Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 21, No. 4, September 1967

Mike Shayne faced his toughest foes. Lucy had been kidnaped — and death was the ransom price.

I

Mike Shayne called into his office at eight o’clock that night. Shayne was on a job for a woman whose son was accused of complicity in six juvenile robberies. The woman said the boy was innocent. The boy sneered. Shayne was on the weary round of finding out.

“I’ll go straight home, Angel,” Shayne said from the pay booth. “Close up shop for the night and go home yourself.”

“All right, Michael,” the brown-eyed girl said. “The district attorney wants to see you in the morning.”

“Sure, Angel, but tonight I sleep.”

“Don’t forget to eat something, Michael,” his secretary said.

After Shayne had hung up, Lucy Hamilton filed her work for the day, straightened the office, checked to be sure all was in order for the morning, and freshened her make-up. Then she clicked her bag shut firmly, and left the office. She put out the lights and locked the outer door behind her.

Her heels clicked firmly along the deserted corridor of the Flagler Street building. She rode down in the elevator, and crossed the echoing lobby. She walked along the crowded street in the evening twilight to the garage where her car was parked.

“Evening, Miss Hamilton,” the attendent said.

“Good evening, Paul.”

“You working late again,” Paul said. “I guess you’re heading straight home.”

“You guess right,” Lucy said, smiling.

She drove out of the garage and turned toward her apartment. She drove easily, relaxing after the long day. She was tired, but she smiled. Lucy liked her work, no matter how hard it was, or how late she had to work for Shayne. It was more than a job to Lucy.

She turned into her quiet street. She was thinking about the good dinner she was going to prepare for herself, the one, perhaps two, cocktails before, and then a quiet night with a good book and early bed.

Briefly she frowned when she thought about Mike Shayne. She hoped that the big redhead would have the sense to eat, and that he would not work too late on the job. It was a thankless job her boss had now — guilty or innocent, the boy Shayne was trying to help was a young punk. And the mother wasn’t much better — a spoiled widow, no better than she should be, who had ruined her son and now wanted Shayne to save him.

With all this in her mind, Lucy failed to see the car that turned into the quiet street behind her. She had just begun to slow to make the turn into the garage beneath her building, when the blue car behind her suddenly speeded up, passed, and cut in.

Lucy Hamilton jammed on her brakes.

The blue car had cut her off.

Her body hurled forward; her head grazed the windshield. Luckily she had been driving slow, already about to turn into the ramp down to the garage. She sat, unhurt but shaken, behind the steering wheel. A man was getting out of the car ahead.

Then the anger swelled up in Lucy. She jumped out of her car and walked in a fury toward the blue car and the man who had emerged from it. As she neared the car, where the man stood at the rear as if waiting for her, another man got out of the blue car.

Neither of them seemed disturbed or upset.

They moved smiling toward her, one beginning to speak as if apologizing.

“What do you think—” Lucy began, furious, and then she stopped.

She saw their faces. She suddenly remembered what had really happened — they had cut in front of her. She saw that they were neither angry, nor shaken, nor really apologetic.

She turned to run.

The two men leaped. One grabbed her arms. She opened her mouth to scream. The second man clamped his hand over her mouth. She struggled in their grip. She kicked one in the shin with her sharp heel.

The man grunted, swore, but did not let go.

They had her securely now, and began to drag her toward the blue car. She fought, but it was no use.

They pushed her into the car.

Inside the car a third man held her.

One man got behind the wheel, the second joined the third man in the back seat with her.

They drove off.

They had not spoken a word.

II

The ringing seemed to be far away — somewhere far down the lovely valley where Mike Shayne stood in the sun with his fishing rod in his hand, and — Shayne woke up.

The telephone was ringing insistently.

Shayne looked at the luminous dial of the clock on his bed table. It read three o’clock in the morning. Shayne swore. The switchboard man knew better than to put a call through to Shayne at such an hour, unless—

Shayne sighed, sat up, reached for a cigarette, cradled the receiver-on his shoulder.

“Shayne,” he grunted.

“Mr. Shayne?” the voice of Pete on the switchboard said. “I wouldn’t bother you, but this call sounds urgent.”

Shayne snapped a match-light on his thumbnail, lit the cigarette.

“Okay, Pete. Put it through.”

There was a brief silence, then, “Shayne?”

The voice was muffled, thick and gruff. A handkerchief over the mouthpiece, Shayne knew instantly. But he could sense the deep, hard voice beneath the muffled sound.

“Yes,” the redhead said.

The voice rasped under the muffle. “Listen, and listen good, peeper. I’m gonna say it just once. We’ve got your secretary. And we ain’t—”

“Lucy?” Mike Shayne snapped. “You’ve—”

“I said listen, shamus,” the voice snarled, “and I mean listen. You want to see her again?”

Shayne blew smoke, took a tight grip on himself.

“Go ahead,” he said tightly.

“Swell,” the voice said, rasped. “We’ve got your Lucy. She’s okay. We want a little favor. No money, just a favor. Sit tight and we’ll call again.”

“How do I know—” Shayne began.

There was a silence, then a new voice. “Michael? They grabbed me as—”

The phone went dead. Shayne stared at it for a long time. It had been Lucy’s voice. Still—

Shayne took a deep breath. All right, someone had Lucy. Why? A ransom. A favor, not money. All right, that figured. He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. He had advised enough people not to panic in his day.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, his mind working on two levels at once. First, what did they want? Which of his three present cases were they concerned with, if it were one of his present cases?

On the second level he considered what to do instantly. He knew that. He had told enough people that too. He reached for the telephone again.

“Pete? Get me the police. No, Gentry’s office.”

Shayne smoked, waited.

A sleepy voice answered. “Office of the chief.”

“Who’s this?” Shayne said. “Mike Shayne here.”

“Mr. Shayne?” the sleepy voice said. “This is Sergeant Banner. The chief’s at home.”

“I’ve got to talk to him, Banner,” Shayne snapped.

“At this hour? I don’t dare, Mr. Shayne. He’d have my head. Even the Mayor—”

“It’s a kidnaping, Banner. My secretary.”

There was a silence. Then Sergeant Banner’s voice had come fully awake.

“Miss Hamilton? Hold on.”

There were noises on the line.

“Okay, Mr. Shayne. You’re through on the direct tie-line.”

Shayne waited, smoked. Already the familiar sense of endless waiting that was the tense atmosphere of a kidnaping was beginning to envelop him. The sense of each second being an hour as a man could do nothing but wait for some mocking voice to call again in its own diabolical time.

“Who the hell—” the gruff voice of Chief Will Gentry of the Miami police began.

Shayne cut off his old Mend. “It’s Mike, Will, I’ve—”

“Mike? Shayne?” Gentry’s voice said, began to rise to a slow roar. “What the devil do—”

“Lucy’s been kidnaped, Will,” Shayne said.

“I don’t care what—”

Shayne could almost see the eyes of the chief widening under the heavy black brows. He could see Gentry sitting bolt upright in bed, perhaps reaching for the stub of black cigar that was never far from his hand.

“Kidnaped? Lucy?” Gentry’s harsh voice said.

Shayne heard the grim, almost solemn undertone. The most dreaded word in the policeman’s vocabulary — kidnaping. The dirtiest, saddest, most difficult of crimes. No matter what happened in a kidnaping no one was ever the same again. The one crime where the criminal held all the cards, where there was no sure and proper way to operate. Each case was different. Any move, right or wrong, could be fatal.

“Okay, Mike,” Gentry’s now alert voice said. “What’s the picture?”

Shayne told the Chief the little he knew. “They want me, of course. Pressure on me for some favor.”

“Yeh,” Gentry said. “They didn’t say what they want?”

“Not yet,” Shayne said. “They’ll contact me later. The usual pattern, Will. Let me sweat it out for a time. The cat-and-mouse routine. Probably a couple of more calls before they get to the point, just to soften me up.”

“You want the FBI?”

Shayne considered. “Not yet. This isn’t a real kidnap, you know? Just an extortion on me. No ransom in money, no contact or delivery. They’ll just tell me what to do, and supposedly let Lucy go when it’s done.”

“All right,” Gentry said. “We’ll keep it to us for now. Can you figure what you could do for someone that would be final enough to use this kind of pressure? I mean, it has to be some act you can’t go back on later, Mike.”

“I know,” Shayne said. “I’m thinking. Meanwhile, you better bring a tap for my telephone, set up tracing procedure. Put out the full alert for Lucy with her description.”

“I’ll give it the works, Mike,” Gentry’s gruff voice said. “What about the papers?”

“It’s not a regular snatch, as I said,” Shayne said. “But I’ll bring Tim Rourke in. He’ll handle the other reporters if they get wind of it. They probably won’t be interested; no real human interest, like in a child snatching.”

“No,” Gentry said.

Shayne swore. “They didn’t even tell me not to call in the police.”

“No reason to, Mike. Like you said, no contact or delivery. It’s an outright pressure play. We’ll have nothing to trip them on. The police can’t really hurt them unless we can find her.”

“Then we’ll have to find her,” Shayne said grimly.

“Or give them what they want,” Gentry said, equally grim.

“Let’s cross that bridge when we find out what they want,” Shayne said. “Let’s see if we can find a lead first. Maybe they’re professionals, and your informers may tell you something. Meanwhile, I’ll check her route, see if I can find where they grabbed her, and if they left any clues.”

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line. Gentry’s heavy breathing could be heard, the quick and sharp puff on his perennial black cigar.

“It’s a hundred-to one against finding them before they make their demand, Mike,” Gentry said. “You know that.”

“I know, Will,” Shayne said, “but I can’t just sit. I’ve got to do something. Keep busy. Anything.”

“Sure, Mike, I’ll get the wheels turning,” Gentry said.

Shayne hung up and sat for some time staring into the faint grey light of the dawn beyond his window. Lucy was in deep danger because she worked for him, Shayne. Her life in danger because of him. And he was helpless. That was a kidnaping. The victim innocent, and the police helpless, and in the middle the terrified target with the money.

Only this time it was not money — which made it, perhaps better, or, perhaps worse. They wanted something, and if they got it they would probably let Lucy go. But what if what they wanted could not be done? There was no way of knowing if what they had in mind was impossible except in their minds.

“Move!” Shayne suddenly said aloud.

He stood up, stubbed out his cigarette, and began to dress. He neither shaved nor showered. Somehow he could not bring himself to do those simple, routine actions. Dressed, he checked his automatic, sensing the fury inside him that itched to use the gun, clapped his panama on his head, and went out.

He went down to the garage beneath his building and got into his car. He drove out into the still and silent faint grey of the Miami dawn. The whole city seemed to be waiting... waiting.

Shayne drove toward his office. Maybe they had left some trail for him to follow, made some mistake. Anything.

III

Mike Shayne stood inside the outer door of his office, and a cold hand seemed to grip his stomach.

The office was so deserted, so silent. A neat and cold office without the pert brown eyes of the human presence that gave it life each morning when Shayne strode in. As if a great, cold space had been left in the dim air, an emptiness so real Shayne could feel it almost physically.

Shayne shook his head, swore at himself for a sentimental fool, and walked across the deserted outer office to the door of his inner office. It was still locked. Lucy, then, had locked it before she left. Which almost certainly meant that she had not been captured inside the office.

To be sure, and because sentiment would do no good and work was what he needed, he checked the office carefully anyway. He found nothing unusual or suspicious. He sat down at Lucy’s neat desk and picked up the telephone. He dialed the number of the Miami Daily News and asked for Tim Rourke.

“Rourke,” the voice of his reporter friend said.

“Mike, Tim,” Shayne said. “Are you busy?”

“As usual, Mike,” the lean reporter said. “But if it’s important—”

“Lucy’s been kidnaped, Tim,” Shayne said softly.

He sensed the stunned silence on the other end of the line. Then Rourke spoke, his voice high, cracked.

“Why would anyone—”

“Pressure on me,” Shayne said. “Can you get over to the office? I guess I could use company.”

“On my way,” Rourke said. “You want it quiet, Mike?”

“If you can keep it quiet for now.”

“We can, and I’ll talk to the other boys,” Rourke said. “I’m on my way.”

Shayne lit a cigarette in his silent office. But he could not just wait. He locked up again, and began to walk slowly along the dim dawn corridor of the office building. His grey eyes studied every inch of the floor and walls all the way to the bank of elevators. He found nothing. There were no marks of a struggle anywhere.

