“That could be a pleasant assignment.” Rourke yawned and propped his feet up on his desk again. “Let me know, huh? What cyanide tastes like, and whether that governess looks as good under her clothes as I’m guessing she does.”

Shayne said, “I’ll let you know.” He made his way out of the City Room and got into his parked car.

Ten minutes later he entered a sixth floor office on Flagler Street. There was a medium-sized, pleasantly cool reception room presided over by a pleasantly cool blonde at a desk near the door. She was medium-sized in some respects and somewhat more than that in others. She gave the redhead an aloof glance and said, “Yes?” with her nose tilted a little higher than was necessary.

Shayne took off his hat and tugged at a red forelock bashfully. “It’s this here humidity, Ma’am. Makes a man sweat right through his flannel underwear. And, when I sweat, I stink, as the girl told her momma, and, when I stink, the boys won’t dance with me. That must be what you smell, Ma’am.”

The nice nose tilted higher and beautifully arched platinum brows became more severely arched. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“Not what I first thought about when I peeked in,” Shayne told her cheerfully, “so you might as well let me see Mr. Barker.”

“Have you an appointment?”

He said, “Shayne. And how the hell do you know I haven’t dropped in to buy a million bucks worth of insurance?”

She said, “Mr. Barker is not a broker. He is an adjuster.” But there was the faintest tinge of warmth in the cool depths of greenish eyes as she lowered them from his face and lifted an inter-office phone.

As she spoke into it, Shayne moved past her toward the single door opening off the reception room. It was closed and marked PRIVATE. He opened it and went in.

Hamilton Barker was alone in his neat office, just replacing the handset in its holder. He was a slender, stony-eyed man in his early forties, and he greeted the detective without undue cordiality.