SHAYNE STRODE STEADILY along the winding road in the shadow of interlaced fronds. He came to an abrupt stop at a turn in the road that brought the estate into clear view. Every window was dark, and the island stillness was queerly magnified when the sound of his footsteps ceased. The moonlight and shadows played odd tricks on his alert perceptions as he hesitated.
An eerie atmosphere of desertion enveloped the silent mansion. The night air was humid and heavy with the scent of garden flowers. At the corner of the house he could see the spidery outline of the wrought-iron railing of the outside stairway down which Lucile had come to meet him earlier. The small balcony above was deserted, the French doors leading into the house were closed.
Shayne grinned at his indecision while he stood there. This was a hell of a time for him to start getting jumpy, just because the entire household was asleep at two-thirty in the morning, and because a girl had failed to keep her date.
He shrugged off his hesitation and went across the concrete drive to the corner stairway, climbed the stairway firmly, perversely pleased with the faint clang of iron beneath his feet.
He tried the French doors and found them locked from within. He hesitated once more, scowling at himself for the skulking method he was employing. This was not his way of doing things, but he had to find out what had happened to the maid. A man didn’t have to be a complacent ass to be positive that she would have met him at the bridge unless forces wholly beyond her control had prevented it.
He turned and went down the stairway, walked around to the front door and leaned on the electric button. He could hear the faint ringing of the bell inside. He kept his finger on the button for more than a minute, and his scowl deepened to one of anger. Stepping back a few feet he shouted, “Hello! What does it take to wake you up?”
After a brief wait lights glowed behind curtained windows upstairs. The curtains parted, and Burt Stallings’s resonant voice answered, “Who’s down there?”
“Mike Shayne.”
“Shayne? What are you doing here at this time of night?”
“Come down and open the door.”
“I have no intention of doing that,” Stallings retorted sharply. Then, with less assurance, “What is it? Have you news of Helen?”
“I’ve got a lead. But I’m not going to stand here and shout it up to you.”
“Very well. If it’s so important I suppose I can’t refuse.” Stallings withdrew his head from the window, and the curtains fell back into place. Shayne moved forward and leaned against the threshold.
The door opened after several minutes. Stallings wore a silk dressing-gown, and his bare feet were encased in leather slippers. His silvery hair was awry and he demanded in an outraged tone, “What is it that won’t wait until morning?”
“Just this.” Shayne brushed past him into the small anteroom where he had interviewed the housekeeper. He swung about to face Stallings and in clipped accents explained, “I’ve got a hot tip that your stepdaughter Helen is right here in this house.”
“That’s preposterous.”
“I’m not so sure of that. Your story of her disappearance could be a phony.”
“But that’s fantastic. She hasn’t been near the house since noon yesterday.”
“That’s what you say. Your story and that kidnap note put me on the spot. It could be a gag to put Marsh out of the running and swing votes to you.”
“But Mr. Painter was with me. He verified my story. Surely you don’t suspect him.”
“Painter was taking your word for everything. I’m not. I’m going to see for myself.”
“You’re at liberty to verify my daughter’s absence,” Stallings told him stiffly. He moved past Shayne. “I’ll take you up to her suite.”
Shayne followed him into a wide hall and up a winding stairway, then to the left along another hall to a door which he opened and gestured for Shayne to enter.
The detective lounged inside and made a pretense of investigating a luxurious suite consisting of a parlor, master bedroom, bath, and powder room. Stallings stayed back by the outer doorway, his features set in lines of grim disapproval.
When Shayne returned from his tour of inspection he asked icily, “Are you completely satisfied now?”
Shayne said, “No. I’ve only started. There are more rooms in this dump.”
He strode out the door, and Stallings followed him, fuming. “I certainly have no intention of conducting you on a tour of the whole house. This is the most outrageous demand—”
Shayne cut him short. “You don’t have to conduct the tour. I’ll find my way around. This must be the west wing.” He started along a wide hall.
Stallings stepped in front of him. He was breathing heavily. “I forbid it, Mr. Shayne. My wife has occupied this wing since her illness. She must not be disturbed.”
Shayne stared at him levelly. “Make it easy on yourself, Stallings. I can be back here in half an hour with a search warrant and I’ll turn the place inside out.”
“You wouldn’t dare go so far.”
Shayne said, “If you think I won’t, go ahead and stop me now.”
For a long moment their eyes interlocked. Stallings’s gaze dropped first. In a choked voice he said, “Very well. I have nothing to conceal. I must warn you, though, that Mrs. Stallings has not been told of Helen’s disappearance, on orders from her physician. She is critically ill, and a shock of that nature might be fatal.”