Shayne pressed the elevator button, and examined the elevator when it came up. He examined each elevator, and, on the last one, rode down to the lobby. He had found nothing that meant anything in any of the elevators.

In the lobby he paused. The maintenance crew was at work on the final morning mop to make the marble floors sparkle for the influx expected to begin within an hour. The night checker on the door nodded a greeting to Shayne.

“Were you on when Lucy left last night, Joe?” Shayne asked.

“No, she must have left before I got on,” the checker said.

“Did you notice anything strange in the lobby when you came on? Signs of a struggle?”

“No, nothing, Mr. Shayne. The cleaners would have told me if there was anything.”

Shayne nodded. He looked around the lobby as if not quite sure what to do next. It was getting to him, the effect of being involved in a kidnaping. Then he saw Rourke come in. The elongated reporter was walking fast.

“The boys will keep it under wraps as long as you say, Mike,” Rourke said. He studied Shayne’s face. “Anything happen?”

“No, but I better check my answering service and my hotel,” Shayne said. “I guess I forgot.”

Shayne went to the pay telephone in the lobby. He called his answering service. He called the switchboard at his apartment-hotel. There was no message. He returned to Rourke.

“Come on,” Shayne said.

The two men left the lobby of the Flagler Street building, and Mike Shayne turned left toward the garage that Lucy always used. His grey eyes scanned the deserted morning streets as they walked. At the garage the sleepy attendant came out to greet the detective.

“Mornin’, Mr. Shayne. You’re early today.”

“Hello, Paul,” Shayne said. “Did Lucy park here last night?”

“Like always,” Paul said. “She was late, too. I mean, late pickin’ up the car.”

“Did you notice anything unusual?”

“Unusual? No, not that I remember, Mr. Shayne.”

“No one hanging around?”

Paul frowned. “No, but there’s always people hanging around here, you know? I mean, maybe I seen some guys, but I ain’t sure.”

“Did Lucy say anything?”

“Only that she was goin’ straight home.”

Mike Shayne nodded. “Thanks, Paul.”

The redhead and Tim Rourke walked back to Shayne’s car. The lean reporter watched the detective. Shayne’s face was grim and pale.

“Take it easy, Mike,” Rourke said.

“Sure, Tim,” Shayne said. “It’s me they want, you understand? Me! But it’s Lucy who is in danger.

If they want me why didn’t they attack me?”

“I know, Mike,” Rourke said.

In Shayne’s car the two men lapsed into silence, each with his own thoughts, as Shayne drove the route he knew Lucy took each night as regular as clockwork. Made to order for an abductor, Shayne thought bitterly.

Shayne drove slowly, his sharp eyes observing the route. But he saw nothing in the early morning of the city until he turned into the quiet street where Lucy lived. He saw the car instantly.

“Her car,” Shayne said, nodded ahead.

“It looks like she was about to turn into the garage,” Rourke said.

“And was cut off,” Shayne said. “Look at the way it’s nosed into the curb. She hit her brakes and skidded toward the curb. There are tire marks up ahead from another car.”

Shayne parked directly behind Lucy’s empty car, and the two men got out and walked carefully toward Lucy’s car. Shayne studied the ground as he approached his secretary’s abandoned vehicle. He saw nothing on the macadam of the street.

At the car the two men leaned in and searched and found nothing. Shayne straightened up and rubbed his gaunt jaw.

“Her handbag is gone. That looks like she got out by herself,” the detective said. “She probably thought some lousy driver had almost hit her, and got out to give him a piece of her mind.” Shayne smiled. “You know Lucy.”

Rourke nodded. “And she walked right into a trap. It looks like they planned it pretty well, Mike. Pros?”

“Probably,” Shayne agreed. “They moved fast and they didn’t make a mistake, as far as I can see. They must have known her route pretty well. This is a quiet street.”

“There’s nothing at all for a due,” Rourke said. “Just her car.”

An empty early morning street. Nothing but an abandoned car, mute testimony to the danger Lucy was now in.

“Should we look at her apartment?” Rourke said.

“No point,” Shayne said bluntly. “She never got there, Tim. They grabbed her here. They did it smoothly, and they’ve got her. Damn it, Tim, what do they want?”

“What do you have, Mike?” the reporter said. “I mean, what can you do for them?”

“How the devil do I know? It could be one of the cases I’m on now, it probably is. But it could also be a half a dozen cases from the past. If I just had an idea!”

“Easy,” Rourke said again.

The lean reporter watched his friend. Rourke’s face showed how concerned the reporter was for Mike Shayne. But Shayne suddenly took a deep breath, shivered through his massive frame.

“You’re right, Tim. Yelling gets me nowhere. All right. I’ve got to think while I’m waiting. They’ll tell me soon enough what they want, but if I could get an idea before they do, maybe I could get something in motion.”

“What are you doing to do?”

“Go back to the office. I should be there anyway. I just wanted to see if I could find a mistake first.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Just keep your ears open, and keep it out of the papers,” Shayne said.

“Okay, Mike,” Rourke said. “Don’t worry. Gentry’ll find her.”

“Yeh, we’ll all find her,” Shayne said. “But alive or dead?”

The lean reporter had no answer. He knew as well as Shayne how many kidnap victims are found floating in a lake or at the bottom of some ditch.

Shayne drove them back to the Flagler Street building. The reporter took his car and drove away. Shayne went up to his office.

IV

An hour later Mike Shayne sat back in the desk chair of his private office and pushed the files in front of him away. The redhead stared out the window at the bright sun that rested on the sprawling city of Miami.

Nothing.

The silence of the office was beginning to get to him. Nothing underlined the absence of Lucy Hamilton as much as the deadly silence. Three times the telephone rang, and each time Shayne had waited for Lucy to answer.

A reflex action. And each time he answered at last his stomach sank again with the knowledge of Lucy’s danger. The brown-eyed girl had made herself so important in Shayne’s life that every action he did reminded him of her abduction.

Shayne smoked. After a time he turned back and looked at the files on his desk again. Three cases, that was all he had at the moment — and each one drew a blank.

The case of the juvenile Dillinger was open and shut — either the young punk was involved in the robberies or he wasn’t. The police had the boy. The widow’s only hope was that Shayne find some proof that the boy was innocent. There was nothing in the case that could be changed by pressure on Shayne. The police already considered the boy guilty. They would need real proof to change their minds, not pressure.

The case of the socialite husband who made too many “trips” with his secretary was no case at all. Nothing but a paranoid wife. The socialite was as innocent as a lamb. The trips were real, the secretary had a husband she loved, and there wasn’t a hint of suspicion except in the sick mind of his client. He was about to close the case. There was no area of pressure in it.

The third case was a simple insurance job — the investigation of a burglary in which he was empowered to pay to get back the loot, no questions asked. No inside job, and the police were after the thieves. No pressure on him could change this case either.

Shayne smoked, waited, and thought in the deadly silence of the office. Twice Will Gentry called to report that everything possible was being done, and that there were no results yet. Even Gentry’s informers knew nothing. The city was being carefully combed, but so far nothing.

“Thanks, Will,” Shayne said. “No one could do more.”

“Every man on my force has Lucy’s picture burned into his brain, and is on the lookout for any hint,” Gentry said. “What have you come up with?”

“Nothing.”

“And no contact yet?”

“No contact,” Shayne said.

What did they want? Why didn’t they call? They said it wasn’t money, but what the devil was it? The waiting, that was the killer in a kidnaping.

Shayne went back to work. He examined all his recent cases, and all his past cases for five years to see if any of them could involve some action of his that could be forced to change a result. After another hour he came up with one thin file. He looked at it for a long time.

It was a case closed six months ago, a murder case. Shayne had been the one who tracked down young Jerry Sanders and dug up the evidence that convicted the young man of the murder of his friend in a youth club. Shayne’s testimony had weighed heavily in the conviction.

Now a clemency hearing was due to determine if young Sanders would go to the electric chair or have his sentence commuted. There was also a motion for a new trial on the grounds that the first degree charge had been in error. Shayne’s testimony could affect both matters, perhaps get young Sanders both a commutation and, later, a reduced sentence.

It was possible that if Shayne said that he thought the boy had not really planned the murder, a point that had never been clear, maybe Sanders would get a reduction. Yet Shayne had already made it known to the Governor that he did think that Sanders had not planned the murder.

Only maybe someone did not know that.

Then Shayne swore softly. Young Sanders came from a simple lower middle-class family with no money to speak of. Shayne could not imagine them either thinking-up such a scheme to pressure him, nor having the money to pay kidnapers. Men who risked a kidnaping charge did not come cheap.

Shayne lit another cigarette. He felt helpless. Nothing he had thought of yet seemed to help at all. And somewhere some ruthless men had Lucy! If he ever got his hands—

The ringing of the telephone stopped his thought. The red-head licked his dry lips, and picked up the receiver slowly.

“Shayne,” he said, and his voice cracked as it had each time he had answered the telephone, his stomach sinking.

“Mike? It’s Tim. I had a call!”

“A call?” Shayne said.

“About Lucy, Mike.”

Shayne rubbed his chin. “They called you? Why would they call you when—”

“No, Mike, not them, not the kidnapers,” Rourke said rapidly. The reporter sounded eager. “A call from some informer. No name, you know the type. He said he had information on Lucy if I wanted it. He said he knew I was a friend of yours, and that he didn’t like kidnapers.”

Shayne tugged on his ear. “Go on, Tim.”

“It was about ten minutes ago.” A man, voice muffled. He told me that he had definite information that Lucy had been taken to Los Angeles. He said he’d seen her. He didn’t call her Lucy, of course, Mike. He said I was to tell Shayne that his woman was on her way to Los Angeles.

Shayne swore. “A crank, Tim. They come around a kidnaping like locusts. They crawl out of the woodwork.”

“But no one knows Lucy’s been abducted, Mike,” Tim said.

“They probably do in the criminal world, Tim,” Shayne said. “I can’t act on a tip like that. It’s a thousand to one it’s just a crank. Maybe someone with a grudge against me who just wants me on a wild-goose chase. No, I—”

Rourke broke in. “Mike, I don’t think this was any crank. He sounded too scared. And, Mike, what was Lucy wearing?”

“Wearing?” Shayne tried to think. His mind worked to picture his secretary as he had last seen her yesterday. “A grey dress, pale blue blouse, grey high heels, and a pale blue bag.”

“That was exactly how he described her, Mike,” Rourke said quietly. “He said that was what she was wearing when she was put onto a plane! Except that he added a star-shaped silver pin on her grey jumper — jumper, not dress.”

Shayne was silent for a long minute. He saw Lucy in his mind, and he saw the silver pin. He also realized that the grey dress had indeed been a jumper, or why would she have had a blouse on, too?

“All right,” Shayne said. “He Knows what she was wearing. He could have seen that at any time yesterday. It doesn’t prove a damn.”

“All right, Mike,” Rourke said, “but if Lucy wanted to send you a message what would she say about last night?”

“Last night?” Shayne said.

“Was the last thing she said to you last night, ‘Don’t forget to eat something, Michael?’ Was that what she said on the phone? The last words, exactly?”

Shayne did hot breathe for a moment. He could hear the voice of his brown-eyed secretary as she said those exact words on the phone last night. Then this caller, the tipster, had talked to Lucy, and after Shayne had last night.

“Okay, Tim, he’s seen her. Did he say why they would take her to Los Angeles?”

“He said they know how close you are to Will Gentry, and how dangerous it would be to hold her long here. And, Mike, he said that they would not contact you until they had her safe in Los Angeles. Have they called you yet?”

“No, Tim, not yet,” Shayne said.

Why hadn’t they called him? Why wait so long? Tim had come up with a possible answer, and there was no doubt that the unknown tipster had really been close to Lucy and recently. It smelled bad, but could he afford to overlook it? Gentry would keep working in Miami.

“Okay, Tim, I’m going to Los Angeles. I know men on the force out there. I—”

“I’m ahead of you, Mike. I’ve already booked us two seats on the next jet out. I’m going, Mike. You need someone with you, and I can help keep the Los Angeles papers quiet.”

Shayne nodded! “Okay, Tim. I’ll meet you at the airport.”

The redhead hung up. Then he picked up the receiver again and called his switchboard and his answering service. He gave them the number of a hotel in Los Angeles where they could call him the moment they got a call of any kind.

In most kidnaping cases, a man would stay close to his phone, but in this case they wanted Shayne, and Shayne only, and they would wait.

He called Gentry and explained what had happened.

