Brett Halliday - The Corpse Came Calling

Sitting silent beside him, Phyllis shuddered and relaxed against the back of the seat with her cheek pressing against his shoulder. In a low voice she said, “Michael! I don’t think I’ll ever forget that horrible moment this afternoon when you kept going toward the man while he backed away threatening to shoot you. Why didn’t he pull the trigger?”

“He didn’t want to shoot me any more than I wanted him to,” Shayne scoffed. “He knew one shot would end the party-bring someone to investigate-and I wasn’t any good to him if I couldn’t talk.”

“This is the kind of case you’re crazy about, isn’t it?” Phyllis demanded after a moment of silence.

“It’s beginning to look interesting,” Shayne hedged. “I like to find out things as I go along-stay one jump ahead of the other fellow.”

“I mean the danger. The continued imminence of death. Pitting yourself against murderous forces. That’s what you really like about it, Michael.” She shuddered again.

He was thoughtfully silent for a time. “Maybe so, Phyl. I never put it into words before.” His voice roughened. “I’m sorry if it’s tough on you, but you knew my business before you married me.”

“I’m not kicking,” she disclaimed quickly. She sat up straighter, reached over, and got two cigarettes from a pack in his shirt pocket. She lit them both, inserted one between his lips. “Let it be a short life and a merry one,” she went on with mock bravado. “Only-it is fun being married to you, darling. I’d like to have it last another month or so.”

“I lasted a lot of years before I had you to worry about me. And you’d better be glad,” he went on, “that I’m not flying a bomber or riding a submarine tonight. Bucking a couple of New York gunsels isn’t half so dangerous as taking a whack at the Nazis.”

“That would be different. At least, I think it would,” Phyllis said slowly, seeking to rationalize a thought that wasn’t wholly rational. “It seems to me I wouldn’t mind that half as much.”

“A man is just as dead,” said Shayne sententiously, “from an enemy machine gun as from a sawed-off. 45 in the hand of a hired torpedo.”

“Oh, I know.” Phyllis shivered and pressed against him. “War and death seem so far away. It’s sacrilege to think about such things on a night like this.”

That, Shayne realized with a sense of shock, was in line with what he had been thinking a short time before, only in an entirely different way. He remained silent, driving down the last incline off the causeway and turning abruptly south on the peninsula.

A few blocks more and he pulled up in front of the Danube Restaurant, a low, inconspicuous building facing Biscayne Bay.

There were not many cars in the large parking lot, and as they got out, Shayne explained casually. “The war has practically ruined Otto’s trade, I guess. He’s a nice, harmless old fellow but he had the misfortune to be born on the wrong side of the Atlantic.”

“It’s a shame,” Phyllis said warmly. “He’s an American citizen, isn’t he?”

Shayne said, “Yes. Otto’s naturalized, but he’s still a German to a lot of people who think in terms of headlines.”

He guided Phyllis through the entrance and gave his hat to a motherly Frau behind the check counter. A tall, heavy-shouldered man met them at the entrance to the dining-room. He had a long, horsy face and sad brown eyes. He wore dinner clothes and had a napkin neatly folded over his arm.

“Two, sir?” He did not bow, but there was servility in his tone.

Shayne said, “You’re new here,” as they followed him into the large dining-room where less than a dozen diners sat.

“Yes, sir. I’ve been here only a short time.” He spoke without a trace of foreign accent. “Will this be suitable, sir?” He led them to a table near the wall.

Shayne said, “This will do.” The headwaiter drew out Phyllis’s chair, then snapped his fingers loudly for a waiter.

Shayne ordered two sidecars and inquired about the hasenpfeffer. The moon-faced waiter beamed delightedly and assured him it was of the most delectable.

Phyllis leaned close to her husband when the waiter went away. “Now will you tell me why you insisted on coming here tonight?”

He told her, “I wanted to get a look at the head-waiter.”

She craned her head around to look at the sad-eyed man. “What about him?”

Shayne admitted he didn’t know. He gave her a brief resume of his talk over the telephone with Will Gentry. “It’s an old dodge,” he concluded, “reporting one’s car stolen while it is being used to commit a crime. So old,” he added ruefully, “that few of our better crooks use it except as a last resort. But it’s the only angle that’s turned up yet and I didn’t want to pass up any bets.”

The waiter brought the sidecars. As Shayne lifted his glass he turned his head slightly and saw Helen Brinstead following the headwaiter to a table for two against the opposite wall. She was alone and she still wore the dove-gray dress he had seen that afternoon. He set his cocktail down and said, “Don’t look now, but I think I smell heliotrope perfume.”

Phyllis sniffed unconsciously. Her eyes widened and she glanced aside in the direction of his gaze where Helen was sitting down. Shayne hunched his chair around so that his back was partially toward the girl.

Phyllis breathed, “She’s-beautiful, Michael.”

He nodded and lifted his glass again. “Maybe that’s why she’s bored with her husband.”

“Michael! Are you sure there isn’t some mistake? She doesn’t look like that sort of girl.”

Shayne said, “Most of them don’t, angel. Take you, for example. Now who would think you were a dish-throwing female?”

Phyllis grimaced. “You knew she would be here for dinner,” she challenged. “That’s why you came.”

Shayne shook his head. “I’d have come alone if I’d been sure. But it isn’t strange that she’s here,” he added. “Her apartment is only a block away and this is the only decent restaurant in this vicinity.”

As they finished their drinks, the waiter approached proudly bearing aloft a tray holding huge bowls of the German dish prepared as only the Danube cook could prepare it. A short little man waddled in the wake of the waiter. He was almost as wide as he was tall. Deep lines of worry were etched in a moonlike face that was normally placid and beaming. Otto Phleugar’s round blue eyes held a hurt look of bewilderment like that of a child who has been unfairly punished by his parents.

He stopped beside Shayne’s chair and put a fat, moist hand on Shayne’s shoulder. “It is good to see you ordering the hasenpfeffer, mine friend. It is for wonder you do not fear so German a dish would be poisoned by the Nazi ideals.”

Shayne smiled up at the proprietor. “Is it really getting that bad, Otto?”

“Worse nor that,” he declared. “Those who were my friends in past years have declared the boycott. For yourself, you can see.” He waved a pudgy hand toward the almost deserted dining-room.

Shayne said, “It’s just the backwash of war hysteria. It will pass, Otto-if you keep on serving the same kind of food you have been.”

“I am sure of nothing,” sighed Otto Phleugar. “In America I have lived for twenty years yet, and now I am hated and threatened because once I lived in a land that is now at war with us.”

He hesitated, then ventured timidly, “Could I in my office see you after the dinner is ended, Mr. Shayne? There is somethings for talk in private that I your advice would ask.”

“Sure, Otto. You can’t drag me away from this dinner, but as soon as I’m full to the chin I’ll be in.”

“It is with the greatest thanks,” the rotund man said. He bowed from his enormous belly to Phyllis and turned away.