Free The Homicidal Virgin by Brett Halliday Page A

ruefully across the room. Why shouldn’t Lucy use her wiles to drum up business for him? He had no doubt that she would extract a higher retainer from the insurance company than he would have asked. What he should do, he told himself, was to give Lucy a percentage of the take. Hell! if she was going to prostitute herself to entice clients into his office, she deserved a fair cut. Like any streetwalker bringing her earnings back to her pimp.
    He shook his red head suddenly and hated himself for his thoughts. Just because the girl had accepted a perfectly innocuous dinner invitation last night and had proved an enjoyable companion was no reason for him to get into a tizzy about it.
    He knew, of course, that his anger wasn’t really directed at Lucy. He was striking out at her because he hated himself this morning. Lucy was just a symbol. It was Jane Smith who was really in his thoughts. Lucy could take care of herself. Jane Smith couldn’t. If ever a man had been offered an opportunity to help a fellow human being, he had been given that chance last night. And he had muffed it completely. How goddamned self-righteous he must have sounded to the frightened girl when he spouted off to her. How utterly alone she must have felt when he walked out of the room leaving her with her problem!
    A frightened kid who wasn’t yet twenty and had never faced the realities of life before. She had bared her heart and her soul to him, and what had he given her in return? A lecture, by God!
    He shoved back his chair and stood up, strode to the window overlooking Flagler Street. He’d been a fool to hope she would take the fatuous advice of Mike Wayne and turn to a private detective for help. Instead, he had done exactly what Timothy Rourke accused him of doing. He had driven her on in the quest for some other killer to do the job he had refused to do.
    What would be his position, he asked himself now angrily, if Saul Henderson did turn up murdered in the near future? He, Mike Shayne, would be the only one to know the truth. Would he remain silent, or would he speak out against Henderson’s already pitiably ruined stepdaughter?
    He could warn Henderson in advance of course. But every decent instinct inside him rose up and shouted that he couldn’t do that. God knew the man deserved no warning, no mercy.
    If he could only get hold of the girl—talk to her again before it was too late. Before she put murderous forces in motion that could not be halted. But he didn’t even know Jane Smith’s real name. True, he could find out easily enough. The stepdaughter of a prominent man like Saul Henderson shouldn’t be difficult to trace.
    Shayne turned decisively away from the window, strode to the door and pulled it open. David Waring had pulled a straight chair across the anteroom and was seated in it close to the low railing and was in an animated huddle with Lucy Hamilton, who sat at her desk with paper in her typewriter taking direct dictation from him with her fingers flying over the keys. Both his voice and her typing stopped abruptly when Shayne opened the door. Her brown eyes looking past Waring implored him to be sensible as she said, “We’re working out the rough draft of an agreement, Michael. Have you time to check a couple of points?”
    Shayne went on toward the outer door, reaching for his hat. “I told Waring you had full authority to set it up any way you want. I’ll sign whatever you have typed when I get back.” He went out and pulled the door shut with unnecessary violence behind him.
    Downstairs, he went to the Herald morgue for the information he wanted, instead of the News. He might run into Rourke at the latter newspaper office, and he wasn’t ready to explain to Tim the reason for his sudden interest in Henderson. Knowing Shayne as well as he did, the reporter had a disconcerting habit of reading the redhead’s mind before Shayne himself knew what was in it. Like last night. His casual, parting reference to