Then he checked his automatic, clapped his panama on his shock of red hair, and went out and down to his car to drive to the airport and the flight to Los Angeles.

V

The great jet flew high and steady, and above Grand Canyon Mike Shayne looked down. The massive cut in the land was spread out and beautiful below. It would not be long before they reached Los Angeles.

Shayne had already had Gentry teletype ahead with the details of the case. Los Angeles had promised full cooperation and secrecy. A Captain De Jong, a man Shayne knew, would meet the jet. There was nothing more Shayne could do now. He was not optimistic — Los Angeles was a big city, and finding Lucy would be looking for a needle in a haystack.

The redhead watched the great canyon pass away behind. In a way, though, the move to Los Angeles would help him and the police. At least now they had a lead, the arrival of the other plane in Los Angeles. It was possible that someone might have seen a woman of Lucy’s description, possible even that Lucy could have indicated to some witness that she needed help.

Shayne shook his head. The kidnapers had taken a big risk in moving Lucy, especially on a public carrier. It was an unnecessary risk, when—

Mike Shayne stopped.

His grey eyes narrowed into the hardest of steel points.

Something was wrong.

It had smalled bad all along.

Why would the kidnapers take such a stupid and unnecessary risk? Just to avoid the Miami police? They must know that the Los Angeles police would work just as hard. Why leave one city where they were safely hidden, to risk the exposure and accidents of a trip to another city?

Not a bad risk, to go to Los Angeles, but an unnecessary risk!

Shayne tugged hard on his left earlobe. A hunch was slowly growing in his mind.

The tipster called, a man who had obviously been close to Lucy since she had been abducted. Why not one of the gang?

No contact had been made since the initial call. Why? If they wanted something from Shayne, what were they waiting for?

None of his cases, except the remote possibility of the Sanders matter, contained anything he could affect, no matter what the pressure on him.

And now the unnecessary risk of taking Lucy to Los Angeles.

No, it stank. And yet, they had kidnaped Lucy, so they wanted something from him.

What?

Perhaps something in a crime that had not yet happened!!

Shayne rubbed his gaunt jaw and watched the desert land flying past below the great jet. His grey eyes burned with a sudden fire. A hunch, yes, but that was what police work came down to a great deal of the time.

A simple hunch that what the kidnapers really wanted was only one thing — to get Mike Shayne out of Miami!

But why? Why such a risk as a kidnaping just to get him out of town? He was a good detective, but not that good. No one was that good, unless—

The raw-boned detective thought about the retainer contracts he had. There were only three: two insurance companies, and a large New York detective agency who retained him to do any work they needed in the Miami area or the South.

Because if they went to such lengths to keep him out of town, then they had to know that he would be in the case automatically. Which meant one of his retainers. And they also had to fear him very much.

Shayne felt cold. What if he was wrong? If Lucy were in Los Angeles? The kidnapers could have been simply stupid. Men who kidnaped usually were; it was a stupid type of crime.

Yet, Shayne felt his hunch. He was sure. And, in the last analysis, what good could he do in Los Angeles anyway?

“Tim?” Shayne said quietly.

The reporter looked at him.

“I’ve got a hunch, Tim,” Shayne said. He explained quickly.

Rourke stared at him.

“You’re sure?” Rourke said.

“No,” Shayne said, “but I’m going to take the chance. I have to. We’ve got to get a lead on Lucy. Now listen. You stay here, be seen, work around with the Los Angeles police. I’ll go with you as far as Headquarters. I expect they’ve got a man watching, if my hunch is right.

“When we get to Headquarters I’ll try a disguise. I’m not easy to hide, but I’ll do something. Then I’ll get the police to fly me to Las Vegas in a police plane. I’ll get the jet for Miami from Vegas. I won’t even get in touch with Gentry until I get back to Miami. If they have a man here, they’ll figure it out after a while, but I should get a day’s start anyway. If it all goes well, I’ll be in Miami by midnight.”

“All right, Mike, if you really think—”

“It’s all I’ve got, Tim. If I’m wrong, you and the Los Angeles police can do all I can.”

Neither man spoke again until the great jet circled out over the blue Pacific and swooped in for a landing at Los Angeles International Airport.

The Los Angeles police were waiting at the end of the moving sidewalk inside the main terminal building. Shayne watched everyone and everything all the way from the jet to the police, but he saw nothing and no one.

“Hello, Mike,” Captain De Jong said. “Sorry, but we’ll do our best. I’ve got my men checking all air arrivals, even private planes.”

Shayne nodded, and said nothing about his hunch until they were safely in a police car. Then he leaned forward and explained it to De Jong. The captain was dubious.

“It’s a hell of a chance just to get you away,” De Jong said.

“I know, but maybe someone needed me away very badly,” Shayne said, “which means that I’ve got to get back because if it’s that important I ought to spot it as soon as anything happens. And if I’m right, that’s my lead to Lucy.” The captain agreed to Shayne’s plan, and when they all reached the courthouse, Shayne went into the private office of De Jong with a police disguise expert.

A half hour later three uniformed Los Angeles policemen walked casually out of the Courthouse and into a waiting prowl car. One of the policeman was tall and gaunt, but instead of red hair his was black, and dark glasses covered most of his upper face. His nose was straight, and he looked every inch a policeman.

Behind the wrap-around pilot-style dark glasses Shayne watched carefully, but he saw no one who seemed to be even close enough to be interested in him. At the airport again he walked quickly to a small police plane. Moments later the plane took off.

Later that night anyone watching the Las Vegas airport would have seen a tall, dark-haired, aquiline-featured man in dark glasses board the Miami-bound jet. But Shayne was sure that there was no one watching.

It was just after midnight when the jet touched down in Miami, the city itself a blaze of light in the night. Midnight was not a late hour for Miami. But there were few people at the airport to greet the jet, one of the test arrivals for the night, and Shayne walked carefully in the shadows.

He did not take his car, which was parked in the parking lot, but waited until he was sure no one was observing, and then caught a taxi. He directed the driver to a medium-priced transient hotel in the heart of the city.

In the hotel he checked in under a fake name and went up to his room. Once in the room he sent down to room service for a bottle of Martel. The cognac came. He tipped the waiter, and closed the door. He poured four fingers of the good brandy, and picked up the telephone. He got an outside line and dialed Will Gentry’s private number.

The chief was there, and that made Shayne feel good. Will Gentry was staying on the job where Lucy was concerned.

“Will?” Shayne said quietly.

“Mike! Where are you?”

“In Miami, Will. I came back.”

There was a silence. Then the gruff voice of the Chief of Police said, “You found her?”

“No, Will, I didn’t even look. I’m in the St. Peter’s Hotel. I’m not supposed to be back. Can you come here? Room fourteen twelve. I don’t want anyone to know I’m back.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes, Mike.”

Shayne hung up, took a long drink of the fine cognac, and stared thoughtfully at the far wall of the hotel room.

He hoped his hunch was a good one.

VI

Will Gentry appeared at the door ten minutes later. The bluff chief had changed into civilian clothes. He took a glass of the Martel and looked hard at Shayne.

“Tell me, Mike.”

Shayne told him. The whole hunch and the secret and disguised trip back. “So I figure that someone wanted me out of town very badly. Or, to be exact, wants me out of town because I think something is going to happen that hasn’t yet happened.”

Gentry chewed his cigar stump. “It’s a hell of a long shot, Mike. Lucy could be sweating out in Los Angeles now.”

“She could be,” Shayne said, “but my judgment says no. I’ve got a lot of experience, Will, and that’s what gives me the right to judgment. I’ve got to get to whoever has Lucy on my terms, not on his.”

Gentry gulped his cognac. The chief looked hard at Shayne.

“Okay, say your hunch is right,” Gentry said slowly. “Say the whole deal was to get you out of town, as far as Los Angeles. What’s to stop the kidnapers from having really taken her there anyway? I mean, why keep her here? And by taking her out there maybe they leave a small real trail to keep you busy.”

Shayne nodded. In the silence of the hotel room he rubbed at his jaw and sipped his Martel. It was a good question. Gentry knew his business.

“Number, one, I don’t think they would have risked it, Will. Not for a small advantage of leaving me an interesting trail. No, they could have just sent a man with a piece of her clothing, something from her bag, anything. In fact, they probably did, and Tim and the L.A. cops will find it tomorrow.

“They had to know that you had every cop in the city on the alert, that every contact of mine would be alerted. Even that Tim would have the news boys watching. Why take such a risk for so small an advantage?”

Gentry nodded agreement. “Okay, Mike. So they used a phony tipster. They knew you’d have to check it out. What’s your other reason?”

“Whoever engineered this is smart and very careful. If my hunch is right, he pulled it all just to remove the chance that I could hurt him. That’s careful planning. I figure that, once having snatched Lucy, he would keep her close around as an added piece of insurance in case his first plan doesn’t work.

“He’s already taken, her, so he’s in bad trouble enough. He’s got nothing to lose by keeping her around, and maybe a lot to gain if anything goes wrong. As a last resort he can use her as a hostage.”

This time the silence of the room was thick. Both men knew what Shayne had said. Even if his hunch were right, all the advantage was still with the men who had Lucy. If Shayne got close to them, they still had Lucy as a cover.

“All right, Mike. Let’s say you’re right,” Gentry said. “Where does that leave us?”

Shayne stood, poured another four fingers of the Martel, and then began to pace the small space of the hotel room. There was little room, and Shayne paced the rug like a caged lion.

“It leaves me with three possibilities, Will,” Shayne said. “I’ve got a retainer with Continental Insurance, another with Casualty Mutual, and a third with the Jansen Detective Agency in New York. I don’t like the possibility of Jansen, because how could anyone know they would call me in?”

Shayne stopped for a gulp of cognac, and went on. “But both Continental and Casualty Mutual have a lot of coverage in Miami. I’ve done work for both of them many times. It figures that anyone in a company insured by them, or maybe anyone planning anything against a company insured by them, would know I’d get the call.”

“And if you weren’t here, they’d wait for you rather than send a man down,” Gentry said. “That could mean a day, maybe more than a day of lag before you got to work. It’s not a lot, Mike, a day.”

“But possibly enough if they were afraid of something I already knew,” Shayne said.

“Anyway, if you were out of town on a case, they wouldn’t expect you to drop everything on the instant,” Gentry said. “It could be two days, or they could send a man from New York.”

“Right,” Shayne said. “Now, Will, can you do me a favor? I want to stay under cover as much as possible. I know most of the big companies insured by the two insurance companies, and it figures to be a big company if they went to all this trouble. At least, a company big in assets. But I don’t know them all. So if you could send one of your boys to look into my files and get the names—”

“Will do, Mike,” Gentry said. “And then you want me to stake out all the places?”

Shayne stopped pacing. “It’s a big job, Will. And on just a hunch.”

“I like your hunches,” Gentry said, “and it’s a kidnaping. If the Mayor or anyone wants to question later, I’ll answer later.” The gruff chief stood up. “All right. I better get at it. It’s late, but I can get started.”

“Thanks, Will. I hope my hunch is right, and we can get after them fast,” Shayne said.

“So do I, Mike,” Gentry said.

After the chief had left, Shayne sat with his third drink and looked at the walls of the room. He looked at each wall in turn. He needed sleep, but he did not think he was going to sleep tonight. Not with Lucy somewhere out there in the city that was slowly growing darker as the night deepened.

If Lucy was out there!

It was more than possible that while Shayne sat hiding in a Miami hotel room, Lucy was somewhere far away in Los Angeles. And there was an added hazard.

No matter where Lucy was, if the gang who had taken her suspected that their plan to lure Shayne out of the city had not worked, they might kill her at once.

It was not a pretty thought.

Lucy could die whether his hunch were right or wrong. Because if his hunch were wrong he was out of touch with the kidnapers.

It was past two in the morning when Shayne at last decided to try to get some sleep. He could do Lucy no good by staying awake with nothing better to do than drink.

Shayne lay down, but he did not undress. For a time his eyes would not close. His brain would not rest from the constant thoughts of Lucy alone somewhere with men who didn’t care if she lived or died, and probably preferred the latter. Then, slowly, he began to doze — and the telephone rang.

Shayne jerked instantly awake.

His big hand grabbed the telephone and almost dropped the receiver.

“Yes?” he barked.

“Mike?”

It was Will Gentry’s voice.

“Yes, Will, you have something?” Shayne snapped.

“I think so, Mike. One of the names on your list was Markham, Gilley and Pinter, Incorporated?”

