“He made me promise not to. He’s utterly terrified of what the Syndicate will do if we dare go to the police.”

“What did he tell you?” demanded Shayne sharply.

“Simply that he is using the name of Fred Tucker down here. He would have said more but I… I’m afraid I cut him off because I’m afraid our telephone is tapped.

“Well, first I went to a private detective in Chicago to solicit professional assistance. I felt so inadequate to come down here alone and attempt to find Steve, and thought I needed the advice and aid of someone who knew about such matters. I know how corrupt the city police are in Chicago, but I thought a private detective would be different. Still, I thought such a man might decline to help me find Steve if he knew he was bucking the Syndicate by doing so, and before I consulted him I decided that I would not tell him the truth.

“I didn’t know anything about how to find a reliable detective in Chicago, of course, nor did I know anyone I could ask, and so I picked the name of a detective agency at random out of the yellow pages. He advertised that divorce cases were his specialty, with a line about tracing ‘erring spouses’… and I had already decided that was how I should represent myself… as a wife whose husband had deserted her.

“I confess I was appalled by the appearance and manners of the man when I met him in his office, but he did appear competent and didn’t ask too many probing questions, and assured me that he had many contacts in Miami which would make it a very simple matter to locate my husband.

“I’m convinced now, Mr. Shayne, that he has connections in the underworld and that he somehow put two and two together and realized that my erring spouse was really the man on whose head the Syndicate has put a price. I think that was why he was eager to take my case and didn’t even demand a retainer in advance… just travelling expenses. A lot of little things happened on the trip down that made me suspicious of him. He’s not a nice man, Mr. Shayne. He frightens me, and now I’m terrified that he will find Steve before the police do.”