Covering the mouthpiece, she whispered excitedly, “He wants me to meet him at the Daphne. He won’t say why,” and motioned for Shayne to say something.
“Tell him you’ll come if you can bring a friend. Tell him you have a guest and—”
“I guess I can come, Henri, but I’ll have to bring someone with me. What? N-o-o. It’s a man. You don’t know him, but he’s here and I won’t just go off and leave him.” She waited for a moment, said, “All right. As soon as we can get a taxi and get there,” hung up and whirled on Shayne, her brown eyes bright with excited conjecture.
“Henri sounds frightened,” she told Shayne. “He wanted to know if the police had been here and if I’d seen Evalyn. He wouldn’t tell me why, and he practically ordered me to meet him at the Daphne. Said I’d regret it if I didn’t, and that he’d explain everything when I got there. And he naturally thought the worst when I told him you were here,” she went on, her words choked with laughter. “He said for us to get dressed as fast as we could and get over there.”
“You can tell him I’m your uncle from Waukegan,” Shayne suggested. He gave her a little shove toward the living-room. “I’ll call a taxi while you’re getting ready.”
Chapter ten
When Lucile called, “I’m almost ready,” he went into the living-room. She was in the bathroom rouging her lips before the lavatory mirror after changing to a green sports dress with suède shoes to match. “That is,” she admitted, “all except putting on my mask and buttoning up.”
Shayne scowled at her. “So you want me to play lady’s maid?”
“They’re simply hellish to button,” she told him, coming through the bathroom doorway and backing up to him. “There are only a few. Darn little old things — and the buttonholes aren’t big enough.”
Shayne’s big fingers fumbled with the small cloth-covered buttons. He ran out of fresh curse words as the last of the short strip of buttons at the back of the neck was fastened.