Shayne swore. “Sure, the wholesale jewelry outfit. Diamonds mostly. But that’s a lousy three-man company!”

“Not so lousy, Mike. They just lost a cool half million dollars in stones — diamonds, rubies, the works. Cleaned out of their whole stock.”

“When?”

Gentry’s voice was grim. “That’s the kicker, Mike. It happened early this evening. Maybe six hours ago. When my man got back from your office with the list it hit me right in the face. The robbery was reported early this evening. When I saw the company on your list it rang a four-alarm bell. And, Mike?”

“Yes, Will?”

“No leads at all. They got clean away.”

“I’ll be down at the side entrance,” Shayne said. “Pick me up on your way.”

Shayne hung up. Was this the crime? It fitted all the needs of his hunch all right, except that it was a small company. It was insured by Continental Insurance, and he, Shayne, was sure to be called in by morning. It had happened almost as soon as he was out of town.

A $500,000 haul was a big one. Shayne knew a thousand hoods who would risk a kidnaping charge for that kind of money, even at the cut price they would have to take to fence the stones.

Only one thing puzzled Shayne — there were no leads.

If there were no leads, how could Shayne hurt the thieves?

He put on his dark glasses. He looked into the mirror. Still in his disguise, no one could really tell that he was Mike Shayne. He hoped that someone was going to get a big surprise — but how?

VII

Mike Shayne waited silently in the shadows of the side door of the hotel. He smoked. He was not feeling good. If this was the crime he sure was involved with Lucy’s kidnapping, where did he start? A simple burglary with no clues?

Ten minutes later Will Gentry’s long black car glided up to the side door of the hotel. Shayne dropped his cigarette and walked quickly across the dark sidewalk and slid into the car beside Will Gentry. The car moved off at once. The gruff chief of Miami Police nodded to Shayne.

“It looks like your hunch was right, Mike. At least, you said there was going to be some big crime involving one of your retainers, and here it is. The other clients turned out quiet so far.”

“Tell me about it, Will. All the details,” Shayne said.

Gentry spoke low as the black car drove through the late night streets toward the offices of Markham, Gilley & Pinter. “There were four men. They appeared in the offices of the company at nine o’clock tonight. One of the partners, John Pinter, was working late with another staff member. Just the two of them.

“They never heard a thing. Pinter says the four hold-up men just appeared in the office. They wore rubber face masks. You know the trick they all use now, ever since that Brinks hold-up. Every two-bit thief in the country is covering his face with a rubber play mask.

“Anyway, they appeared. They didn’t say a word. They tied up Pinter and the other man. Then they cleaned out the whole office — safe, work drawers, everything. They walked out the front door and got clean away.”

Shayne was silent in the big car. Gentry chewed moodily on the stump of his black cigar. An unspoken question hovered in the silent air. Shayne finally put it into words.

“How come they had such a large amount of stones on hand, Will? Was it usual to have such a valuable stock?”

“No, Mike, it’s the usual damned thing,” Gentry said bluntly. “They had just gotten a special big shipment. Sort of a middle-man deal, on consignment to be delivered all through the south. That was why Pinter was working late. The big shipment was the largest they had ever handled. It made up about half of the haul. The rest was their normal inventory.”

“So the burglars somehow knew the big shipment was in the office,” Shayne said.

“That’s the way it looks to me,” Gentry said.

“How many employees?”

“About twenty,” Gentry said. “They all knew about the shipment two weeks ago. I’ve got my men checking them all out right now, but it’s going to be a long job.”

Shayne rubbed his chin. “Then how could I be so dangerous they had to go to so much trouble to get me out of town? Damn it, Will, I don’t see it yet. I thought I’d see the picture as soon as I knew what was going to happen.”

Gentry was grim. “Maybe you’re wrong, Mike. Your hunch, I mean.”

Shayne shook his head. “No, I can’t be. It’s too much coincidence that the crime I expected showed up exactly on schedule. They wanted me out of town, Will. But why?”

“Maybe we’ll find out at the offices,” Gentry said.

The black car drove on and a few minutes later pulled up in front of the office building where Markham, Gilley & Pinter had its offices. A uniformed patrolman came and leaned into the car. He saluted Gentry.

“Anything new?” Gentry asked.

“No, sir,” the patrolman said. “We haven’t found anything. It looks like they parked in the alley at the side, and just went in the service entrance and took the elevator up. But we haven’t found a lead.”

“Bellows still upstairs?”

“Yes sir. The lieutenant is still going over the offices.”

Gentry turned to Shayne. “You want to go up, Mike?”

Shayne frowned. “No, not yet. I’ve got to think of Lucy. I don’t want anyone to know I’m back in town.”

“What are you going to do?”

Shayne shrugged. “I’m going to think, Will; I’m going to sit here and think.”

After Gentry and the patrolman had gone up to the offices of Markham, Gilley & Pinter, Shayne sat back in the dark interior of the big black car and thought about the hold-up and the small company. In front of him, hidden by the dark night, the shadowy head of Gentry’s driver rested against the back of the front seat now, dozing, catching a little rest in what could be a long night.

For Mike Shayne it had already been a very long day and night. It was hard to realize that twenty-four hours had not yet passed since the voice had told him over the telephone of Lucy’s abduction. Less than twenty-four hours, but it seemed an eternity. He knew no more about where Lucy was than when the voice had called.

In the black car he lit a cigarette and thought about Markham, Gilley & Pinter. He clicked the company off in his mind. Not large, but a substantial firm. Conservative, not a hint of trouble all the time Continental had insured them. All its employees were bonded. Still, $500,000 was a big temptation for anyone. Investigation might uncover one man, or woman, out of twenty with a sudden need for money.

Shayne closed his eyes, smoked, and thought about the three partners. Walter Markham: tall; grey-haired; distinguished. A gentleman of expensive tastes. Single and something of a gay man-about-town, even at sixty-two. The businessman of the trio, the organizer and administrator. Shayne liked Markham, and, excluding his penchant for women some thirty years younger, knew of no vices the man had.

Max Gilley was the salesman, the hard-sell wheeler-dealer of the partners. Short, chunky, peppery and the youngest of the three at forty-nine. Gilley was married to a handsome woman some ten years younger than himself. It seemed like a happy marriage. As far as Shayne knew, Gilley neither gambled nor drank to excess. He could not, at the moment, think of anything he knew about Gilley that could hurt the man.

The last of them, John Pinter, was the technical man, the gemologist, the expert on diamonds and the other precious stones. Pinter was a diamond-cutter in his own right, although he rarely did that now. A small, thin man of fifty-four, Pinter was married to a woman almost his own age and had four, children, all grown-up. The youngest about thirteen.

Shayne smoked, swore softly. He could think of nothing that he knew about any of the partners that connected to a hold-up. Of course, he did not know them that well. He had had no reason to know them. He was still trying to remember all that he knew about the company when Gentry Opened the car door and sat down beside him.

“Anything important, Will?” Shayne asked.

“No, not that we can tell now. No clues at all,” Gentry said. “There was no break-in for entry. It looks like they just came in the front door, and went out the same way. Pinter swears he locked the front door, but I can see that he’s not absolutely sure. I figure they came prepared to break in, but found the damned door open and strolled right in. The guy working with Pinter wasn’t sure the door was locked at all.”

“Careless,” Shayne said bluntly. “Or worse.”

Gentry chewed on his cigar. “Pinter? It’s possible, I suppose. He doesn’t look the type, but we’re checking into his background. It sure looks like those hold-up boys were tipped by someone.”

“What about the other two partners?”

“Bellows says that Markham was out at the time of the robbery, didn’t get home until about two. He came home alone and he’s at home now with one of our men,” Gentry said. “Gilley was at home all night. His wife was with him. We took his statement, and he’s still at home now. All three of them are coming down to Headquarters tomorrow morning. And that’s about all we can do until then.”

Shayne nodded. “All more or less covered. Yet each one could have tipped the hold-up or arranged it.”

Gentry scowled. “Damned dangerous, Mike. I mean, it has all the feel of an inside man. None of them could ever really show up with a sudden fortune and not arouse suspicion. The insurance people, and you, would never give up on the case, right? And where would one of them run if he wanted to? We’ve got them watched already, they wouldn’t get far, and who’s going to take them in?”

Shayne sighed. “Okay, but, damn it, Will, there’s something about this hold-up that I’m supposed to be able to spot and ruin the deal. Okay if I take a look at the offices up there on my own now? Are they empty?”

“They will be as soon as Pinter goes home. I’ll leave one man, but otherwise it’s all yours.”

It was ten minutes later that John Pinter left the building. A patrol car followed Pinter. Shayne slipped out of Gentry’s car, into the alley, and in the side entrance of the building.

VIII

Mike Shayne left the service elevator and stood in the dim corridor. The doors of the elevator closed behind him. The redhead looked around.

This was certainly where the burglars had stood. One corridor led straight ahead and past the main entrance of Markham, Gilley & Pinter. A second corridor ran at right angles to the first corridor, past the elevator, and along toward the rear of the building.

Shayne considered the corridors. He could see nothing on the floors that might have been dropped. It was doubtful that he would find any clues as such. Lieutenant Bellow and the rest of Gentry’s men knew their job.

Shayne started along the corridor toward the main entrance to Markham, Gilley & Pinter.

He stopped.

He listened. Something was odd. A noise that was out of place. Then he knew what it was.

The service elevator was coming up again!

Gentry had said that he would leave Shayne alone in the offices. Still, maybe one of Gentry’s men wanted to do some more work, or tell the officer on duty inside the offices something. That was probably all it was. And yet—

Shayne looked around. There was a mop closet just ahead along the corridor. Shayne slipped into the closet and waited. The elevator stopped at the floor. Shayne heard the doors open and close. Footsteps came along the corridor.

Slow, cautious footsteps.

Shayne tensed. The way the man was walking it could not be one of Gentry’s men.

A dim, shadowy figure passed outside in the corridor as Shayne watched through a tiny crack from the closet. He could not see the figure clearly. But he could see one thing clearly — an automatic in the man’s hand.

Shayne let the figure pass, and prepared to come out of the closet, his own automatic in his big hand. The man turned at that moment and looked back along the corridor. Shayne could still not see the face clearly; it seemed to be a dark face with a large nose and oddly deep eyes.

He could not see the man clearly, but he could see the caution of the man, and the fact that the man seemed to be looking for something or someone.

Shayne tensed to jump the instant the man turned again.

But the man did not turn in the dim corridor. Instead he backed a few steps until he was directly outside the door of Markham, Gilley & Pinter. Then, with a last look all around, the man cautiously opened the door of the office and vanished quickly inside.

Shayne came out of the closet and moved quickly along the corridor. He reached the door to the offices of Markham, Gilley & Pinter. As he put his hand on the doorknob, his gun in his other hand, he heard a sudden grunt and the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.

Shayne kicked open the door and charged in with his gun ready. His grey eyes took-in the scene at a glance.

The policeman left by Gentry was on the floor unconscious. The man Shayne had seen enter the office was crouched beside the prostrate form of the policeman. The gun was in the hand of the intruder and aimed at Shayne.

The redhead hurled into the room, saw it all, and in the same motion dove for cover as the intruder fired.

Shayne felt a violent blow on his right hand.

His hand went numb and the force of the blow knocked him sideways and against the wall. He came off the wall ready to fight back and then realized that he no longer held his automatic.

The blow on his hand had not been on his hand at all. It had been on his pistol. The intruder’s shot had been a lucky one. It had hit his pistol and knocked it away, the force of the .45 caliber bullet numbing Shayne’s hand and knocking him against the wall.

Now, for a split second, the redhead stood there as if frozen. Unarmed, he stared at the intruder, who still crouched by the unconscious policeman. The man had his automatic still trained on Shayne. Now the man stood slowly.

“Okay, buddy. Just hold it very still. You got that?”

Shayne said nothing. He just stood there without moving.

“Hands on the wall. Quick!” the man commanded.

Shayne turned and leaned against the wall with his hands flat against the wall. He felt the deft hands of the man search him quickly but efficiently. Then he heard the man stand back, and heard the light switch on.

The only light in the office had been a desk light. Now the intruder turned on the overhead light.

“Okay, buddy, turn around.”

Shayne turned.

“Sit over there. Put your hands flat on the desk. Don’t move a muscle.”

Shayne sat at a desk in the big office. He placed his hands flat on the desk. But he was not thinking about any of this. He was staring at the face of the intruder.

The man had no face. His face was a rubber play mask!

