The Violent World of Michael Shayne Read Online Free PDF

around. “Yes, over there.”
    “Where?”
    “In the beige dress. See the tall man with white hair and the monocle, talking to the President’s wife? Maggie’s—no, she just went out. You may be able to catch her in the hall. Now, remember what I said. Phone me, it doesn’t matter how late.”
    “All right, Mrs. Redpath, thanks.”
    She maneuvered to one side and let him pass. The jam had become much worse. Halfway to the door he collided with the woman he had met on the sidewalk when he arrived. She, too, had been drinking the Swedish national liquor, and she gave a squeal of pleasure, recognizing Shayne. Their friendship had ripened very fast, and she now seemed to look on him as one of her oldest friends. He persuaded her that he couldn’t possibly take her to dinner, and continued to work his way to the door. But she had delayed him too long. By the time he reached the sidewalk Maggie Smith was gone.

 
CHAPTER 4
    8:25 P.M.
     
    SHAYNE STOPPED AT A BAR FOR A COGNAC TO KILL THE TASTE of the open sandwiches. While he was there he looked up the address of Maggie Smith’s Little Club Theatre. It was on Macomber Court. He hired a taxi driver to point it out to him, parked his rented car, and then had a hard time finding it again. Macomber Court was a tiny cobblestoned street, so narrow that he nearly walked past the entrance. The houses on it were two windows wide and jammed tightly together. Probably the theatre had once been a stable.
    The first act was underway. In the ticket booth, a bony girl with her hair in a ponytail brightened at the prospect of selling Shayne a ticket. He grinned at her and stooped so she could hear him through the round hole in the window. “Where do I find Mrs. Smith?”
    “I’m not sure that she’s here tonight,” the girl said vaguely. “What do you want to see her about?”
    “A friend of mine told me to look her up when I came to Washington. What do I do, walk in?”
    The girl slid off her stool. “No, wait here. If anybody wants a ticket, tell them I’ll be back.”
    Instead of going into the theatre, she went along the alley and around the building. Shayne looked at the posters while he was waiting. A local dramatic critic had called the play “a searing statement about our precarious human condition.”
    The box-office girl came back. “Mrs. Smith was in earlier, but she’s left for the night. Would you like to leave your name and phone number?”
    “I don’t want to chase her around town,” Shayne said. “Could you get a message to her? This friend of mine met her on a Caribbean cruise. I’ll write it all down.”
    Using the back of an envelope, he wrote the real name of the man the little Civil Service investigator, Ronald Bixler, had called Mr. Y, and added the name of the ship and the stateroom number.
    “I’ll see,” the girl said uncertainly.
    She went back around the building. Shayne had cut the fuse very short. Before the count reached ten the girl was back, bringing Maggie Smith with her. An unlighted cigarette in his mouth, the redhead watched them approach. Trina Hitchcock, thinking of Maggie in terms of a potential stepmother, had exaggerated some things and omitted others. Maggie Smith’s hair was a dark burnished red. She wore it long, combed back from her forehead. A pair of horn-rimmed glasses had been pushed up out of the way. She was in her late thirties, Shayne judged, with a pleasant face and a humorous mouth. He had only an instant to appraise her, but that was time enough to realize what it was that had so frightened Trina. Physically Maggie Smith was one of the most exciting women he had ever seen. Her arms and shoulders were bare. It was true that she carried a great deal of jewelry—necklace, rings, bracelet, earrings—but what had seemed overdone to Trina seemed fine to Shayne. She wore a full-skirted dinner dress.
    She looked at him curiously. “What you sounded like,” she said in a throaty voice that went with everything else,