Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 3, February 1961

It wasn’t the Redhead’s first danger-in-triplicate murder case under Caribbean skies. But Shayne knew if he didn’t watch his step... it could be his last!

I

The overseas calls from Nassau, British West Indies, came through one, two, three — bang — stacked up like pancakes on this suffocating July afternoon.

The first voice was clipped, arrogant, very English public school. “Michael Shayne? You’ll only make a fool of yourself and make things harder for Count de Nieully if you come over. If you’re smart, you’ll drop the Wyndham investigation.”

The connection clicked. There was a man who knew what he wanted to say and said it. There was nothing to be gained by trying to trace back that kind of a call.

The next call was a voice speaking with the very precise English of a man not raised with the language. It was a blunt warning to keep away from the case if the Miami detective valued his health.

The third call was from a hard breather, talking through a handkerchief, the speech thick and blurred. There was no mention of Wyndham, but the speaker offered the bribe of a preposterous fee if Michael Shayne would leave for Ceylon immediately to track down some mythical commercial data.

Shayne’s decorative secretary, Lucy Hamilton, stood belligerently in the doorway after the third call and declared, “See? That’s no murder trial over there — it’s a lynching bee! Michael, you’ve got to take this case on.”

The redheaded detective lounged back in his spring chair and tugged at the lobe of his left ear. He regarded his pert secretary quizzically. For three weeks, she had been growing more and more incensed at Tim Rourke’s reports on the trial as published in the Miami News until she had made it her personal cause celebre.

“Apparently,” Shayne told her, “I’m already in the deal.”

It was an hour before the fourth call came. This was from the Countess de Nieully, only child of Sir Herbert Wyndham, the victim, and the wife of the young count on trial for the murder. She made an urgent plea for Mike Shayne’s help, using Tim Rourke’s recommendation. All she asked was for Shayne to unearth some evidence that would aid the getting of a fair trial.

Shayne accepted the deal on condition that whatever he dug up would be available to the prosecution. The countess agreed reluctantly — the reluctance clearly evident in her voice.

Thus Mike Shayne was at Miami’s bustling International Airport just after dawn. Flying eastward into the new day, he chuckled most of the way over Lucy’s parting advice — “You just be careful they don’t end up making you a party to the murder!”

There was a good deal of shrewdness in her thrust, for the trial was turning out quite as bizarre as the murder itself. As Tim Rourke had written yesterday, “This trial sets a precedent in British jurisprudence. A man is being tried without any incriminating evidence, and is being compelled to prove his innocence in order to disprove a guilt which has not been established.”

“And with at least three outsiders wanting the count to hold the bag, it seems!” Shayne added to himself.

The noiseless jet winged over on the tight, downward spiral of island landings. The Bahamas, Jewels of the Atlantic, were strewn on the azure sea beneath. As the neat, sunkissed town of Nassau floated up to meet them, Shayne thought he might altogether enjoy this case.

Forty minutes later, he had radically reversed that cheery hope. He still cooled his heels and warmed his neck at the ‘S’ sector of Customs while a ferret-nosed inspector dawdled over obvious pretexts for delay. In the very middle of one item, the inspector glanced at the clock, and with no further flicker of interest in Shayne’s belongings, replaced them in his suitcase.

“Looks like you’re all cleared,” he said with a chuckle in his bright blue eyes. “Hope you enjoy your visit, Mr. Shayne.”

The detective contained his hot answer and headed for the lobby. Shouldering the door, he glanced back. The inspector had left his station to use a government phone on a post behind him. It was just time, the redhead noted, for the government offices to be opening.

“So,” Shayne frowned to himself, “I was not to be passed through until some official brass had his morning tea and toast and could be duly notified!” There could be no doubt at all that he had tangled at the start with a rather startling official attitude.

As he strode through the door, a cool English voice came at him, “Michael Shayne?”

Still bad tempered, the Miami redhead glared into a pair of amazingly blue eyes set in the tanned face of a character right out of Beau Geste. Tall, sinewy, athletic, aristocratic. The man stood a good six feet four and looked like a Scot. He wore tan Bermuda shorts and open shirt, but made his concession to British formality with a white crash linen jacket.

The redhead nodded his identification. The tall man took a briar pipe from his mouth and fell into easy step beside Shayne. “Gave you the official treatment, I see,” he commented. “That will give you an idea of what you’re up against.”

Shayne stopped and put down his suitcase, reached for a cigarette. “You’re my caller from yesterday who warned me off the Wyndham case?”

“Advised,” the man corrected smoothly. “Name’s Anthony Crispin.” He looked at Shayne shrewdly. “Apparently, somebody did warn you?”

Shayne cursed his Irish temper for his slip and let the question go unanswered. He frowned and lit a cigarette, tossing the match casually aside. “To what am I indebted for this welcome?” he asked.

Crispin knocked the dottle out of his pipe on the heel of his hand. He blew it and fresh-loaded it from a pouch bearing regimental stripes. “You still have time to take the advice,” he said. “Margot was an idiot to call you in. It is going to make things much harder for Raoul.”

“How much harder can they be than a rigged trial?” Shayne grunted.

“The fat’s in the fire now,” Crispin said. “But the jury can still report a null prosse or not guilty.”

“You think they’re liable to, with the star chamber circus of the prosecution?” Shayne demanded.

“Ah — that has to be the unavoidable risk,” Crispin murmured. “But if you get to stirring around, you may unearth some very lively skeletons. And every leading family in the islands will be putting on pressure to get Raoul convicted before you have the chance.”

“To keep their own skirts clean?”

“Skirts,” Crispin smiled with cool, sardonic humor, “is a very apt word! In spite of his age, Sir Herbert was a notably successful old lecher. At best, Island society is pretty much a bucket of eels. Nobody wants the bucket kicked over for public inspection.”

“Including you?” Shayne demanded.

“Very much including me,” Crispin nodded. “Although there is no slightest chance that I might become a suspect. At the time of the crime, I was in the hospital in traction from an accident water skiing.”

“Then why your significant interest?” Shayne inquired.

For the barest instant, danger shot through Crispin’s sky blue eyes like tracer bullets. Then he said, fully at ease, “Shayne, under the proper circumstances, there is a little homicide in all of us. I’d not like mine to be tested.”

Shayne picked up his bag. He said with droll mockery, “I will be sorry if I have to conjure up the devil in you, Crispin! But if it eases your mind, I’m not interested in any skeletons except Sir Herbert Wyndham’s.”

He let his hard gaze rest on the tall man for a moment, then moved on toward the telephone booths. He set his bag down to fish for change. He was vaguely conscious of the peculiar sound — a hissing thwaaaak — for several seconds before he realized that the sound had come from his bag.

Before he looked, he knew what he sought. And it was there — a small round hole, as black as an ink blot. It had put a period after the ‘S’ of a Savannah hotel sticker.

‘S’ also stood for Shayne.

His eyes leaped over the crowd to find something suspicious. Nobody was running, nobody was watching him, in fact, nobody was even not watching him particularly.

Crispin had stopped at the end of a waiting bench to fish for a light. He brought a jet lighter from his pocket and applied the flame, tamping the fire down with the butt of the lighter and drawing deeply of the smoke. Not until then did he glance back toward Shayne. His glance might have held a trace of derision.

Shayne watched him head onward for the lobby doors. His jacket pockets were bulky, but Englishmen had a way of stuffing their side pockets. It was impossible to judge whether Crispin carried anything as heavy as a small silenced pistol.

Shayne turned his inspection back to his suitcase, looking for the line of fire that might trace the bedded bullet. The shot had not penetrated the far side of the bag. So, it must have come from a zip-gun or an airgun, and its non-lethal purpose must have been to hit precisely where it had hit. It was impressive warning of somebody’s expert marksmanship.

The redhead gave the marksman his rueful respect and stepped on into the phone booth to raise Tim Rourke out of bed. Making arrangements to meet at the Nassau Hotel, he went on to the carports. No airline limousine was ready for town, so he signalled over a private taxi.

In the nearby alighting zone, a handsome, hard-eyed Latin lounged in a blue Ferrari as if waiting for the return of some friend. He was smoking a thick cigarette of dark yellow paper. He met Shayne’s glance with unyielding curiosity, expelling a long jet of thick blue smoke.

A mile down the road, Shayne leaned to catch the reflection in the taxi driver’s mirror, and saw the blue Ferrari following — without a passenger.

“Good!” he growled. “They’re going to bring it to me on a platter!”

Tim Rourke was waiting in the Nassau lobby. Shayne wigwagged, checked in, and told the bellboy to take up cognac and straight rye, and to bring the key to him in the men’s bar. Then the two Americans moved into the long dim room for an eyeopener.

Tim tapped a photo envelope he carried and said significantly, “I’ll show you these upstairs.”

The barkeep nodded to Tim and said to the detective, “Do I understand yours is always cognac, Mr. Shayne?”

“It used to be — but it’s bourbon now.” He looked at Tim curiously as the bartender moved off to get their drinks. Tim said, “News that you might enter the case was considered important enough to put on the local radio last night. Likewise, a description of you. With that bricktop of yours, you are not exactly hard to spot!”

“Who supplies the news for these local broadcasts?”

“A little of everybody. But the grapevine was buzzing about you by three o’clock yesterday afternoon.”

Shayne frowned. “That’s before I even talked with the countess.”

Tim lifted his shoulders and let them fall. “The sands have ears when it comes to this case! There isn’t anybody in the Bahamas who hasn’t a personal angle in it. This bartender, for instance, made some very handsome tips from Sir Herbert Wyndham, keeping him informed of visitors who might be here on various business and political deals. If the information came out, he’d lose his job.”

II

The bellboy came with Shayne’s key, and he and Rourke retired to the privacy of his suite. The rooms were spacious, cooled by old-fashioned ceiling fans and double doors opening on a balcony. It was a pleasant relief from Miami’s ultra-modern, sealed-in, sardine cans with their too chill air conditioning.

