Shayne stepped back and emptied the glass of cognac down his dry throat. He hesitated only an instant before going to the telephone. He picked it up and said, “Police Headquarters,” but the clerk’s excited voice broke in on the line.
“Mr. Shayne! I thought you’d left town. I just told Chief Gentry you had. He and another man are on their way up there. They’re waiting for an elevator now.”
Shayne cut off the connection.
TWO
SHAYNE WHIRLED ABOUT and ran to the death room. With swift precision of movement he stripped the sheet and bedspread from under the girl, drew them up to cover her clothed body. Leaning close, he pressed her head sideways so that her cheek was on the pillow and turned away from him. He crooked her right arm upward, spreading the flaccid fingers out to coyly cover her upturned cheek, then tucked the spread down tightly about her neck to hide the knotted stocking that had throttled her.
Stepping back he surveyed the bed and body searchingly, nodding with grim satisfaction as he unbuttoned his coat and vest, stripped them off, and dropped them to the floor beside the bed. He loosened his soft collar and jerked his tie awry, then ran for a bottle of cognac. He splashed liquor from the bottle on the spread near the girl’s face.
Heady, pungent fumes roiled up from the liquor. He put the bottle to his lips and drank as an authoritative knock sounded on the outer door.
He didn’t hurry to answer. He made his grim features go lax and practiced staggering to the bedroom doorway. He lolled against the threshold in view of the outer door, holding the bottle by the neck, calling thickly, “Yeh? Who th’ hell izh it?”
The outer door opened, and Will Gentry advanced solidly into the room, followed by a tall, lean man with deep-set cynical eyes.
The chief of the Miami detective bureau was a burly man with heavy features and a slow impassive manner. He had been a close friend of Michael Shayne’s for many years, and the two had worked together with congenial expediency.