With a faint smile she said, “I don’t read much popular fiction and almost never watch TV. No, Mr. Shayne. My dread arose from a recent personal experience that has been quite… horrible.”

Shayne said, “Tell me about it if you wish. I know most of my competitors in Miami, and if one of them has gotten out of line…”

“Oh, no. Not in Miami. In Chicago. But I had better start at the beginning, hadn’t I?”

Shayne settled back in his swivel chair and got out a pack of cigarettes. He held the pack toward her with lifted eyebrows and she shook her head a fraction of an inch and said, “I don’t smoke, thanks.”

“I will, if you don’t mind.” Shayne lit a cigarette and asked, “What is the beginning?”

“It’s my husband, Steve, Mr. Shayne. He’s in Miami and in terrible danger. If I could only find him… get him to face up to it and come home and seek the protection of the law which he fully deserves…” Her face went to pieces suddenly and she lowered her head and sobbed convulsively while her hands writhed together in her lap.

“My husband isn’t a bad man. Steve’s weak, perhaps… but not bad. He didn’t really do anything so terribly wrong. Nothing that he should be punished for.” She lifted her head abruptly and looked at him with tears streaming down her cheeks. “He didn’t do anything wrong at all. Just got in with the wrong crowd and gambled more than he could afford… and then when those crooked gamblers had won all his cash, it was they who urged him to gamble on credit. He told me all about it, Mr. Shayne. Poor Stevie! He actually thought they were being kind-hearted and generous to him… giving him a chance to win back what he’d lost.

“It wasn’t until he was in ’way over his head that he finally realized how cleverly they had trapped him. They cut off his credit suddenly and demanded payment. My husband isn’t a wealthy man, Mr. Shayne, but he has a fine position of trust with a Savings and Loan Association, and they callously suggested he could get the money there if he couldn’t raise it elsewhere.