Shayne unpacked while Rourke mixed drinks. He found the pellet from the shot, a .25 caliber slug sticking to the hard rubber sole of a sport shoe.

He tossed it slowly in his hand as he asked, “Know a hard and handsome Latin who drives a blue Ferrari?”

“Sounds like Luis Valencia. He’s a freelance mystery man in Latin politics and arms running. Probably had some deals with Sir Herbert. They were friends.”

“Unh. And Anthony Crispin?”

Tim shot him a grin. “Nassau’s glamor boy? Third son of a viscount, top athlete, war ace, loaded with medals, and no money. Plays squire to a wealthy young widow, Alma Wollner, who runs with Margot de Nieully — the countess — and who rather adopted Margot’s mother for her own. Alma was raised an orphan, so the relationship is quite understandable. Alma is very loyal to the Wyndhams.”

Shayne pulled at his ear with one hand and jounced the pellet with the other as he sifted the potentials of these facts. Rourke went on, briefing him in various unpublished aspects of the case. Shayne turned suddenly toward the door, giving Tim a signal to go on talking. In the same instantaneous movement, he turned the doorknob and threw open the door.

A man stood there, obviously listening. With no slightest embarrassment, he nodded stiffly and moved past Shayne into the room.

He was built square, very fit for his hoary years, with a seamed, dark burned face, iron grey hair and mustaches. He had the same grey in his eyes, and, Shayne suspected, in his veins.

The reporter broke off his talk to exclaim, “Well, Mr. Dennis of the Colony office! Do you know Mike Shayne?”

“I know about him,” Dennis said dryly. He looked the redhead over, etching every detail into his memory.

“Shayne,” he said without preamble. “I hope that you understand that you are Visiting our shores strictly in the capacity of a private United States citizen.”

“Which means?” Shayne asked.

“You will be extended no cooperation nor privileges for investigation here. You will not be permitted to trespass nor invade the privacy of any citizen of the Bahamas. Under no circumstance, will you be permitted to carry or use firearms. Any complaint will force us to regard you as an undesirable citizen and to deport you accordingly.”

Shayne shaded grey with restrained anger. “What calls for this?”

“We feel our own police and private investigators quite competent,” Dennis stated. “And we do not intend to encourage a foreigner’s meddling.”

His gaze came hard, drill and official. “Have I made myself clear?”

“You have made the case much clearer!” the redhead breathed with anger.

Dennis nodded and turned back to the door. He paused with the door half open to add, “One thing which might save you some embarrassment — the de Nieully property is impounded by the crown until the termination of his trial. The company of the countess would not alter your status should we find you trespassing.”

“You ought to be glad for a little help unearthing some real evidence!” Shayne reminded him.

“We have quite enough evidence,” Dennis stated. “Nothing that you might turn up would affect the trial, nor the outcome, in the slightest.”

Then he was gone.

Shayne stared with disbelief at Rourke. Tim said somberly, “That just about limits you to the clubs and pubs and the Wyndham estate.”

“I wonder what they’d say if I came up with the murder weapons?” the redhead rasped.

“Unless they bore the incontestable finger prints of de Nieully, they would probably say they were counterfeit, and charge you with attempting to impede justice,” Tim laughed. “My friend, nobody else can be guilty as the crown sees it!”

He held out Shayne’s drink with a grim smile. “You look like you might need this.”

Shayne swept the drink into his hand and downed half of it at one toss. It was simply incredible to him that a case could be handled in this arbitrary manner in any British court. Finally, he forced himself to stretch out on a cool wicker chaiselounge to ask about de Nieully.

“An odd duck,” Tim said. “Likeable, but rather colorless. Easygoing, playboy type, but has some business ability. The crown prosecutor branded him a fortune hunter and claimed that he was estranged from his wife. But he’s a real count, has sufficient money of his own, and his wife came rushing back from Maine to defend him the minute she heard the tragic news about her father.”

“What was the family trouble a few months after their marriage?” Shayne asked.

“She was taken exceeding ill, necessitating a legal abortion. Her father, Sir Herbert, blew his top and blamed the count. Sir Herbert could be pretty crude when he was mad. He came out of the row breathing fire and swearing he’d see that his daughter got a divorce.

“His daughter refused, and Sir Herbert really flipped. Warned the count never to set foot on Wyndham lands again, and instructed armed guards to shoot him like a dog if he did. Changed his will so that the count could never benefit by a cent of his wife’s inheritance. Even tried to get the count black-balled out of the yacht club.”

“I suppose that could make the count hate him pretty thoroughly,” Shayne considered. “But it doesn’t paint a very likely background for a quiet bedroom chat at two or three a.m.”

“The quietness of the murder has bothered me all through the case,” Tim grunted. “The women of the family were vacationing in Maine, as you know. The Wyndham servants do not sleep in the main house. But there was a reliable houseguest that night, sleeping in the room that adjoined Sir Herbert’s. No sound was raised loud enough to disturb him, yet both men were quite sober when they retired, anticipating an early rise and breakfast.”

“What stands against the count?” Shayne asked.

“Hate. The fact that he knew the habits of the estate, and the layout of the house intimately.”

“And what is in his favor?”

“Well, for one thing, Sir Herbert’s well-known temper. In spite of his age, he was still built like a bull, and of a pugnacious disposition. The count is slight of build, and anything but aggressive. It seems a reasonable presumption that the count would hesitate to enter Sir Herbert’s room at that time of night without a gun, and that if he’d been armed with a gun, that is the weapon he would have used.

“Even if Sir Herbert was sound asleep, which seems doubtful, killing him with some instrument such as a hammer was damned risky for the assassin. If the first blow had failed, Sir Herbert would have bounced up roaring like a lion.”

“I’ll buy that,” Shayne agreed. “The use of a striking weapon — not even a knife, and with no attended scuffle — suggests a man with considerable experience in sandbagging. They never identified what the weapon might have been, did they?”

“No. It left half-inch, V-shaped marks. The blows were heavy, but that’s all they know. There was absolutely no sign of struggle. Yet Sir Herbert had been burned lightly on his face and lower stomach with a blowtorch both before and after death. Neither the murder weapon nor the blowtorch have been located.”

Shayne swirled his remaining cognac. He already knew that the count had been found to have slight burns on his forearm and mustache, such as might have been acquired from a blowtorch. But a houseguest of the count’s had testified that the count got the burns while lighting hurricane lamps previous to a dinner party at his home the night of the murder.

“What do the islanders think about that blowtorch angle?” Shayne inquired.

Rourke gave a grunting breath. “What they think and what they’re saying are two different things! Leaving the count out of it for the moment, the use of the blowtorch, as it was used, suggests the brooding vengeance of some husband or lover whose lady fair was stolen for a night or two by Sir Herbert in the past.

“But of course, anybody who says that openly is indirectly aiding the count’s defense. And the sad fact is that even friends of the count’s who sincerely believe in his innocence would rather see him hold the bag than to see a wide open investigation that might toss up some of their own dirt. So there isn’t much talk.”

“What do you think about Count Raoul’s innocence?” Shayne asked, so quietly and casually that Rourke was half into his answer before it struck him that he was pinpointed.

“I don’t know,” Tim confessed. “Financially, he lost from Sir Herbert’s death. As long as Sir Herbert lived, Margot had a sizeable allowance she could spend as she wished, and a good deal of it was doubtless spent on the de Nieully household. Also, there was always the possibility that she could eventually soften her father toward the count. With Sir Herbert dead, Margot’s inheritance is strictly accountable, and the count is firmly excluded.

“Outwardly, Count Raoul is not the killer type. And he has an established alibi for most of his evening. He gave a small dinner party, he was in excellent humor and did not get tipsy. At midnight, he took two young matrons home, returning at twelve thirty for a nightcap with his houseguest and his girl.

“At two o’clock, the house-guest’s cat disturbed the count. He brought it to the guest, asking him to lock the damned thing up, or put it out. The guest laughed and decided it was time to take his girl home anyway, and he was back by two-thirty. Count Raoul’s car was just where it had been when the guest left, and the lights in his room were out.

“Even the prosecution could not figure any period longer than ten minutes that the count might have had free to get to Wyndham and commit the murder. And it is five miles from his house to Wyndham’s.

“But the coroner could not pin Sir Herbert’s death any closer than sometime between two and five A.M. Now with luck, the count could have sneaked out of his house and done the job and gotten back in without observation or wakening his houseguest.”

“Still, you don’t really think he did it,” Shayne challenged.

“No, I don’t,” Tim conceded. “But he could have done it. On the other hand, there are at least twenty people in the Bahamas with even greater motive. Sir Herbert was a pretty ruthless duck — in business, in romance, or in politics.”

“I think that torch angle is the real key,” Shayne murmured, pulling his ear harder than usual. “It doesn’t fit right. If you bother taking a blowtorch to a man’s bedroom at two A.M. presumably you intend to use it on him. And if you do — both before and after death — you don’t bother to do it lightly.”

“Maybe the killer got squeamish,” Tim suggested.

“And so used the torch a second time?” Shayne remarked with a skeptical frown.

Rourke poured them fresh drinks and handed Shayne the photo envelope. The bulk of the pix were police pictures taken at the scene of the murder the next morning. They showed Sir Herbert lying in a relaxed position, half atop his covers, his face turned to the right. His right arm was outstretched with the hand open, palm up, as if he might have just laid his cigar in the ashtray on the night table.

Part of his pajamas were burned. Some of the bedding about him was charred and the rug still smoldered from where ignited bedding had fallen onto it. Otherwise, there was no indication that the gruesome incident had taken place. Even under the bum of the blowtorch, Sir Herbert’s face was not contorted.

“The nightlight on his table was still burning in the morning,” Tim said. “No other lights were going in the house.”

The redhead nodded and looked into a smaller envelope enclosed. It contained two glossy prints of fingerprints, and two negatives.

“The count’s?” Shayne questioned.

Tim nodded. “What do you make of them?”

