The girl who faced Michael Shayne in his downtown Miami apartment was beautiful, but too unblemished to interest Shayne particularly. She was young, certainly not more than twenty, with a slender niceness of figure that was curiously rigid as she sat in a chair leaning toward him. Her lips were too heavily rouged, and her cheeks were too pale.

She said, “I am Phyllis Brighton,” as though her name explained everything.

It didn’t. It didn’t mean a thing to him. He said, “Yes?” wondering why there should be that expression of self-loathing in her eyes; she was too young and too beautiful to have that look. The pupils of her eyes were contracted and cloudy beneath heavy black lashes, and they stared into his face with a fixed intensity that wasn’t quite sane.

“We’re on the Beach,” the girl told him as though that should convey a great deal. She drew herself stiffly erect in the deep chair, gloveless fingers weaving together in her lap.

Shayne said, “I see,” without seeing at all. He stopped looking into her eyes and leaned back, loose-jointed and relaxed. “You don’t use the phrase in its slang meaning, I suppose?”

“What?” The girl was beginning to loosen up a trifle in response to Shayne’s easy manner.

“You don’t mean you’re down on your luck-a beachcomber?”

A nervous smile hovered on her tight lips. Shayne had an idea there would be a dimple in her left cheek if she relaxed and really smiled. “Oh, no,” she explained. “We’re at our Miami Beach estate for the season. My-father is Rufus Brighton.”

Things began clicking in Shayne’s mind. She was that Brighton. He crossed inordinately long legs and clasped his hands about one bony knee. “Your stepfather, I believe?”

“Yes.” Phyllis Brighton’s words came with a rush. “He had a stroke in New York four months ago-only a month after he and Mother married while I was in Europe. They were sending him down here away from the cold when I arrived so I came down with him and the doctor and his son.”