Counterfeit Wife Read Free Page A

clear, hot blue like the clean flame of an alcohol burner. They dwelt upon him for a moment before going on to the others. She was relaxed now, and steady, with the outspread fingers of one hand lightly touching the counter.
    The little man whom she had brushed aside fidgeted behind her, but made no move to take his rightful place.
    Mrs. Dawson turned back to the girl and asked in her husky voice, “Where’d he go if he didn’t get on that plane? I don’t see him around.”
    “I’m sure I don’t know.” She spoke with the compressed-lip patience of a public servant dealing with a fool or a drunk. “I presume he returned to the city after being told there would be no more planes departing until morning. And now, if you please—”
    “I don’t see him around,” said the woman again.
    “I’m very sorry I can’t do anything to help you. If you’ll please step aside now—”
    The big blonde looked down at her for a moment in speculative silence. The girl looked back at her with a touch of weariness in the bend of her head. The little man behind Mrs. Dawson fidgeted again.
    She turned, finally, and strode across the waiting-room toward a door marked Men.
    Shayne thought she was going in, but she stopped just outside, beckoned to a porter and said something to him. The man went inside the room and Mrs. Dawson remained firmly planted outside, oblivious of the glances of people standing about.
    The porter returned shaking his head. She gave him a coin and went toward the front door, and people got out of her way again.
    Shayne picked up his suitcase and followed her out, keeping a dozen paces behind her. He hadn’t made up his mind yet whether to accost her or not. He remembered the terror in the pasty-faced man’s brown eyes, and he reminded himself that it wasn’t up to him to put a Valkyrie on the trail of a poor devil who might be trying to escape from a personal hell.
    Yet he was, he realized, the only person in Miami who could tell her the truth about the man who called himself Parson. If she were actually worried about the little guy, he supposed it was only decent for him to put her mind at rest by telling her the truth.
    She was moving across the driveway toward a row of parked cars as Shayne emerged into the illusive tropical moonlight. It glistened on the coiled hair about her high-held head, and played queer tricks with the contours of her body, softening and slenderizing her, producing the hallucinatory effect of stripping the severely tailored suit from her and replacing it with a flowing robe of some translucent material that trailed behind her, accentuating rather than hiding the sensuous, supple curves.
    Shayne set the Gladstone on the steps, lit a cigarette, and watched her approach a gray sedan parked beyond the fringe of light from the terminal.
    The left-hand front door opened as she reached it. She got in and closed it. He could not see the other occupant of the sedan. He couldn’t see anything of either of them as he stood there, undecided. He could, however, hear a murmur of voices from the parked car. Hers, throaty and full-bodied, faintly slurred but still resonant. Mingled with her tones were the strident ones of the man in the front seat with her. He sounded querulous and demanding, though Shayne couldn’t hear any of the words that were spoken.
    He picked up the Gladstone, shook his head at the driver of a loitering taxi in the driveway, and passed in front of the taxi on his way toward the gray sedan.
    The voices hushed as he approached, and his quickened perceptions guessed that they heard him coming and did not wish to be overheard.
    He was ten feet away when a cigarette lighter flared in the front seat. The man’s cupped fingers shielded the flame as he drew it into a cigarette, and the light showed the flickering outline of a thin, hawklike face.
    Shayne kept on walking at the same even pace but swerved to the left and passed the sedan without another glance. One look at the