SHAYNE DIDN’T LOOK AT DONK. He warned Arch Bugler with passionate intensity, “You’d better keep this apple off me. I already owe you for one beating and that’ll cost you plenty.”
Donk stopped beside him, his doltish gaze questioning Bugler.
Bugler studied Shayne a moment, then raised a broad hand toward Donk, motioning him back. “Hold it a minute. You and Johnny have messed things up enough by letting him in here.”
“Jeez, boss,” Johnny exploded, “I don’t know how he done it. Donk hit ’im solid, and I never saw a man get up from that before. Honest to Christ, I thought his jaw was busted.”
“You’re not paid to think,” Bugler purred. “I told you to keep him out.”
Shayne laughed shortly. “They tried,” he told Bugler without rancor. He transferred his gaze to the lax body of the young man on the floor. “Looks like you’re receiving an influx of undesirable visitors tonight.”
“Just a punk who couldn’t hold his liquor. Take him out and dump him, Johnny. You stick around, Donk.”
Shayne watched with a saturnine smile twitching his swollen lips while Johnny got hold of the young man and dragged him out the rear door. He dropped his cigarette on the floor and mashed it out with his toe, lit another one. “You knew I’d be dropping around tonight,” he mused. “What were you afraid I’d find if I nosed around?”
Bugler said, “I don’t like my place stunk up with private dicks.”
“It’ll smell worse,” Shayne told him softly, “if you keep any bodies lying around.”
Bugler stiffened. His opaque, lidless eyes bored across the desk at Shayne. He didn’t say anything for thirty seconds. He finally spoke with no perceptible movement of his lips.
“You’d better get out, Shamus.”
Shayne shrugged. He took a slow drag on his cigarette, held the smoke in his lungs for a long time, then let it out of his nostrils. He nodded and got up, went to the door and out without looking back.
Donk was twenty feet behind him when he went into the cocktail bar. He waved to the bald-headed bartender and kept going. Donk followed him to the entrance gates where he stopped and stared after the detective wishfully.
Shayne winced with pain as he got into his car and backed away from the curb. Passing by the entrance gates he leaned out and waved a long arm to Donk, who was still standing there looking unhappy.
He drove south along the ocean drive until he reached a drugstore with a public-telephone sign. He called Timothy Rourke’s home address and, after a long wait, got the reporter on the line. Rourke swore softly when he heard Shayne’s fuzzy enunciation. “You sound like the cat got your tongue.”
“I ran into a fist at Arch Bugler’s,” Shayne explained thickly. “And I picked up a chore for you.”
Rourke’s sigh sounded in Shayne’s ear. “Start checking the hotels for a man named Marlow,” Shayne instructed. “He arrived this afternoon, I imagine, from New York or thereabouts. Call me at my hotel in an hour with the dope.”
“Have you got a line on the corpse?” Rourke asked. “I can’t help wondering where she’ll turn up next.”
“Bodies are where you find them,” said Shayne cheerfully. He hung up and went back to his car, circled east on the peninsula to a private bridge over the inland waterway leading to Burt Stallings’s island estate.
The island was small, containing perhaps an acre of ground, protected by a sea wall of coral rock to prevent the ebbing tides from eating away the edges. The entire area was carefully landscaped to give the careless effect of natural luxuriant growth, and the Stallings mansion was situated in the center, screened from view by lush shrubbery and feathery-fronded palms. A narrow, twisting road led up to an impressive stone frontage with two wings guarding a rear patio.
There were no other automobiles in evidence, but lights glowed through the front window. Shayne parked near the steps on the double concrete driveway which circled around to the narrow road. He went up the steps and tried an ornamental bronze knocker without effect. He then searched for and found an electric button. There was a long interval of silence after he pressed the button.
Leaning against the stone casement, he waited patiently. There was an atmosphere of lassitude in the remoteness of the island, a sense of lethargic detachment which communicated itself to one as soon as the bridge was crossed and the mainland left behind. Moonlight silvered the fronds of graceful coco palms and the stately gray trunks of royal palms towering toward the sky. Fish pools set in the lush green lawn reflected the stars in their still waters, and marble benches gleamed ghostly white.
So this was what money could buy, Shayne reflected idly as he waited. He had thought Stallings a fool to sink so much money in a home. Now he wasn’t so sure, even if this island estate, as was rumored, had swallowed up a sizable portion of the fortune the man had acquired in his career as a building contractor. The rumored cost was probably very much exaggerated, he mused. It stood to reason that a contractor could build his own home at far less cost than he built for others.
The door opened to interrupt his vagrant thoughts. A big-bosomed, militant female challenged him with a coldly suspicious gaze. She wore a plain black silk dress buttoned snugly at the neck, like a uniform. Her upper lip fuzzed with black hair, and a cluster of black bristles surrounded a mole on her chin. She said, “Well?” in a harsh, forbidding voice.