“This takes expert analysis,” Shayne said. “But my bet would be that the prints have been superimposed. The fingerprints are too clear for a rough surface. They must have been made on glass. But that’s some kind of wood under them in these glossies.”

Rourke laughed outright. “I wondered if you’d come up with that! Those prints were delivered to the prosecution for use in the trial next week. Never mind how I got ’em. The photos were made by two experts from the States — two identification experts of your old friend from Miami Beach — Chief Paul Pointer.”

Shayne barked a breath and stared hard at Rourke to see if he was joking. The Miami Beach Police chief had once tried to frame Mike Shayne on a murder charge, and except for the help of Chief Will Gentry of Miami proper, Shayne would probably be behind bars right now.

“I don’t think the prosecutor is aware they might be phonies,” Tim went on. “And he’ll probably be sure not to become so. But it is a strange coincidence that the Miami Beach boys somehow shanghaied Count Raoul away from his lawyer before they supposedly found those prints and got him to handle a glass pitcher and to pour a glass of water.”

“They were supposedly found on the scene of the crime?” the detective queried.

“Right where the local police had looked as if they were looking for a hidden hydrogen bomb and found nothing. Purportedly, they were on a big hand carved wooden screen that Sir Herbert sometimes used to cut the draft onto his bed.”

“And of course, the screen could explain the count’s unsuspected presence,” Shayne growled. “It could be implied he entered the room while Sir Herbert was washing and hid behind the screen.”

“Exactly,” Tim agreed. “And with feelings the way they are, I rather imagine that evidence will send him to the gallows. That only gives you the weekend to work in, Mike.”

Shayne’s face set, but breakfast came, and no worry interfered with his hunger. While he ate, he studied one of the death scene pix propped up in front of him. He couldn’t get the feeling out of his head that Sir Herbert had been killed during the interim of a conversation — that the killer had sat on the left side of the multimillionaire’s bed, and tapped him when Sir Herbert turned to the night table to lay down his cigar.

But that still left the torch part of the affair to be explained.

Shayne finished his breakfast, sealed the second envelope containing the fingerprints, and put in a call to Lucy Hamilton at Miami. She was already at the office and greeted him cheerily, “Haven’t they found you guilty yet?”

“Don’t think it couldn’t happen!” he told her. “With this operation, they’d claim I used a time machine.” Then he said, “Lucy, we have a friend in Atlanta, a War Two intelligence, print expert.”

“The colonel,” she said promptly. “He doesn’t like being disturbed after eight P.M. or on weekends.”

“That’s why you’re going to Atlanta with bells on — and the less otherwise, the better! I’m sending over some pix on the next plane. Meet them. You take them up and make that old fussduddy examine them under every light he’s got, and come up with an opinion of what they are.”

“Suppose he wants to examine me under those black lights?” she asked.

“Not on payroll time,” Shayne chuckled.

Still grinning, he hung up.

III

Tim Rourke drove the redhead out to the airport where Shayne found a pilot friend to personally carry the envelope. It was against rules, but it could be done. As they sauntered back through the airport lobby, Shayne saw the familiar Latin.

“Really haunting this airport this morning,” he said to Tim. “Is that our Luis Valencia?”

“In the flesh,” Tim informed him. “This is earlier than he usually gets up. You must have him worried.”

They saw no sign of the Ferrari outside, but midway back to town, Shayne saw the flicker of the blue car in the side mirror. Rourke bypassed the town, cutting across to the shore road. The road was built on a coral shelf that graded down to the shoals and reefs, but directly on its inland side, a ridge lifted and ran parallel to the shore, hiding most of the estates on that side.

Rourke nodded at a pair of gateposts and muttered, “Alma Wollner’s. The house is back about a quarter mile. The next big estate on the right is Wyndham’s. It sits quite a long way from the highroad, almost atop the water.”

It had a tree shaded drive and enormous lawn, the detective noted. The whole second floor was surrounded by a balcony. Rourke drove on past to show the de Nieully place.

They came to the entrance five miles beyond. A policeman lounging at the gate grinned at Tim Rourke. “Come out to pick some more posies in the garden, I suppose?”

“I always wait for moonlight,” Tim told him and tossed him a couple of cigars. “What news out here?”

“Well, we’ve got a host to greet you proper the next time you come by moonlight,” the policeman chuckled. He gave a piercing whistle, and two bristling mastiffs came bounding out of nowhere. “Take a good smell of that Yankee so you won’t mistake him and treat him gentle!” the uniformed man told the dogs.

Shayne studied the house in the distance. It was a comfortable looking, old type plantation house with a four car garage, and it looked as if it were muchly lived in, which the Wyndham place did not. An old jallopy stood outside the closed garage doors.

“Is that the count’s car?” Shayne asked with surprise.

“Oh, he’s got a Caddy and a fast Porsche inside the garage,” the guard said. “But he usually drove this one for run around.”

“Top speed, fifty miles per hour out on the airstrip,” Tim put in. “The prosecution clocked it.” He passed some brief banter with the guard and swung around for the five mile ride back to Wyndham.

Rourke drove as near fifty as he could and the ride was bumpy. In the count’s antique chariot, it would have unsettled the coolest killer. Shayne timed the drive, and separately, timed their drive from gateposts to the palatial Wyndham house.

The car park was on the inland side of the house, but a butler led them through to a terrace that overlooked the sea. He left them to inform the countess of their arrival.

Rourke nodded at the boathouse and the small man-made yacht. “A small T-class sailer, two speedboats, and that ocean-going cabin boat for travelling to the mainland,” he itemized. “Have it real tough, these tax ridden millionaires!”

“Sir Herbert a yachting addict?”

“No, he hates the water. But Lady Wyndham likes the cabin boat. The Countess Margot and her friend Alma Wollner race the speedboats and the sailer.”

Shayne gave a low whistle. “Racing boats cost a penny just to keep tuned up! Unless they’re female mechanics, too?”

Rourke shook his head. “There’s a mechanic at the club takes care of most of the estates along here for a flat fee.”

He saw the hopeful glint of Shayne’s eyes and shook his head again. “He was here the day of the crime, he thought Sir Herbert was a diamond in the rough, a misunderstood good guy.”

The young countess came onto the terrace, a cool, self-possessed, straightforward looking girl. She was more American in dress and manner than Shayne had expected. And she was gracious. She ordered breakfast for them all.

“Mr. Shayne,” she said straightforwardly, “I am sure Raoul had no part in the — the tragedy. I’m so sure of it that I give you carte blanche to make the evidence available to the prosecutor, even if it is prejudicial. But what I really hope for is the—”

“Real culprit?” Shayne suggested understandingly.

“No,” she surprised him by saying. “I loved my father dearly, but nothing is going to bring him back! I am under no illusions as to his public character. Somebody probably felt they had justified reason to commit this act. All I am after is something to startle the prosecutor out of this star chamber handling of the case.”

“That would still be risking the jury,” Shayne pointed out.

“This is a peculiar case, as Mr. Rourke has probably told you,” Margot said. “My husband was the unfortunate scapegoat. But even with all the pressure and self interest to block any other investigation, I am convinced that the jury will exonerate my husband if the prosecutor can be forced to give an open-minded summary.”

“You think evidence pointing definitely toward another suspect would weaken the prosecution?”

“It would tear it to shreds!” she said. “All the world is shocked and angered now at the arbitrary way the case has been handled. If there is the ghost of a chance that after conviction and sentence, a private investigation might turn up the real killer.”

Shayne nodded. “The prosecutor and public opinion will both see the wisdom of exonerating your husband.”

“Exactly,” she agreed. “I know the prosecutor. He is a very severe and honest man, but I believe that he honestly thinks Raoul is guilty. I think he decided that when he thought Raoul and I were separated. Once having brought the charges, he cannot bring himself to even consider any other suspect. But I do not believe he is consciously trying to frame my husband. What I hope you can do is to find evidence that will show the prosecutor that he has been blind and prejudiced.”

Shayne admired her. Now, for the first time, he was completely satisfied with his own decision to undertake the case.

“I have a strong stomach and a strong mind, Mr. Shayne,” she said. “Ask anything that you find necessary — and count on my cooperation one hundred percent.”

“That makes it easier,” Shayne admitted. “One thing comes to mind. Your father never kept a gun until recently, it’s been said, but on the night in question, he had one in his night table. Do you know why he began arming himself?”

“I can only guess,” she said. “He had been very involved in several of these recent Latin revolutions. In one case, he promised to back a certain clique, and then later, withdrew. I suppose he thought that he might be in jeopardy from both sides, and so he began keeping the gun.”

She fell thoughtful a moment and then said, “Senor Luis Valencia might know something, but I doubt if he would talk. At times, he had mutual interests with my father, I believe.”

“You don’t think this could have been an act of jealous vengeance on the part of some husband?” Shayne asked.

The girl reddened but took the question in her stride. “I can think of at least a dozen men who might have thought about it,” she told him frankly. “But not one with the guts to tackle father. He was still a miner when he was thirty-five, Mr. Shayne. He never lost the physique — nor the wild temper.”

The butler and a maid brought in breakfast, and the two men ate a second time in courtesy. The detective waited until they were on second coffee and the butler had departed before asking, “Countess, can you explain how it happened that several people knew you had it in mind to employ me in this matter?”

She colored guiltily, “I’m afraid I scotched, Mr. Shayne,” she admitted. “I had just come from seeing my husband and his counsel about calling you. I was rather upset at the way the trial had gone yesterday morning. I stopped by Alma Wollner’s and she was giving a buffet luncheon for about forty guests.

“One of them, a Lady Doane, has an unusually sharp tongue and wayward sense of humor. She made some catty remark about the trial, and I blew my top. I wanted to throw the fear of God info them, and I did — or rather, the fear of Mike Shayne. I told them all that if they thought it was so funny to send a man to the gallows with no evidence whatsoever, I’d produce some Mike Shayne evidence that might give them a real laugh!”

