“Oh, I do!”

“That’s swell, then.” Shayne patted her hand and stood up. “I’ll be seeing you,” he promised her casually.

She got up and moved close to him impulsively. “I can’t tell you how you’ve made me feel. Everything is different. I’m glad I came.”

Shayne went to the door with her and took her hand briefly. “Keep your chin up.”

“I will.” She smiled uncertainly and went down the corridor.

Shayne stood for a moment looking after her and rubbing his chin. Then he closed the door, went back to the center table, and lifted out the string of pearls to study them with narrowed eyes. He wasn’t an expert but they certainly didn’t look phony. He dropped them back into the drawer, shaking his head. There were a lot of possible angles.

Ten minutes later, when he left his apartment, he was whistling tunelessly. At the desk downstairs he told the clerk he’d be gone half an hour-he never forgot to do that at the start of a case-and went down the street to a newspaper office, carefully read all the dope he could find on the Brightons, and went back to the hotel. This time he entered by the side door and climbed the service stairway to his second-floor apartment. His phone was ringing. It was the clerk.

“Mr. Shayne, there’s a Doctor Joel Pedique here to see you.”

Shayne frowned at the telephone and told the clerk to send Dr. Pedique up. Even after he had hung up and given the room a swift, characteristically speculative look, he was still frowning. From what Phyllis Brighton had told him, he had an instinctive feeling that he wasn’t going to like Dr. Pedique.

He didn’t. Dr. Joel Pedique was a man whom Shayne, surveying him at the doorway, would have instantly disliked if he had met him with no previous knowledge of him at all. He was small-boned and dark-skinned. His black hair was too long and it glistened with oil, combed straight back from a V where it grew low on his forehead. His lips were full and unpleasantly red. His eyes were beady and nervous, and his nostrils flared as he breathed. The rest of his appearance pleased Shayne equally little. The man’s double-breasted blue coat clung snugly to his sloping shoulders and sunken chest, and immaculate white flannels were tight about plump hips.