The Private Practice of Michael Shayne Read Free Page A

deeply carpeted hall a wide stairway curved upward. A youth with shifty eyes lounged against the balustrade. A cigarette dangled from his colorless lips.
    Shayne stopped in front of him and asked, “Marco upstairs?”
    “Yeh. Whaddo you want, an’ I’ll tell him?”
    “I’ll tell him myself,” Shayne said with good-natured contempt, and started up the stairway.
    “Hey,” exclaimed the youth, “you can’t do that.”
    Shayne went on up the steps without a backward glance. At the top he turned to the right down a narrower, paneled hallway, past the closed doors of private dining rooms, to the end where silver letters on a door read:
    NO ADMITTANCE.
    He turned the knob and pushed the door open soundlessly.
    A big man sat at a clean flat-topped desk, his back toward Shayne. Overhead lights shimmered on his oily bald head. He was pointing ah unlighted cigar at a girl wearing a red dress who sat across the office in a leather and chromium chair against the wall. Her thin legs were crossed and the red skirt fell away from her knees. Her short hair looked too alively new-copperish to be natural, and the tint was reflected in green-gray eyes. Her features were sharp and discontented, thin lips were twisted in moody disdain.
    The bald man with the cigar was saying,
    “—come out of it and act your age. God knows there are other men in the world. There’s Elliot Thomas—what’s the matter with him?”
    “Sure.”
    The girl’s eyes rested mockingly on Shayne’s angular face and bristly red hair. They slanted upward a trifle at the outer corners, or, perhaps, curiously formed brows made them appear to slant.
    “Mugs!” she spat out angrily.
    “Now, by God, Thomas isn’t any mug. You—”
    “I think the lady is referring to me,” Shayne interrupted.
    John Marco swung his heavy body about in the revolving desk chair at the sound of Michael Shayne’s voice. His cheeks were puffy without being soft and he had an incongruously tiny rosebud mouth. He stared at the tall detective for a moment with opaque china-blue eyes, then moistened his ridiculous little mouth with the tip of his tongue.
    “What are you sneaking around here for, Shayne?”
    “I walked in through the door, Marco.”
    “Well, walk out again. Can’t you see—?”
    Shayne said, “Go to hell,” very softly. He walked past John Marco, deliberately putting his back to the bald-headed man.
    The girl in the red dress clapped her hands merrily.
    A lot of the discontent had gone out of her face, and the reddish tint of her eyes was intensified.
    “Goody!” she cried, “you’re one of those hard-boiled he-men, aren’t you?”
    Shayne stopped in front of her, hands still deep in his pockets. He looked briefly down into her face, then lifted his left eyebrow in quizzical amusement, shaking his head.
    “I’m not really hard-boiled. Calling Marco’s bluff is no criterion. Any punk can do that and get away with it.”
    “By God, Shayne, do you want to go out on your own feet or be thrown out?”
    Shayne paid no heed to the booming voice behind him. He was looking into the girl’s eyes and she was looking back into his. She was about twenty-five, but her face was immature, almost childish.
    Shayne shrugged and turned slowly to face the big man whose fat hand was hovering over an electric button on his desk.
    “Don’t do anything you’re likely to regret, Marco,” he advised in a remotely gentle voice.
    He held Marco’s angry gaze serenely, hooked a toe around the chromium runner of one of the chairs and dragged it forward.
    Marco’s breathing was heavy through pursed lips. His fingers still hung over the electric button as though restrained from touching it by some mysterious flux.
    Smothered laughter sounded behind Shayne’s left shoulder.
    “This is all so frightfully melodramatic,” giggled the girl.
    “You’d better go, Marsha,” John Marco said thickly.
    “Not me. I’m going to stay right here. I’m waiting to see you throw this