Suddenly, she giggled a little. “I’m ashamed of laughing about it,” she apologized. “But you could have heard a pin drop! Two of the Colonel Blimps on hand grabbed for bottles instead of pouring drinks, and I think Lady Doane actually swooned.”

“You’re very close to Alma Wollner?”

“Like a sister. She worships my mother, and we regard her as part of our family. We always have.”

“Can you think of a reason why Anthony Crispin would not welcome the investigation you’ve employed me for?”

Shayne could feel that question strike hard within her. It was something she had to think about. She said reluctantly, “Tony is very deeply attached to her, but he does have to live. I think that three or four times she has let him have fairly large sums of money. Of course, if that came out, it would make him look like a common gigolo, and it would look worse for Alma.”

For the time at least, Shayne was willing to accept that possible explanation.

“I suppose you’ll want to see dad’s room?” the Countess offered. For the barest second, her gaze faltered and she bit her lip. Then she rang for the butler.

IV

The room had been put in order, was still much as it had been on the fatal morning. The same rug was still there, with the burned spot where smoldering bedclothes had dropped on it. The same mattress was on the bedstead, still smelling of char. The windows onto the balcony were open, as they had been in the police photos, and the big carved screen still stood obliquely between the end windows and the bed.

Shayne measured off two and a half steps from the screen to the head of the bed and shook his head negatively. It brought him up in an awkward position with his right shoulder jammed against the wall. A downward blow by a standing man was an uncertain one at best, and this position would have been risky in the extreme.

“A man berserk with pent-up jealousy might chance it,” he said. “But a man in that mood would have raised a rumpus.”

He sat down on the left side of the bed and envisioned the movements of Sir Herbert’s powerful body, turning without suspicion toward the night table to lay down his cigar. It would tense the muscles on the left side of his neck and head, and present a clear target for a sitting man to strike him behind the ear. But it was still a damned risky way to attempt murder.

“It’s possible,” Shayne erupted suddenly, “that the killing was an unintended error. Suppose somebody he trusted, or else held in negligent contempt, came to force some information out of him. They sat over here talking, and took their chance to daze him with a blow. Then they went to work on him with the torch.

“But he was hurt more than they had figured. In fact, he was dying. They realized that when he showed no response to the torch. That would account for bums both before and after death. When they realized he was dead, they got out fast.”

“Sounds plausible,” Tim said. “But you can’t hide a blowtorch under a tropical suit. How did the killer walk in at two or three A.M. carrying a blowtorch without rousing Sir Herbert’s suspicions?”

“Yeah,” Shayne agreed. “There is something funny here, almost as if this were two different deals. Maybe they didn’t bring the torch. Maybe they went out and got it after they knocked him out. But I don’t like that one, either.”

The redhead got up and inspected the closets and bathroom thoroughly, and looked at the balcony. The balcony, of course, was a perfect hideout for a killer wanting to observe his victim. But it still didn’t click. Shayne felt sure the Sir Herbert had been awake, and conversing, when the death blows were struck.

They returned to the terrace where the young countess looked a little wan and shaky. She pulled herself quickly in hand.

“One thing occurred to me, Mr. Shayne,” she said. “A number of women on the island envisioned themselves as Lady Wyndham, but to my father, they were simply a pastime. One of his very few loyalties and softnesses was my mother. That may explain a good deal about our family that is puzzling.”

“I thank you,” Shayne said. “With your permission, Countess, I may come back later.”

“Of course,” she agreed. “Higgins, the butler, already has orders that you are to have free run of the place, day or night.”

She turned to pick up a list of names from the glass-topped table. “These are the people who were at Alma’s when I flipped,” she said. “I may have missed five or six, but these are the important ones.”

Shayne looked at the list and smiled at her cool thoroughness.

“Hermann Roesch,” she added, “had occasional deals with my father. I think he also works with Luis Valencia.”

She escorted them to the front door herself, standing there until they turned out through the tree shaded drive.

“Lively little place, Nassau,” Shayne murmured and thought of Crispin’s description — A bucket of eels.

“You get any idea from the talk?” Tim asked.

“Yes. I’m beginning to understand the prosecutor’s position. If he’d checked out all the possibles first, he’d have been waiting ten years to pin down a suspect.”

“Spot your other two phone-friends from yesterday?”

“Valencia speak good English?”

“The best. Swear he was one of the Brown Boys of Eton.”

“My bet is on him for the warning. And perhaps Hermann Roesch for the bribe.”

Rourke had a story to do and loaned Shayne his car. The redhead drove toward the waterfront, to a little old bar that smelled of tar and hemp and sweat, owned by an old friend.

Terry Mathis, the owner, had a new bottle of Shayne’s favorite brand already set up on the bar. “Yer late,” he said with a soft brogue as greeting for the first time in three years. “Ye got in on the early flight, and don’t be telling me different, Mike Shayne!”

Shayne grinned and pumped his hand. “I got tangled with the Orangemen,” he whispered. He wrapped his legs around an old fashioned barstool and watched Terry pour them drinks. They toasted — “Up the Rebel!” and laughed, and Terry rested with his cable-like forearms on the bar.

“So yer here to clean up the mess the British be making of the case and to save the poor boy from murther?”

Shayne eyed him. “You feel that strongly against the British, or for the count?”

“Well, he’s not what I’d call a cronie of mine,” Terry said more seriously, “But Sir Herbert was, and I tell you, the lad did not do the job.”

Shayne raised his eyebrows questioningly.

“First, this Raoul is a slight boy, and no damn fool,” Terry said. “He’d not be breasting that wild gorilla of a father with nothing but a tack hammer in his hand.”

“There was the blowtorch,” Shayne pointed out.

“Take it easy — I’m getting there. The blowtorch is part of the reason it wasn’t the count. You see, this young count, for all his fancy ways and title, is something of a mechanic, and he knows how to use a torch. But whoever used the one on Sir Herbert didn’t know how to manage.”

Shayne sharpened. “Don’t go wild on me, Terry! Explain that real simple.”

Terry Mathis walked to a small storeroom and returned with a torch. “Ye see this rod? This is for pressure, and you always keep the pressure at the full. This valve controls your flow — the size of the flame you might say. And this is your oxygen mix. It controls the combustion, or the heat.”

Mathis gave the rod a couple of rams and put a match to the torch. “Just let it warm a bit,” he grunted. “Now what I’m going to show you is this. You cannot burn flesh lightly with a proper-set blow torch. Even a flick is going to toast it good, or not at all.”

He went off to the cooler to return with a shank of raw lamb. “This is skinned, of course, but you’ll see.” Mathis drifted the flame across the raw meat in parallel stripes, moving it closer each time.

The first two times left simply smoke marks. The third stripe was like a welt, and the fourth stripe was wide, spattered, and left an acrid stench.

“That,” Terry said, “is the way anybody who knew their torch would use it. If they just wanted to singe a man, they would hold the flame sidewise — like this — and just toast him with the heat. But that was not the case with Sir Herbert. The point of the flame had touched him.”

Mathis put the torch out, let out most of the pressure, threw the mixing valve a little off, and relighted the torch which now burned with a sputtering sound. “And this is about the way the torch was working.” He turned the blaze onto his own arm, singing the hair and turning the flesh red, but not burning himself badly.

Terry turned the torch off again and set it on the back bar with a decisive bang. “Whoever bedevilled Sir Herbert didn’t know how to use the tool they had. The pressure was down and they just used it the way they found it. I say that the count would have pumped up his pressure without even thinking before he lit the torch.”

“And I say, you may have something, Terry Mathis, and I’ll be buying the next drink!” Shayne complimented him. “But who in hell would think of using a torch who didn’t understand it?”

“Ha! Any of these slick haired hoodlums and smugglers,” Terry snorted. “Sure, it was only a week ago that a man whose owned a boat for twenty years brought his torch into me to find out how to use it for some soldering. Y’see, Mike, it is such a simple common tool almost every man thinks he could use one right off, but you come to find out, damned few have ever tried.”

“Maybe if you knew Sir Herbert, you’ve had a hunch of your own?” Shayne suggested.

“No — none that I’d care to mention. Nothing but wild suspicions of one or two people because I don’t like them. The truth is, the count himself spoke the truth. It could have been anyone did it, and it is a wonder he wasn’t murthered long ago. He was no lily, Mike. But what a man!”

They had their drink. They talked fishing. Then Shayne noted the time and got directions to the Racquets Club.

“Some claim they play tennis up there,” Terry chuckled at him. “But all I’ve ever heard tell is of bar and dance floor!”

V

Michael Shayne judged from the parking that the club’s bar and cuisine was far more popular than its courts. There couldn’t be this many tennis players of a hot mid day!

Tim Rourke was waiting for him at a small table a little aside from the crowded bar. He was talking with the bar captain, a level-eyed young man who looked at Mike Shayne with a mixture of curiosity and respect.

“One of your fans,” Tim said to Shayne. “By virtue of the publicity I gave you.”

The captain grinned. “Followed your cases ever since I came here, Mr. Shayne. Some of ’em are better than whodunits.”

“This one particularly,” Shayne grunted drily. “You knew Sir Herbert of course!”

“Yes sir. But I was not exactly one of his fans,” the captain said. He snapped his fingers imperiously at the bar and somehow mysteriously managed to convey the drink order without speaking at all.

“It was not his roughness on the help I minded so much,” the captain went on in a carefully lowered voice. “It was that he was always wanting to hurt somebody. It seemed to make him feel good. If he was horsing some friend, there was always a cut in the joke.”

He moved away to the bar to bring the drinks himself. Rourke seemed to be his special pet. “Maybe I was raised with too much respect for women,” the captain continued. “It jibes me to see a woman hurt, even when she deserves it. And Sir Herbert took a kind of special gloat in that. If he could embarrass a woman, or make her mad, or make her cry, he got his kick.”

“Any woman? Or just the... uh... girls?”

“Well, he was mostly concerned with the latter sort, Mr. Shayne. But he could be cruel even to decent women too. There was the night he had the accident— Is that what I should call it?”