A dark colored rubber mask with a long nose, grotesquely bulbous lips, a rubber beard, and deep eye sockets through which the real eyes glinted menacingly.

“Okay, buddy, who are you?” the man snapped.

“Who do you want me to be?” Shayne said.

“Don’t get wise, buster!” the man snapped, and the automatic wagged threateningly.

Shayne only smiled. He had realized that this man, who had to be one of the hold-up men, was looking for something — and that something had something to do with him, Shayne. The man was not going to shoot until he knew more.

“There’s been a robbery. I suppose I’m a cop,” Shayne said.

“Nuts! We know all the fuzz around here. You’re no cop, buddy. Take off those dark glasses. Quick!”

Shayne removed his glasses.

“Stand up. But be careful.”

Shayne stood up. The man behind the rubber mask seemed to stare at him.

“That nose, it’s a fake. You’re Shayne!”

“Who’s Shayne?” Shayne said.

The eyes behind the rubber mask glinted coldly. The man stepped closer, the automatic trained on Shayne’s heart.

“Mike Shayne’s a private snooper too smart for his own good,” the hold-up man said. “You’re dead, Shayne, and so is your girl. That’s right, smart buddy. You’ve killed the broad and yourself. He said you might figure it out.”

“He must know me pretty well,” Shayne said quietly.

“Well enough. You just couldn’t play it cool, could you? Disguise and all. So you knew we wanted you out of town. You just had to sneak back. Now—”

That was as far as the hold-up man got. As he had been talking he had stepped closer to Shayne. In his recognition of the redhead he had grown momentarily careless. For one instant, as he talked, the automatic wavered and his alertness relaxed. In that instant Mike Shayne moved.

His hand swept up a heavy metal box that was on the desk and hurled it at the masked hold-up man in the same motion. As his hand moved, swept, threw; his body leaped sideways and down at the same split second.

The box struck the man in the face. The automatic fired. The bullet grazed Shayne’s shoulder as he went down. Shayne hit the floor behind the desk, and with all his strength kicked a heavy desk chair straight at the man.

Confused for the moment, the man, after firing once, had started toward where Shayne had vanished behind the desk. As the man came forward the chair struck him hard in the legs. Off balance, the man grunted and went over in a sprawling heap. His automatic skidded away.

Shayne dove toward the pistol.

The masked man recovered and scrambled frantically for his gun.

Shayne reached the gun first. He grabbed it and half turned. The masked man threw himself on Shayne and the pistol skidded away again.

Shayne hit the man in the face.

The man kicked Shayne with his knee.

Shayne grabbed the man and hurled him across the room as he scrambled to his feet, The man saw Shayne’s automatic and clawed for it. The man came up with Shayne’s pistol in his hand.

Shayne kicked the automatic away. He kicked hard at the man’s face.

The man caught his foot and threw Shayne down.

Shayne scrambled up. The man threw the same chair at Shayne and the redhead sprawled over the chair as he charged.

The intruder jumped up, staggered, and ran out through the door into the corridor. Shayne leaped up, grabbed his automatic, and raced in pursuit.

In the corridor he saw the man go through the stairs door. He raced down the dark hall and through the door. Footsteps pounded above him. Shayne panted up in chase.

The man knew that he, Shayne, was back in town and working on the case. If the man got away it would probably be Lucy’s death warrant! The redhead had to stop him.

At the top of the stairs the door to the roof stood open. Shayne ran through the door and saw the fleeing man some fifty feet ahead. Shayne fired. The man ran on and out of sight behind some rooftop structures.

Shayne came around the corner of one of the structures — and the man was gone. Feeling cold, Shayne let his grey eyes search for the man in the night.

Then he saw him.

The masked man was at the edge of the roof. A long board was thrown across the wide gap to the next building, and even as Shayne watched the man started across.

Shayne ran toward the spot, but even as he ran he knew he would not reach the man in time.

Once on the other roof, the masked intruder would pull the board after him, and escape.

Shayne reached the edge of the roof.

The man reached the far side. He kicked the board free from the top of the parapet of the other roof.

In another second the man would be gone.

Shayne dropped to one knee, held his automatic in both hands, and fired.

He fired at the man’s legs.

The man screamed. His left leg buckled. He swayed at the edge of the roof, clawed for something to hold, and for a long split second hung there in mid-air.

Then with a grotesque scream, the man fell over the edge of the roof and plunged all the way down to the dark street below. Shayne looked down for a moment, then turned and walked slowly back toward the stairs down.

IX

In the offices of Markham, Gilley & Pinter, the patrolman who had been attacked was groggily awake. Shayne helped the man into a chair and then called Gentry. The chief of police listened in silence.

“I wanted to take him alive, Will, but I had to stop him getting away,” Shayne said.

“I understand, Mike,” Gentry said. “We’ll be down in a few minutes. At least he won’t get back to the rest of them.”

“They still won’t know that I’m back in town,” Shayne said, “and won’t change whatever their plan is. One thing, Will.”

“Yes, Mike?”

“Now we know that they did kidnap Lucy just to get me out of Miami,” Shayne said. “All I have to do is try to find out what I know that’s so dangerous to them.”

“Maybe we can get a clue from the guy you killed,” Gentry said. “Maybe he’ll lead us to them,”

“Maybe,” Shayne said.

But the redhead did not think so. At least, he did not think that an identification of the dead intruder would lead to the hold-up men, and Lucy, in time. Whatever they had in mind would have to happen soon. They could not have expected Shayne to stay away too long after the hold-up had been reported to Continental Insurance.

No, whatever was going to happen, that they were so worried Shayne could prevent, would happen soon.

Shayne turned to the patrolman Who had been attacked.

“You all right now?” Shayne asked.

The patrolman nodded. “I think so. I’ll just take it easy a minute, you know. I feel lousy. I was sort of trying to think about the case when he jumped me. I had my back to the door, and I guess I wasn’t alert. Damn.”

“We all make mistakes,” Shayne said. “Keep alert this time, I’m going to take a look over the place.”

Shayne stood there in the large main office of the jewel company and tried to visualize the scene. Nothing had been touched. It was clear where Pinter and the other member of the staff had been working — a long table at the far end of the room. The front door was in sight from the long table, but was some distance away. It was possible that the four men could have entered very quietly and not been heard until they seemed to “appear.”

The rest of the office was taken up by three storerooms and the three private offices of the partners. Jewels do not require a great deal of space, and the company was not in the retail business. They had no need for showrooms and other details of retail trade.

Shayne went from room to room. In each of the storerooms be found a shambles where the jewels had been hastily scooped up by the thieves. The main vault was open, but it had been blown open, not opened by a key.

He carefully inspected each storeroom. They were small, dark rooms without windows and lighted only by artificial light. There were air-conditioning ducts, but they had not been touched as far as Shayne could tell. The ducts were large enough for a man to have crawled through, but the screws that held the covers were painted over and had not been tampered with.

Shayne then began to inspect the three offices of the partners.

The office of John Pinter was the smallest and the nearest to the main entrance. It had a desk, a couch, and three chairs in addition to the desk chair. There was also a table for the examination of the jewels, and a large bookcase filled with books about gemstones. On the table there was a microscope of a special type used for jewels.

There were also three windows and a door. Shayne looked out each of the windows. A sheer drop, no fire escape, and no building close enough. Shayne turned his attention to the door. It was a solid wooden door and was locked with a deadfall lock from inside.

Shayne closed his eyes and pictured the layout of the offices and the corridors. The way the three private offices were located, Shayne realized that the door in Pinter’s office opened into the cross corridor that led from the service elevator. But the deadlock was stiff and corroded. Shayne could barely move it, and could not open it. The lock had not been oiled in a couple of years.

He found nothing in Pinter’s office and went on to Markham’s office. It was larger, with four windows, and its furnishings were the most lavish. The chairs and couches were leather, and the desk was a massive pile of mahogany. The books in Markham’s shelves were primarily business volumes.

The door in this office was exactly the same, and the lock was equally corroded. The windows gave no more chance of access. Shayne went on to Gilley’s office.

The office of the salesman partner fitted somewhere between the first two in decor. It was better furnished than Pinter’s office, but not as elegant as Markham’s office. Shayne could picture their business set-up, As far as he recalled they were equal partners, but Markham was the front and dealt with the customers, so had the best office. Pinter was all science and technology, so he had the least pretentious office. Gilley was right in the middle. And, then, the offices had to reflect the taste of each man.

Shayne could see the character of Pinter in his austere and modest office, and he could see the character of the elegant and aristocratic Markham in his office. Gilley’s office fitted right in — it was loud and expensive without being tasteful. A salesman’s office. And yet—

Shayne let his eyes glance all around Gilley’s office. There was an incongruous feeling about Gilley’s office. While most of it was loud and brash, there were certain touches — two very good paintings on the walls; a series of books on military tactics, from Alexander The Great to Douglas MacArthur; another series of books on Latin American History; two small wooden carved statues of some kind of African tribal gods.

Shayne rubbed his gaunt jaw. Gilley? What was it he knew about Gilley? Something in this office of the salesman partner had given his mind a twist, a pinch. It was as if small fingers were trying to move inside his head. Something about Gilley that he did know. But what?

Shayne shook his head. Whatever it was would come. He turned his attention to the windows. It was the same story here — no access, no fire-escapes. He examined the door. An identical door to those in the other offices. The same deadlock, rusted and corroded.

Shayne stopped thinking. His grey eyes stared at the lock on the inside of Gilley’s door. It looked identical, and yet — Shayne touched the lock lightly. There were places where the dust and grime had been disturbed.

The change was faint, very faint, and yet where the moving parts were corroded, there was the smallest of hairline cracks. Shayne tried the lock. It turned stiff and hard, but it turned. He opened the door and looked out. It was the cross corridor, and the service elevator was not more than twenty feet along the corridor.

Shayne examined the lock closely. He touched the inner bolt. He looked at his hand. There was no doubt. The lock had been oiled! Very lightly oiled, wiped carefully, but it had been oiled, and recently. Shayne stared at the lock.

Then he saw the outside of the door.

He looked at it for some time. Then he stepped along the hall and looked at the other two doors into the offices of the jewel company. He should have guessed. A company that handles such fortunes in jewels would not want side doors that could be entered.

There was nothing on the outsides of the doors. No lock, no doorknob, no keyhole!

The doors were completely smooth — on the outside. They could be opened only from the inside, and from the look of them they were never opened.

Except that the door into Gilley’s office had been opened.

Shayne bent down and looked at the floor. There was no doubt. In the dust that had accumulated under the door over the years of remaining unopened there were distinct footprints!

Someone had come through this door from the corridor into the office of Max Gilley, and the door could only be unlocked from the, inside.

And the lock had not been picked or broken!

Shayne walked slowly back into Max Gilley’s office and closed the door softly. He stood there in the silent office and stared at the door for sometime. All right; this door had been opened and used. All the other comparable doors were corroded shut.

But he had no way of knowing just when the door had been used.

He had no proof that this was how the hold-up men had made their entry so silently and unseen.

If it were how they had come in, there was no way of knowing for sure just who had opened the door.

The door had been securely locked from inside by the time the police arrived, which was why they had not noticed that it had been used. But that could easily have been done by the hold-up men themselves.

The door was left unlocked. The hold-up men entered. They locked the door again behind them, and went out into the main office. Shayne frowned. He strode quickly across the office to the door, out into the main office.

The lock on this door was a spring lock, easily opened from inside. Shayne opened the door and looked closely at the lock on the outside.

A key lock!

The door into Gilley’s office had to be unlocked with a key. The door into the office. Which was why the outer door could be left unlocked after Gilley had left. No one could get into Gilley’s office without a key! Who had keys to Gilley’s office?

Shayne rubbed his left ear. It was a hundred-to-one that only the partners had keys to each others offices, if anyone had such keys except the man who occupied the office!

What was it he knew about Max Gilley? The small nibbling at his brain that would not come clear?

Because one thing was very sure. The unlocked door was just another indication of the main factor in the whole affair — time!

Someone had wanted him, Mike Shayne, out of town for a time. For the first twenty-four hours after the hold-up, at least. And someone knew that the unlocked door would be discovered sooner or later. And it was more and more a certainty that there had to have been an inside man. And the hold-up men had been so worried about something happening too soon that they had risked having one of them watching the building. Because that was the only way the dead hold-up man could have followed Shayne up to the offices.

Time.

The holdup men needed time, and the only reason had to be for an escape. Whatever it was that Shayne was supposed to know, or guess, it had to be involved in the escape plan.