Shayne tried to work up his most disarming smile, but his swollen lips were painful, and his heart was not in the effort. She didn’t look like the type to be impressed by any sort of smile. He stopped trying and said, “I want to see Mr. Burt Stallings.”
“Mr. Stallings is out.” She started to close the door, but Shayne interposed, “Mrs. Stallings, then.”
“Mrs. Stallings is too ill to see anyone.” She was closing the door. Shayne lounged forward and put his shoulder against it. “Miss Helen Stallings, then.”
“Miss Stallings isn’t in.” The woman was beginning to put pressure on the other side of the door. In his weakened condition, Shayne wasn’t at all sure he could hold out against her weight and strength. He resisted the pressure with his weight. “I’ll talk to you, then,” he said. “About Miss Stallings.”
The female guardian of the portal compressed her lips in a straight line. “I don’t know who you are, but this isn’t any time—”
“It’s no time for playing hide-and-seek,” Shayne told her swiftly. “I’m a detective — hired by Stallings to find his daughter. I don’t think he’d like it if you withheld any information from me.”
“A detective?” She considered him with doubtful eyes, then said, “All right. You can come in, but I don’t know what I can tell you.”
The front door opened into a wide, uncarpeted entrance room with chairs placed stiffly around the walls.
There was movement beyond an open door leading into an unlit hall.
The woman said, “Lucile!” sharply, and after a moment’s hesitation a girl stepped into the doorway. She wore a maid’s cap and apron, and a short skirt revealed stocky calves. She had bold, brown, wishful eyes, and they rested on Shayne’s big frame with approval. Her upper lip was short and it twitched mutinously when she said, “Yes, Mrs. Briggs. I was just—”
“You were snooping,” Mrs. Briggs snapped. “Go upstairs until you’re wanted.”
Lucile’s lower lip was heavy and pouted. She pouted it still further, hesitating in the doorway and hopefully inviting Shayne’s attention.
Shayne responded with a slow grin of approbation and protested to Mrs. Briggs, “I’d better talk to Lucile, too. I need all the information I can get. Perhaps I can see you later, Lucile.”
Mrs. Briggs surged in front of him like a battleship at full steam ahead. “Go to your room, Lucile,” she commanded sharply.
The girl’s eyes darkened resentfully. The tip of her tongue showed momentarily between her short upper lip and the pouting lower one. Then she turned and flounced away, tossing black curls that hung below her maid’s cap.
“I had a feeling that Lucy had something she wanted to tell me,” Shayne reproved Mrs. Briggs.
“I’ve no doubt of that,” Mrs. Briggs snapped. “She’s man crazy, and not at all choosy.” Her gaze flickered meaningly over Shayne’s bruised face and his coarse red hair. Then she sat down in a straight chair and folded her hands in her lap, looking at him coldly over her formidable bosom. “What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t say.”
“Well, what is it? How do I know you’re a detective?”
“The name is Shayne.” He patted his coat pocket. “I have my credentials if you care to see them.”
“Shayne? The detective from Miami who’s been campaigning against Mr. Stallings? Why would Mr. Stallings go to you for help?”
“Because I’m the best in the business.” Shayne sat down. “How long has Helen Stallings been missing?”
“I didn’t know she was missing. She’s usually missing around here. She wasn’t here for dinner tonight but that’s nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Can’t you give me anything that might be a clue?” Shayne persisted. “Mr. Stallings has reason to believe she’s been kidnaped.”
Mrs. Briggs said, “Humph! Kidnaped?” and shook her head. “I’m just the housekeeper here. I’m afraid you’re wasting your time.”
Shayne inwardly agreed with her. He nodded impassively and stood up. Mrs. Briggs let him go to the door alone. As he went out he glanced back at her and surprised a look of dismay and fear on her dour features.
He closed the door and went slowly toward his car, puckering his lips to produce a tuneless whistle. The whistle echoed back from out of the enveloping island silence.
Turning his head, he saw a lighted upstairs window that had been dark when he approached the house. Lucile was leaning out, her head supporting the unlatched screen as she looked down at him in the moonlight. Her lips were softly echoing his whistle.
Shayne halted on the edge of the grass and lifted one hand in a mock gesture of farewell.
Lucile shook her head and gesticulated frantically, pointing toward the north side of the house. Shayne hesitated only an instant, then nodded and threaded his way between clumps of blooming hibiscus in the direction indicated.
Lucile withdrew from the window, and her light went out. A concrete driveway led along the north side to a separate garage in the rear. Near the front of the house an iron-railed outside stairway led up to a hanging balcony of Spanish design.
Shayne stopped at the foot of the stairway and waited. A door opened outward onto the balcony, and Lucile stepped out. She glanced down at Shayne, then hurried silently down the stairs.
She stopped on the bottom step, her head thrown back, a smile parting her lips.
“Good work, babe,” Shayne said, and held out his arms to her. She slid into them, pressing her body close, laughing up into his face while her fingers went up to tangle in his hair.