“It will do!” Shayne and Rourke both laughed.

“Well, he was having a cocktail in here, waiting for his dinner guests when Mrs. Wollner came in.”

“Alma Wollner?”

“Yessir. Now she was like his own flesh and blood, in a manner of speaking. But he had her crying — right here at this table — and you could see that he was enjoying it. Maybe she’d made some mistake in her investments. It was plain that she didn’t want to do what he was telling her. But she knew that whatever he was saying was what she’d have to do, and it was making him feel big and powerful just to beat her down.”

The captain reddened. “Of course, I was eavesdropping a little.”

The other two grinned. Shayne said, “That’s our specialty!”

Luis Valencia had strolled through to their end of the bar and disliking the crowded lineup, took the table next to them. While ordering, he glanced at their own half empty glasses and asked Rourke, “May I offer a round?”

Rourke flicked Shayne a glance and nodded. “Move over here,” he suggested. “You two may want to know each other sometime.”

“Ah yes, Mr. Shayne,” Valencia murmured with well-bred charm. “You’re quite the gossip item of Nassau this morning. Tell me, do you have hopes of finding evidence that can clear our good friend, Count Raoul?”

“Evidence,” Shayne said, “is one thing. Whether it will do him any good or not is something else. You were a business associate of Sir Herbert’s I understand.”

“On occasion,” Valencia smiled evenly, but the redhead saw his eyes grow cautious, estimating just how much Shayne might know. “We had some political interests in common,” Valencia added. “And again, sometimes we were opposed. C’est la vie, eh?” He laughed.

Shayne took a blind chance. “Were you opposed a few months ago when he just caught the last plane out of South America by the skin of his teeth?”

Valencia laughed with soft mockery in his eyes. “Mr. Shayne, all the gossip columnists have pointed out that Sir Herbert and I were twin serpents in that little fiasco.”

“But you didn’t have to catch a plane out,” Shayne said.

Valencia gave his white ivory smile. “Fortunately, no. I was able to swing with the tide in time.”

The drinks came and Valencia raised his glass in toast. He was a small man, a little chunky of build, very fastidious of dress, very conscious of sitting straight. A fleshy, large man came to the doorway and looked toward him. Making apologies, Valencia finished his drink hurriedly and went to meet him.

“Hermann Roesch?” Shayne asked. Rourke nodded.

The two Americans took their time at their own drinks, quite conscious of the hostility their presence caused, feeling it move against them in growing, silent waves. Shayne shook his head suddenly. “There isn’t time,” he growled. “They’re too many cooks in the broth. Too many people that have nothing to do with what we’re looking for. I’m going to have to find a straight path here.”

“You won’t find anything straight in the West Indies,” Tim said.

In due course, they ate a magnificent luncheon. Going out to their car, they noticed Luis Valencia engaged in conversation with four very indignant looking Britishers on the front porch. In spite of the fact that they were beyond earshot, they bristled with hostility at sight of Shayne.

Luis Valencia, however, turned and gave his charming smile and punctilious bow.

“Quite a gentleman,” Shayne murmured.

“Quite a snake, also! There is a story that when he was a small timer in alien smuggling, he once heaved an iron cage of twenty refugees into the deep when a Coast Guard cutter put a shot across his bows.”

They got into Rourke’s car and Shayne sat a moment with head bowed, pulling at his left earlobe. “I would like a talk with the count,” he said. “But our friend Dennis sounded as if that privilege had been cut off.”

“His counsel checked. There’s no way, Mike.”

“Well, let’s have a talk with his dinner guests on the fatal night.” Shayne growled.

The guests verified the facts on the party. It had been a leisurely, informal dinner, attended by the count’s houseguest, another count — Francois deLong — that count’s current romantic interest, and two young matrons belonging to the island’s flying set.

De Nieully had been a perfect host. He was in excellent humor, had not gotten drunk, and had kept them all laughing until midnight, when he took the two matrons home in his dilapidated runabout.

It was this point of the count’s defense that the prosecution had made particular effort to weaken, but it was obvious that these young matrons had nothing to gain by falsifying facts to the count’s advantage. They had wanted to leave precisely at midnight in order to be home when their airline pilot husbands arrived, which was usually a punctual twelve-thirty.

A couple of minutes before twelve-thirty, Raoul de Nieully had arrived back at his own house. He had mixed himself a last drink to have with his houseguest as the clock struck the half hour. De-Long’s testimony withstood shattering crossquestioning. Although he had been a lifelong friend of de Nieully, he had nothing to gain by covering for him, and his testimony was corroborated by his girl.

De Nieully had then retired to his private quarters. At two A.M. — and again, the times had been noted, due, possibly, to the chiming. clock — DeLong’s pet cat had come into de Nieully’s room and awakened him. He had carried the cat to DeLong in something of a sleepy bad humor, asking his houseguest to either put the damned animal outside, or else lock it in his own room.

DeLong had laughed, and then noted that it was time to take his girl home anyway, and he had put the cat outside while he did so. Returning within half an hour himself, he parked beside de Nieully’s runabout, the two cars now blocking the garage doors behind which the count kept his faster cars. Both cars were just as he had last seen them in the morning.

DeLong answered all of Shayne’s questions with cynical amusement, but what appeared to be honest brevity. He also verified having personally witnessed de Nieully burn himself on the arm and singe his mustache while getting the hurricane lamps lighted before the party. The prosecution had sought to prove the bums might have been made by a blowtorch.

“One thing I am curious about,” Shayne remarked, “is why no blow torch was found on the count’s place, although he putters around with mechanics a lot.” DeLong made a gesture. “He’d loaned it to Tony Crispin a few days before to refit some bridles over at Alma Wollner’s place.”

Both Shayne and Tim Rourke showed surprise at that. Tim said, “The prosecution hasn’t brought that out!”

DeLong uttered a brief, derisive laugh. “Possibly it suits the prosecutor’s purposes with the jury to just leave the dark fact hanging that investigation failed to disclose a torch on Raoul’s place.”

Nothing further was to be gained from any of these witnesses. It was clear they were all incensed that de Nieully had been charged with the murder, and none of them believed it remotely possible that he was guilty.

Shayne felt a little dispirited when he thought about how blind Nassau justice could be.

VI

The sun was slanting toward Florida when Shayne and Tim Rourke returned to their car and once again headed out toward Wyndham. A few miles from town, Tim said, “Blue car on our tail again, but I can’t make out if it’s a Porsche or Ferrari.”

He purposely drove past the Wyndham place, cutting off behind a bluff at the end of a short straightway. For fifteen minutes they waited, but no blue car came by.

“Must of have been Tony Crispin’s Porsche headed for Alma Wollner’s,” Tim grunted. “But I’d swear he passed her lane.”

“Don’t get spooky,” Shayne cautioned. “We’re flubbered up enough as it is.”

The countess was out, but Higgins said they were free to go anywhere on the estate, She was certainly a thoroughgoing little girl on the details, Shayne thought. Right now, they’d just take a look at the boathouse by themselves.

They passed through the house, across the terrace, and down over a graded, landscaped lawn. They had reached the end of scattered shrubs when a glint of light flashed high above them, obliquely to their rear.

Shayne’s reflexes acted automatically. He rammed Rourke sprawling behind a bush, piling flat alongside at the same instant. A clod of dirt popped into the air behind them, and then the sharp crack of a flat trajectory rifle came distantly from the place Shayne had seen the glint.

The redhead peered through an opening in the bush at a high hill that reared out of the ridge beyond the highroad. The hill was brushed and day’s heat still hazed it slightly, but he thought he saw a spurt of dust.

“That’s Wollner property,” Tim informed him. “There’s a bridle path climbs around that hill to a plateau behind.”

“Wait here and don’t move!” Shayne rasped curtly. “But keep an eye on that boathouse.”

He tore out from behind the bush in a low run, darting from shrub to shrub until the driveway trees hid the hill. He trotted to the car, raced it out of the drive and swung toward Nassau.

Far ahead of him, hopelessly outspeeding him, a car glinted on the highroad. At a point to his right, dust still boiled and sparkled in the oblique rays of evening light, and a gate stood open onto the Wollner bridle path.

Shayne swerved in and braked. He made out the skid marks of a car that had come out of here fast and skid-turned onto the highroad. He followed the tracks in to where a car had parked, and later turned. Climbing to the brow of the hill, he found footscuffs, but nothing useful — except by the inverse of what he did not find. Whatever his rush, the sharpshooter had remained cool enough to pick up his shellcase. Maybe it was a habit, such as picking up the murder tool and torch.

Shayne rejoined Rourke. “We can thank the sun for striking that telescopic sight!” he remarked.

He pulled at his left ear, frowning. “You can see fifteen miles down the island from up there,” he murmured. “And the parking space here forms a better target than this lawn. You know, Tim, I’ve got a hunch we wouldn’t have been shot at if we hadn’t been headed for the boathouse. Let’s take a look in there.”

It was a commodious, beautifully kept boathouse. The two speed boats and the sailer floated at their berths. The larger boat was moored in a small artificial basin in front. There was a large playroom upstairs, looking out on the sea, with one small window facing the house. It occurred to Shayne that from this window, an observer could get a pretty fair idea of just what was going on inside the house late at night from the manipulation of the electric lights.

As looking required him to go behind the bar, the redhead took the opportunity to pour them drinks. Happily, the Wyndham’s stocked his own brand of bourbon. He drank in silence, however, scratching his red hair.

Suddenly he tossed the drink down neat and came around the bar to run downstairs. Behind the mooring cove there was a large sail room. One corner of this was devoted to a work bench and tools in neat order. There was a gap in a row of cans on a shelf. Although there was very little dust this near the water, there were circular marks showing that something with a round base was usually kept there.

“The torch?” Tim asked.

“It looks it. And missing! The police did comb the grounds here, didn’t they?”

“They practically dug up the shrubs and replanted them I heard,” Tim nodded. “They were still at it when I got over here.”