Only whose escape plan? Which one of the partners was the inside man? Which one had Lucy? If he did not guess right, Lucy could be dead before tomorrow night.

X

In the good but spartan office of Will Gentry, Mike Shayne sat in a chair with his long legs stretched out before him and listened to Gentry read the report on the man Shayne had killed.

“Male, Caucasian, about thirty-five years old. No distinguishing marks. Prints not in our files, we’ve sent them on to the FBI. His clothes had New York labels, so we’ve got a teletype out to New York. We don’t make him in our files at all. Nothing on him to give any leads, and nothing that seems to connect him to Lucy.”

Shayne nodded. “What about keys to Gilley’s office?”

“All three partners have keys to each office,” Gentry said. “But no one else does.”

“So we’re down to three.”

“If that door was the real method of entry, Mike.”

“It was, I know it. And it’s got to be an inside job. There had to be a tip, Will.”

“All right, but it’s not proof, and I need proof,” Gentry said. “So far none of them has made a move. Damn it, Mike, it might not be an inside job after all. I mean, maybe they got wind of the shipment from the other end, from those who shipped the stones to Markham, Gilley & Pinter. Or maybe it was just luck. That’s happened before, believe me.”

“I know,” Shayne said, “but this has all been planned too carefully. I’ve been on to my answering service, and no one has called about Lucy. They don’t want ransom or a favor, Will; they just wanted me busy out of town. It’s more than a hunch now.

“I talked to Tim out in Los Angeles, and he says they’ve come up with absolutely nothing. The L.A. police say they’re just about sure Lucy isn’t in L.A., and I agree. She’s right here, Will, in the hands of someone who wants cover for a getaway with five hundred thousand dollars in stones.”

“My hands are tied, Mike, until one of them makes a move. We’re out after the hold-up men, but we haven’t a smell so far.”

“We won’t have,” Shayne said, “until they move again, and that could be too late.”

Gentry chewed on the stump of his black cigar and scowled. “You know as well as I do, Mike, that we’ve got nothing on anyone. In a case like this we’ve got to wait to pick up the hold-up men and get a story, or actually come up with real evidence against the inside man.

“We’ve got no connection yet. Unless we could get the inside man to confess, we’ve got to wait for a break. Either we catch the gang, Or our man makes his run. Sooner or later we’ll get them all, but it takes time.”

Time. There it was again. The whole case was time, and Shayne thought with a cold feeling that time was running out for him — and for Lucy.

Shayne looked at his watch. “I’m betting our man has to move soon. It’s almost six o’clock now. I think he’ll move before he’s due in here at nine o’clock. And when he moves it’ll be quick and safe.”

“No move is safe with those stones,” Gentry says.

“His will be, Will. He’s got it planned all the way. And it won’t be any route we expect. It’s something very special, something I might guess, but no one else.”

Shayne stood up, began to pace. “He’s staked it all on the getaway. He knew you wouldn’t pick him up without some lead to him — and yet he knew it had to look like an inside job. So he knows that when he moves it has to be fast, short, and so safe you can’t touch him after may a brief period of danger.”

Shayne looked down at Gentry. “Whatever it is, Will, he was worried, really worried, about only one thing — that I could come up with something that would stop him before he was safe! He’s worried about being stopped too soon.”

Gentry swore. “Okay, then I’ll pick them all up now. I have enough to hold them for questioning.”

Shayne shook his head, paced, “But that doesn’t help Lucy. No, Will, as I said all along he’ll have Lucy somewhere as a safety measure in case we stop him. And you don’t have enough to hold anyone long. No, we’ve got to work out what he’s afraid of, what route he could use to get away safe.”

Gentry shrugged. “I don’t know of any safe way to run out with five hundred thousand dollars in hot gems. No matter where he goes we’ll get him. No matter what route he used, we’d figure it out as soon as he exposed himself by running.”

Shayne nodded. “All right, let’s start there. First, his plan has to be based on complete safety from the police when he gets away from Miami. Second, his route has to be such that it won’t help us even when we know it, when he’s exposed himself. Third, it has to be something that we could stop if we knew it in time.”

Gentry raised his arms wide in disgust. He puffed on his cigar, stared up at Mike Shayne.

“First, there are a few places that don’t have extradition treaties for robbery, but they’re hard to get to. Second, I can’t think of any route except magic that we couldn’t stop him on once we knew it. I mean, we’ve got the airports covered. No one would get far by car. The Coast Guard can pick up any boat at sea. No matter what he does he’s a fugitive, Mike.”

Shayne nodded. “He moves, and you cover every exit from the city. You’re on roadblocks, you’re at the airports, and you can watch any ship.”

“Sure,” Gentry said. “Maybe he figures on Cuba, but he’s got to get there, and that isn’t easy now. Besides, they don’t take to letting thieves in, not even with five hundred thousand dollars.” Gentry laughed. “They’d take the loot and send him back!”

But Shayne had stopped pacing and stopped listening. The big redhead stood in the silent office as if paralyzed. He blinked his grey eyes. Gentry stared at him.

“Mike? You’ve got it?” Gentry said quickly.

Shayne slowly sat down. His grey eyes were fixed on Gentry’s face. “Haiti!”

“What?” Gentry barked.

“Haiti, Will! Max Gilley and Haiti! Damn it, that’s got to be it.” Shayne stared at Gentry. “Four years ago I was in Washington. Some special crime commission called me up there, I remember. Damn it, of course! I went to a dinner with Assistant Attorney General Walters. It was one of those big Washington affairs. You know, all sorts of Ambassadors, Congressmen, the works.”

“So?” Gentry said.

“Max Gilley was there. Damn! One of those little things you don’t remember. I’d only met him once or twice. But he spoke to me. He was drunk, excited; he wanted me to meet his friends. He must have been afraid I’d remember right away if I was called into the case.”

“Remember what?” Gentry snapped.

“His friends, Will. They were Haitians. Government people from Haiti. One was a woman. A very beautiful woman. Gilley was all over her. But it was more than that, too. He was involved with them. You understand? They were important people from Haiti, and I don’t know if they’re in or out down there now.”

Shayne stopped. Now he saw in his mind the books on the shelves of Max Gilley’s office: military books; and books on the history of Latin America. Where he sat he reminded Gentry of those books.

“All right,” Gentry said, “so what? The Haitian government wouldn’t protect him.”

“Are you sure?” Shayne said. “Listen, Will, what if Gilley was very close to some important people down there — the woman, say? He gets there, and they deny he’s even there. I imagine that five hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money down there, and for all I know he might have more stashed away there. Maybe this is just a last big haul to take with him.”

Shayne was up again, pacing. “What if they don’t admit he’s there? Relations between us and Haiti are touchy, always have been. If they deny he’s there, how do we touch him? He stays out of sight, changes his name and appearance, and our government isn’t going to push it. On top of that, if he gets the whole gang there, how do we ever prove a case against him? We can’t arrest them without proof and the loot.”

Gentry was skeptical. “All right. Say he gets there and they protect him, fine. But how does he get there? The moment he moves we’re all over every way out of the city We’d spot a flight to Haiti, or a ship. We’d have him in hours, before he got to Haiti.”

Shayne nodded. “There can’t be a lot of ways to get to Haiti from here.”

“As far as I know almost nothing that doesn’t stop first in Puerto Rico or The Virgin Islands or the Bahamas, all places we’d grab him like a sitting duck. A private plane we’d spot in minutes once he ran,” Gentry said. “Damn it, Mike, even if he reached some means of transportation, we’d get him after he got aboard. I’d have a warrant to pick him up as a material witness in ten minutes!”

“You wouldn’t have to, Will,” Shayne said. “It’s my guess he’ll have the jewels with him by then. They went to a lot of trouble to keep me out of this. I think that means the whole gang will be together — and with the stones.”

Gentry laughed. “Then we’d really have him. What way could he run where we couldn’t touch him?”

Shayne again stopped pacing. He looked at Gentry. “Will, are there any Haitian ships in port?”

“How do I—” Gentry began.

“Find out, can you?” Shayne said.

“Sure, Mike,” Gentry said.

The chief picked up the telephone and snapped out some: orders. Then he hung up and the two men waited. Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen. Mike Shane paced. Gentry puffed on his cigar, crushed it out, and lighted a fresh cigar.

Twenty minutes later the telephone rang. The sun was already up in the sky outside the office as another day came to Miami. Gentry picked up the receiver and listened for a minute. Then he barked a thanks, and hung up. He looked at Shayne.

“No Haitian ships at all,” Gentry said. “Except a private yacht that docked last evening. It sails at eight o’clock this morning.”

“Private yacht?” the redhead said.

“Yeh,” Gentry said. “It belongs to some political big shot down there, and—”

Gentry stopped, blinked, the cigar smoke curling unnoticed into his dark eyes. Shayne had half-turned. Now the two men stared at each other in dead silence for a full minute.

“Some political bigshot in Haiti,” Gentry said. “Maybe a Government official. The yacht made an unscheduled stop here.”

“Haiti’s a small country, corrupt sometimes,” Shayne said. “I’ll bet the yacht is classified as a Government ship, a naval vessel.”

“Put a gun on it and call it a gunboat,” Gentry said, “and pay no taxes. It’s a common trick down there.”

“The government pays the maintenance, too,” Shayne said. “A neat trick.”

Gentry blew fierce smoke. “You’re sure about Gilley and Haiti?”

“I’m sure now,” Shayne said. “It’s what he was afraid I would remember, Will, and it’s condition two, right? Once aboard that yacht we can’t touch him. He’d be on Haitian property. If they said he wasn’t on the ship, we wouldn’t even request to board. He could take the whole gang aboard, stolen jewels and all!”

Gentry stood up. “Then let’s get him, Mike.”

Shayne did not move. “No, Will, we can’t go and get him.”

This time the silence in the room was as thick as mud.

XI

Mike Shayne paced the brightening morning office.

“If you pick him up at his house, Will, you’ve got nothing on him, and the gang still has Lucy. We’ve got to think of Lucy.”

Shayne’s gaunt face was haggard now with the long, endless day and night without sleep or rest. His grey eyes were sunk in fatigue, but they had not lost their cool snap of reason. For a moment the redhead looked out Gentry’s window at the sunlight just beginning to wash the city and the distant blue water.

“It’s my guess that Gilley will rendezvous with the rest of the gang and go to the yacht. We’ve got to let him, Will,” Shayne said.

“All right. We let him run, meet the gang, and then we pick him up at the yacht,” Gentry agreed.

Shayne shook his head again. “We can’t pick him up then either, Will.”

Gentry swore. “Now listen, Mike, when I get that gang all together, I’m going—”

“He’s our only lead to Lucy, Will,” Shayne said. “He’ll leave a man with her. He won’t release her, or have her killed, until he’s on that yacht.”

“I can’t let him escape, Mike,” Gentry said. “Not even for Lucy.”

“I know that,” Shayne said. “You’ve got to stop him from getting to the yacht, but don’t pick him up.”

Gentry chewed on his cigar that had gone out now. He looked out his sunny window. He was not looking at Shayne.

“Let him go and tail him?” Gentry said at last. “That’s risky, Mike. Risky for you and for me and for Lucy.”

“What else have we got, Will?”

“If they get away again, it could be my scalp and Lucy’s life, Mike,” Gentry said.

“I know that, Will, but I’ve got to find where she is before we can do anything,” Shayne said.

“How will you do it?”

“I’ll have to chance tailing them from the yacht after they spot you and your men,” Shayne said.

Gentry shook his head. “Too risky, Mike. You could lose them in a hundred ways. They’ll be alert when they see us at the ship. They’ll know we’re on to them, and they’ll be on watch for a tail.”

“I know,” Shayne said, “but we don’t have time to set up a team to keep them under watch, Will.”

Gentry nodded gloomily. “Damn it, Mike, if only Lucy wasn’t involved in this.”

“Which shows how smart they are,” Shayne said. “They took her as protection, and it’s working. Gilley’s a military science amateur, Will. His move with Lucy was a double safety. He got me out of the way, he hoped, and if that didn’t work he has her as a hostage. He’ll have an alternate plan of escape, and Lucy covers his rear.”

“All right, you tail them. What happens if you lose them?”

“Then we’ll have to wait for them to move again. He has to get to Haiti somehow. Sooner or later he’ll have to move, and he’ll probably try to trade Lucy for a safe conduct.”

“You know I couldn’t make a deal like that,” Gentry said.

