“Exactly. The old so-and-so has a good wife and two fine kids here in town, but he has evidently got himself tangled up with a wench in Miami. I was in Miami on business this afternoon and saw him on the street. Now he’s in an uproar because I was going to print the news as a local item. Seems he told his wife he was making a business trip up the coast. If I had that mortgage paid off I’d print it whether or not. That’s the sort of small-town stuff I’m running up against all the time here.”
Shayne said, “This Payson-is he the brother of the proprietor of the other print shop in town?”
Matrix nodded and dropped into the chair before the desk. Shayne resumed his position, one hip on the corner of the littered desk.
“That relationship,” Matrix continued, “cost me a nice juicy contract for printing the dog-track tickets last fall. I’m morally certain they opened my bid first, then arranged that the Elite bid a few dollars under my price.”
Shayne said, “Hardeman told me that Payson and he divide the responsibility of getting the genuine tickets printed without a leak.”
“That’s right. If the old goat didn’t own stock at the track I’d suspect him of having counterfeits printed.”
“As it is,” said Shayne casually, “how do you think the counterfeiters get hold of the new design each day in time to get their forgeries out? Hardeman claims that Boyle guards the printed tickets personally until they’re delivered at the track.”
“Humph. Who guards Boyle?” Matrix asked cynically. “That’s the crux of the whole affair. Hardeman is just a trusting fool. He refuses to recognize the obvious fact that Boyle is only a tool for Grant MacFarlane.”
“You hate MacFarlane?” Shayne asked softly.
“I don’t deny it.” Matrix glared at him, his thin face working. “I hate what MacFarlane stands for-the rottenness and filth our youth are taught to take for granted when they frequent a cesspool like the Rendezvous. Any man who preys on adolescents makes a business of warping immature minds and is the greatest menace in modern society.”
Shayne nodded, swung himself to a standing position and said, “It’s time I took a look-see at MacFarlane’s sink of iniquity.” He paused with his hand on the knob, half turned back into the room.
“You don’t happen to know the name of Payson’s light-of-love in Miami? Did you see him with her?”
“No, and he naturally didn’t divulge any details.”
Shayne said, “Naturally not. But if you have any way of finding out I’d like very much to know the lady’s name.”
He went through the door as Matrix stared after him in open-mouthed amazement.
Chapter Seven: SHE FORGOT HER ROLLER SKATES
Shayne crossed the street to his roadster, still parked in front of the hotel. With his hand on the doorlatch, he hesitated and turned to look toward the entrance into the lobby where he had left Phyllis. Then he frowned, took a step forward, and stopped. Equally unaccountably, he grinned, turned back to the car, got in, backed away from the curb, and drove north through the business district of Cocopalm. Tall, clean-trunked royal palms lined the highway, their graceful fronds silvered with the pale light of a quarter moon.
Lounging back in the seat with his big hands loose on the steering-wheel, Shayne drove slowly. He was waiting for something, he wasn’t certain what. There was a subtle warning in the subdued murmur of the night breeze swaying silvery fronds along the way, in the gentle swish of combers on the shore to his right.
He nodded absently. It was best to leave Phyllis twiddling her thumbs in the hotel lobby.
The black macadam of the highway was strangely deserted, an unwavering path leading him onward between the slender white palm trunks which were like a double row of planted lances in the softly diffused light.
Headlights of an oncoming automobile cut a bright swath toward him. He slowed still more and watched it roar past. A Ford, and the driver was the stoop-shouldered man he had watched drive away from the Voice office.
When his headlights picked up the slender figure of the girl in the roadway ahead, Shayne felt no surprise. She was as much a part of the scene as the tall palms and the night silence. She was walking northward on the edge of the pavement, glancing back over her shoulder hopefully as he came up behind her.
She stopped suddenly and turned to face his headlights, not gesturing for a ride, but quite evidently offering herself for any adventure that might come. Few men would have passed her by on the lonely road, and certainly Michael Shayne was not one of those.