“So, the killer took it along,” Shayne considered. “But he damned well wouldn’t keep it long! Let’s go talk with the club mechanic.”

The mechanic had left the yacht club on a call down the island. From there, he was going directly home. It gave the two men time for a change from their grass-stained clothes, and they still had quite a wait at the man’s house before he drove up just after sundown.

His name was Monty Atkins. He answered briefly, directly, definitely, and without offering unasked information. Yes, he did all the mechanical work on the Wyndham boats. Yes, they needed a good deal of looking after, and he came and went at his own discretion, unless called particularly. He had not dropped by since the gruesome tragedy as the Countess Margot had told him they’d not be using the boats for some time.

Oh, yes, he had fixed up the sail and tool room himself. Most of the people he serviced let him do that. That way, he had his special tool shop right on hand for their particular needs. Of course, the Wyndhams had-a blowtorch. He’d been using it out there about three days before the murder. In fact, he’d almost burned Senor Luis Valencia’s shoe with it when he came down with Sir Herbert as they were taking a constitutional.

“Guess it was my fault,” Atkins acknowledged. “Lot of people don’t realize how hot the flame is and get right on top of it.”

“You keep your torches at full pressure in between jobs?” Shayne asked him curiously.

“My own private ones, yes,” Atkins nodded. “But not the ones in my customer’s kits. Kids are liable to get hold of them, and we had that kind of accident once. So now I let out the pressure and turn the mixer when I finish.”

“You mean it can’t be ignited that way?”

“Well, maybe yes, maybe no, but it wouldn’t bum hot or throw a long flame, and pretty quick it would fizzle out.”

Shayne asked a few casual questions about the girl’s mechanical abilities. Atkins laughed. Miss Alma, now, was always itching to learn, but just didn’t have it in her. He’d show her the right tool and how to do something, but next time she’d pick the wrong tool or do it wrong anyway. Once she nearly got drowned in the swells while trying to hook up a loosened sparkplug connection, and he’d just snown her the simple chore a week before.

She was another reason he was damned careful to let the pressure out of the torch over at Wyndham. He’d been going to teach her soldering once, but not after he saw her stick her face right on top of the torch when she went to light it.

“But, you’ll find the torch at Wyndham at the right end of the second shelf above the workbench,” Atkins said.

Shayne nodded and eased him with some general talk and took his leave.

Outside, Rourke muttered, “Christmas! What are we getting into?”

“Or who?” Shayne asked a shade grimly. “I’d better meet this Alma Wollner.”

“She’ll drift into the casino for the dance tonight,” Tim said.

VII

It had been a long, hot day. Shayne and Rourke were glad for a chance to go to their hotels for a bath and change, and then have time for a leisurely drink and supper at the Planter’s.

Around eleven they drifted over to the casino. In a few moments, Rourke nodded toward a beautifully gowned, tall brunette, dancing with a Naval captain. Although her body flowed automatically to the music, she kept looking over the captain’s shoulder. Shadows lay dark beneath her eyes, and she looked pale. At the end of the dance, she towed the captain immediately toward the bar.

Approaching her unobserved, Shayne realized she was drinking fast. He saw the relief explode within her as Anthony Crispin came toward them, dressed in a white mess jacket and cumerbund that emphasized his wide, athletic shoulders.

Rourke said, “It would be my bet you’re going to have to wade through some rough opposition!”

Shayne looked at his fist, decided to take no chances, and shortly made a ten-dollar deal with the waiter to find him a short honing steel out in the kitchen. He wrapped this carefully in a napkin, then drifting toward the bar, broke boldly into Crispin’s ranks.

“Just returning this morning’s compliment, you know,” he said, smiling at the tall aristocrat.

Crispin looked as if he might simply cold shoulder Shayne with English arrogance, or as if he might call for the captain to have this cheeky Yank taken off. Whatever his inclinations, he was prevented by some caution behind his cool, watchful eyes. Grudgingly, he presented Shayne and Tim Rourke to Alma Wollner and the captain.

At first opportunity, Shayne said to Crispin, “Something came up today I’d like to ask you about.”

Crispin evidenced irritation. “Look here, old man, can’t you keep these things to business hours?”

“Yes, I could,” Shayne nodded. “But seeing as it took place on Wollner property—”

The girl broke in excitedly, “What happened?”

Crispin’s mouth clamped. For the first time, Shayne recognized the full danger in this man. Crispin grunted reassuringly, “Just a little men’s talk, dear. I’ll leave you in the very dangerous hands of the Navy while I do a little deduction with my friend Michael Shayne.”

He led the way outside instantly, down off the verandah, and out onto the golf course. “Well, Shayne,” he demanded as he turned toward the detective.

Shayne said with a bleak look, “I tried to catch you coming out of that bridle path today, but you burped out of there in one helluva hurry.”

Crispin watched him inscrutably. “I usually do,” he answered. “There’s a sand trap there and you have to keep moving.” Then he frowned and added, “But I didn’t see you, or any other car there.”

“Maybe you didn’t think I’d be there,” Shayne suggested.

“Why the ruddy should I think you’d be there?” Crispin demanded. Then he said, “Oh, I begin to get it. You think I was trying to cover my visit to Alma by using the bridle path instead of the drive? Well, it was a bit early in the day, and with so much gossip running, there’s no reason to advertise the fact that I come and go at some rather unconventional hours.”

Shayne studied him briefly. Either he was damned fast at throwing out red herrings, or else it had not been Crispin on the hill at sundown. He was undecided which, and simply stalling for time while his mind worked on it, he said, “Of course, you’ll have no objection to my verifying the time with Alma Wollner?”

Crispin stiffened like a rousing Doberman. “You are damned right I’ll have objection!” he declared with a growl. “I’ll have objection to you questioning her on any fact or subject that might make her feel worse than she does already! In fact, I’m going to make sure you don’t question her unless I’m on hand!”

Anger was rising in the Scot like a tide.

Shayne said quickly, nodding beyond the tall man, “Well, here she comes, so we can do it your way.”

Crispin’s head spun around. With a swiftness that left Crispin unaware of what had happened, Shayne struck the tensed muscles on the side of the Scot’s neck with a hard right. It was a harmless, but effective blow. Crispin dropped like a sack in his own boot tracks.

Shayne felt his pulse, decided he was out cold for some time, and went back inside to rejoin Alma Wollner.

“We’ll be meeting Tony in a little while at your place,” he told her. “But first, I’d like to take you for a little drive.”

The fires of suspicion leaped within her eyes. “Where do you want... to... drive, Mr. Shayne?” she breathed.

“We might drive out to Wyndham’s,” he said.

He saw her nerves tauten.

“Margot’s out tonight,” she said. “What... what possible purpose can it serve, Mr. Shayne?”

“Well, it is a place where we can talk without being overheard,” he said. “And it just happens that they keep my brand of liquor at the boathouse.”

The momentary fright washed out of her like a receding wave. “Oh, the boathouse,” she repeated. “Well, it probably would be the most private place.”

The boathouse didn’t bother her. But something in his brief conversation had. He wondered what. This he had to learn.

Ann Wollner sank into silence, retaining it even as he led her down across the lawn at Wyndham and into the boathouse and upstairs to the playroom. She neither looked toward the sailroom door, nor showed uneasiness of the place in any way. She snapped on the light switches, quite at home, as they went in, and upstairs, dropped her wrap onto a lounge and asked for a drink — a strong one.

Shayne mixed it and sat on the arm of the opposite lounge with his own drink. He said, as gently as he could, “Mrs. Wollner, I’m going to have to get very personal. Precisely what was Sir Herbert saying to you, earlier the fatal evening, that upset you so at the Racquet Club?”

She stared at him, her eyes dark with sudden fright and panic. “Did Margot tell you to find out?” she breathed hoarsely.

“No,” he said. “In fact, I can keep your confidence. But it is necessary for me to know myself in order to see other things more clearly.”

She got up and went to the opened mullion windows, looking out upon the phosphorescent sea. Shayne quietly mixed her another drink and left her to her thoughts.

Bringing it to her, he murmured, “Believe me, Mrs. Wollner, I will do everything possible not to disrupt the relationship you have with the Countess Margot and her mother.”

She made a hopelessly weary gesture. “How can you help it, Mike Shayne? But I do believe you’d try. It’s in your tone.”

She drank deeply from her glass and returned to the lounge and lighted a cigarette. “Believe me,” she said, “it’s only because of how it would hurt them that I haven’t already told this. At first, it seemed easy to keep quiet, because it seemed impossible that that they could seriously accuse Raoul. But all the past week I would have told, except Tony kept telling me how much it would hurt Margot’s mother — and nothing could be gained.”

Shayne sensed the conversation taking a turn that he hadn’t expected. He swirled his drink, looking down into the mellow lights of the cognac, suddenly half wishing that he’d never taken on this case. He had a premonition that a great deal more unhappiness might come of her next words than would come of the trial of de Nieully.

The beautiful girl tossed down the remainder of her drink and pulled a full lungful of smoke and sat very straight as she exhaled it. Then she looked at him, eyes tragic, but brave and level, and said without faltering, “Mike Shayne, I killed Sir Herbert. It was an accident, I was half crazy with shame and anger — but, I killed him.”

Shayne had seldom been taken aback, but this caused him to swallow and to renew both drinks. “Let’s take that easy,” he suggested.

She made a gesture of disgust. “He couldn’t keep his hands off any woman he hadn’t had,” she said. “His ego demanded that he have every woman once. How he got them he didn’t care. In my case, he had control of my money.”

“That’s what he was telling you at the Racquet Club the preceding evening?”

“I told Tony you’d get most of it figured out anyway,” she murmured. “Maybe you already know what he was saying. Sir Herbert told me to come out to the house — his house — after midnight, that he’d be waiting in his room. If I didn’t come, he said, I might find I had a great deal less fortune than I thought, and I might hear some dirty scandal about some money that I’d loaned Tony. He was quite capable of that kind of vindictiveness.”

