Brett Halliday - Tickets for Death

Lounging back in the seat with his big hands loose on the steering-wheel, Shayne drove slowly. He was waiting for something, he wasn’t certain what. There was a subtle warning in the subdued murmur of the night breeze swaying silvery fronds along the way, in the gentle swish of combers on the shore to his right.

He nodded absently. It was best to leave Phyllis twiddling her thumbs in the hotel lobby.

The black macadam of the highway was strangely deserted, an unwavering path leading him onward between the slender white palm trunks which were like a double row of planted lances in the softly diffused light.

Headlights of an oncoming automobile cut a bright swath toward him. He slowed still more and watched it roar past. A Ford, and the driver was the stoop-shouldered man he had watched drive away from the Voice office.

When his headlights picked up the slender figure of the girl in the roadway ahead, Shayne felt no surprise. She was as much a part of the scene as the tall palms and the night silence. She was walking northward on the edge of the pavement, glancing back over her shoulder hopefully as he came up behind her.

She stopped suddenly and turned to face his headlights, not gesturing for a ride, but quite evidently offering herself for any adventure that might come. Few men would have passed her by on the lonely road, and certainly Michael Shayne was not one of those.

He braked the roadster to a stop beside her, seeing only that she was young and slender and held herself with an aloofness that was disconcertingly at variance with what one might reasonably expect of a roadside pickup.

The girl hesitated momentarily, then leaned forward on the door, putting her head and shoulders inside and looking at his face with grave, searching eyes. She had bright blond hair wound around her head in big braids with a tiny jaunty ribbon tucked on one side. Her breath came jerkily through parted lips that were too red.

Shayne decided that her eyes were blue. He grinned and asked, “Well, do I pass inspection?”

When she nodded without speaking he leaned over and released the door catch. “It doesn’t cost any more to ride, and it’s lots easier on shoe leather.”

She nodded swiftly and slid in beside him, drawing a light silk cape protectingly about her shoulders and breast. She shivered and murmured with forced flippancy, “I forgot my roller skates.”

Shayne reached past her and closed the door. He settled back and took out a pack of cigarettes, offered her one, but she shook her head; then, changing her mind, she reached for one. “I guess I will, too.” Her voice was a deep-throated murmur.

Shayne held a match to the end of her cigarette and amusement came into his eyes as she puffed with bravado. She had a nice profile and a creamy soft complexion where there was not excessive rouge.

She said, “You’re wondering-why I’m out here like this-walking down the road alone at night.”

Shayne said, “Why, no. I was expecting you.”

She jerked her bright head around quickly, lips parted in surprise. “You’re crazy. You couldn’t have been.”

“All right,” Shayne agreed, “I’m nuts. I guess it’s the moon.” He puffed on his cigarette serenely and waited for her to make the next move.

She fidgeted with her cape, holding it together with one hand while she held the cigarette in the other. “What I mean is,” she said haltingly, “no one could have expected this to happen. Not even I. I thought Fred was a nice fellow.” There was a note of deep injury in her throaty young voice.

“Wasn’t he?” asked Shayne interestedly.

“I’ll say he wasn’t. He-well, a girl doesn’t mind when she’s stepping out to have a good time. But when he admitted he was married and had two kids-” She shrugged her slim shoulders and relapsed into gloomy silence.

“So your evening is completely spoiled?”

She gave him a long, demure glance out of the corner of her eye. “Does it have to be? What I mean is-we were headed out to the Rendezvous for a few drinks and dancing. I could certainly use a drink right now.” She ended with a shaky, high-pitched laugh which the big detective did not believe originated in any gaiety on her part.

Shayne nodded gravely. He put the roadster in gear and let it snail forward. “How do you know I’m not married with a passel of brats at home?”

She smiled happily. “I can tell. You don’t look married.”

“Maybe Fred didn’t either,” he reminded her, “and not many girls would tumble to this old jalopy of mine.”

She flashed him another quick, searching look, but Shayne’s eyes were mild and he was smiling. “Well, you know how it is. I did hesitate to get in with you, but a girl gets bored stiff doing nothing night after night. I didn’t think it would be any harm to go out to the Rendezvous with Fred tonight. My name,” she tagged on as an afterthought, “is Midge.”

Shayne inclined his head. “I’ll answer to Mike-from you.”

“You’re nice,” she breathed. “I can tell it already. You’ve got hair that makes a girl just itch to run her fingers through it. You’re the kind who would know when a girl wants to be petted and when she wants to be let alone.”

Shayne chuckled with genuine amusement. “I call this old jalopy of mine the Mayflower,” he warned, “because so many puritans have come across in it.”

Midge laughed delightedly and leaned back, pressing her silk-clad shoulder against him.

“I thought that gag was old enough to be new to a gal your age. Is that the Rendezvous ahead?” Shayne asked as they approached a building gleaming with red and yellow neon lights.

“That’s it.” She shivered and moved closer to him. “If you haven’t ever been there before, drive around to the west entrance,” she cajoled. “We can go in through a side door and upstairs to a private room where no one will see us.”

“A private room? Are you ashamed of being seen with me?”

She laughed lightly. “Don’t be silly.” She trailed her knuckles over one of his big hands. “It’s only-well, I can’t afford to be seen at a place like the Rendezvous. My family-you know. Dad’s a deacon in the church and he and mother would have a fit if they knew I’d ever taken a drink.”

Shayne nodded and drove through an arched entrance, past rows of parked cars, and around to the west side of the rambling two-story building. A single green bulb burned over a closed oak door. Midge pointed it out. With a giggle that didn’t quite ring true, she explained, “That’s where all the high-school kids go in and out.”

Shayne parked, got out, and she slid out after him. She caught his arm and held it tightly, pressing against him. The heavy door opened at the turn of the knob and they went into a long carpeted hallway. A burst of music came from beyond the partition, and there were loud voices and laughter.

Midge turned him to the right and led him to a stairway. “They gamble in the back upstairs,” she told him in a conspiratorial whisper, “and they say you can order most anything you want served in the private rooms.”

Shayne climbed the stairs with her and didn’t probe further into the suggested evils of the upstairs rooms. A dark-featured man wearing a white mess jacket lounged at the top of the stairway. He nodded woodenly to Midge and led them to a closed door at the end of a row of closed doors. He opened it onto a dimly lit cubicle with a small table set for two. There was an overstuffed couch in the room and a deep club chair in the opposite corner. The man said, “I’ll send a boy right up,” and went out, closing the door behind him.

Shayne stood in the center of the small, intimately furnished room and rumpled his coarse hair. “It’s a nice quiet place for high-school youngsters to do their consorting,” he observed dryly. “Lots more fun learning the facts of life here than by observing bees and flowers.”