He braked the roadster to a stop beside her, seeing only that she was young and slender and held herself with an aloofness that was disconcertingly at variance with what one might reasonably expect of a roadside pickup.
The girl hesitated momentarily, then leaned forward on the door, putting her head and shoulders inside and looking at his face with grave, searching eyes. She had bright blond hair wound around her head in big braids with a tiny jaunty ribbon tucked on one side. Her breath came jerkily through parted lips that were too red.
Shayne decided that her eyes were blue. He grinned and asked, “Well, do I pass inspection?”
When she nodded without speaking he leaned over and released the door catch. “It doesn’t cost any more to ride, and it’s lots easier on shoe leather.”
She nodded swiftly and slid in beside him, drawing a light silk cape protectingly about her shoulders and breast. She shivered and murmured with forced flippancy, “I forgot my roller skates.”
Shayne reached past her and closed the door. He settled back and took out a pack of cigarettes, offered her one, but she shook her head; then, changing her mind, she reached for one. “I guess I will, too.” Her voice was a deep-throated murmur.
Shayne held a match to the end of her cigarette and amusement came into his eyes as she puffed with bravado. She had a nice profile and a creamy soft complexion where there was not excessive rouge.
She said, “You’re wondering-why I’m out here like this-walking down the road alone at night.”
Shayne said, “Why, no. I was expecting you.”
She jerked her bright head around quickly, lips parted in surprise. “You’re crazy. You couldn’t have been.”
“All right,” Shayne agreed, “I’m nuts. I guess it’s the moon.” He puffed on his cigarette serenely and waited for her to make the next move.
She fidgeted with her cape, holding it together with one hand while she held the cigarette in the other. “What I mean is,” she said haltingly, “no one could have expected this to happen. Not even I. I thought Fred was a nice fellow.” There was a note of deep injury in her throaty young voice.
“Wasn’t he?” asked Shayne interestedly.
“I’ll say he wasn’t. He-well, a girl doesn’t mind when she’s stepping out to have a good time. But when he admitted he was married and had two kids-” She shrugged her slim shoulders and relapsed into gloomy silence.
“So your evening is completely spoiled?”
She gave him a long, demure glance out of the corner of her eye. “Does it have to be? What I mean is-we were headed out to the Rendezvous for a few drinks and dancing. I could certainly use a drink right now.” She ended with a shaky, high-pitched laugh which the big detective did not believe originated in any gaiety on her part.
Shayne nodded gravely. He put the roadster in gear and let it snail forward. “How do you know I’m not married with a passel of brats at home?”
She smiled happily. “I can tell. You don’t look married.”
“Maybe Fred didn’t either,” he reminded her, “and not many girls would tumble to this old jalopy of mine.”
She flashed him another quick, searching look, but Shayne’s eyes were mild and he was smiling. “Well, you know how it is. I did hesitate to get in with you, but a girl gets bored stiff doing nothing night after night. I didn’t think it would be any harm to go out to the Rendezvous with Fred tonight. My name,” she tagged on as an afterthought, “is Midge.”
Shayne inclined his head. “I’ll answer to Mike-from you.”
“You’re nice,” she breathed. “I can tell it already. You’ve got hair that makes a girl just itch to run her fingers through it. You’re the kind who would know when a girl wants to be petted and when she wants to be let alone.”
Shayne chuckled with genuine amusement. “I call this old jalopy of mine the Mayflower,” he warned, “because so many puritans have come across in it.”
Midge laughed delightedly and leaned back, pressing her silk-clad shoulder against him.
“I thought that gag was old enough to be new to a gal your age. Is that the Rendezvous ahead?” Shayne asked as they approached a building gleaming with red and yellow neon lights.
“That’s it.” She shivered and moved closer to him. “If you haven’t ever been there before, drive around to the west entrance,” she cajoled. “We can go in through a side door and upstairs to a private room where no one will see us.”
“A private room? Are you ashamed of being seen with me?”
She laughed lightly. “Don’t be silly.” She trailed her knuckles over one of his big hands. “It’s only-well, I can’t afford to be seen at a place like the Rendezvous. My family-you know. Dad’s a deacon in the church and he and mother would have a fit if they knew I’d ever taken a drink.”
