Brett Halliday: Stranger in Town

She moved quite slowly, with a sort of gliding motion that gave the impression each forward step was an effort, that only by concentrating on each muscle required for movement could she force herself forward at all.

Shayne sat quietly, both big hands cupping the glass in front of him, his eyes locked with hers as she drew near. There was more than sheer terror in her unblinking eyes. They questioned him, and they implored him to understand, and they begged piteously for forgiveness.

The hell of it was that Michael Shayne did not know what question they were asking-what they wanted him to understand-or what he was being asked to forgive her for.

Then she was standing directly beside his booth, and she leaned forward from the waist, slowly untwining the curled fingers of both hands to place palms flat on the table to support her weight as she bent close to him.

Two men had followed her inside the room. Shayne was not aware of their entrance. He waited, staring back into her fear-dilated eyes, seeing the lips tremble uncontrollably, then part enough to allow three words to be wrenched from her throat:

“I’m sorry. I…”

She got no further.

The two men who followed her inside had strode forward, and one of them shouldered her roughly aside, thrusting her back against the wall and moving slightly behind Shayne as he did so.

He was a big man, with hulking shoulders that strained the seams of a light brown gabardine suit-coat. Heavy-boned and black-haired wrists extended well below the cuffs, and his hands were the size of picnic hams. He had a moon-like expanse of ruddy face, with an incongruously small and pursed-up mouth beneath a wide, flattened nose through which he breathed stertorously. His eyes were small, and inflamed like those of a maddened boar as they glared down at the detective.

His companion was tall and slender and wore a conservative, pin-stripe business suit, and a natty snap-brim hat tilted low over searching black eyes. He was in his mid-thirties, with rather high cheekbones and a cleanly sculptured jaw that gave his face a curiously ascetic expression. He stood calmly in front of Shayne, no single flicker of expression on his face as the black eyes beneath the low brim of the hat carefully studied and assayed the seated detective.

Smoke curled up lazily from a cigarette in his left hand. His right hand was thrust deep in the side coat pocket that clearly showed the outline of a stubby automatic. Probably a. 32, Shayne thought mechanically.

Shayne made no movement. Both hands were in front of him on the table. After his first swift glance at the bigger man, he disregarded him and gave his entire attention to the other.

He said, “I think there’s some mistake.”

“No mistake,” the tall man said. His voice was pleasant and supremely self-confident. “Want to talk to you. Outside.”

Shayne lifted his glass of brandy and took a deep swallow, eyes not leaving the other’s face. There was the briefest nod, and a ham-like fist crashed against his right temple like the kick of a mule. The brandy glass flew against the wall, and Shayne was catapulted side-wise so his body was wedged in the corner between the wooden table and the back of the booth.

From a long distance away he heard a shrilly whimpering exhalation of breath from the girl who had stopped at his booth and started to speak to him. The most beautiful girl Michael Shayne had ever seen in his life-and an absolute stranger to him.

There was no further sound in the bar-room.

Shayne set his teeth together hard and slowly pushed himself erect. The tall slender man had not moved. His face was as dangerously non-expressive as before. His black eyes continued to study the rugged features of the red-headed detective with the same impersonal interest as before.

He said, “Outside,” and took a single backward step, right hand still bunched in his coat pocket.

Shayne put his hands on the table in front of him and pushed his wide-shouldered body as erect as the narrow space between table and bench would allow.

Thus, with knees slightly bent and leaning forward from the waist for balance, he awkwardly sidled out of the booth.

As he straightened to his full height in the aisle, his left foot shot out behind him in a vicious kick aimed in the general direction of the big man’s groin, and at the same instant he dived headlong at the slender man with the gun.

The sole of his shoe struck solid flesh behind him and gave his body impetus that threw him into the other man before he could sidestep. They crashed to the floor together and Shayne had his big hand over the pocketed automatic before it was fired.

But he had missed the vital target behind him, for while he and the gunman were still rolling on the floor under the first impact of his dive, the toe of a number twelve shoe caught him squarely on the side of the neck just below the cheekbone, not quite wrenching his head completely off his shoulders.

For one brief instant everything blacked-out. It was purely by instinct that the grip of his hand on the automatic did not weaken and that his other hand found the throat of the writhing figure beneath him. Shayne’s body acted as a superb fighting machine that had been wound up and set into motion, and his reflexes took over during that brief period of unconsciousness.

Then the big man undid what he had done before by kicking him viciously again. This time the toe of his shoe landed in Shayne’s ribs as he was rolling on the floor on top of the gunman, and the impact brought him back to sharp awareness.

He was wedged half under a booth, but the automatic came free in his hand and he whirled onto his back and fired upward once at the blurred hulk of the second man stepping in for the kill.

He knew he had missed as he pulled the trigger, but the big man halted momentarily and Shayne dragged himself to his knees with the gun ready, blinking his eyes desperately to sweep the red mist of pain away, and he was barely conscious of swift movement toward him from the front of the bar-a third man hurrying in to help the first pair.

He swung his head desperately against the pull of bruised neck muscles, trying to align the automatic against the new threat, but his muscles refused to respond fast enough to save him.

He didn’t see the short length of lead pipe that clunked solidly against the side of his head. He didn’t see anything at all for some little time.

When life did come back to him he realized he was huddled half on the floor and half on the back seat of a moving car. There was someone on the seat beside him, and he heard a voice speaking from in front. It was the cold, incisive voice he had heard in the bar: “Put it back in his pocket where you got it, Mule. And don’t try to slip even a buck out of it. This has got to be a straight hit-run accident and no fooling about it.”

There was a low rumble of disgust from the man in the back with him, and Shayne felt a big hand feeling over his body for his hip pocket and slipping something into it. His wallet, he supposed from what he had just overheard.

They had made some sort of mistake, of course. The girl and the two men who had evidently followed her into the bar. This hadn’t happened to Michael Shayne. It had happened to him, of course, but not to Michael Shayne per se.

But they hadn’t wanted to argue the matter back in the bar. They hadn’t been at all interested in any explanation. The voice came from the front seat again:

“Still passed out, Mule?”

Close beside him on the back seat, a hoarse rumble responded disgustedly, “Cold like a mackerel. Hell, I didn’t kick him hard as all that. To look at him, you’da thought…”

“Just so he doesn’t die on us for another half mile,” the pleasant voice cautioned. “Sure he’s still breathing?”