“Honest to gosh,” she sighed, “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I oughtn’t to be here. Mrs. Briggs’ll raise Old Ned if she catches me.” Her big brown eyes were avid, and her lips brazenly invited his kiss.
Shayne bent his head and touched his sore lips lightly to hers, tightening his arms about her. “I’m not in very good shape for kissing,” he warned her, “but otherwise I’m as good as any man.”
“And better than ninety per cent, I’ll bet.” She pulled his head lower and pressed her moist lips against his bruised cheek, cooing, “Was some bad mans mean to you?”
“Sort of.” Shayne turned toward the hibiscus hedge, keeping his arm around her waist. “Wouldn’t we be safer to get away from here?”
“Not too far.” She went across the driveway with him, giggling excitedly. “Old Briggs’d have a conniption fit if she knew I’d slipped out. I’ll have to run if she starts calling for me.”
There were informal flower beds beyond the hedge with garden seats scattered about beneath low, spreading coco palms. Shayne led the girl to a seat in the heavy shadows.
She leaned against him when they sat down. “You’re a detective, aren’t you? I bet you’re just pretending to like me to find out things.”
“Don’t be silly. You know you could make any man forget business.” Shayne pressed his cheek lightly against her hair. “You been working here long?”
“Ever since they moved in. We all have.”
“And I suppose you’re pretty much isolated here on the island,” Shayne said sympathetically. “But you get a day off now and then, don’t you?”
“I’ll say we don’t. Old Briggs is a slave driver. She’s so ugly herself she’s jealous of any of the rest of us having a good time. All we get around here is work from morning till night. That’s the reason I went sort of all loose inside when you looked at me in there and I knew you liked a good time, too.” She turned against him and raised her face hungrily.
Shayne touched his swollen lips to hers again. She caught his face between her palms and held it, gently touching the tip of her tongue to his bruised mouth. She drew away, laughing shakily. “Does that hurt?”
“Soft as an angel’s wings,” Shayne told her throatily. “Couldn’t you slip away tonight — after they’ve all gone to bed?”
“I might get away with it. Would you meet me, redhead?”
“On the other side of the bridge — at midnight?”
“Better make it later. Two o’clock. Briggs is always up till midnight. She gives Mrs. Stallings her medicine then.”
“Is Mrs. Stallings really very ill?”
“I guess she is, all right. She never comes out of her room. Mrs. Briggs is a trained nurse and she does everything for her. You know what I think? I think she’s a hop-head.”
“Mrs. Briggs?”
“No; Mrs. Stallings. I’ve seen Briggs sterilizing a hypodermic two or three times.”
“Lots of nurses give their patients shots.”
“But there’s something funny about it,” Lucile insisted. “Briggs tries to keep it a secret from the rest of us. Sometimes I think maybe it’s the girl uses it. She acts dopey enough, if you ask me.”
“Helen?”
“Yes. There’s something funny about her, all right. Boy, the things I could tell you if I was to cut loose.”
“Go ahead,” Shayne encouraged her.
“Damn you, you’re just working me for information. I ought to have known.” She jerked herself away from him.
Shayne drew her back gently. “You’re crazy,” he said in a soft, indulgent voice. “You know the reason I’m not loving you to death. That’ll have to wait until later. We can keep our minds off of what we’re missing by talking about something else. Helen, for instance. She’s dopey, huh?”
“Sort of nuts,” she answered, snuggling against him. “I don’t get her at all. And the way I’ve seen the old man looking at her— well!”
“Stallings?”
“The old goat.” Lucile pursed her lips resentfully. “If he gave me the eye like that—”
“You’d give it right back to him, I’ll bet,” Shayne told her cheerfully. “You can’t blame Stallings so much. Helen’s only his stepdaughter.”
“Sure. But you’d think with his wife sick and all—”
“I wonder if she is a hophead,” Shayne muttered. “That might be an angle.”
“There you go,” the girl complained. “I knew you were just after information. You don’t care a thing about me.”
“Give me a chance to show you. At two o’clock. You don’t think there’s actually anything going on between Helen and her stepfather, do you?’
“I wouldn’t know,” Lucile answered resentfully. “Their rooms are right next to each other. And it’s a cinch she doesn’t care much about the old lady. I haven’t caught her going in to see her mother once since they moved in. But let’s talk about you and me.”
The lights of an automobile crossing the bridge cut a white swath across the garden. Lucile jumped up with a startled cry. “I’ve got to get in before they find out. Two o’clock — across the bridge.”
She sped across the garden and through the hedge. Shayne followed more slowly. A limousine was pulling up behind his car. A chauffeur jumped out and ran around to open the door for the commanding figure of Burt Stallings. He got back in the limousine, backed up, and drove in the driveway while Stallings went up the walk.
Shayne waited behind the hedge until the car passed, then sprinted out to his car and got in. He started the motor while Stallings was opening the front door, roared around the circular drive and across the bridge.