“You considered that you had no choice?”

“I knew I didn’t. I packed Tony off early that night, and finally dressed in riding clothes and went for a ride to calm myself. I carried my crop with a loaded silver handle embossed on the end with the initial ‘A’. It was an old crop, pretty well beaten up, and time had forced the silver molding into sharp ridges and raised the sides of the A higher than the crossbar, which had been dented in.

“Well, finally, perhaps around one o’clock, I faced what had to be faced and rode over here to Wyndham. The only light was in Sir Herbert’s room. Frankly, I meant to try and bargain with him, to buy my way out.”

She broke off to give Shayne an inscrutable look and to breathe an ironic laugh. “Don’t think I’m so prim that a quarter of a million dollars or more couldn’t weigh me, Mr. Shayne! But with Sir Herbert—” Her smooth shoulder convulsed. “His wife was like a mother to me. His daughter is my closest friend. How could I?”

She got up this time to mix her own drink. “I knew the house well, of course,” she said when she came back. “I went up to his bedroom and closed the door and sat on the left side of his bed to try and talk him out of his crazy idea. I had riding gloves on, so there were no prints.

“He just laughed. I was half crazy with anger more than outrage. Finally I told him to go to hell, and he could ruin my reputation and steal all my money, but he’d never get me into bed. I started to jump up as he turned away to dump his ash, but somehow, he grabbed my left wrist.

“That’s when I struck him with the crop. I slashed his face four times on the side of his head. I thought I was using the lash, but it looks as though I was using the crop.

“Only, Mr. Shayne, he was alive when I left! He was rubbing his neck and in a black temper as I ran around the bed and out. I know he was alive because he barked at me, ‘Alma, I’ll have you yet, and you’ll pay for that.’”

She threw down her drink and her shoulders began to shake.

“Steady here!” Shayne told her and pressed her shoulder. “Don’t come unstuck! What did you do with your riding crop?”

“I must have dropped it!” she quavered.

Shayne took her hand. “Now Alma, so far, you’d get no blame,” he said. “But I have to know the rest. Did you come down here for the blowtorch?”

She blinked at him with bewilderment. She shook her head. “I don’t know anything about a torch, Mr. Shayne! All I wanted was to get away. But you won’t believe that!”

“Maybe I do,” he said soberly and tugged at his left ear. “Now do you know if about an hour before sundown today, Anthony Crispin was near your place?”

“Why yes, he was there with me,” she said. “I was too nervous to play tennis or go sailing, and we sat out on the east porch and talked from about four to seven. Then he drove down the driveway to go dress for dinner.”

Shayne swung his gaze directly on her. He would have sworn she was telling the truth. He said, “Alma, I think maybe you’ve been worrying about something you didn’t do. At least for now, this talk ends right here with you and I. And I want your promise!”

She stared at him disbelievingly. Slowly, hope and gratitude surged up in her, and she leaned against his chest and cried. After a time she quieted and decided to spend the night at Wyndham, and he took her and left her on the terrace.

VIII

Shayne drove slowly back to town thinking of what she’d said. Beyond Wollner’s a car shot past him doing an easy hundred. He was just as glad that he was without her in the seat, and that Anthony Crispin didn’t recognize Rourke’s car in the dark!

In his rearview mirror, he saw the car whip into Wollner’s. He put his foot down on the accelerator and sped on to the Nassau.

He was scarcely in his room when the phone rang and Crispin’s voice barked at him with cold, murderous fury, “Shayne, what have you done with her?”

“Why, I dropped her at Wyndham’s,” Shayne told him.

“At where?”

“At Wyndham’s. She decided to spend the night with Margot.”

“So help me God—!” Crispin grated, then got himself in hand. “Shayne, if you do one damned thing to harm her—” he rasped. Then he said, “Damn you, why didn’t you go back home this morning!” and hung up.

Shayne lighted a cigarette, sloshed himself a snifter of cognac and stretched out on his bed to phone the casino for Tim Rourke. He said to the reporter, “I’m bushed and going to hit the sack. But can you be up by daylight?”

“God, I have to commit blackmail, perjury and theft for my art!” the reporter complained. “And now get up at daylight for my friends!”

“I’ve got your car here. I’ll pick you up,” Shayne told him.

Rourke was muttering imprecations as Shayne hung up.

The redhead stretched and relaxed, and then he heard the creak upon the balcony. He needed action, he wanted action. His eyes warmed as he sought to place the sound exactly, considering the length he had to leap or charge from his doorway.

Then he considered something else, the stern visage of Mr. Dennis if a complaint were made that he was roughing up local citizens. Tony Crispin might not complain, but others would. And Dennis, he felt sure, would give them the benefit of any doubt. It would be the quick and easy way to rid the island of the Shayne menace.

He got up casually to make a noisy to-do of pouring a final drink. He drew the curtains across the double doors and turned the water splashing into his tub. In all ways, it looked and sounded as if he were getting ready to hit the sack with quite a few drinks in him. Even the most impatient killer would be a fool not to wait until he was in bed and dozing.

He got the heavy bolster out of the closet, bent it with his knee, and put it under the sheet. The bed was provided with two sets of pillows, two big ones for propping up in bed, two small ones for sleeping. He crushed one of the small ones into a global shape and placed it at the head of the bolster with the sheet partially over it.

He threw his extra pair of shoes down by the bed, and tossed his stained suit from earlier out across a chair. He turned off the bath water, splashed it a bit, let the tub drain with its hollow retching roar, and moved soundlessly to the balcony curtains.

The sound of stealthy movement came through to him, and then a sharp “Pssst!” and the sounds of whispers. So there was more than one!

He went back to his bed, switched off the night light, then cussed aloud as if forgetting the curtains, and a moment later, yanked the cord that pulled them back to let in the night breeze. In the dark, he went back to the bed again, made relaxing grunting sounds, and then finding the door, let himself silently out and silently closed it.

It was not the Mike Shayne way, but he was taking no chances of Dennis spoiling his game at this point. He returned downstairs, got his car and drove around to Roarke’s hotel where he checked in for the night.

He rooted Tim out at dawn. Before sunup, they had breakfasted and were back at the Nassau. When Shayne threw open the door to his room, he saw about what he expected. A knife stood upright in the bolster; Some heavy object had crushed the pillow that he had improvised for his head, crushing the thick top of the bolster. In hurry and excitement, the crunch would have sounded like a crushing skull, no doubt.

Rourke gestured at the knife. “Finerprints, maybe?”

“There’ll be no prints on there,” Shayne grunted and removed the knife and tossed the bolster in the closet.

He glanced over the room. Nothing disturbed. They were smart cookies. They’d struck and run, not even attempting to riffle for papers that might indicate their particular interest and eventually lead to them.

They went down and got in the car again and headed out toward Wyndham’s. Shayne said, “Even a cool-headed professional gets away from a murder scene as quickly as possible, and gets rid of any incriminating evidence first chance he gets. Now the police must have searched the Wyndham grounds — and along the road between Wyndham and de Nieully’s — pretty thoroughly for the weapon and torch. But I’ll bet they never searched the other way!”

Rourke said, “From the inquiry I made, they did not search toward town.”

“We’re going to,” Shayne growled, and drove to the Wyndham driveway and swung around.

At this early hour, they had the highroad to themselves. Shayne let the car crawl along the edge, his eyes a little narrowed as he watched the siding, and his mind cleared of all other thoughts and open to impression. They passed the bridlepath gate and he nearly stopped, but then went on. When he came to a bridge over a creek, he did stop.

He got a wrench out of the repair kit and found himself a twenty-four inch stick with a knobby end. Then he stood in the low car, one foot on the seat, and hurled the objects out into the tall grass along the creek, noting carefully where they landed.

Shayne followed after them, moving so as not to crush the grass and leave a trail. He found the wrench first, then within five feet a small blowtorch. He never spotted his club at all, but he did find the riding crop poking up vertically from the muck.

Weather and salt air had gotten at both objects. It was dubious whether any possible fingerprints would have survived. However, he picked the objects up carefully with handkerchiefs, finding telltale specks of weathered blood on the riding crop. He made a wax impression of the silver head, resmeared it with mud and stuck it back where it had been. The torch he carried back to fit in the empty space of the Wyndham sail room. Its bottom matched the marks there precisely.

Weather had corroded the valve and plunger, but he was able to release the gas to try a light. The pressure was practically gone, and the torch refused to light. But it did flare up the match light for a moment before the match gutted out. Of course, the pressure might have leaked out but he doubted it. This torch had been used out, and probably the pressure had been low to start.

He took the torch back to the creek then. Shaking his head at what might be a foolish move that he’d regret, he sailed it back into the grass.

“Now,” he told Rourke, “we’re going to go real psychological and give a Christmas play — if those prints of the count’s turn out the way I think.”

“I like the way the pieces fit so far, Mike,” Tim said.

The two were back at the Nassau having their first eye opener when Lucy Hamilton phoned from Atlanta. “Michael, the colonel says there is no way to prove it, but in his opinion, those photos were tricked from prints on glass to look like prints on wood.”

“Atta girl! Will he sign that opinion?”

“I’m sending it over from Miami when I get back,” Lucy said efficiently. “But don’t you ‘Atta girl’ me! I look like I’d been through a five dollar sale on real mink coats!”

“We give all for our art,” Shayne chuckled. “I was murdered last night in effigy.”

“Michael! You’re not fooling! Were you hurt?”

“Of course not,” he growled. “Not yet, anyway. Hustle back to Miami and get that affadavit on the way. Have him brad the glossies right onto his signed statement, and have him bill the de Nieully counsel.”

Shayne put up the phone and lighted a cigarette. “You,” he told Rourke “are going to double for me at this Christmas play in a monk’s cowl. You’re just on the sidelines, so don’t get stage fright. All the talking will be in my dramatic voice, on a tape recording.”

“This going to be the manger scene?” Rourke grinned.

