The elevator deposited him in a large and ornately furnished lobby. Shayne thrust his way across it toward the desk, caught the clerk’s eye, and received a negative shake of his head. Without stopping he went on, out through the side front entrance and across to a row of garages, where he unlocked the padlock on one door and folded himself into the driver’s seat of a middle-aged car. Once the car was backed out, Shayne drove a winding course to Southeast Second Street, thence east to Biscayne Boulevard, and north on the right-hand drive. He paid no attention to his route, and very little to the other cars on the road.

At Thirteenth Street he turned to the right at the traffic circle and sped over the causeway across the Bay. When he reached the peninsula, he drove as far east as the ocean would allow, then turned north. His watch told him it was eight-twenty; the place could hardly be more than a few minutes ahead of him. Shayne relaxed imperceptibly at the wheel; he began to look around him. There was little traffic on the wide street, and few strolling figures in Lummus Park, He checked the house numbers as he drove along, and a short distance beyond the Roney Plaza, slowed and turned into a winding concrete drive between granite gateposts.

The general look of the place was luxurious but conventional to the point of dullness. There was a carefully tended terraced lawn on the left and a wide landscaped area of tropical shrubbery. The dark bulk of a huge mansion showed as he followed the drive to a porte-cochere, bougainvillea-draped in front. Lights shone from the lower windows.

An elderly woman in a maid’s uniform opened the door. He told her his name, and she said he was expected in the library and would he follow her?