Brett Halliday - Guilty as Hell

He thrust the girl against the railing. Without hesitation he uncoiled the whip and ran it around one of the concrete uprights, pulling the shank through the loop on the handle. When Deedee saw what he meant to do, she tried to pull away.

“You can’t make me.”

“Grab me around the neck and hang on, unless you want me to throw you over.”

“You wouldn’t!”

Shayne grinned at her.

“Oh, God,” she said in a trembling voice. “I just can’t.”

He swung over the flat balustrade. A quick jerk of the head commanded her to follow. She was making frightened noises. Shayne tangled the hook in her long hair and yanked her toward him. She seized his neck with both thin arms. Her legs fastened themselves compulsively around his waist.

He was already letting himself down, the thin end of the whip looped around his fist. With a splintering crash, the door in the apartment sprang open as Shayne’s lithe, rangy body disappeared below the balustrade. He crooked his right arm around the concrete upright, putting no weight on the whip. His feet probed out blindly. The ceilings were as low as the builder had been able to make them, and Shayne figured on a drop of no more than six feet to the railing.

The girl had a stranglehold on him. Her bare knees scraped against the rough concrete as he let himself down another few inches, still not entrusting their combined weight to the whip.

He shifted his hold. For one instant before his toes touched the concrete railing, only the stretched leather thong kept them from dropping eight floors to the embankment along the edge of the bay.

Then he was balancing lightly on the railing, his cast pressed against the terrace ceiling. He revolved so the girl was over the terrace and pried her fingers loose from his neck. He jerked at the whip handle. As soon as it came free, he threw it straight out and, without waiting to see it fall, jumped down to the girl’s side.

The mattress cover had dropped at her feet. She was shuddering, her face in her hands. Shayne threw the mattress cover around her shoulders and pulled her to the door.

She started to speak, but he stopped her with a harsh whisper. Inside, he saw the looming shapes of furniture and banged his shin painfully on a low table. There was a faint hissing sound in the room. Discerning the oval outline of a lampshade, be let go of her hand and felt for the switch.

Another light came on before he could find it. This was a tiny tensor lamp beside the bed, with a concentrated beam. The beam found Shayne.

A woman’s voice said, “Stand still.”

Enough light leaked out of the intense beam to show Shayne something else-a Colt. 45 automatic. He said easily, “Let me turn on this other lamp. Then you can hold the gun with both hands.”

His hand continued its slow movement toward the lamp. When she didn’t tell him to stop, he snapped the switch, flooding the room with rosy light. This apartment was a duplicate of the one overhead in shape and size, but it contained enough furniture to crowd a much larger place. The woman in bed was wearing a cold-cream disguise and her head was a mass of exploding curlers.

She said with surprise, “You’re the man with the broken arm in the elevator.”

The hissing, Shayne saw, came from a vaporizer on the table by the bed.

“That’s what fooled me. You went to bed with a cold.”

“Don’t try to change the subject,” she said in a determined nasal voice, and gestured with the. 45. The muzzle hole was pointed squarely at Shayne’s chest, and she was squeezing the grip so hard with both hands that he knew the handle safety wouldn’t be operating.

She risked a sideward glance at Deedee and exclaimed, “Why, you’re as naked as a jaybird under that thing!”

The barrel of the. 45 twitched back at Shayne and held steady. “Mister, you just go on holding still while I call the police. If you’ve got an explanation, I don’t want to hear it.”

Shayne started to speak and she repeated, “I don’t want to hear it!”

He said in a conversational tone, “If you squeeze any harder, it’s going to go off. I’m standing still. I intend to go on standing still. Call the cops, by all means. But listen to me a minute first. My name’s Michael Shayne.”

“No, it’s not.”

“I’ll show you my license if you’ll let me take it out.”

“I’m not as foolish as I look. Hold still, you!” she said as Deedee started to move. She pawed out blindly for the phone, upsetting the vaporizer. “I’ll tell you why I know you’re not Michael Shayne. I saw Shayne on TV about one minute after I rode up with you in the elevator. So much for that story.”

“That was a tape,” Shayne said. “They taped it this afternoon. The phone’s just back of your hand. Yeah, right there. Did the Mike Shayne you saw on TV have one arm in a sling?”

“Yes-s,” she admitted. “It was quite a coincidence, I thought.”

“Don’t dial for a minute,” Shayne said as she put the phone on her lap. “I traded that TV interview for some information. I’ve been looking for a missing girl, and here she is.” He pulled the mattress cover aside to reveal the long whip mark across Deedee’s thighs. “They’ve been keeping her upstairs in 9-C, and they locked up her clothes so she couldn’t run away. They showed up at the door before I could get her out. We came down like Batman, which I don’t ever want to have to do again. I’d like to show you the license.”

After a moment, she said reluctantly, “Move your hand a half inch at a time.”

He turned slowly and unbuttoned his hip pocket. Removing the little leather folder, he flicked it open and extended it across the foot of the bed.

“Not so close,” she said. “I’m farsighted.”

He pulled it back slowly until she nodded. He put it away and she aimed the gun somewhere else, to Shayne’s relief.

“I guess that’s who you are, then. Who’s she?”

“I haven’t found out her name yet. You’ve heard about white slavery?”

“Oh, yes-sure. Is she one?”

Shayne nodded gravely.

The woman put the gun aside and pulled back the covers. “Still and all, regardless of how she makes a living, we don’t want her to run around town in her birthday suit, do we?”

She picked a dressing gown off the back of the nearest chair, then changed her mind and went to the closet, from which she took a much tackier garment of dark blue terry-cloth.

“Never mind returning it unless you want to, Mr. Shayne. It’s outlived its usefulness. And I don’t want my name to appear publicly in this in any way.”

Shayne assured her she could count on his discretion. Deedee shrugged into the robe, which was several sizes too large.

“Maybe I can find a pair of slippers you could put on, honey,” the lady said.

“She’s all right barefoot,” Shayne told her. “I’ll look out and see if the coast is clear, anyway,” the lady offered, going to the door. “I could even go down in the elevator with you, if you can wait till I take out the curlers.”

“We’ll be all right now,” Shayne said. “Which way to the stairs?”

She pointed. After they went out she stood in the doorway watching them. Then, with a deep sigh, she turned back into her crowded apartment. The door swung shut behind her.

“And just what is white slavery, may I ask?” Deedee said haughtily on the fire stairs. “If it’s what I think it is-”

Shayne grinned. “Ask your parents.”

“That’s a laugh. First I’d have to find them. What are you going to do with me?”

“What do you think I ought to do?”

She looked at him suspiciously, to see if he was serious. “Why, let me go, as soon as I answer the rest of your questions. I’m going to cooperate a hundred percent. You don’t want to have me arrested. All that red tape, Mr. Shayne, I know how busy you are-”