The Homicidal Virgin Read online

  The bellboy came back with a fifth of Martel, a pitcher of ice, and offered Shayne some dollar bills and silver in change. The redhead waved it aside casually said, “That’s okay.” He started to open the bottle and added, “Join me in a small drink?”

  “I better not,” the boy said regretfully. “I don’t go off till six.” He started toward the door and Shayne stopped him with one big hand in the air. “What’s the chance getting some sort of action in this dump?”

  The boy paused halfway to the door and considered the redhead carefully. “What sort of action? You want a woman…”

  Shayne swept his hand downward in a disdainful gesture. “I’ll do my own hustling. Any games running? Friend of mine in New Jersey stayed here last month said he got a fair break.”

  The lad’s eyelids shifted downward. “Whyn’t you talk to the night clerk? That’s Dick. Comes on at six. He might know something.”

  Shayne said, “Thanks, I will.” The boy went out and Shayne got two glasses from the bathroom and poured a couple of fingers of cognac in one, put ice cubes in the other and filled it with water.

  He set the two glasses side by side on the desk, sat down and composed a letter on hotel stationery:

  Dear Miss Smith:

  You will be surprised to receive this letter after you see that your ad didn’t appear in the Daily News. This is what happened.

  The newspaper does not run ads like yours, but my girlfriend that works in the advertising department opened your letter and read it and instead of turning it over to her boss as she was supposed to, she put it in her bag instead and gave it to me at lunch. So I’m the only one that knows about it and you won’t get any other answer but this.

  I think I can fill the bill if the price is right. You can reach me at this address any time after nine or ten p.m. Hoping to hear from you,

  Very truly yours,

  Mike Wayne.

  He fortified himself with a long drink of cognac before reading over what he had written, and even at that he shuddered as he came to the end. But he folded it resolutely and sealed it inside a hotel envelope and addressed it to Jane Smith at her Miami mail drop, and then settled back in an easy chair with his feet up on the windowsill overlooking the Bay to take alternate sips of cognac and ice water while he waited for it to be six o’clock so he could go down and confer with the night clerk to start establishing the new identity of Mike Wayne from Bayonne, New Jersey.

  2

  By the evening of the third day Michael Shayne had established himself in the routine of the hotel as a regular who was casually accepted by the staff and the other regulars. He left his room promptly each morning and dropped his key at the desk, did not return until nine or ten in the evening when he would be greeted amiably by the night clerk and given the room number in which the game was running that night.

  It was a cozy stud-poker set-up, presided over by three residents of the hotel who moved it from one of their rooms to another each night. They played for table stakes with an initial buy of a hundred dollars worth of chips required in order to sit in, and it was a smooth operation designed to milk moderate sums from a succession of suckers as painlessly as possible.

  Shayne discovered that much about the game the first night he sat in—the first evening after he checked in. He quickly identified the three regulars as professional gamblers who knew their business, and the two other players who were being set up for the kill. He played his own cards carefully and aloofly while the fat man from New York on his left was efficiently relieved of almost two grand. From conversation around the table it developed that the fat man had been carefully set up for the kill during the preceding three or four evenings, having been allowed to win moderate amounts each evening until he was thoroughly convinced that the game was honest and that they were the suckers ripe to be taken.

  And it was an honest game so far as Shayne could ascertain. Within the legal definition of honest poker, that is. They didn’t appear to be using marked cards or doing any manipulating. Such crude methods weren’t needed, of course, with three experienced men playing as a unit against one sucker. By one of them raising lavishly on nothing while one of his partners obviously had the winning hand, the outsider was whip-sawed time after time into losing large pots in which he had no business whatsoever.

  It was a familiar enough pattern for such a game, and Shayne cynically won a succession of small pots and stayed put of the big ones, noting that it was the other floater’s third night for being allowed to win, and with a certain admiration for the finesse displayed by the three professionals.

  The fat man wasn’t present the second night, but there were two new players to take his place, and all four of the outsiders were allowed to win moderately.

  When Shayne sauntered up to the desk at nine-thirty on the third evening, Dick turned to a pigeonhole behind him and withdrew Shayne’s key and a large bulky white envelope. He leaned across the desk and spoke rapidly, “Funny thing this evening, Mr. Wayne. Along about seven a woman called to ask was you in. I told her you never was here before nine. About ten minutes later this chick comes in and asked for you. I can’t swear it was the same one that had just phoned, but I’m pretty sure it was the same voice. When I told her you wouldn’t be in till nine, she slid a ten-spot across to me and started askin’ all these questions. What you looked like, how long you been here, what do you do… all that. You never had told me not to answer questions, so I took her money and told her what she wanted to know. One thing in particular she pushed me hard on.”

  Dick paused to snicker. “This’ll kill you. She wanted most special to know if you was a cop. That’s one thing I did tell her flat you wasn’t.” The clerk snickered again, and then added anxiously, “If I did anything wrong…”

  “You did just right, Dick.” Shayne got a five from his wallet and flipped it across to avid fingers.