“I know it, but I hope Gilley doesn’t,” Shayne said. “Let’s hope I’m lucky and don’t lose them.”

“All right, Mike,” Gentry said. “But I’m going to hang a transmitter on your car. That way we can at least follow you in case you need us.”

“That sounds good, Will.”

Gentry picked up the telephone again and began to issue orders. He instructed his lab to affix a homing transmitter to Shayne’s car. He ordered two units to the pier where the Haitian yacht was tied up. He instructed them to hide, but not to hide too well. Let themselves be seen, but not make it easy.

Then Gentry stopped in mid sentence. Shayne watched the chief listening. Gentry hung up and stood.

“My unit at Gilley’s house reported in,” Gentry said. “Two minutes ago. Gilley’s on the move. He drove out of his garage suddenly and gave my unit the slip five minutes ago! He’s making his run, Mike.”

“Let’s go!” Shayne snapped.

The two men walked quickly out of the office and down into the morning sun of Miami. The units were waiting. Shayne took his own car. They all drove fast to the pier in the fine morning. The yacht was ready for sea. Steam was up. Only two lines still linked the yacht to shore. It was exactly seven-thirty in the morning.

“The transmitter’s working, Mike,” Gentry said as the two men stood in the shadows of the pier and out of sight of the yacht. Gentry’s men were in place. On the yacht a dark woman leaned on the rail of the bridge and stared down at the police, She did not move, she only stood and watched.

“Good,” Shayne said. His grey eyes looked around. The approach to the yacht was a narrow lane along the pier itself. There was no other way. A car would have to drive down the lane of the pier and swing out into the open loading area.

Shayne looked up the pier toward the street. Just where the lane began on the pier, there was an alley across the street: It had a perfect command of the lane onto the pier.

“I’ll park up in that alley. They can’t see me,” Shayne said, “and I can’t miss them. They’ll have to drive back from the pier the same way they go on.”

Gentry agreed. “Okay, Mike. That woman on the yacht has seen us. She’ll give the high sign. I just hope Gilley doesn’t can the yacht first and get scared off before he shows here.”

“We have to chance that,” Shayne said grimly.

He did not add, but he thought, that chance was too big a factor in the whole affair. It was eighty percent chance, and nothing could be done about it. That was the nature of a kidnaping.

Gentry left to take up his position with his men. Shayne got back into his car and drove off the pier and into the alley across the street from the pier. He backed into the alley, lighted a cigarette, and stared out over the pier at the blue water of the harbor.

Shayne looked at his watch. It was a quarter to eight. Gilley was cutting it fine, if he was coming. Shayne could be wrong. He did not think that he was wrong, too much pointed to the entire sequence of events, but he could be. He smoked and waited.

At five minutes to eight, Shayne began to feel uneasy. If he was wrong? Then—

The car turned slowly into the street and came down in the sun toward the pier. Shayne crouched down in his car. He was far enough back so that they could not see him, but he wanted to be sure.

The car stopped at the head of the pier. Shayne realized that they were not going onto the pier. He watched four men get out. Three were strangers, but the fourth was Max Gilley. It was Gilley who carried a large leather, case. The four men locked around, and then began to walk fast along the pier toward the yacht that was out of sight from where they had parked.

Shayne stared at the parked car.

If he tried to tail he could lose them.

He got out of his car and moved quickly to their car. The keys had been left in the ignition. They had not opened the trunk. Shayne took the keys, moved quickly to the rear of the car, and opened the trunk.

It was a large trunk — and empty.

Shayne stared at the open trunk. If he tailed he could lose them easily. But inside the trunk — He had to make a quick decision, weigh the risk.

He ran to the front, put the keys back into the ignition, returned to the trunk, drew his automatic, and climbed inside. He lowered the trunk until it almost locked. He took out his handkerchief, tore off strips of cloth, and stuffed two small strips into the lock. Then he lowered the trunk as far as it would go.

The trunk could not lock now. Inside, Shayne held his automatic in his right hand, and held the trunk closed with his left. He hoped he had a good enough grip. If the trunk flew open while the car was moving, he was in trouble.

He lay there in the dark.

Minutes passed. Endless minutes like hours.

Then he heard running feet.

The feet came up to the car, were all around the car. The feet did not pause, did not come near the trunk. The car sagged under the sudden weight of men piling into it. The motor started. With a wild squeal of rubber against concrete the car lurched into motion.

Shayne braced inside the trunk. The car moved rapidly into high gear, suddenly leaned far over in a turn, straightened, and roared away.

Inside the trunk Mike Shayne hung on.

So far he had a better chance of finding Lucy than if he had tried to follow them. But he was alone. The homing transmitter was on his car in the alley.

Shayne was on his own — and there were four of them.

XII

Mike Shayne, inside the trunk, tried to follow the turns of the car, and looked at the luminous dial of his watch in the dark trunk.

The first turn, he knew, had been along Moreton Street, away from the bay. The next turn had led to the curving entry to the parkway. After that he estimated the speed and watched his watch.

The car drove steadily north through the city and out into the northern suburbs. Shayne could tell by the speed and the changing sounds and echos outside.

When the car finally turned off the parkway, Shayne guessed that they were in an area of highway motels and small, shabby suburban villages — the hungry areas that were once villages but now hung onto the skirts of the city and lived off the crumbs of the tourists.

The car drove some distance farther after leaving the parkway, and then turned sharply and Shayne heard the crunch of gravel beneath the tires. The gravel continued to crunch for some hundred yards, and then the car made a slow turn and came to a halt.

Shayne felt the car dip, and then rise as the four men got out. A cold, hard voice sounded almost directly above Mike Shayne.

“Okay, Gilley, it didn’t work. You got any ideas?”

“I have many ideas, Macjic, and you remember who’s running this little operation,” the voice of Max Gilley said. Shayne now recognized the voice of the salesman partner. He also recognized the undercurrent of uneasiness in the voice. So did the man named Macjic.

“I’ll remember, as long as you can run it, Gilley. You like being a general, but I ain’t sure you got the nerve for it,” Macjic said.

“I have all the nerve I need,” Gilley’s voice snapped. “It must be that damned Shayne. He came back. No one else could have guessed about that yacht.”

“All right. The peeper came back and queered that deal,” the hard voice named Macjic said. “What next?”

“We put the alternate plan into effect, of course. I was not unprepared for this. Come inside the house.”

Shayne lay almost without breathing inside the trunk. He listened to the crunch of feet in gravel. The sound went on for some half a minute, and then there was the noise of feet on wood, and the creak and slam of a screen door.

Shayne waited, and while he waited he tried to guess what the ground outside was like. There was a gravel drive, and then a wide gravel yard. A house with a wooden porch. The house was some distance from where the car had been parked. The car was not in a garage. As far as his ears had told him, all four men had gone to the house, but he had no idea if there were other men, or if the car was clearly visible from the house.

He was sure there had to be at least one more man, because someone had to have been left with Lucy.

He lay listening and holding his automatic for another four minutes. He heard no sounds and no movement but a faint and distant sound of the traffic on the parkway.

Shayne took a deep breath, and opened the trunk a crack.

His right eye peered out.

The sun was bright all around the rear of the car — but the car itself was in the shade. Directly behind the trunk was the thick trunk of a tree. Beyond the tree Shayne saw only bushes, flowers and open fields.

The car was nosed toward the house!

At least he was in that much luck.

And he saw no one, which was also luck, but unfortunately he could not see the whole area in front of the car.

He took another deep breath, opened the trunk all the way and leaped out and closed it down all in a single motion.

An instant later Shayne was crouched behind the tree and looking toward the house. He had made no sound, the trunk not closed all the way down. Nothing moved in the immediate area. The windows of the house were heavily curtained, even in the Florida heat.

It was a ramshackle two-story frame house of the kind they used to build all over the country from Independence, Missouri, to Key West before people got ethnic about the place they lived instead of their heritage. Now all the buildings in Florida had Indian, Spanish or modern architecture.

The yard was all gravel and dusty. The trees drooped with dust. It had all the air of a temporary hideout. The kind of place Hollywood always has bank robbers hide out in, and, strangely, Hollywood is right.

There was another car parked on the far side of the house. Inside the house itself nothing seemed to move. The entire scene was one of peace. A peace Mike Shayne knew that he was going to have to shatter soon.

The redhead looked carefully all around. To his left the grove of trees curved in a gentle arc toward the rear of the property. He could move in the cover of the trees to a point some thirty feet closer to the house at the rear. After that he would have to move in the open.

He crouched and darted from tree to tree until he had reached the point closest to the house. Then he saw that he had another break in his favor. From where he crouched, the rear windows of the house all shaded with shades down, there was a shallow ditch that ran to the downspout at the rear of the house — as if the shallow ditch had been cut but years of rain run-off from the roof.

Shayne went down on his belly and crawled along the shallow depression. He reached the rear of the house just at the back steps and crouched beside the steps. He reached up and tried the rear screen door. It was locked.

Shayne studied the door. He could see the simple hook inside. He reached into his pocket and took out his pocket knife. Deftly he cut a hole in the screen and unhooked the door and slipped inside. He crouched again in the gloom of the back porch.

The house seemed strangely silent. Flies buzzed in the small back porch. A closed wooden door led into the house. It was not locked. Shayne opened it and slid through. He closed the door behind him and stood almost holding his breath in the back hall of the old-fashioned house.

Then he heard the voices. They came from the distant front of the house, and they were arguing. Shayne guessed that Max Gilley was having trouble with Macjic and the other professionals. That was good. If they argued, maybe that would keep them busy long enough for him to find Lucy.

He did not care about them or the loot just now. His first job was Lucy. He inched silently along the hall toward the front hall where a staircase of massive dark wood mounted up in the dim interior to the second floor. It was odds — on that they had Lucy on the second floor.

He knew the layout of houses like this — all large rooms on the ground floor to hold the coolness behind drawn shades as long as possible. The smaller rooms were all on the second floor. Shayne reached the foot of the stairs and started up. He made no sound, moving with the amazing cat-like agility for such a big man.

At the top of the stairs he paused to listen. The voices still argued below. Mostly Max Gilley’s voice explaining, instructing. The salesman-partner sounded like a general before the battle. Shayne went on along the upstairs hall.

He listened at each door.

At the last door along the upstairs hall he heard the noise. A woman’s cough! Then he heard water run, and footsteps, and a man’s voice.

“Here, drink. You ain’t got long, no sense you coughing like that, sister.”

“Thanks,” the woman said, and it was Lucy!

Shayne heard the familiar voice with a leap in his stomach. He put his hand on the doorknob and slowly began to turn it.

The voice was behind him.

“I told you, didn’t I, Gilley?”

Shayne straightened, turned.

Four men stood there. Max Gilley was one of them. The other three were hoods. The tallest had to be the man named Macjic, the one who had spoken. A tall, cold, cobra-like man — thin and deadly, and with eyes just dumb enough to be very dangerous.

“Drop the gun, mister.”

Shayne dropped his automatic. One of the men came and picked up the gun and stepped back.

Max Gilley stared at Mike Shayne. “How did you know? How did you guess, Shayne? It was foolproof! You hear? Fool-proof!”

“It was stupid,” Shayne said, “and you’re dead, Gilley.”

Gilley’s face contorted. He stepped to Shayne and slapped the redhead hard across the face.

Shayne laughed.

“Okay,” the tall man named Macjic said. “How did you get here, peeper? Did you come alone?”

Shayne just laughed again.

“Bring him downstairs,” Macjic said. “The broad, too. We got to move fast.”

XIII

Mike Shayne and Lucy Hamilton sat bound to chairs in the small dressing room area behind the main living room of the house. A small, pale man sat in a chair in the door way alternately watching them and turning to listen to the debate still going on in the large living room.

“You’re all right, Angel?” Shayne said.

Lucy smiled. “I’m fine, if stupid, Michael. I just walked right up to them. You’d think I would have learned more caution after all the years with you.”

Shayne grinned. That was just like Lucy — under the threat of sudden death for days and all she talked about was her error in letting herself be taken so easily. But she was human, too. Shayne watched her look nervously at the door.

“Do... do we have much chance, Michael?”

“We always have a chance, Angel,” Shayne said. “Listen to them. They’re nervous.”

The voices were louder in the living room as the gang debated their next move.

“How do you know he came alone?” Macjic said.

“I just know it,” Gilley said. “Shayne is that kind of man. Isn’t it obvious that he was in the trunk of the car? We found it open, the lock jammed. There was no other way he could have followed us, and that means no one else followed us.”

