The Homicidal Virgin Read Free

a side street in the Northwest section between Miami Avenue and the Boulevard. It was a hotel he knew by reputation only as catering to low-income tourists and natives seeking hotel service at moderate weekly rates.
    There was no doorman when he paid off the cab in front, and he carried his suitcase into a square lobby with a few wilted potted palms and half a dozen shabby lounging chairs. A bored bell-captain came out of his cubicle in the center to take his bag, and a prissy little man behind the desk looked at him incuriously as he signed a registration card: Mike Wayne, 1270 Riverview Avenue, Bayonne, N. J.
    “I can let you have a nice room with eastern exposure for twelve dollars, Mr. Wayne?” The clerk looked at him expectantly.
    “How much of the twelve is for the exposure?”
    “Ah… nothing really. That is, if you’d like something cheaper, I have one on the third floor for ten. Or… “
    Shayne made an expansive gesture. “Let’s shoot the works on your eastern exposure. Only be a few days.”
    The clerk nodded and slid a key across to the waiting bellhop who had been summoned from the rear by the captain. “Take Mr. Wayne to eight-six.”
    His guide was a short youth with chubby cheeks and a long, sharp nose. He took Shayne’s bag to double elevators at the rear where an attractive colored girl waited outside an open cage, and they went up to the eighth floor and to a clean and unexpectedly pleasant room with double windows on the east that just cleared the top of adjoining buildings so that a strip of the eastern part of Biscayne Bay and the shoreline of Miami Beach were visible from them.
    The boy opened a window and checked the bathroom while Shayne waited patiently. Shayne got his wallet out of his hip pocket and asked, “Can I get a bottle from Room Service?”
    “No liquor in the hotel, sir.” The boy paused, his pale blue predatory eyes on the bulging billfold from which Shayne was in the act of extracting a ten. “There’s a liquor store a few doors up the street. I’ll be glad to get what you want.”
    Shayne slid the bill out and handed it to him. “A fifth of cognac. Monnet or Martel… or Courvoisier. And a pitcher of ice.”
    The lad said, “Right away,” and went out.
    Shayne hung his jacket in the closet and checked the desk to see if there was a supply of hotel stationery on hand. There was. He opened his suitcase and began transferring its contents to two bureau drawers, carefully putting the shoulder-holstered pistol on the bottom wrapped in an undershirt where it would certainly be found and reported the first time his room was cased after he went out… if he judged the hotel correctly.
    The bellboy came back with a fifth of Martel, a pitcher of ice, and offered Shayne some dollar bills and silver in change. The redhead waved it aside casually said, “That’s okay.” He started to open the bottle and added, “Join me in a small drink?”
    “I better not,” the boy said regretfully. “I don’t go off till six.” He started toward the door and Shayne stopped him with one big hand in the air. “What’s the chance getting some sort of action in this dump?”
    The boy paused halfway to the door and considered the redhead carefully. “What sort of action? You want a woman…”
    Shayne swept his hand downward in a disdainful gesture. “I’ll do my own hustling. Any games running? Friend of mine in New Jersey stayed here last month said he got a fair break.”
    The lad’s eyelids shifted downward. “Whyn’t you talk to the night clerk? That’s Dick. Comes on at six. He might know something.”
    Shayne said, “Thanks, I will.” The boy went out and Shayne got two glasses from the bathroom and poured a couple of fingers of cognac in one, put ice cubes in the other and filled it with water.
    He set the two glasses side by side on the desk, sat down and composed a letter on hotel stationery:
     
    Dear Miss Smith:
    You will be surprised to receive this letter after you