the name that read Sylvester Santos.
A little, ample-bosomed
, gray-haired woman wearing a pink-flowered housedress came to the door, her fleshy arms protruding from the short sleeves. Her face looked drawn, but her worried brown eyes kindled with pleasure when she recognized the redhead.
“Michael Shayne!” Her full lips spread in a welcoming smile and she stood aside. “Be so good to come in, Mr. Shayne.”
Shayne walked into an apartment as neat and shipshape as Sylvester’s boat, the woman following him, talking volubly.
“You look for my husband, no? Well, I tell you. He came home maybe one half hour ago, then go out again. To look for you, he say. But now you look for him. Mr. Shayne, what is the matter? These days I am most unhappy.”
“Why does Sylvester look for me, Mrs. Santos?”
“He does not say. He says nothing to me but to talk of his new friends who are so good to him. But I do not like these new friends, Mr. Shayne. He is now drunk with them all the time and it is not like Sylvester to drink so much. Every day he comes home drunk and goes to bed dead. But tonight he comes home drunk and bleeding. One eye is black, and blood is on his face from fighting. I have to wipe it off and the cuts are deep. This is not like Sylvester, to fight—”
“Did he say he was in a fight?”
“No, but I can see he has been beaten and his clothes torn.”
From the way Sylvester had been staggering around the deck this afternoon, his fight might have been only with the Demerara. Perhaps he had gotten up too quickly and fallen on his face a few times, or maybe he had been jackrolled on the way home. If that had happened it would explain why he had left home to look for his friend, “the detective who heads only the big cases.”
“What does Sylvester say about his new friends?” Shayne asked.
She shrugged elaborately. “Only that they are so good to him. But I think they are drunk bums, Mr. Shayne, good only to get my husband drunk and in trouble and to spoil his health.”
“May I use the phone, Mrs. Santos?”
“Sure. Help yourself. You’re good man.”
Shayne dialed and got his answering service. There had been no calls. Then he phoned Lucy and learned from her that Sylvester had not tried to reach him at her apartment either.
Dolls Are Deadly Page 6