“It won’t be necessary to tell her why I’m snooping around,” Shayne told him. He followed Stallings down the hall to another upstairs living-room. The light revealed a studio lounge made into a bed with a woman asleep on it. Mrs. Briggs raised her head from the pillow and stared at them sleepily as they entered. Anger flickered in her eyes when she recognized Shayne.
Mr. Stallings cleared his throat. “Excuse us, Mrs. Briggs. Mr. Shayne insists on convincing himself that Miss Helen is not here tonight.” He explained to Shayne, “Mrs. Briggs sleeps here to attend Mrs. Stallings’s wants during the night. She has had nurse’s training and is devoted to her mistress.”
Shayne nodded casually to Mrs. Briggs. “I believe we’ve met before.” He went toward a closed door. “Is this the sickroom?”
Stallings said, “Yes; but I assure you—”
“No harm in being thorough.” Shayne opened the door of a large bedroom. He wrinkled his nose at the strong odor of disinfectants and medicine as he stepped inside. Moonlight filtered through lace curtains, faintly outlining a still form lying on a bed in the center of the room.
He hesitated just inside the doorway and felt along the wall for a light switch. Behind him, Stallings warned in a sharp undertone, “I’ll hold you responsible if she is awakened. She has a difficult time—”
Shayne found the light switch and pushed it. A ceiling fixture lighted the face of the woman. She breathed easily and did not move when light flooded the room. She had finely chiseled features, much the same as the features of the girl who had died in his office that afternoon. The woman had a look of bloodless fragility which often accompanies a long and serious illness.
She had not blinked her eyes or moved when Shayne switched off the light.
Stallings fumed. “Did you have to turn on the lights?”
Leaving the room, Shayne growled, “I’m not missing any bets. That might have been the girl in bed and I’d never have known if I hadn’t turned on the light.”
He went out of the suite followed by Stallings and by Mrs. Briggses accusing eyes.
“There’s no one else in this wing,” Stallings told him stiffly. “We’ve kept it as quiet as we could so that Mrs. Stallings would not be disturbed.”
A questioning gleam lighted Shayne’s gray eyes for a moment. He nodded and said, “All right. I’ll take a look in on the servants now.”
“They’re in the east wing. But surely you don’t think it necessary to look for Helen there?”
With restrained ferocity, Shayne said, “God damn it, Stallings, I’m not playing hide-and-seek for fun. I’m going to satisfy myself on one point before I leave here.” Stallings walked along behind him to the east wing without further remonstrance. He stopped at the first door of the servants’ quarters and said grimly, “The two maids sleep here, I believe.”
Shayne opened the door and switched on the light. A girl jumped up with an “E-e-k,” from one of the twin beds. She snatched the covers up about her throat and stared at him with frightened eyes. She had sharp features and straggly brown hair. The other bed was unoccupied.
Shayne turned out the light and shut the door. He said to Stallings, “I thought you had two maids.”
“I did. I forgot to mention that Mrs. Briggs discharged the girl called Lucile this evening.”
Shayne arched his eyebrows but said nothing. He nodded toward the last door in the wing. “Who’s in that room?”
“The chauffeur and his wife. She is the cook. That’s the complete staff.”
“I guess they wouldn’t have Helen in bed with them,” Shayne said, and turned away. When they reached the head of the stairs he stopped. “Lucile must be the girl I saw downstairs when I was here this afternoon. Do you know why Mrs. Briggs discharged her?”
“I didn’t inquire into the matter. Mrs. Briggs handles all such matters. I believe Lucile was very flighty and not dependable.”
Shayne rubbed his lean jaw. He muttered, “She looked like a girl who might comfort a man in his wife’s absence. I wonder if I could get her address from Mrs. Briggs?”
Stallings’s upper lip curled away from his teeth with loathing. “By heavens, Shayne, I’m beginning to believe the stories told about you. But I happen to know that Mrs. Briggs hasn’t the girl’s address — and has no idea where she may be found.”
Shayne hesitated and looked mildly disappointed. Then he said, “Okay, sorry to have been a nuisance, but that tip about Helen being here bothered me.” He descended the stairs briskly and went out.
Stalking back along the winding road to the bridge and Rourke’s car, the scowl darkened on his gaunt features. He was firmly convinced that both Mrs. Briggs and Stallings knew that Lucile had slipped out to the garden with him that evening. He wondered if they suspected why he had insisted on touring the house, or whether his story of searching for Helen had gone over. He was more than ever convinced that Lucile had important information and that she had been summarily dismissed to prevent him from seeing her again. It was damned funny about Stallings being so positive that Briggs didn’t know the girl’s address.
