Pay-Off in Blood Read Free Page B

settling the final details.” He looked down at his watch. “In exactly four minutes. I would like to tell him that you are going to be with me, Mr. Shayne. So that he will know exactly where he stands. If he protests your presence, I will feel that he isn’t really… as you would say it, I think, on the level.”
    Shayne nodded, grim-faced. “How difficult will it be for you to determine that the documents he gives to you are worth your twenty grand?”
    “Not difficult at all, Mr. Shayne. I envision us exchanging envelopes under your supervision. I will expect him to open mine and verify the amount contained inside it. At the same time, it will require only a minute for me to satisfy myself that all is in order. As soon as we are both satisfied, we will so signify, and go our separate ways. That is all I ask of you, Mr. Shayne.” The doctor’s manner was earnest and appealing.
    Shayne nodded, rubbing his blunt, whiskered chin. “You’re to phone him at nine?”
    “In exactly two minutes,” said Dr. Ambrose with another glance at his watch.
    Shayne nodded and yawned widely. “Set it up for as soon as you can. Nine-thirty, if possible. I’m sleepy as hell. Tell me one thing, Doc,” he added casually, opening the center drawer of the table beside him. “You’re not packing a rod, are you?”
    “I?” The doctor’s eyes widened. “Of course not. Why would you suspect that I would be … ‘ packing a rod’?” The intonation he gave the three words put quotation marks around them.
    Shayne grinned wryly and said, “Some amateurs get strange ideas. I’ll have a gun, but I don’t want you messing things up by pulling one on your own.” He reached inside the open drawer and withdrew a short- barrelled .38 which he laid on the table. “Better make your phone call, hadn’t you?”
    Dr. Ambrose hesitated, pursing his lips and looking down at the rug. “That goes through the switchboard, doesn’t it?” He nodded toward the telephone at Shayne’s elbow. “To make a call from here I have to give the number?”
    “Sure,” said Shayne. “But what the hell? Pete, downstairs, isn’t going to keep track of a number you call.”
    “I wasn’t thinking about that, Mr. Shayne. I would be happier if you did not know the number either.”
    “What the hell?” grated Shayne. “Don’t you trust me?”
    “Not entirely,” said Dr. Ambrose. “You made it very clear to me that you disapprove of this… as you call it… pay-off. I trust you to go with me and see it through, as you have offered to do. But, also, Mr. Shayne, I have read enough detective novels to know that you have ways of tracing a telephone number… and, after this matter has been concluded satisfactorily, I would not want you to do any further investigating. I trust you understand me?”
    Shayne stared at the plump, little doctor for a long moment with lifted eyebrows and with a sardonic look on his rugged face.
    Then he chuckled unexpectedly. “I get you. It’s nine o’clock,” he went on. “The telephone in the bedroom is a direct outside line. Go in there and dial your number. But I want to hear what you say over the phone. I don’t trust you a damn bit more than you trust me.”
    “Very well,” said Dr. Ambrose. He got up from his chair and went into Michael Shayne’s bedroom. The detective leaned back and sipped from his cognac glass while the doctor dialled , making no attempt to identify the numbers dialled because he had learned long ago, while practicing his profession, that it was humanly impossible to do so.
    He did, however, get up from his chair and stroll forward to the open bedroom door to hear Dr. Ambrose say:
    “Hello. It is nine o’clock. I have the envelope ready and will be at the Seacliff Restaurant in exactly half an hour to deliver it.”
    There was a brief pause. Dr. Ambrose went on. “I will be accompanied by the well-known private detective, Michael Shayne, whose only interest in the matter is to see that