“Sorry to bother you, ma’am. Is anyone in your apartment with you?”
She clung tightly to the doorframe and the door with both hands while demanding, “Why do you want to know?”
“We’re looking for a man,” the cop explained impatiently. “Traced him into this apartment house in the last hour and we’ve got to ask your permission to search your place for him.”
“Do you suspect me of harboring a fugitive?” she asked hotly.
“No need to get nasty about it. Maybe you are, at that.” The blue-coated policeman pushed forward against her with a leer. “If I was on the lam I’d not want a nicer place to lay up.”
She didn’t hear Shayne behind her. Wasn’t aware that the redhead had moved from the divan until she felt his hand on her shoulder thrusting her aside roughly.
The policeman jerked to an astonished halt when he was suddenly confronted by the blazing eyes and jutted jaw of Shayne instead of a shrinking female, and heard a harsh voice demanding, “What the hell do you mean by pushing into a private place and insulting a decent woman?”
“Can it, friend.” Taken aback and on the defensive, the policeman adopted a blustering tone and made the mistake of reaching for his stick. “Keep your yap shut before I run you in for—”
Balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, Shayne hit him full in the mouth. Lucy moaned faintly and covered her face with her hands as she saw Shayne’s fist drive forward and upward with the weight of his body behind it.
The officious cop staggered back and caught his heel on the threshold and went over backward in the hall with flailing arms. Shayne stalked grimly into the doorway and confronted a sergeant who came running from another room at the sound of the affray. The sergeant stopped with mouth agape when he saw and recognized Shayne. He said sharply, “What the hell is this? Get up from the floor and start talking, Morrison.”
Morrison got to his feet slowly, spitting out two upper and a lower tooth with a curse, his beefy face as scarlet with rage as the blood trickling from his mouth. “That must be him, sarge.” His hand went to his holster. “Jumped me from behind the door and slugged me with brass knucks or something.”
The sergeant snorted contemptuously and lunged forward to grab the half-drawn gun while Shayne lounged against the doorframe and watched the tableau, his features stony and controlled.
“Get back, you fool,” ordered the sergeant. “That’s Mike Shayne. If he had used knucks you wouldn’t have any teeth left. Get down the hall with Langley and I’ll handle this.”
Mention of Shayne’s name changed the patrolman’s surly attitude to one of abashed deference, for it was commonly known in Miami that the private detective and Chief of Police Gentry were close friends. After he slunk away, the sergeant asked Shayne, “What did the bigmouthed ape do to ask for what he got?”
“Barged into my secretary’s apartment without any explanation and insulted her,” Shayne told him coldly. “What’s this all about?”
“We’re hunting a killer we hoped we had cornered in the building. Slightly built young fellow. I didn’t know that was Miss Hamilton’s apartment,” the sergeant went on defensively. “You know how it is when you’re trying to work fast. Don’t mind if I take a look around, do you?”
“I mind plenty,” Shayne told him coldly. “Miss Hamilton tried to tell your man there was no one here. Now, I’m telling you that she isn’t hiding anyone in her bedroom. That good enough or do I have to call Will Gentry?”
“That’s plenty good for me,” the sergeant assured him hastily. He turned back to the others who were emerging from the other apartments empty-handed, and Shayne stepped back to slam the door shut violently.
Lucy was huddled back on the divan and she watched Shayne with frightened eyes as he stalked back to pick up his drink. She had never seen him look so savagely angry, and having heard only his end of the colloquy at the door, she asked timidly, “Who are they looking for, Michael?”
“Some punk they were tipped off was hiding here.” Shayne’s voice grated unnaturally. He shook his head and lowered the cognac a full inch in his glass before setting it down. “My damned temper,” he muttered disgustedly. “Going to get me in trouble sometime.” He grinned down at Lucy with an effort and touched the tendrils of brown hair at the nape of her neck with his finger tips. “I guess maybe I do like you a lot, angel. Something went all over me when that lout said what he did. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” Lucy told him sturdily. “I’m glad. But,” she added faintly, “I have to tell you something, Michael.”
He dropped back onto the divan and got out a pack of cigarettes, his thoughts still on the incident at the door. “That’s the whole trouble with cops,” he muttered. “They take an ignorant Cracker out of the backwoods and give him a gun and authority to bulldoze his betters. He’s been kicked in the teeth all his life, and he immediately begins to take out all his accumulated venom on the general public I’ve told Will Gentry a hundred times—”
Lucy wasn’t listening to him. She was biting her lip indecisively and looking at the closed bedroom door. “Michael!” she broke in. “I said I have something important to tell you.”
“Okay. Tell it.” He waited quizzically.
“It’s — I don’t know how to say it.” Lucy’s face was suffused with shame. Shayne’s words to the sergeant continued to echo in her ears: I’m telling you that she isn’t hiding anyone in her bedroom.
“It... it all happened so fast,” Lucy said faintly. “I hadn’t time to think. I didn’t really mean to tell a lie, Michael.”
“What are you talking about?” His grin changed to a frown of perplexity.
“I’m trying to tell you the best I can. To explain why I didn’t — when that policeman came — just at first. Then things happened so fast I didn’t have a chance. You knocking him down and all.”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“The man. He is in my bedroom, Michael.”
It took the space of twenty seconds for her words fully to penetrate into Shayne’s consciousness. His perplexity changed slowly to incredulity to understanding, and to cold rage. He got to his feet slowly, and Lucy could not meet his gaze.
“Do you mean that, Lucy? You let me lie to the sergeant? Use my reputation and friendship with Gentry to refuse them entry while you were hiding their man all the time?”
Lucy nodded without looking up. Tears were streaming from her eyes. She winced as though from a blow with each word Shayne spoke. There was a brief silence and still she did not dare look up. Then the sound of Shayne’s heels striking hard on the floor as he strode to the outer door and jerked it open. She sat with bowed head and listened drearily to the sound of him taking the stairs to the bottom three at a time.
Lucy didn’t lift her head until he returned. There were deep trenches in his gaunt cheeks, and his eyes were cold. He jerked his head in negation and said, “Too late. Sergeant Loftus and his crew have already gone.” He strode past her to the bedroom door and turned the knob.
The door did not budge.
Shayne turned angrily and demanded, “Did you lock him in?”
“No,” faltered Lucy. “There’s a bolt on the inside. He must have closed it.”
Shayne turned and thundered his fist against the door. When this brought no response, he shouted hoarsely, “Unlock the door before I break it down.”
He paused and there was complete silence in the apartment. Shayne waited for no more than ten seconds, then took one step back and crouched a trifle, drove his shoulder against the edge of the door.