Brett Halliday: The blonde cried murder

AU right. Why didn't he marry Lucy? Tonight, he decided grimly, he was going to face the question squarely. He was going to ask her to face it squarely with him. Something neither of them had done before, though they had been on the verge of it many times.

He straightened up in the chair as he heard the swish of her full skirt re-entering the room. She carried a tray with a squat bottle of cognac, a four-ounce wine glass, a tumbler with ice cubes in it for herself, another tumbler filled with ice and water for him to sip while he drank cognac from the wine glass.

She set the tray down on a low table in front of the sofa, seated herself in the comer close to Shayne's chair, and filled the four-ounce glass with cognac. Then she poiu-ed an inch in the bottom of her tumbler, and held his glass out to him.

Her telephone rang before he could take the glass.

An extraordinary change came over Lucy's face. The shrill, insistent ring of the phone shattered her placidity as the glassy surface of a still pond is shattered by a stone tossed into the center.

She continued to hold the glass out for him, and said hotly, "I shan't answer it. It'll be for you, of course. No one would be calling me at this hour."

"All the more reason for you to answer it," said Shayne. "It might be important."

"A blonde?" she asked tautly.

He said easily, "Or a brunette." The telephone kept on ringing. With a gesture of impatience, he rose and crossed to it in two strides. He swept it up with his back to her and said, "Miss Hamilton's apartment," into the mouthpiece. Then he said, "That's right," and listened, his right hand going up to rub his jaw absently.

Watching him, Lucy Hamilton compressed her lips tightly and set his untouched glass of cognac back on the tray. It was a limp gesture of surrender.

With his back to her, he said incisively, "All right, Pete. I'll be there in five minutes."

He replaced the phone and turned, shaking his head sadly though his gray eyes were alert and not at all unhappy.

"Sorry as the devil, angel. But that was-"

"A blonde," she supplied for him. "A blonde in distress, no less. Just dying to weep on Mike Shayne's broad shoulder."

"Pete didn't say," he returned absently, looking around for his hat and then remembering he hadn't worn one. He suddenly became conscious of the bitterness in her face, and stepped contritely forward to touch her cheek with his fingertips. "This really sounds important. You know I've told the hotel never to bother calling me here unless it was."

"I know," she said dully, looking down so her eyes would not meet his. "So why don't you get on your white charger and ride? What's keeping you?"

"You know I'm sorry," Shayne said again. His jaw tightened when she still refused to look up. He turned to the door, saying calmly, "Keep that drink for me. I'll be back before midnight."

The lobby of Shayne's hotel was deserted except for the night clerk behind the desk and one young woman nervously smoking a cigarette in an over-stuffed chair on one side facing the doorway as Shayne entered.

He glanced at the woman briefly as he went to the desk. She appeared quite young and pretty, wore a dark skirt, a white blouse with a light gray jacket over it, and had a i red patent-leather handbag in her lap. Her eyes followed him as he strode to the desk where Pete leaned forward eagerly, his thin face screwed up in a grimace, pale eyebrows moving up and down with excitement.

"I didn't know whether to call you at Miss Hamilton's or not, Mr. Shayne." He kept his voice furtively low, as though he feared being overheard. "But you did give me that number once, for me to try if I thought it was important, and this time I decided it was. She said it was, see? And acted scared to death. You know, looking back over her shoulder like she thought she was maybe being tailed- like the devil himself might be after her. And you told me once before it was all right to send somebody up to your room to wait for you to come back, and so I thought-"

"If she were pretty enough," Shayne reminded him with a grin. "Is she?"

"Yeh. Real pretty." Pete's answering grin was relieved by Shayne's evidence of good humor, and it took on a sly man-to-man quality. "Not, that is to say, for my money, anything like as hot a piece as this here other one sitting yonder." He jerked his thumb toward the girl with the red pocketbook. "But then she didn't come in till later, see, so I couldn't very easy send her up, too. Could I?" he asked anxiously.

Shayne rested one elbow on the counter and pivoted to look at the girl across the lobby. Watching them closely, it must have been evident to her that she was under discussion, for she promptly got up and hurried toward them.

She was extremely well filled-out for her age, which didn't appear to be more than twenty, and her hips twitched provocatively as she approached. Her eyes were very light blue and had a peculiar glassy quality, lashes and brows so thin and light as to seem almost non-existent. She had too much lipstick on a very full and pouting mouth which she spread in a hopeful smile as she came up fast, asking, "Are you Mr. Shayne?"

Shayne nodded without speaking, studying her through narrowed eyes as she looked past him at Pete and demanded viciously, "Well, why didn't you say so? You promised me as soon as he came in-"

"And I just came in," said Shayne quietly. "I'm afraid I haven't time for-"

"You've got time for me." Her fingers caught his arm and tugged at it, pulling him away from the desk toward a corner where they would be out of ear-shot. "It's terribly important," she hurried on in a too-consciously throaty voice for one so young. "I've been waiting and waiting and just about going crazy wondering what I'd do if you didn't get back in time. But it's all right because I know he'll still be there if you go right away. He was there fifteen minutes ago. The Silver Glade. It's right down the street."

She had her leather bag open as she spoke, and was digging into it. Her hand came out with a four-by-six photograph of a young man which she thrust into Shayne's hand.

"That's him. Please hurry so you'll be waiting outside when he comes out. Then follow him wherever he goes."

Shayne shook his red head bluntly. "Sorry, but I'm already working. And if it's a divorce job-"

"What does it matter to you what sort of job it is? I can pay you. How much? Please. It probably won't be more than half an hour." She was digging in her bag again, and j came out with a roll of bills. She began to peel twenties off it, pausing on the fifth to look at Shayne hopefully, then detaching two more as he kept on shaking his head stubbornly.

He held the photograph out for her to take back, but she pushed it away, saying fiercely, "You can't refuse. He'll be gone before I can get anyone else." Her voice became tremulous with supplication, and she pressed herself close | to him, looking up into his eyes beseechingly and pouting ' her too-red lips invitingly.

"Pretty please." She tried to force the seven bills into his hand. "I'll be waiting for you to report. At my place, i Alone." She cooed the last four words throatily, giving them a thoroughly seductive connotation.

He said, "No," shortly, wishing she were old enough to realize her too-blatant perfume wasn't at all as seductive as she probably imagined it to be. He pushed the man's photograph back into her hand and turned away impatiently, but she clung to him and tried to pull him back, sliding the photo into his jacket pocket and continuing to try and force the bills into his hand.

He kept on toward the desk, thrusting her aside impatiently, and she finally gave up and stood still, staring at him with both hands on her ample hips, her pale blue eyes glittering with fury.