Brett Halliday - The Homicidal Virgin

“She told you why she wants Henderson dead?” Shayne persisted relentlessly.

“Yes. The whole sordid truth tumbled out in a torrent. Imagine a man like that. Trying to seduce his own stepdaughter with her mother scarcely settled in her grave. Her cooped up in that house with him and so frightened that she has to lock her door every night. It’s vile and nasty and makes me want to puke every time I think of it. No wonder she got all worked up to the point of doing what she did. I’m not passing judgment on her for it,” he went on fiercely. “If she had only come to me the first time he made a pass at her. I blame myself because she didn’t. She should have known I’d understand and wouldn’t think it was her fault. Well, she knows now, and there’s never going to be any more secrets between us.”

Shayne said gently, “That’s the way it should be if you’re in love.”

“She said you were a nice guy,” the youth burst out impulsively. “And I can see you are, too. But I just had to find out for myself and that’s why I telephoned you this morning. It frightened me, sort of, when she showed me that card you gave her with the private detective’s number on it. I thought what if you called him and told him. You didn’t, did you?”

“I didn’t tell anyone anything about it,” Shayne assured him. “You needn’t worry on that score.”

“I certainly am relieved to hear that. I got all kinds of crazy ideas when I got to thinking about it after telling her good-by this morning. Like if you had told your friend Mr. Shayne, maybe he’d think it was his duty to warn Henderson or even tell the police. And what if something did happen to Henderson? You know, if he should get bumped off. Well, you’d probably think sure as shooting that she had gone on and got someone else to do the job after you turned her down. And I wanted you to know she hadn’t. She promised me she’d never even think of such a thing again, and we’re going to fix it up somehow so she won’t have to go back and live with him until she inherits her money.”

“I’m damned glad to hear it,” Shayne told him sincerely. “I confess I was plenty worried when I walked out of her room last night.”

“God, what a narrow escape she had,” breathed Paul feelingly. “Believe me, I read the riot act to her after she told me what she had done.”

“Marry her right away,” Shayne advised him. “She’s past eighteen and doesn’t need her guardian’s consent. Whether you think you’ve got enough money or not. You’ll get by somehow.”

“That’s exactly what we’re going to do. That’s what I told her. My God, we can live in a single room if we have to. Money isn’t everything, I told her. In just a couple of years you’ll get yours anyhow. Henderson can’t stop that. Just stay away from the bastard, I told her, and forget your crazy plan for hiring someone to kill him.”

Shayne felt vastly relieved when he strode out of the Dolphin bar a few minutes later. The girl had used good sense, he thought, in not telling her young man the full truth about Henderson and her sexual involvement. Paul Winterbottom didn’t appear to have the broadest shoulders in the world, but he seemed a nice enough fellow and genuinely in love with the girl. It was too bad, of course, that something couldn’t be done about Henderson, but he didn’t see how it could be accomplished without involving the girl.

There were lots of Hendersons in the world, though most of them weren’t on the verge of being elected mayor of an important city like Miami Beach. That, too, wasn’t any affair of Shayne’s, but he knew that if he could find a way to throw a monkey-wrench into the political pot, he would do so gladly. For that reason he decided to say nothing to Tim Rourke about no longer wanting to meet the man.

It was the next day when Timothy Rourke called to say that Shayne and Lucy were invited to cocktails at the Henderson house that afternoon. When Shayne asked if he’d had any trouble wangling the invitation, Rourke laughed shortly and said, “It was the other way around. In fact, it was Henderson himself who brought your name up while I was casting about for some way to get you together.”

Shayne said wonderingly, “Henderson mentioned my name out of a clear sky?”

“That’s right. I called to suggest I might interview him on his political prospects, and we made an appointment. Then, before I could say anything else he sort of gushed, ‘By the way, you’re quite friendly with Michael Shayne, aren’t you? The private detective.’ When I coyly confessed that we were practically on a first-name basis, he said he admired hell out of you and always had wanted to meet you. I told him it wasn’t difficult if he had the price of a drink on him, and he wondered out loud if you’d like to drop in for cocktails this evening, and I accepted for both of us.”

“And Lucy?”

“And Lucy. He said there isn’t any Mrs. Shayne, is there, and I told him no but you had a beautiful secretary with two hollow legs. He thought that was very funny indeed and insisted that you must bring her. Pick me up at my place a little before six?”

Shayne said, “Sure,” and hung up reflectively. Why would a man like Saul Henderson be anxious to meet him? Did he know about his stepdaughter’s meeting with Shayne? And would she be there? It looked like an interesting evening, and he went out to tell Lucy to leave the office early enough to be ready to be picked up at half past five.

The Henderson house was a modern one-story structure directly on the ocean at the far northern end of Miami Beach. There were already half a dozen cars parked in the circular drive in front of the ranch house when Shayne turned in at six-thirty. Sitting between the two men in the front seat, Lucy said, “You didn’t say it was going to be a party, Tim. If I’d known that…”

“I didn’t know myself, and what would you have worn different if you had known?” Rourke’s amused glance took in her neat tailored suit of blue silk with a fresh organdy blouse which she had changed into after leaving the office.

“But this isn’t a party dress.”

Shayne stopped and switched off the motor and said gruffly, “You look good enough to eat, angel. Next time I bring you to meet a wolf like Henderson remind me to make you wear that gunnysack that makes you look like Old Mother Hubbard.”

“You don’t even know the man, Michael. Yet you keep on making veiled remarks about him,” Lucy protested as they got out and circled the parked cars toward the front door.

“That’s right,” Tim Rourke averred with a curious glance at him over Lucy’s head. “What does give between you and Henderson, Mike? You asked me to set up this meeting…”

Shayne said, “Just don’t let him get you into a bedroom alone with him, Lucy.” He squeezed her arm and grinned to make the warning lighter than it sounded, but she stopped on the steps to glare at him and said furiously:

“You sound as though I make a practice of going into bedrooms with strange men.”

Shayne pulled her on up to the front door and said grimly, “Just don’t.” He put his finger on the button and the door was opened almost instantly by a maid in a neat white uniform.

There was a small entry hall behind her, and from an archway on the right flowed a loud babble of voices and laughter and the welcoming click of ice in glasses.

The maid smilingly took the men’s hats and they passed her to enter a large square room that held twelve or fifteen people in three groups, all with glasses in their hands and seemingly all talking at once.

Saul Henderson detached himself from the group nearest the entrance as they hesitated there. Shayne recognized him at once from his newspaper picture, and immediately disliked him more in the flesh than he had in his thoughts. He was of medium height with thinning dark hair, and he carried his forty-odd years with a youthful bounce that somehow managed to be irritating to the redhead. He had an ingratiating, smile that was almost effusive as he advanced with outstretched hand and exclaimed, “Mr. Rourke. How delightful that you could come. And in such charming company.”