She gave him a welcoming smile as he stood rooted there, which changed from sultry sensuality to a gamin-like grin as she lifted the paper cup high in a mock salute: “Hope you don’t mind me grabbin’ a free sample. I seen this desk drawer open and the bottle sittin’ there. Some kinda foreign likker, ain’t it?” She tossed the last of it off with a practiced swig and scarcely grimaced as the full-strength slug went smoothly down her throat.

Shayne said grimly, “It’s cognac and I do mind teenage delinquents drinking out of my bottle. Put the cork back in and put it back in the drawer. Then get out of my chair.”

“Gee! You are sure enough tough, ain’t you, Mike Shayne?” She smiled happily and put the cork back in the bottle, swung her bare legs off his desk and stood up sinuously, leaning forward to replace the bottle in the bottom drawer and give him a good chance for an unobstructed view of the deep trench between her heavy breasts.

Shayne looked and then shrugged wearily as she glanced up at him from that position with sly calculation in her bold eyes. He stalked around the desk to his vacated chair, and she swung her hips provocatively to a nearby chair into which she plopped, veering her legs wide and leaning forward with elbows on knees to prop her chin in both hands with a frankly admiring look on her face.

“What’d you mean by that crack about teen-age delinquents?”

Shayne glanced at the intercom button to Lucy’s desk and saw that it was open. He asked, “How old are you?”

She giggled throatily. Coming from her youthful and red-smeared mouth, it had an obscene sound. “Plenty old enough. I been old enough,” she confided, “since I been big enough, an’ anybody down on the Keys’ll tell you the Piney girls got big fast.”

In a measured tone, Shayne told her, “You’ve got just two minutes before I throw you and your stinking perfume out of my office. What do you want?”