“You think, but you don’t know. You’ve already blown one big plan,” Macjic sneered. “I never liked the kidnap caper in the first place.”

“Do you want to run all your life?” Gilley shouted. “Once you start running they’ll pick you up one by one unless you have a haven. Haiti is the haven. I’m in good there. I’m on their side, have been for years. I’ll be a big man there, and we’ll all be protected. Why do you think I decided to steal the jewels? I don’t need money, not for myself. It’s to set myself up over in Haiti.”

Shayne heard Gilley take a deep breath. “I’m in with people who are important now, but who’re going to be a lot more important. When I get there with the money we’ll all be safe as in church. No extradition, no admission that we’re even there. That’s why we have to follow the alternate plan.”

Macjic laughed. “Like we had to follow the big plan? How do we know you can deliver on this one any better, Gilley?”

“It’s risky, of course, but it’s better than running. Look, the yacht will be cruising off shore tonight, as soon as it’s dark. All we have to do is get twenty miles to the boat. They’ll have the Coast Guard watching by now; it won’t be as good as the first plan, but it’s our best plan. We keep the woman with us, then we tip them where she is. While they pick her up, we make it out to the yacht.”

There was a silence in the living room. A long silence. Shayne listened, and he could picture the scene. The three pros were all watching Gilley, and each other. They did not like the complications. They were pros, and they liked a regular getaway plan. They probably wanted to drive far and fast from Miami and Florida, hole up in some remote place, and wait for the heat to cool. Then they would try to get away all the way.

But the prospect of a safe haven was strong.

“All right, Gilley,” Macjic said, “but you’ll do a little bending. We blow this place. I don’t like it when I’m found by anyone. One guy can do it, anyone can do it.”

“I don’t like unnecessary moving, Macjic,” Gilley snapped. “That’s the unnecessary risk. Every move we make exposes us.”

“This ain’t the army, Gilley,” Macjic said. “We got no flank. And the first error of a crook is to stay in one place when he has been found. We move.”

There was another silence. While it was going on, and the guard was watching out into the living room, Shayne touched Lucy with his foot and nodded at her to indicate that she stay alert from now on, be ready.

Shayne was thinking hard. They were all about to make an even bigger error. They were going to take the unnecessary risk of moving two prisoners they had secured, and they were going to do it while they were disagreed. They did not know for sure who was giving the orders, Gilley or Macjic.

Shayne considered. The other two hoods would watch Macjic. Macjic would watch Gilley. Shayne did not know what the fifth man, the small one who was in the chair in the doorway, would do. He was the man who had given Lucy the water.

While Shayne was thinking the silence had grown. Then it was broken by Gilley’s reluctant voice.

“Very well, Macjic, but I’m against it. I don’t like moving with the girl. Not before we’re ready. And I don’t like moving Shayne.”

“So we don’t move Shayne,” Macjic said. “We leave him — dead.”

“Risk a shot being heard? Murder? Why do you people want to complicate everything by killings? The crime of robbery is one my Haitian friends don’t care about, and no one is going to chase us very hard. Murder is another matter.”

“It’s already kidnaping, Gilley.”

“Only technically. It’s more like taking a hostage.”

“Tell that to the jury when they charge you,” Macjic said. “Now let’s move. I don’t like sitting around here. The cops could be moving in right now.”

“Do you have somewhere we can go, Macjic?”

“You bet I do. I keep a couple of hide-outs on any caper like this, just in case. Boys, pack it up and let’s move.”

There were noises in the living room. Shayne listened as the gang spread out to its jobs. He heard the outside door open and close. Distant voices talked urgently. A few minutes later the car motor started up to the right of the house.

The small, pale man in the doorway stood and looked out as if not sure that he was going with the rest of them. Shayne kicked Lucy again. She looked at him, her brown eyes alert and ready.

Shayne whispered softly, forming the words with his lips alone. “Faint. When they untie you, faint, bite them. Do anything to draw attention.”

Lucy nodded.

Shayne listened. He was sure that they would send only one man to bring himself and Lucy. A lot would depend on which man. He watched the small man at the door. Then he saw the man smile and nod. Someone was coming.

Shayne felt lucky again. The man was one of the hold-up men, not Macjic nor Gilley. He came into the room carrying his pistol. But he was not an amateur.

“Untie them,” the hood said to the guard.

The guard came and untied them. The hold-up man remained across the room with his pistol leveled. Shayne looked at Lucy quickly and gave a small shake of his head. Not yet.

“We going somewhere?” Shayne said.

“Button your lip,” the hold-up man said.

“You guys must be mighty nervous,” Shayne said. “It’s a dumb play to move in daylight.”

“I said shut up,” the hold-up man said.

But Shayne saw that the man was nervous.

Soon his hands were untied, and his feet, and the small man pushed him and Lucy toward the door into the living room. The hold-up man walked backwards through the door until Shayne and Lucy were in the living room. Then the gunman motioned with his pistol.

“Move.”

Shayne walked slowly beside Lucy, his eyes scanning the large room. The holdup man was behind him. The smaller guard walked beside them, his gun in his belt. Then Shayne saw the rug.

It was a large throw rug in the archway between the living room and the main entrance hall. Outside the second car motor had started. Shayne saw no one else in the house.

He reached the throw rug. Suddenly, as he stepped off the rug in the entrance hall, Shayne stumbled heavily, fell to his knees.

“Hold it!” the gunman shouted behind.

Shayne scrambled up, turned to apologize, his face pale.

The gunman stepped onto the rug, alert.

Lucy screamed. “No! Don’t shoot! Oh—”

And Lucy crumbled to the wood floor of the entrance hall. The small guard jumped to her, bent. The gunman let his eyes turn toward her for a split second.

Shayne bent and jerked the rug with all his might.

The gunman went over backwards in a shattering fall.

The pistol hit, fired, and a bullet sang into the ceiling. Lucy suddenly sank her teeth into the hand of the small man who was bent over her. The man howled in agony. Shayne hurled himself onto the fallen gunman.

The gunman made one effort to rise. Shayne kicked him under the chin and heard his neck snap.

Shayne whirled. The small guard was clawing for his gun with his bitten hand bleeding. Lucy scratched at him like a tiger. The man hurled her away. Shayne got to him and kicked the gun from his hand. Shayne bent and hit the man flush on the chin.

“Come on, Angel!”

Shayne caught Lucy’s hand, bent for the gun, and stumbled as fast as he could for the stairs.

Shayne and Lucy went up the stairs — fast. Shayne half dragged the brown-eyed woman.

The downstairs door burst open and a shot splintered wood from the stairs.

Then Shayne and Lucy made the cover of the second floor hallway. Shayne fired two quick shots down toward the door.

Then there was only silence in the house.

XIV

Mike Shayne listened in the silence. He could hear them in the living room. They were working over the two Shayne had jumped.

“Gilley!” Shayne called down. “Macjic!”

There was a movement, and then silence again.

“You’re through, all of you. You try to rush us, and I get you.”

Silence.

Shayne listened. He checked the automatic. It had had a full clip. With only three shots gone he could get them all. Unless they came all at once, but he did not think they would. They were holdup men, not soldiers.

Shayne listened and heard whispers. The harsh whispers of men making plans.

“You’re through, boys, all of you. You better run. Maybe you can make it. You better forget about that Haitian yacht, though. I’ll have that covered two minutes after you run.”

The whispers below grew angry. Then they were no longer whispers. They were the angry shouts of frightened men.

“We’ve got to get them!” Gilley said, shouted.

“You get them,” Macjic said. “I thought you didn’t want any killing?”

“The situation has changed. They know the alternate plan. We have to kill them now,” Gilley almost screamed.

“Your damn plan is shot anyway,” someone else said.

“Not if we get them! Rush them, you cowards! What did I bring you in for? Rush them! Kill them!”

Then Macjic’s cold voice. “You rush them, Gilley. He’d get some of us for sure. Be brave.”

“I planned this, you stupid ape! I hired you to do the fighting. Now you earn your money! If we don’t kill Shayne and the woman we’re through. They’ll take us one by one!”

Gilley’s voice was almost hysterical. Desperation gave the salesman-turned-thief a frantic sound. Desperation and fear that oozed from his voice like blood from a dying snake.

Shayne listened, gripped his automatic, and waited for what would come from the silence below. After Gilley’s last outburst there was only silence. Then Macjic’s voice came again. Low now, and colder than it had ever been.

“We’re through anyway, Gilley,” the leader of the gunmen said softly. “You and your plans. Shayne knows it all, and the cops’ll figure it out. Time’s run out, smart man. Your big plans are through.”

There was another silence. Shayne listened, his grey eyes narrowed, alert. Suddenly Gilley’s voice rose almost to a thin scream.

“No! Where are you going? Just kill them and we’ll be safe! I have friends. We’ll be protected! Stop! I said stop, come back, you won’t get ten miles—”

Again silence. A heavy, charged silence. Then the quiet, soft, cold voice of Macjic.

“You and your stupid plans, big man.”

The two shots echoed through the old frame house like the sound of a hammer in a great hollow space. Explosions that bounced and reverberated up the stairwell and along the hallway where Shayne and Lucy crouched.

Before the echoes died there was another sound below, the sound of a door closing.

In the upstairs hallway Shayne and Lucy looked at each other, and waited. Nothing moved below. Then car motors revved up outside in the yard of the old house. There was a squeal of tires against gravel, and then a steady and fading crunch of wheels against gravel. The car motors faded in the distance.

In the house there was total silence and nothing moved anywhere. Mike Shayne stood up slowly and moved to where he could look down over the stair railing to the entrance hall below. He saw nothing. He turned and motioned to Lucy.

“They’ve gone, Angel,” Shayne said.

“Are you sure, Michael?”

“I’m sure, Angel. Macjic and his men are professionals. We’re no more danger to them than anyone now. They’ll revert to their normal ways now and make a run for it.”

Shayne led the way down the wide stairs, across the entrance hall, and into the living room. The detective stopped in the archway into the living room. Lucy came up beside him and gave a small cry.

The body of Max Gilley lay on its back in the middle of the throw rug Shayne had used to such great effect. A pool of blood spread out all across the rug. Gilley’s eyes stared up at nothing — at the shattered shreds of his big plans.

Gilley had been shot twice in the chest. Either shot would have killed him. Lucy turned away, her face white.

“Easy, Angel. He was behind the whole deal. He had you kidnaped and he robbed his own company. He had to end up this way sooner or later.”

Lucy nodded, but went out into the entrance hall and sat on a straight chair, and took deep breaths.

“You all right, Angel?” Shayne asked.

Lucy nodded. “I will be, Michael. I can’t stand violence or blood. The poor, stupid man.”

Shayne went to the telephone and called Gentry. Then he looked around the house for the stolen jewels, but, of course, they were gone.

Twenty minutes later Gentry and his men arrived. The gruff chief was all smiles when he saw Lucy.

“Now you, stay out of trouble front now on young lady,” Gentry growled to Lucy. “I can’t have you working us so hard.”

“Yes, Chief Gentry,” Lucy said with a twinkle in her brown eyes.

Gentry looked at the body of Max Gilley. “He got in with hard boys, and he wasn’t as tough as he thought.”

“That’s the story,” the redhead said.

“That and the fact that he tried to fool you,” Gentry said. “Too clever, like all amateur crooks. His kidnap of Lucy just drew attention.”

Shayne frowned. “Not such a bad plan, Will. If I had been here all along, I think I would have thought of the Haiti deal even sooner. He almost made it. Another half an hour and we would have lost him.”

Gentry nodded. “Yeh. Only now he’s the big loser. And we’ll have the others soon.”

Gentry was a little wrong, and so was Max Gilley. Macjic and his three companions were not picked up soon, and they got a lot more than ten miles from Miami. In fact, they got well over two thousand miles away.

All but Macjic himself were picked up trying to cross from California into Mexico. Macjic was eventually picked up by the Mexican police in a seedy dirt town in Baja California. He made no fight, and he was still carrying the case of stolen jewels.

The Coast Guard reported that the Haitian yacht cruised off the Florida coast all the night of the day Max Gilley died. At dawn it turned and steamed off toward the east. A woman was seen at the stern looking back. No one ever knew who she was.

Max Gilley’s wife cried for some time.

Markham, and Pinter had to get another sales partner.

Lucy Hamilton was back at work at nine o’clock the next morning, and Mike Shayne slept late.