  “Gee, thanks, Mr. Wayne. So she left this here envelope for you and made me promise you’d get it the moment you came in.” He passed the thick, sealed envelope across to Shayne.

  Words were typed on the front and Shayne read them quizzically. MIKE WAYNE in capital letters, and the message: Don’t unseal this until you walk outside and stand under the light. Then tear it open and remain in plain sight while you read it.

  Shayne grinned at the clerk who he was sure had read the curious message, and said, “That’s a dame for you. Always playing games.”

  He turned back with the sealed envelope in his hand, went out to stand on the sidewalk under a bright overhead light. Several cars were parked nearby, any one of which might contain someone watching him.

  Deliberately he tore off one end of the envelope and shook the contents out. There was a folded sheet of square paper similar to the one on which the original advertisement had been typed.

  He unfolded it and read:

  You are being observed every moment. Remain in plain sight while you read this. Then hail the first empty cab that comes along. Get in and have him drive to the Boulevard and out to 79th Street and across the Causeway. You will be followed all the way. Go to the corner of Lime Road and Beach Plaza Place and let the cab go. A blue and white Plymouth sedan is parked at the Northeast corner. Get in and get a further message and the car keys from above the left sun vizor.

  Jane Smith

  Shayne refolded the sheet of paper and stuffed it back into the white envelope. He slid it into his right coat pocket and looked up the street for an empty cab. He stood there impassively, his rangy figure outlined in the bright overhead light, for several minutes before a cruising cab pulled in to the curb in answer to his signal. He got in and directed the driver, “Over to Biscayne and across the Seventy-Ninth Street Causeway.”

  He settled back sideways in the corner and watched the street behind him with interest as the cab pulled away. A car that had been parked just beyond the hotel entrance eased out from the curb behind them and followed eastward toward the Boulevard.

  Shayne relaxed and lit a
cigarette, a wry smile curving his lips as he went over the typed instructions in his mind.

  Jane Smith was playing it cagey, all right. Up to this point she was taking no chances of being confronted and identified. By having him open the envelope while she watched from a parked car, she had eliminated any possibility of him communicating with a confederate by telephone or otherwise. It was pretty cute figuring and indicated a certain amount of experience at this sort of thing or a devious mind that had read a lot of E. Phillips Oppenheim.

  He was comfortably conscious that another car was keeping a sedate and careful distance behind them as they sped up the Boulevard and east across the winding causeway. At the eastern end, he leaned forward and told the driver, “The corner of Lime Road and Beach Plaza Place. Know where it is?”

  “Just about. I can find it okay.”

  Shayne settled back with another cigarette and let the driver find the intersection. It was in a quiet, residential section of palm-lined streets and middle-income homes, devoid of traffic at this hour. As the driver pulled in to the curb and stopped, Shayne noted the headlights of another car pull in half a block behind them. He got out and paid the driver, waited under the corner streetlight until the cab disappeared, and then strode around the corner to a blue and white Plymouth.

  He slid under the steering wheel and felt above the sun vizor for another folded sheet of paper and a set of car keys. He groped along the instrument panel until he found the map light and turned it on, and read Jane Smith’s second message.

  You are still under constant observation. If you have followed instructions thus far, drive to Collins and proceed south to the Palms Terrace Hotel. Stop at the entrance and give your keys to the doorman. He will give you a parking ticket. Go straight through the lobby into the Crystal Room. Sit at an empty table and order a drink and drink it slowly. If I have not sat at your table and accosted you by the time you finish a second drink, you will know that I do not trust you on closer scrutiny and shall not approach you at all.

  In that case, leave the Plymouth in the hotel parking lot and forget about me.

  Jane Smith

  P.S. It will be useless to try and trace me through the Plymouth. It is stolen.

  Shayne grinned wryly as he put the key in the ignition and turned on the headlights. He was developing a very definite admiration for Jane Smith and her devious methods. She had coppered every bet thus far, setting the situation up with admirable efficiency so she could turn aside at any moment without the slightest chance of a finger being put on her.

  As he drove southward on Collins followed by the car that had been behind him all the way from Miami, Shayne wondered what Jane Smith was like and whether she would come to his table in the Crystal Room. If it was she who was doing the tailing, she would be behind him at the hotel, and would enter the cocktail lounge after he did. On the other hand, she might already be there, waiting for him to appear, having turned the tailing job over to someone else. He hadn’t seen whether the driver of the car behind him was male or female. Perversely, he had tried not to see. It was a lot more fun this way, and as he drove southward through the languid warmth of the semi-tropical night Shayne suddenly admitted to himself that there hadn’t been near enough fun in his life in recent years. He had been letting himself grow old, by God. Maybe not old, but certainly stodgy. Going along in a routine groove, accepting mundane assignments and carrying them out competently.

  And now all at once Jane Smith had made him feel young and adventurous again. He looked forward eagerly to sitting alone at a table in the Crystal Room, sizing up the females present and speculating whether this one or that was Jane Smith—and whether she would make herself known to him or not.

  No matter how this affair turned out, Timothy Rourke had at least done this much for him—and Shayne was properly grateful.

