Brett Halliday - Counterfeit Wife

But there was something more than fawning supplication in the damp eyes. There was terror and a desperate and despairing urgency.

Shayne shook the tight fingers from his arm and started purposefully toward Gate 3, saying, “I don’t believe it’s any of your business.”

The smaller man trotted beside him, again clutching at Shayne’s arm. “But you don’t understand,” he said. The low murmur of his voice became a whisper. “It’s terribly urgent that I get a seat on that plane. There’s not a single vacancy. I’ve been pleading with the girl at the desk. When I heard your telephone conversation-”

Shayne stopped suddenly and again forced the man’s hand from his arm.

The man sighed and set his suitcase down, wiped sweat from his pallid brow, and went on rapidly: “It’d be a tremendous favor, brother, if I could have your seat. Pressing business, you understand.” He drew in a deep breath and tried to calm the shakiness of his voice. “I simply must be in New Orleans tomorrow morning. This is my only possible chance.”

Shayne shook his head, glancing at the clock. “There isn’t time to exchange tickets now. The plane leaves-”

“We needn’t bother about formalities,” the man broke in. “To avoid explanations and delays I’ll simply take your ticket and say nothing. Your girl turned you down flat, didn’t she? I heard enough to get that. You don’t want to go running after her. Show her you’re independent. That’s the way to handle ’em, brother.” His trembling hand dug into his pocket and came out clutching a roll of bills. Under Shayne’s bleak and angry gaze he peeled a C-note from the outside of the roll, hesitated briefly, then peeled off another. “I’m glad to pay-well,” he whimpered. “You can get another plane tomorrow. That’ll be too late for me.” He ended on a note of despair.

The sonorous tone of the loud-speaker filled the room, calling, “National Airlines announces the immediate departure of Flight Sixty-two to Jacksonville and New Orleans from Gate Three. All aboard, please.”

Shayne shrugged his wide shoulders and his face relaxed a trifle. “I’ve missed planes before,” he admitted. “But my bag is already checked.”

“Take mine and check it instead,” the man said hurriedly. “Tell the porter there’s been a mixup and this is actually your bag. Have him bring yours back. You can get it at the gate.” He forced the two one-hundred dollar bills into Shayne’s big palm.

Michael Shayne was scarcely conscious of closing his knobby fingers over the two bills. His thoughts were wholly in New Orleans, occupied with a slim, brown-haired girl whose shining brown eyes were now probably cold with anger and full of tears. He visualized a deserted, locked-up office and the lonely emptiness of it without Lucy Hamilton behind the reception desk. He knew, now, that it had all been a mistake.

He had run away from Miami once to escape certain memories, and then he had run away from New Orleans to escape certain other things. Suddenly he knew Lucy was right. The whole thing had been wrong from the beginning. She deserved a vacation from him. He looked again at the clock, saw that the minute hand was covering the hour hand at twelve o’clock, and the smaller second hand was rapidly swinging past flight time. The loud-speaker was urgently announcing this fact.

“I’ve already given up my apartment,” he muttered aloud, “but it’s probably still vacant, and I can get it back.” He whirled and caught the arm of a passing porter.

“This gentleman and I have got our bags mixed,” he explained rapidly. “They’re both Gladstones and look a lot alike. Mine is loaded on Flight Sixty-two instead of his. Here-” He took a five-dollar bill and his baggage check from his pocket and thrust both into the porter’s hand. “If you can get my bag off the plane and his on in place of it there’ll be another five in it for you.”

“You bet!” The porter glanced through the window at the big airliner with the passenger loading platform still pushed up against the side of it. A couple of attendants stood at the foot of the stairs nervously looking at their watches and at a passenger list one of them carried. “I’ll fix it, boss,” the Negro said, snatching up the suitcase and sprinting away.

“Passenger Michael Shayne for New Orleans,” the voice of the loud-speaker called impatiently. “Flight Sixty-two is now ready to depart from Gate Three. Please go to Gate Three to board the plane.”

“That’s you,” Shayne told the smaller man. “Let’s go out and stall them long enough for the porter to exchange those bags.” He took his ticket from his pocket as he spoke, thrust it into the man’s pudgy hand, and they moved together toward the open gate.

The man gave a long sigh and mopped at his pasty face as they walked. With the ticket in his hand the stress left him; he suddenly became stiff and somewhat pompous. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Mr. Shayne. My name is Parson, sir. You’ve been most kind and obliging.”

“Think nothing of it,” Shayne told him. He stopped just inside the gate and watched Parson go toward the steps leading up to the cabin of the plane.

The baggage compartment behind the cabin was still open, and, as he watched, he saw the Negro porter hurrying across with Parson’s Gladstone in his hand.

Parson stopped at the foot of the wheeled loading platform and conferred briefly with the attendants while a blue-uniformed stewardess leaned out anxiously from the doorway above. Parson was showing his ticket, making some explanation. Shayne saw the porter step back from the baggage compartment with a suitcase in his hand. An attendant closed and locked the storage space. Parson then mounted the stairs nimbly and disappeared inside the cabin, followed by the two men who closed the cabin door from the outside and hurried down to wheel the loading platform away.

The four propellers of the huge airliner began to turn slowly, then two of them speeded up with a mighty roar to wheel the plane toward the runway.

The porter came up to Shayne with a wide grin on his face and, panting, handed him the Gladstone.

“I was mighty lucky, boss. Yours was loaded on last, right there where I could lay my hands on it.”

Shayne nodded absently and took the promised bill from his wallet for the Negro, his gray eyes riveted on the plane disappearing swiftly into the misty moonlight beyond the range of the floodlights atop the tower.

When the porter went away, Shayne stood very still, his bleak gaze still watching the plane. There was futile emptiness inside him as the colorful lights rose and climbed higher and higher toward the sky. It wasn’t so much the thought of Lucy running out on him, he thought morosely, as the fact that he had made a fool of himself. Standing in the Miami air terminal with no reason whatsoever for being there, he swore softly under his breath.

The New Orleans episode was over. That was very clear to him now. He convinced himself that he was glad he had been able to do Parson a favor, and he wasn’t at all sure that the little pasty-faced man had not also done him a favor in return. If Lucy couldn’t understand that a man sometimes gets caught up in a tangle he can’t get out of-if she didn’t have enough loyalty to carry on for a few days-A few days! He suddenly realized that it had been months since he had been in New Orleans.

He said aloud, “To hell with it,” picked up his suitcase, and strode back into the terminal building.

As Shayne came in from the rear, a woman entered the front door with a free-swinging, masculine stride. She caught his eye at once because she was statuesquely and lushly blonde, and because she carried her liquor superbly.