“Eighty-thirty,” he said as he let the doctor out. Dr. Pedique bowed stiffly and went down the corridor. Shayne closed the door and walked back to the table, smoothing the bills out between his fingers. He opened the drawer, took the pearls out, rolled them up in the bills and stuck the wad in his coat pocket.
Then he grinned and muttered, “Now, if the old lady would come around and hire me as her bodyguard, the setup would be perfect.”
CHAPTER 2
At seven-thirty, Shayne came up a side street from Flagler to the service entrance of his apartment hotel. Down concrete steps and through a door into a square vestibule, then up two flights and to the right.
In his apartment, he crossed to the table, took the wadded pearls and bills from his pocket, unrolled the pearls and let them lie shimmering on the table while his eyes brooded over them. After a minute, and leaving the bills on the table, he carried the pearls into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out the hydrator, which held a head of lettuce. He put the pearls in the bottom, scattered lettuce leaves over them, and replaced the pan.
When he returned to the living-room, he was carrying a glass and a pitcher of crushed ice cubes and water. He set these things down on the table and brought out a bottle of Martell five-star cognac and a wineglass from a cupboard. Shayne’s actions were apparently almost unconscious; the precise somnambulism of habit was in every motion, an automatic smoothness that lasted while he sat down, poured a drink, and lit a cigarette. There was nothing in his face to show what he was thinking.
For the next half hour he sat silently, alternately sipping from the wineglass and the water glass, lighting one cigarette from another. Finally he stood up, turned out the lights and went out. His expression had not altered, but there was purposefulness in his walk.