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.