“And the one inside? Does she bathe in Black Sin?”

“I’ve no doubt she wallows in it at least,” said Lucy, adding savagely, “or any other color that happens to be handy.”

The right side of Shayne’s mouth quirked upward. “I take it you don’t approve of her. Or is it her case you don’t approve of?”

“I know nothing about her case. She’s saving that for a personal interview. If I didn’t have definite orders never to turn away an unknown client…”

Shayne started toward the closed door, saying defensively, “Well, you never know…”

“You certainly don’t… not around this office.”

Shayne opened the door wondering what on earth could have brought that tone of vicious anger into Lucy’s normally gentle voice. He understood when he crossed the threshold, and he hastily pulled the door tightly shut behind him.

She was slouched back in his swivel chair behind his desk with her feet up on it wearing a pair of battered teen-age loafers, and she was the most brazenly provocative hunk of jailbait the redhead had ever seen. She had a half-burned cigarette in her left hand and a paper cup in her right holding a couple of inches of bourbon which she had poured from the uncorked bottle sitting on the desk beside her.

He guessed she was maybe eighteen, and she was wearing more makeup in bright daylight than he had ever seen applied to any floozie in a dim-lit night club. She wore a peasant skirt that fell away from womanly thighs above bare knees, and a flimsy blouse that left her shoulders and a goodly portion of obviously unfettered breasts completely bare. She had a wide, full-lipped mouth that was heavily and inexpertly smeared with scarlet, a lot of mascara and violet eyeshadow that failed to take your attention away from big, bold black eyes, and the entire impression was one of lusty, wanton, and youthful sexuality that gloried in its youth and the effect she knew she had on most men.