“It’s going to be the murder scene,” Shayne growled.

Rourke shook his head with mock criticism. “No fun, no romance in you,” he complained. “Always got to be scientific.”

They unearthed Terry Mathis at his home, for the pubs would not open today until two o’clock. Terry had a build very similar to Sir Herbert’s. All the ham in his Irish nature swelled with importance at the idea of impersonating the dead Sir Herbert at his death scene. Further, he rigged a blowtorch with some other blue flamed combustible that gave off a relatively mild heat. Through a connection at the broadcast studio, Rourke got the loan of a professional machine to make Shayne’s tape recording.

Shayne needed two more men, a small man and a large one, and a girl with riding clothes. Then he faced the two delicate points of his plan — the cooperation of the Countess Margot and Alma Wollner.

Margot, he was able to handle on the phone. In spite of their state of mourning, he hoped that she could arrange cocktails at her home for as many as possible of the crowd that had been at Alma’s the day the countess had mentioned Mike Shayne’s name.

“Don’t worry that any will be missing,” she told him. “When they hear you’ve got something to tell, they won’t dare not show up!”

Shayne breathed easier at her assurance on the guest score. With Rourke’s help, he made his sound track, a very simple one to accompany pantomine, mentioning no names, but giving the explanation of the action as a commentator would. He wrapped that up and took it out to Alma Wollner’s letting her hear the explanation of the part she had played, but disguised in such a way that it was a seduction scene that might have involved any woman.

At the end of her scene, she was limp, but grateful. “Mike, it could be any one of half a dozen girls in Nassau!” she breathed deeply. “If nothing goes wrong, Margot and her mother need never really know that it was me.”

Then she said with sudden worry, “But it’s going to be hard to hold Tony in line! He’ll think it’s a trick! I know he will!”

“Tell him to pack his gun,” Shayne grinned. “If it’s a trick, he’ll have plenty of chance to use it.”

There was the final detail now — getting Margot’s permission to produce the reconstructed scene in her father’s bedroom. She granted the permission, but it took guts on her part. She’d not witness the scene herself at Shayne’s suggestion, but this was getting into sensitive territory.

IX

Every last one of the people invited had arrived at Wyndham by sundown. There were also some extras. Presumably, Dennis and other officials were having the affair unofficially covered. Shayne watched for surprise on the part of any of the guests to see him still hale and hearty, but could find none. Or else, it was lost in the engulfing waves of animosity and fear that beat against him from every side.

Shayne explained that this was a two part re-enactment of the murder, which he would explain point by point from his shadowed cowl as commentator. The guests were requested to stand beyond the immediate scene of action.

“Two items in this possible solution of the crime are stage props,” he stated. “The murder weapon, and the torch. But we will have a thorough search made tomorrow which should turn them up. We are sure now that we know where to find them.”

There was subdued excitement with danger twisting through it like vicious currents in a flooding river. Anthony Crispin watched Shayne with a cold, lethal fire in his blue eyes. Luis Valencia was suave, but watchful. Hermann Roesch breathed heavier than usual and his eyes snapped from one to another group as if all were plotting and intriguing against him personally.

At dusk, Shayne led the group up to the murder chamber. Only the night lamp lighted the scene, and the sides of the room and balcony lay in heavy shadow. By request, the women scattered out along the room walls. The men stood back upon the balcony beyond the open doors.

Terry Mathis, dressed in pajamas, lay on Sir Herbert’s bed smoking one of his cigars. Rourke, wearing the monk’s cowl, impersonating Shayne, stood off in the shadow of the carved wood screen. The sound machine was unseen behind the screen, giving Shayne’s transcription. The redhead had lost himself without effort at the very back of the crowd of men, whose attention was riveted on the room.

A clock struck one. A girl in a riding habit and carrying a crop came to the door, moving into the room half in fear, and half with angry self assurance. She stood at the foot of the bed a time as ‘Sir Herbert’ gestured. Her self-assurance sagged. She moved around the bed and sat down beside him, pleading tearfully.

Shayne’s voice explained that she was being coerced. All of those people had known Sir Herbert. The women particularly could fill in their own details of the precise words and threats and promises he would be making. The girl began to sob frantically. ‘Sir Herbert’ scoffed with rough derision.

Suddenly she jumped up in an effort to escape. ‘Sir Herbert’ reached out and caught her left wrist, jerking her back onto the bed with easy power of brute superiority. He turned away casually to lay down his cigar.

The girl struck him on the head with her riding crop — but with the limber whip. Then she had freed herself and was running out the door. Unsuccessfully trying to intercept her, ‘Sir Herbert’ thundered, “I’ll have you yet!” and grunted an ugly laugh.

As the girl ran out, men’s teeth crunched. Along the edge of the room the women’s breaths sucked in like a solitary sound.

Then the smaller of the two male actors came through the door. He came sauntering with easy self-assurance, both hands in his jacket pockets. ‘Sir Herbert’ half rose on one elbow then waved at him carelessly and gestured toward the side of his bed. In the hall outside the larger character stood with the blow torch burning in his hand unseen by ‘Sir Herbert.’

The smaller man sat down on the bed and began to converse. Idly, he picked the riding crop off the floor, joking about it, slapping it into his other hand. ‘Sir Herbert’ turned to reach for his cigar, and suddenly the little man raised the crop and beat the crop down on the side of ‘Sir Herbert’s’ head. On his second stroke, the man outside rushed in, the torch in one hand, a gun in the other.

Shayne held his breath, every nerve and sense in him keyed to the reaction. His soundtrack explained that the torch had been picked up at Wyndham’s own boathouse, and that the interlopers knew he was awake because they had seen his light on from there.

But he could be wrong — dead wrong. It was still quite possible that Alma had pulled the wool over his eyes, and that she and Crispin had executed the job themselves.

Although the night light shed considerable light directly on the bed, the shadows thickened rapidly beyond it. Suddenly, Shayne was conscious that Alma had vanished into the darkness of the hall. Almost at the same moment, Luis Valencia drifted through the open windows into the adjoining bedroom.

There was no way for Shayne to drive through the crowd and pass through Sir Herbert’s room unnoticed, and he lost valuable seconds going through the next room, finding the door locked from the outside. Circuiting through a third room, when he reached the downstairs, there was utter quiet. He lost more valuable seconds listening for telltale sounds which did not come. Then he heard the Ferrari start up and sweep out the driveway at highspeed.

Shayne leaped out to Rourke’s car, following with lights blacked out. The Ferrari vanished ahead on the highroad toward Nassau. Shayne kept after it, keeping his lights off, and finally saw its tail light, parked, unmoving, close by the creek bridge. Luis Valencia was already out and combing the high grass along the creek with a flashlight.

Shayne drew well to the side of the road, his car hidden by overhanging brush. He leapt out, moving silently along the shoulder, picking up a rock to weight his fist. Valencia had found the blowtorch, and caught the dull shine of the silver handled crop. His flash flickered off, and only the labored sound of his movements back toward the road gave evidence of his presence.

Shayne crouched low, waiting for him to come up the bank. He was unconscious that Anthony Crispin had followed him, also without lights, until the Scot rasped right beside him, “So you didn’t buy her story, but you figured to follow and frame her!”

In the swiftness with which full knowledge comes in moments of peril, Shayne realized that Anthony Crispin thought that Luis Valencia was Alma Wollen, and that Shayne had trailed her here to trap her in some way.

He could smell the urge to kill bursting out of the Scot’s big body with his sweat. He could feel the man’s utterly ruthless and reckless determination to protect his woman at any cost. He heard the click of Crispin’s pistol, and at that instant, Luis Valencia threw his flash beam up onto Shayne and snarled a curse. He dropped the objects he held and clawed for his gun.

Valencia’s flash had a side beam. In the circle of light, his gun glinted as it whipped on Shayne. The detective saw the wicked expression on Valencia’s face as the side beam picked his features out of darkness.

Shayne thrust the rock he held and heard Valencia’s contemptuous snarl as he rasped, “So I missed you twice, redhead, but I get you now.”

Crispin’s gun blazed beside Shayne’s head. For a moment, Shayne’s brain felt like a bouncing ball with its muzzle roar. Valencia’s light tilted sharply up into the air. He shot crazily up into the ridge. Crispin’s gun barked a second time, and Valencia dropped, making a soft gurgling sound.

The flash fell in front of his face, showing the vicious snarl on his mouth as he died.

Crispin moved about awkwardly clearing his throat. He growled, “Damn it, I thought that was Alma, trying to find her riding crop, or trying to get away.”

“Maybe you’d better marry her while you’re still outside bars to do it,” Shayne suggested.

He used handkerchiefs to pick up the two valued objects. “At least we’ve got the right fingerprints back on them,” he chuckled.

“But what the devil,” Crispin was puzzling. “What did he bother with the torch work for?”

“It’s a guess,” Shayne said, “but either Sir Herbert had double-crossed Valencia and Roesch, or else they meant to torture some information out of him. He died from the blows while they were at it. I don’t think they meant to kill him until later, if at all.”

He gripped the tall Scot’s steel hard arm in his hand and squeezed him solidly. “I’ll be turning this evidence in to the prosecutor. He’ll hear the story of tonight of course. But I don’t imagine this evidence will ever be offered in court, Crispin. There’s no reason for Alma to confess anything to anyone and feel the shame of it. Let sleeping dogs lie.”

“I’ll see to that!” Crispin vouched.

Shayne took the two items of evidence to the prosecutor’s office himself. A third assistant asked loftilly, “Is this evidence incriminating to the man on trial?”

“No,” Shayne said.

“Then it’s immaterial and irrelevant,” the assistant said. “Of course, you’re free to leave it.”

And that was the last heard of it. But the prosecution, which should have reached a thundering denunciation in the summary, was oddly, and suddenly, tepid. The jury brought in the verdict of “not guilty,”

“You’re a real doll!” Lucy Hamilton told Shayne when she met him at the Miami airport, and pulling his red head down within reach, kissed him.