Again and again as he drove along slowly watching for Orange Drive, Shayne ransacked his brain for any conceivable answer to why?
Conceding that he had been recognized somehow, why had Gene and his two thugs been sent to the bar to wipe him out? No one in Brockton, so far as he was aware, had any earthly reason to fear Michael Shayne or even to hate him.
Had the girl made a mistake in identity when she came directly to his booth to finger him for the men who entered behind her?
Shayne didn’t think so. There had been no hesitancy in her manner. He distinctly recalled the look of recognition on her face, his definite impression before she ever took a step toward him that he was the reason she had entered the room. That she had come in looking for him and expecting to find him there.
Maybe that was an after-result of amnesia. A sort of hallucination that took the place of memory. That was one possibility he wanted to check with Dr. Philbrick. But there hadn’t been a single thing about the girl to give the impression that she was anything but completely normal. Shayne didn’t know much about amnesia cases, but he had a vague idea that such a person would be outwardly different from one in full possession of her faculties. That there would be something about the look in her eyes or in her bearing that would indicate loss of memory. That was something else to ask the doctor.
He passed a neat, stuccoed church on the right which was the last landmark the doorman had mentioned, and slowed for the next corner. A neat street sign told him that it was Orange Drive, and he made a right turn into it as directed. The address was well out from the center of town, and the houses here were generally larger, the grounds of each place more spacious than closer to the hotel.
Number 342 was one of only two houses in an entire block. A large, three-story white house with round columns guarding the front veranda and a cupola on top. It sat well back from the street shaded by magnolias and ancient oak trees, with a graveled drive leading up between a double row of neatly clipped hibiscus shrubs.
There was a double garage to the right at the rear, and the drive circled in front underneath a porte-cochere where wide wooden steps led up to the veranda.
Another car was parked directly in front of the steps, and Shayne pulled in behind it. It was a shabby Ford sedan.
Shayne cut off his ignition and got out to circle around in front of the Ford and mount the steps. The sunlight was bright and there was almost complete country silence as he crossed the scrubbed porch boards and found an old-fashioned knocker on the front door.
There was no electric push-button visible, so Shayne lifted and dropped the brass knocker a couple of times and waited.
The door was opened onto a large center hall by a trim Mulatto maid who smiled pleasantly when he asked for Dr. Philbrick, and led him down the cool hall to a sparkling, modern reception room on the right.
The room was empty. A sign beside the door said PLEASE RING BELL AND BE SEATED.
Shayne rang the bell but perversely refused to obey the second instruction. There was a conventional long center table with neat stacks of popular magazines and medical journals, comfortable chrome and leather chairs ranged about the walls with smoking stands beside half a dozen of them. On the walls were etchings of hunting dogs, and several framed diplomas. Shayne was studying one of them which conveyed the reassuring information that Jay Philbrick had duly passed the proscribed courses in the Southern Medical College in the year 1932 and had been duly awarded the degree of Doctor of Medicine by that institution when he heard a side door open and turned to see a plump and red-haired nurse emerge in her starched white uniform. She was young and had smiling eyes, a pert nose and a saucy mouth. She tilted her head slightly on one side as she looked at him, and said, “Yes?” in a questioning, hopeful sort of way as though wondering what the devil he was doing there and hadn’t he maybe got in the wrong pew by mistake.
Shayne grinned disarmingly and shrugged toward the diploma he had been reading, “Just checking up on the doc’s credentials,” he confided. “Make sure he isn’t a quack.”
Her left cheek dimpled and her eyes danced with merriment, but she said gravely, “Did you wish to see the doctor?”
“I’m Shayne. I phoned you a few minutes ago…”
“Oh yes.” The dimple vanished and the merriment went out of her eyes to be replaced by what appeared to be anxiety. “Exactly what was it you wished to see Dr. Philbrick about?”
“It’s an urgent, personal matter. I’ll take only a few minutes of his time. You promised to try and slip me in between patients.”
“I know. But I should have checked with the doctor before suggesting you come out. He’s much busier than I thought and won’t be able to see you until much later. If you’d give me some idea of what you want, I might be able to help you.”
Shayne kept his irritation from showing. He said, “I don’t mind waiting,” and sat down in a comfortable chair.
The nurse frowned nervously and wet her lips. Shayne had a distinct impression she had been bawled out for asking him to come, and had been commissioned to get rid of him fast. She said, “It may be late in the afternoon until he’s free to see you. He’s terribly rushed this morning…”
Just then a resonantly mellow voice came through the half-open doorway behind her. “Not at all, Ed. You know I want you to drop in any time you feel the ticker needs a check-up. As a matter of fact, Ed, I had time on my hands this morning. If there weren’t strict doctor’s orders against it, ha-ha, I’d be tempted to suggest that my julep bed is just begging to have a few sprigs plucked and I know where my wife has got a bottle of real bonded Old Racehorse hidden away, and we might adjourn to my den and see if maybe the twain would meet…”
The voice was coming closer as it spoke, and a little sallow-faced man pushed the door open and came out, followed by a tall, solid-bodied man with a shock of white hair and a ruddy beaming face who was still talking as he entered the room and saw the nurse and Michael Shayne.
“… but it is doctor’s orders, old man, and I’d be the last one in the world to…”
Dr. Jay Philbrick’s booming voice stopped abruptly in mid-sentence. He glanced uncertainly from Shayne to the nurse, and then back to the patient whom he was just ushering out, and ended in a quieter, more professional voice, “Slow down a little, Ed, and don’t worry. Call me in a day or so after I’ve had a chance to go over the results of the test.”
He turned about abruptly and pulled the door of the reception room shut behind him.
Shayne moved forward in a long, unhurried stride, and reached the closed door just as the nurse stepped in front of it and faced him with an embarrassed flush coloring her cheeks.
“I’m sorry but the doctor can’t see you now.”
Shayne looked down at her quizzically. “I told you it was extremely urgent and I’ll be only a few minutes.”
“I’m sorry, but he told me…”
“To explain that he was too busy to see anyone?” The quizzical smile stayed on Shayne’s face and he kept his voice deceptively gentle. “Although he has got time on his hands for a Mint Julep.”
Shayne put a big hand on the nurse’s shoulder and firmly moved her aside. “How does he know I’m not a salesman for bonded Old Racehorse?” He opened the door and strode into a small room outfitted as an office with typewriter desk and filing cases.
The redheaded nurse followed him protesting weakly as he crossed to another closed door marked PRIVATE. He opened it without knocking into another small room that contained a bare mahogany desk, a thick rug on the floor, three deep comfortable chairs, and a swivel chair behind the desk.
Dr. Philbrick stood with his back to him, leaning over the desk with a telephone to his ear. He turned his head to look at Shayne, and his ruddy face was no longer beaming. He replaced the telephone slowly and straightened to face the detective. “This is a private office, sir, and you are intruding.”