“You’re to take the first train to New York when the election is over,” she said flatly. “If you don’t, I’ll take the first one out of New York.”
Shayne grinned widely and stepped on the accelerator. The train was ready to pull out when he rushed her up the steps and kissed her good-by. Stepping back on the cinder path he watched the long train roll slowly northward while a strange admixture of relief and desolation roiled through him.
He stood there for several minutes, until the train vanished from sight and the whistle sounded for a distant crossing. Unconsciously, the problem of the drugged girl in his office bedroom was a depressing one, while consciously he meditated on the ease with which a man succumbs to pleasant habits. A little more than a year ago he had not known that Phyllis existed, and now he was wholly dejected without her. The way he had rushed her off, one would think he was glad to be rid of her.
During his bachelor years he had taken his women in his stride. They had been a part of the bold, rough life he led. Was it possible that he was the victim of a subconscious urge which he wouldn’t even admit to himself, in spite of a year of marriage to a girl like Phyllis? He didn’t honestly think so. Yet, what man ever really knows his inward motivations?
He became conscious of the movement and commotion around him, the rattling of express carts on gravel, the puffing of engines and clanging of bells, the milling throng of people. He shrugged off a baffled sense of irritation and went to his car.
The sun was setting in a gray-blue mist as he stepped on the starter. He remembered suddenly that he had not locked the door of his office in his frantic haste to get Phyllis away from the scene. He slipped the car into gear and pressed the accelerator to the floor board, driving the six blocks to his apartment in four minutes. He parked at a side entrance just in front of a drawbridge over the Miami River.
He went through the private entrance and up the service stairs with a queer feeling of elation which shamed him. He had done this often in the past — before Phyllis — when every feminine face was a challenge, every meeting in his bachelor apartment holding the promise of an assignation.
He whistled a gay off-key melody as he approached the door. He ran water over a glass of ice cubes in the kitchen, poured a glass of cognac from a bottle in the wall cabinet, then went into the bedroom with a glass in each hand.
Twilight darkened the room, but not enough to hide the grotesquely twisted posture of the girl on the bed. He bent over her, spilling cognac on the floor.
Sightless eyes stared up at him. One of the girl’s stockings was tightly knotted about her throat.