He stopped by the side of the sedan, struck by a sudden sinister thought. If someone had really wanted to prevent Lucile from contacting him, stronger measures than mere dismissal might have been used.
That fragment of a police broadcast which he and Rourke had caught as they left the Parkview Hotel!
“Body of unidentified young woman… body of young woman found floating in the bay.”
Stallings’s house fronted on the bay!
He jerked the door of the sedan open and slid in, gunned the motor viciously, and swung away from the bridge in a screeching turn. He sat erect and drove swiftly back to Miami, his big hands gripping the wheel in a tense grasp, his features grim and preoccupied.
Maybe this was the break. If he could identify the body as Lucile he’d have something to put the screws on with. Someone was getting panicky. That was a cinch. Murder always bred more murder. He cursed himself for not having thought about that while he talked to Lucile in the garden. He should have taken her away with him. He had been a fool not to realize the danger she would incur if they learned she had talked to him.
When he reached the mainland he drove swiftly to the Dade County morgue and parked outside. An old man with watery blue eyes was on duty in the outer office. He regretfully laid down a copy of Lurid Stories as the detective surged through the door. He complained, “Dag take it, Mike, they were just about to grab the ghoul of the lowlands that’s been killing babies and eating half their hearts — just half, mind you.”
Shayne said, “It’ll be all the more ghoulish for waiting a few minutes. Can I go down to the cold room, Tom?”
“Sure. I reckon so. We got in a peacherino tonight.” The old man shuffled along with Shayne. “Reckon she’s the one you’re visiting, huh?”
“Yeh. The one they pulled out of the bay.” Shayne led the way down a corridor and a short flight of concrete steps. The old man opened a heavy, insulated door, and a blast of chilled air rushed out from the cold-storage chamber. The dank air was musty with the fetor of human decay which had been accumulating for decades.
Tom clanged the door shut behind Shayne and went to a sheet-covered body on a porcelain slab mounted on rubber rollers. He pulled the sheet off, gesticulating proudly. “Ain’t she a beaut? Don’t see why they don’t kill off the old hags ’stead of goin’ after the young’uns.”
The body was nude except for a pair of wrinkled silk pants and a bedraggled brassiere. The head and face were brutally smashed beyond all possibility of recognition, but the straggly hair, still wet with bay water, was blond, not the black curls of Lucile. The nude body was slender and small-boned, not the stocky figure of the Stallings maid.
Shayne shook his head and turned away after one searching look.
“It’s not the one I expected to see,” he stated with finality.
The old man covered the naked body, chuckling obscenely. “I reckon you’d know, all right, even if her face is smashed up. They tell me all you got to see is a pair of legs to recognize a girl you’ve known a week.”
“Is that the reason they stripped her?” Shayne demanded. “Hoping someone would recognize her easier that way?”
“That’s jest the way they dragged her out of the bay.” Tom closed the door, and they went up the stairs. “I reckon she was in one of them what you might call orgies,” Tom continued; “stripped nekked of all but her pants. They have ’em all the time on them rich guys’ yachts anchored in the bay.”
Shayne said, “Do they?” without pausing as he passed through the office.
“I’ll say. I was readin’ just the other day in a copy of Passion Plus—” but Shayne had gone out the door and didn’t hear the mumbled details of the old man’s explorations into the realm of fictional filth.
He drove moodily back to his apartment hotel, secretly ashamed of himself for the disappointment he felt. Of course, it had been merely a wild surmise that the body would be Lucile’s, but, by God, how he’d like to hang something like that around Stallings’s stiff neck.
It left him without a lead to work on, and it was only a few hours until dawn when Helen Stallings’s body would be found on the lawn where he had left it.
After it was found, the whole thing was bound to come crashing down around him. He would be lucky if he could stay out of jail and avoid a murder charge. And the election would be lost, along with his two thousand dollars.
His jaw tightened grimly as he parked by the side entrance to his hotel apartment. He had to locate Lucile. He would rout out Tim Rourke and make the newspaperman get to work on it with him. Lucile must be listed with some employment agency. The staffing of homes in Miami was a specialty with only two or three local agencies. If he could find the one that supplied the Stallings mansion when they moved in a short time ago—
Shayne was going down the corridor to his corner apartment. He had his key out and inserted it in the lock. When the door swung open he blinked in surprise at the bright light from a ceiling chandelier. He recalled that he had left only a shaded floor lamp burning.
Then he saw Timothy Rourke lying outstretched on the carpet near the bedroom door. The lanky reporter’s head was bathed in a pool of blood, and his thin, bare shanks were drawn up to his chest in an attitude of agonized repose.