The Corpse Came Calling Read Free Page A

engine?”
    “That, or the cops.” Shayne nodded toward her highball. “Does that taste all right?”
    She drank some and said, “It’s wonderful.” She was relaxed now, her left hand lying against the arm of her chair, her head comfortably back against the cushioned headrest. Her legs were uncrossed and stretched out in front of her, and her skirt had again crept above her knees. Shayne smoked idly and waited for her to begin.
    “You’re wonderful, too,” she told him suddenly. “I feel utterly tranquil sitting here. As though all my troubles were unimportant. How can you be so gentle and understanding when they say you’re tough and conscienceless?”
    Shayne chuckled. “It’s my bedside manner. I lull you into a sense of false security and you find yourself telling me things you wouldn’t tell your priest.”
    “That’s just what I’m ready to do now, but I can’t think how to begin.”
    “Let’s begin with Jim Lacy. I’m interested because I haven’t been in contact with him for ten years. What is he doing in Miami?”
    “I don’t know. I really don’t know Mr. Lacy very well. That is—well, I did once. Some time ago. But we simply met here by accident. When he learned about my trouble he said if there was any man in the world who could help me it would be Mike Shayne.”
    “I can’t do anything without a few facts to chew on,” Shayne reminded her.
    “I know. It isn’t easy to get started. You see, I’m—not at all what I seem. Actually I’m terribly wicked underneath.”
    “Just what form of depravity are you addicted to?” Shayne asked her, grinning.
    “It isn’t funny.” Her voice was suddenly tight and harsh. “I’ve done some despicable things. And now they’ve caught up with me. Back in New York I was—what they call a decoy girl in a divorce racket.
    “I suppose you know how the racket is worked,” she went on tensely. “I was a show girl and jobs were hard to get when I met this lawyer at a party. He and Jim Lacy worked it together—getting divorce evidence for his women clients. Sometimes there was collusion and the men co-operated in setting up evidence of adultery that would hold in courts, but more often the husband was just a sucker whose wife was tired of him and wanted alimony.”
    She took a sip from her glass and compressed her lips, then went on bitterly. “I was the come-on girl. I got a commission for each bedroom scene I staged—each time I set things up for Lacy and a photographer and the indignant wife to burst in on. A professional corespondent, one judge called me.”
    “All right,” Shayne said. “I don’t need a diagram. Lacy was never too choosy about the sort of work he did. So what?”
    “So then—a couple of months ago I was introduced to a new fall guy. His name was—well, you might as well know everything—his name was Charles Worthing. He was nice—so damned nice that as soon as I met him I couldn’t understand why any woman would want to divorce him. It seemed to me it would be—heaven—to be Mrs. Charles Worthing.
    “So— I was the sucker.” Helen was sitting erect now, leaning forward tensely, talking fast. “I fell for him like a ton of brick. Funny! Me, the decoy girl! But it wasn’t funny because he, God help me, fell for me, too. I should have backed out right away. I saw it happening to us. I should have run like hell, but I—I couldn’t.
    “He was married to a woman who didn’t deserve a swell guy like him. And I kidded myself into believing I’d be right for him. I went ahead with it just like any other case. He came to my apartment one night. When we were in what the papers would call a compromising situation, Lacy and Worthing’s wife and the photographer busted in—just like the script was written.
    “Well, there was the usual scene and Charles was wonderful. He never suspected me for a moment. Poor darling, he wanted to protect me—protect my name from being smirched by a divorce suit. My name! Get