  He sat very erect and felt a tingle of anticipation travel down his spine as he turned off Collins and slowed in front of the brightly lighted entrance to the Palms Terrace.

  A smartly uniformed doorman snapped the door open for him and asked deferentially, “May I have it parked for you, sir?”

  Shayne said, “Please,” and handed him the keys, receiving a numbered parking ticket. He didn’t look behind him at an arriving car as he went into the hotel lobby and spotted the neon-lighted entrance to the Crystal Room across at his right.

  3

  The Crystal Room of the Palms Terrace Hotel was very like hundreds of other cocktail lounges in similar resort hotels throughout the area. Discreetly lighted to provide an atmosphere of intimacy conducive to assignations, with a lavish decor and soft-spoken, attentive waiters, with the best brands of liquor served at high prices, it was a congenial spot for hotel guests to spend the dull evening hours in the hope of meeting other bored guests—preferably of the opposite sex.

  At this slack season the room was uncrowded as Shayne entered. Four separate couples occupied small tables along the wall, and a boisterous party of six was making merry at a big round table in the rear. Five men and three women sat on stools in front of the bar behind which two bartenders were not being kept very busy.

  Shayne paused momentarily in the doorway, and then lounged over to the third empty table from the entrance and sat in the chair facing in that direction, drawn out for him by an eager, white-jacketed waiter.

  Shayne said, “Cognac with ice water on the side. A drink, not a pony. Monnet if you have it.”

  The waiter said, “Certainly,” and went to the bar. Shayne got out a cigarette and lit it, turned slightly in his chair with left shoulder against the wall, and studied the backs of the three women at the bar speculatively. The one at the far end he dismissed immediately. She was middle-aged and dumpy and giggly drunk. She swayed on her stool, pressing a bare shoulder against the dinner jacket of her younger male companion who looked sleek and competent. There was an empty stool between her and the next man, with the slender figure of a girl on the seat next to him.

  She had nice shoulders that showed just enough above a conservative cocktail gown, and a slender straight neck surmounted by a gamin-like Italian hairdo of auburn hair.

  Shayne’s gaze lingered on the pair of them as the waiter brought his drink. They both sat very straight and lifted their drinks purposefully and appeared unconscious of each other. From his position directly behind her, Shayne could not see the reflection of the girl’s face in the bar mirror, but long experience in many bars gave him the distinct impression that the two were not yet acquainted but were both hoping to be before the evening became much older.

  There was another vacant stool beyond the girl, then a very fat man sitting alone with a bottle of Heineken’s beer in front of him engaged in a dreary dissertation on the past baseball season to one of the bartenders.

  The front end of the bar was curved, with two stools at the end facing the room. The final occupant of the Crystal Room was seated on the last stool against the wall. Both her elbows were on the bar, and her chin was supported by the backs of the folded knuckles of both hands. She wore a low-necked ruby-red dress with a short-sleeved Angora jacket the same color that was very attractive. She appeared to be in her twenties, with strong, clean features that suggested fine bone structure. She wore tinted Harlequin glasses that effectively concealed her eyes, and had a wide, smooth forehead beneath an upswept hairdo of light brown curls that were in faint disarray.

  Shayne sipped his Monnet reflectively and let his gaze rest on her face for a long, contemplative moment. She appeared to return his gaze steadily, though he couldn’t be sure because of the glasses. He let his gaze linger long enough on her face to indicate strong interest and polite invitation without being rudely aggressive. She held her posture without the outward movement of a muscle. An empty cocktail glass stood between her two elbows.

  Jane Smith? Shayne wondered. She appeared to be the only possibility in the bar. If so, she was giving him a solid going-over and taking her time about it.

  Shayne set his half-e
mpty shot-glass down and took a sip of ice water. He turned squarely in his chair to face the entrance and dragged smoke into his lungs. A tall, svelte woman with a very dark complexion and startlingly white hair came through the doorway. The bartender glanced up from in front of the fat man and moved to his right, smiling a greeting that betokened recognition. She moved to the bar and put one hand on a vacant stool and said something in a husky voice, and then turned to survey the room carefully, her gaze going down the length of the bar to the rear of the room, returning to brush over Shayne’s face unhurriedly. Then she turned and said something else to the bartender, moved aside gracefully and sat at the empty front table directly facing Shayne with one empty table between them.

  She was about forty, Shayne thought. With aquiline features that were classically beautiful, but marred by a discontented droop at the corners of too-thin lips. She opened a beaded evening bag and extracted a long ivory holder and a flat enameled cigarette case. Her brooding gaze rested directly on the detective while she fitted a cigarette into the holder and accepted a light from the waiter who set a champagne cocktail in front of her with a flourish.

  Jane Smith? If so, it looked like adding up to an interesting evening. Shayne met her eyes steadily until she glanced aside, and then slid his own gaze back to the girl at the end of the bar. She appeared to be watching him intently, and suddenly she reached a decision.

  She stood up and said something to the bartender, moved around the end of the bar just as another girl entered behind her.