Brett Halliday: The Homicidal Virgin

Dick paused to snicker. “This’ll kill you. She wanted most special to know if you was a cop. That’s one thing I did tell her flat you wasn’t.” The clerk snickered again, and then added anxiously, “If I did anything wrong…”

“You did just right, Dick.” Shayne got a five from his wallet and flipped it across to avid fingers.

“Gee, thanks, Mr. Wayne. So she left this here envelope for you and made me promise you’d get it the moment you came in.” He passed the thick, sealed envelope across to Shayne.

Words were typed on the front and Shayne read them quizzically. MIKE WAYNE in capital letters, and the message: Don’t unseal this until you walk outside and stand under the light. Then tear it open and remain in plain sight while you read it.

Shayne grinned at the clerk who he was sure had read the curious message, and said, “That’s a dame for you. Always playing games.”

He turned back with the sealed envelope in his hand, went out to stand on the sidewalk under a bright overhead light. Several cars were parked nearby, any one of which might contain someone watching him.

Deliberately he tore off one end of the envelope and shook the contents out. There was a folded sheet of square paper similar to the one on which the original advertisement had been typed.

He unfolded it and read:

You are being observed every moment. Remain in plain sight while you read this. Then hail the first empty cab that comes along. Get in and have him drive to the Boulevard and out to 79th Street and across the Causeway. You will be followed all the way. Go to the corner of Lime Road and Beach Plaza Place and let the cab go. A blue and white Plymouth sedan is parked at the Northeast corner. Get in and get a further message and the car keys from above the left sun vizor.

Jane Smith

Shayne refolded the sheet of paper and stuffed it back into the white envelope. He slid it into his right coat pocket and looked up the street for an empty cab. He stood there impassively, his rangy figure outlined in the bright overhead light, for several minutes before a cruising cab pulled in to the curb in answer to his signal. He got in and directed the driver, “Over to Biscayne and across the Seventy-Ninth Street Causeway.”

He settled back sideways in the corner and watched the street behind him with interest as the cab pulled away. A car that had been parked just beyond the hotel entrance eased out from the curb behind them and followed eastward toward the Boulevard.

Shayne relaxed and lit a cigarette, a wry smile curving his lips as he went over the typed instructions in his mind.

Jane Smith was playing it cagey, all right. Up to this point she was taking no chances of being confronted and identified. By having him open the envelope while she watched from a parked car, she had eliminated any possibility of him communicating with a confederate by telephone or otherwise. It was pretty cute figuring and indicated a certain amount of experience at this sort of thing or a devious mind that had read a lot of E. Phillips Oppenheim.

He was comfortably conscious that another car was keeping a sedate and careful distance behind them as they sped up the Boulevard and east across the winding causeway. At the eastern end, he leaned forward and told the driver, “The corner of Lime Road and Beach Plaza Place. Know where it is?”

“Just about. I can find it okay.”

Shayne settled back with another cigarette and let the driver find the intersection. It was in a quiet, residential section of palm-lined streets and middle-income homes, devoid of traffic at this hour. As the driver pulled in to the curb and stopped, Shayne noted the headlights of another car pull in half a block behind them. He got out and paid the driver, waited under the corner streetlight until the cab disappeared, and then strode around the corner to a blue and white Plymouth.

He slid under the steering wheel and felt above the sun vizor for another folded sheet of paper and a set of car keys. He groped along the instrument panel until he found the map light and turned it on, and read Jane Smith’s second message.

You are still under constant observation. If you have followed instructions thus far, drive to Collins and proceed south to the Palms Terrace Hotel. Stop at the entrance and give your keys to the doorman. He will give you a parking ticket. Go straight through the lobby into the Crystal Room. Sit at an empty table and order a drink and drink it slowly. If I have not sat at your table and accosted you by the time you finish a second drink, you will know that I do not trust you on closer scrutiny and shall not approach you at all.

In that case, leave the Plymouth in the hotel parking lot and forget about me.

Jane Smith

P.S. It will be useless to try and trace me through the Plymouth. It is stolen.

Shayne grinned wryly as he put the key in the ignition and turned on the headlights. He was developing a very definite admiration for Jane Smith and her devious methods. She had coppered every bet thus far, setting the situation up with admirable efficiency so she could turn aside at any moment without the slightest chance of a finger being put on her.

As he drove southward on Collins followed by the car that had been behind him all the way from Miami, Shayne wondered what Jane Smith was like and whether she would come to his table in the Crystal Room. If it was she who was doing the tailing, she would be behind him at the hotel, and would enter the cocktail lounge after he did. On the other hand, she might already be there, waiting for him to appear, having turned the tailing job over to someone else. He hadn’t seen whether the driver of the car behind him was male or female. Perversely, he had tried not to see. It was a lot more fun this way, and as he drove southward through the languid warmth of the semi-tropical night Shayne suddenly admitted to himself that there hadn’t been near enough fun in his life in recent years. He had been letting himself grow old, by God. Maybe not old, but certainly stodgy. Going along in a routine groove, accepting mundane assignments and carrying them out competently.

And now all at once Jane Smith had made him feel young and adventurous again. He looked forward eagerly to sitting alone at a table in the Crystal Room, sizing up the females present and speculating whether this one or that was Jane Smith-and whether she would make herself known to him or not.

No matter how this affair turned out, Timothy Rourke had at least done this much for him-and Shayne was properly grateful.

He sat very erect and felt a tingle of anticipation travel down his spine as he turned off Collins and slowed in front of the brightly lighted entrance to the Palms Terrace.

A smartly uniformed doorman snapped the door open for him and asked deferentially, “May I have it parked for you, sir?”

Shayne said, “Please,” and handed him the keys, receiving a numbered parking ticket. He didn’t look behind him at an arriving car as he went into the hotel lobby and spotted the neon-lighted entrance to the Crystal Room across at his right.

The Crystal Room of the Palms Terrace Hotel was very like hundreds of other cocktail lounges in similar resort hotels throughout the area. Discreetly lighted to provide an atmosphere of intimacy conducive to assignations, with a lavish decor and soft-spoken, attentive waiters, with the best brands of liquor served at high prices, it was a congenial spot for hotel guests to spend the dull evening hours in the hope of meeting other bored guests-preferably of the opposite sex.

At this slack season the room was uncrowded as Shayne entered. Four separate couples occupied small tables along the wall, and a boisterous party of six was making merry at a big round table in the rear. Five men and three women sat on stools in front of the bar behind which two bartenders were not being kept very busy.