But Shayne was out of ear-shot by then. In the lobby, Shayne called his office. He told Lucy that she could go home now, and that she was invited to Homer Wilde’s party.
He interrupted her cry of, “Oh, Mike. What shall I wear?” to tell her, a little curtly, that he would pick her up some time before midnight, that by then, the case should be solved.
He drove back to his apartment, reasonably well satisfied. Lucy would be pleased at having guessed the identity of his plane companion correctly. And now, at least, Shayne knew whom he was looking for. Everything was neatly tied up except for three large questions. Where was Jeanie-Carol? Where was the body of Ben Felton? Who killed Ben?
He was humming, off-key, a little tune as he went up in the elevator to his apartment. The door was ajar. He paused on the threshold and saw two men sprawled comfortably in two of the easy chairs. They were obviously not the sort of persons to be stopped by a mere locked door.
One of them, a lean, young-old man with a violent sports shirt and a badly broken nose that marred a gutter-handsome face, rose languidly and said, “You Shayne? The boss wants to have a word with you.”
“By all means.” Shayne matched the mocking courtliness of the intruder. Then, turning to the other, a squat, ugly character with a prematurely bald head, “Are you the boss?”
“Is he kidding?” the squat one asked, getting to his feet. Like his taller companion, he wore a lightweight jacket over a loud, open-collar shirt. The looseness of the jacket’s fit did not conceal the pistol he carried in a shoulder-holster from Shayne’s trained eyes.
“Shall we go?” said the taller hood politely.
They drove him, in a cream-and-blue convertible, to a palmetto-ringed, ultra-modern house that hugged the ground well beyond the mountain-range of hotels that give Miami Beach its spectacular skyline. Shayne was escorted to a luxurious living room and left there, under the guard of the stockier and stupider of the two hoodlums.
He did not wait long before a compactly built, strong-featured man, who might have been a well-conditioned forty, entered the room. He wore bathing trunks and a brief towelling jacket, and, in spite of the lateness of the hour, there were traces of sand on his chest and stomach. He nodded at Shayne and went to a well-stocked bar.
“Martel, isn’t it, Mr. Shayne?” he asked.
“Right,” said Shayne, studying Copey Cottrell. The man was coarsely handsome and blandly corrupt. He poured himself a vodka highball and brought Shayne brandy. The two hoodlums had withdrawn to the far end of the long room.
“I’ve been wanting to meet you,” Cottrell said quietly, “ever since Homer tried to put you on his payroll. At first, it didn’t seem to me that you could do anything my boys couldn’t do. But since yesterday, I’ve had to upgrade you.”
“That’s nice,” said Shayne, amused by the affectation of urbanity.
“Mind you, Mr. Shayne,” went on his host, “I was not in favor of having Felton killed. I deplore violence — it’s much too costly a method of doing business. And Felton’s death was by way of being an accident. My — associate — in New York lost his temper, which is regrettable — but not as regrettable as the fact that you brought the body back here with you. Ben Felton, found dead in Tyndale’s hotel suite in New York is quite a different thing from Ben Felton liable to be found dead at any moment here in Miami. Under certain circumstances, it could be embarrassing. I’m sure you understand.”
“Pray elucidate further,” said the redhead.
For a moment, he thought Cottrell was going to blow his top. He reddened, all the way from his hair line to the top of his trunks, and his eyes flashed flame. But the flare was brief, and Cottrell did not speak until he had regained self-control. Then he said, in the same quiet tone, “It was my idea, when I was informed last night that you were flying south with the corpse, to have the police take care of it for me. As a taxpayer, I believe in using public servants wherever possible.”
He paused, a trifle smugly, then added, “But, in some way you managed to elude the excellent Chief Gentry’s detective. This is exceedingly inconvenient. Mr. Shayne, I want that body, and I want it now.”
“I’m sorry,” said Shayne. “You can’t have it.”
Cottrell rose from the chair in which he had been sitting while he talked. Jiggling the ice in his glass, he said, “Naturally, I expected that answer. I’m a businessman, and I’m used to making deals. As I told you just now, I sincerely deplore violence. And I’m willing to pay for what I get. Why not? You took some long chances yesterday, but you got away with them. You have something I want. Therefore, I’m willing to pay. And whatever figure we reach will be given you in this room, in cash, once you have given me the information I want. You need not appear in it at all. My boys will take care of the — merchandise.
“What’s more” — he paused again, delicately — “the Internal Revenue people won’t hear a whisper about the transaction from me. You’ll have five thousand dollars and be home free. How does it sound to you, Mr. Shayne?”
“It sounds absurd.” Shayne drained his glass. “Even if I wanted to accommodate you, I couldn’t.”
“Make it ten grand,” said Cottrell softly. “Will that do it?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Shayne. “You see — I haven’t got the body, and I don’t know where it is!”
“Harry Tyndale would be touched by your loyalty.” Cottrell was beginning to turn pink again under his tan. “But I have been told you are a man of such ethics as your profession permits. You’ve just been hired by Homer Wilde to find Ben Felton. Are you going to fulfill that contract?”
Shayne grinned. “Maybe. But when I found the police waiting for me at the airport, I lost my luggage check. By the time I managed to get Len Sturgis off my back, somebody else must have found it and claimed the trunk.”
“Who?”
Shayne shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Perhaps we can stir up your brain cells a trifle.” Cottrell looked past him and said, “All right, boys. But keep him alive.”
Shayne whirled as they came in behind him. The taller hood was swinging a sap lightly, and the half-bald one was drawing a shoulder-holstered gun.
Shayne dropped his shoulder and lunged as he whirled. He caught the squatty one in the belly before he got his gun out, and they went to the floor together.
The gun skidded out of reach, and the man was out cold on the floor. The sap caught Shayne a glancing blow on the side of the head as he came to his feet, and he closed in with the taller man, driving his knee upward into the groin.
The man went down with a thin scream, and Shayne whirled from him just in time to see Cottrell swinging the barrel of a gun viciously. It connected solidly with the base of Shayne’s skull, and he went down and out into blackness...
V
When Shayne returned to consciousness, his head throbbed with pain and the right side of his neck was stiff and sore. It was dark, and his hands were taped securely to his sides. His ankles, too, were tightly taped together.
He was lying on a bed, and there was a window through which he was able to see stars shining above the silhouettes of palmet-toes. As memory came back to him, he became aware that he must have been stowed away in a bedroom of Copey Cottrell’s mansion. He lay there, waiting for his vision to improve, trying to figure some way out. On the side of the room away from the window, he could see a narrow line of light — a closed door with illumination beyond.
Shayne swung his legs over the edge of the bed and struggled to a sitting position. If it were a bedroom, he reasoned, there must be some sharp angle on which he could work the tape loose that bound his hands to his sides. Until he did that, he was helpless.