Michael Shayne said, “All right, Mr. Thrip. I’ll be over to see you right away.” He pronged the receiver on the hook and stood beside the bedside table staring at the wall for a moment, rubbing his chin perplexedly.

It was a large corner bedroom newly decorated in cream and ivory with a light tan and yellow rug on the floor. The furniture was blond maple of modernistic style, a suite which Phyllis Shayne, nee Brighton, had selected before they went on their honeymoon to Cuba. Shayne hadn’t approved of it, but he hadn’t told Phyllis so. Now, after three days of living in the new apartment, he was glad. Phyllis fitted into the modernistic background as though it had been originally designed for her.

An afternoon breeze blew in from Biscayne Bay, fluttering the draperies at Shayne’s left. From wide south windows at his right he could hear the hum of traffic entering the city from Brickell Avenue over the Miami River drawbridge. The sounds were familiar. He had listened to them for more than a decade during which he lived in a bachelor apartment one floor below this one, yet it seemed to Shayne that he had never heard them until three days ago. He had an odd feeling that past years had not been real, an interlude of futility while he waited for a two weeks’ honeymoon in Cuba with Phyllis and these three days at home.

Shayne looked again at the telephone and said, “H-m-m.” He tugged at the lobe off his ear and frowned, his eyes half closed. He grunted again and took six long strides which brought him to a south window where he stood looking down upon the river. A tugboat labored to draw a giant dredge slowly behind it while smaller craft scuttled around them. From the west, pleasure boats gaily bedecked for Miami’s winter season glided toward the drawbridge. Magnificent automobiles of the wealthy, lumbering trucks, lesser vehicles raced across the bridge. Boat whistles signaled and long arms barred traffic to the bridge as it went up. A veritable sea of traffic filled the avenue. Cars crawled up, slipped into dangerously small spaces seeking an advantage to make the dash across the instant the long bridge bars were raised.