Shayne nodded and drove through an arched entrance, past rows of parked cars, and around to the west side of the rambling two-story building. A single green bulb burned over a closed oak door. Midge pointed it out. With a giggle that didn’t quite ring true, she explained, “That’s where all the high-school kids go in and out.”
Shayne parked, got out, and she slid out after him. She caught his arm and held it tightly, pressing against him. The heavy door opened at the turn of the knob and they went into a long carpeted hallway. A burst of music came from beyond the partition, and there were loud voices and laughter.
Midge turned him to the right and led him to a stairway. “They gamble in the back upstairs,” she told him in a conspiratorial whisper, “and they say you can order most anything you want served in the private rooms.”
Shayne climbed the stairs with her and didn’t probe further into the suggested evils of the upstairs rooms. A dark-featured man wearing a white mess jacket lounged at the top of the stairway. He nodded woodenly to Midge and led them to a closed door at the end of a row of closed doors. He opened it onto a dimly lit cubicle with a small table set for two. There was an overstuffed couch in the room and a deep club chair in the opposite corner. The man said, “I’ll send a boy right up,” and went out, closing the door behind him.
Shayne stood in the center of the small, intimately furnished room and rumpled his coarse hair. “It’s a nice quiet place for high-school youngsters to do their consorting,” he observed dryly. “Lots more fun learning the facts of life here than by observing bees and flowers.”
Midge’s laugh was constrained, as though she didn’t quite know whether to take him seriously. She dropped onto the couch and took a compact from her purse, examined her face in the tiny mirror.
Shayne saw that she was older than she appeared in the moonlight and by the faint light on the instrument board. At least twenty-five. She was tall, and had extremely nice legs. The heels of her black suede slippers were run down, and the backs of her hands showed clearly that they were used for hard work.
When a discreet knock sounded on the door, Shayne swung around and opened it. A middle-aged waiter entered bearing a menu, but Shayne waved him aside. He asked the girl, “Would you like champagne?” and she clasped her hands to breathe, “Oh-yes.”
“Domestic,” Shayne ordered grimly. “Thirty-four or thirty-five-and bring me a triple slug of cognac in a beer mug. Martell, if you have it.”
The waiter bowed and withdrew. Midge patted the couch beside her. “Sit here beside me. He’ll pull a table up for us when he brings the drinks.”
Shayne sat down, leaving a foot of space between them. He glanced past the table to a closed inner door and growled, “Where does that lead to?”
Midge followed his glance. Color crimsoned her cheeks. “I think that’s a-a lavatory.”
“You seem to know a hell of a lot about the setup,” Shayne commented in a thoroughly disagreeable tone. “For a girl who knows her way around like you do, I can’t quite feature you walking home from the buggy ride.”
Her eyes lowered swiftly to her tightly clasped fingers. She drew her breath in with a little gasp and said sharply, “Just because I know about things is no reason for you to think I’m-bad.”
Shayne laughed aloud at her naive choice of the word. As yet he had no idea why he had been steered to the private room, but he was evidently going to have a few laughs finding out. He stopped laughing and assured Midge, “On the contrary, I think you’re pretty damned nice.”
He got up and wandered to the closed inner door, turned the knob without result. Midge watched him with eyes clearly frightened now. She murmured. “It’s-I think it’s connected with the next room too. They’ve locked it from the other side.”
Shayne’s eyes narrowed but he said nothing. He returned to sit beside the girl and called, “Come in,” when a knock sounded on the outer door.
The waiter had a split of domestic champagne in a silver bucket of crushed ice, and a beer mug a third full of cognac on a tray. He deftly slid the table over in front of them, pulled the cork from the champagne bottle with a gratifying plop, then poured a tall glass of the cold bubbling liquid for Midge.
He laid a check face up before Shayne and waited stiffly. Shayne glanced at the total and whistled. The amount was $23.50-115.00 was marked opposite the word Service.
Shayne shook his head angrily and pushed the bill aside. “That’s highway robbery. I want to see the manager.”
The waiter said, “It’s perfectly correct, sir. The usual charge for a private room and allows you the use of it for as long as you wish it.”
“To hell with that,” Shayne growled in a murky tone of anger. “Send MacFarlane up here. I’ll settle with him.”
“Please-don’t!” Midge grabbed his arm and raised terror-stricken blue eyes to his. “Don’t make a scene. I–I couldn’t stand it.”
Shayne’s laugh was harsh. “The old gag, eh? How many of his come-on gals has MacFarlane got lined up on the highway to lure suckers in for a fleecing? Hell,” he went on with relaxed brutality, “I can rent a hotel room for a week with a woman thrown in for fifteen bucks.”
Midge’s hold on his arm grew lax. She shrank away from him, her face drained of color except for the red spots of rouge high on each cheek. “Don’t say such things,” she pleaded. “You don’t really mean them.”
“The hell I don’t,” Shayne jeered. He picked up the beer mug and drank half the cognac. “Get MacFarlane up here,” he insisted to the waiter. “I’ll tell him what I think of his gyp joint.”
The waiter nodded and went out with a stiff bow.
Midge sank back, breathing in great piteous sobs. “I don’t know what I’ll do,” she moaned. “Oh, how could you be so-so cheap!”
Shayne laughed and settled comfortably on the sofa close to her. “Don’t worry. MacFarlane doesn’t want publicity any more than you do.”
She moved closer and buried her face convulsively against his shoulder, tugging at his long arm to draw it around her waist.
Shayne had the beer mug to his lips when he felt her squirm against him. He heard the sound of ripping cloth. Then, a wild scream as she stood up and raked her finger nails across his cheek. The torn bodice of her dress came open showing one white breast. Her braids tumbled down, and in the space of a few seconds she was a disheveled and outraged young girl, clinging to him now with surprising strength.
He heard a door opening as he thrust her away. She threw herself at him, pulling his arm around her waist.
There was the flare of a flashlight bulb and Shayne looked up to see two men grinning at him from the doorway leading into the la
vatory. One of them was lowering a camera and the other held an ugly short-barreled gun trained on Shayne’s belly.
Chapter Eight: A MUG WON’T LISTEN
Shayne reached for his pocket to get a handkerchief and the gunman yelled, “Keep your hands in sight,” as he caught the edge of it and flipped it out, then held it against his scratched face. He laughed shortly as the girl cringed away from him, covering her face with one hand while she pulled her dress together in front.
“That was nicely maneuvered, sister. Everybody seems in the mood for pulling old gags tonight. A nice piece of badger baiting.” He shot a sardonic look at the gunman. “I presume you’re the deacon-this gal’s properly indignant father.”
“Cut the funny stuff, pal.” The man leaned negligently against the door casing, his weasel eyes darting from Shayne to his confederate with the camera. “Go on out the door with your pic, Jake. Get it developed right away. This mug is going to sit quiet until you’re in the clear.”
Shayne grinned amiably. He asked, “What would the plate cost me?”
“It ain’t for sale. Get going, Jake.”
Jake sidled toward the outer door with his eyes warily on the detective. Midge was making little whimpering sounds. The gunman dropped his weapon into his coat pocket when Jake was safely out of the room. His thin lips curved into a sneer of triumph. “I guess you know what the score is, shamus. You’ve pulled enough fast ones yourself to recognize one when you walk into it.”
Shayne nodded agreement. He took the handkerchief away from his cheek and frowned at the spots of blood on it. He admonished Midge, “It wasn’t necessary to scar me for life. The scene would have been just as convincing without that.”
“She did just right,” the man in the doorway told him. “That’s the little angle that’ll really make it tough if you’re not smart. A sweet little gal defending her honor against a drunken brute. Boy, was that flashlight one a honey!”
“I’m not in the mood to appreciate artistry right now,” Shayne snapped. He pressed the handkerchief against his face again. “You said the plate wasn’t for sale. What do you want for it?”
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