Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Annual, No. 3, 1973

Doctor Herchenfelder had gone into a shower. She had sat curled in a deep chair in the main room, sipping a weak highball she had finally managed to talk him into preparing. And a sixth call had come in. The voice on the line had been coarse. The voice that had called to her out of the fog on a deserted street corner had been shrill. It had been her only warning. And now...

Doctor Samuel Herchenfelder was the epitome of indignation and disbelief when Desiree awakened him. He clamped a top sheet tight against his Adam’s apple.

“You!” he burst. “What are you doing in my bedroom?”

She rammed his black-rimmed glasses on his nose. He snapped his head away. Then it snapped back, and he goggled. “What — happened to you?”

“I thought you might see things differently with your glasses, Sam.”

“Please, Miss Fleming—”

She left the edge of the bed and went to a dresser mirror.

“Don’t push me,” she snapped. “I’ve had a bad hour and it’s beginning to catch up with me.”

She inventoried her reflection. She had left the coat in the main room. Her short, black hair, normally worn unkempt, was a rat’s nest now, her gold-coated lips smeared. The knees and thighs of her Capri pants were wet and black with grime. She put her back to the mirror, looked over her shoulder. Same thing.

She glanced at her palms. They were gritty. One gold-coated fingernail had been broken. She wiped her palms on the Capri legs. The Capris were ruined anyway. Then Desiree took the tiny gun from the shoulder holster and hefted it at the scientist.

He popped up in the bed. The sheet was dropped and suddenly forgotten. He gaped.

“Shut up,” said Desiree, “or I may be forced to use this gun to drive some common sense into that egg head of yours, Sam.” She holstered the gun. “And that’s the way it’s going to be from now on, understand? Sam and Desiree. I’m tired of mouthing your last name. It’s too much handle. And I don’t like to be called Miss Fleming. It makes me sound as if I’m a debutante coming out. I’m not. I’m an agent for a bureau of the United States government. I’m the casual type. I’m uninhibited. I’m— Damnit, Sam, quit gawking at me as if you’ve never seen an angry female before!”

“Miss... Miss...”

“Desiree!”

“Desiree—” He gulped, stared, then he seemed to gather himself and he thundered, “Desiree, what the devil happened to you? Where have you been? You look as if you’ve been — been in a fight! You look as if—”

He left the bed, wrapped himself in the blue robe, belted it securely at his middle, slid his feet into the slippers.

“Thank God,” Desiree breathed. “Suddenly you’re human. Come on out here, Sam, and mix us a highball. And make it a decent highball this time. You aren’t going to like what I have to tell you, not one bit.”

She went into the main room. He trailed her. She shrugged out of the shoulder rig and took it and her coat into the other bedroom. When she returned, she watched him pour bourbon from a bottle into glasses without measuring. He dropped in ice cubes, poured water from a pitcher.

The drink he handed her was a brown color. She was satisfied. She dropped on a couch, kicked off a loafer and curled a leg under her. He sat on the edge of a deep chair opposite her.

“Now,” Desiree said, “I’m going to explain some facts of life, Sam, and I want you to listen.”

His immediate reaction to her recount of the last hour was, continued disbelief. He sat shaking his head, his eyes hung on some unseen object on the thick carpeting. Desiree kicked off the other loafer and wiggled toes with gold-painted nails as she drank appreciatively from the glass.

“What all this boils down to, Sam, is tomorrow afternoon’s meeting is off.”

He surprised her. He said softly, “Isn’t that exactly what someone wants, Miss... er, Desiree?”

She frowned.

“The way I see it,” he continued, “we play straight into the hands of these people, whoever they are, if I postpone tomorrow. You said it yourself: sprawled there on the sidewalk, you were a perfect close range target. You could have easily been killed, but you were not. Doesn’t that suggest that these people merely are trying to frighten us off?”

“It suggests I am living with a rabbit’s foot in my pocket and that someone was a darn poor shot.”

“Perhaps. But I’m not going to be swayed, Desiree. I think the intent was to frighten.”

“What if I’d gone out and not returned tonight?”

“Well, naturally I’d be disturbed.”

“Thanks a bushel,”

“What I mean, Miss Fleming, is, I’m not totally oblivious to the fact that you are a human being and, well, female.”

“Watch it, Sam. Something hidden in you is beginning to seep out.”

He said nothing. He drank.

Desiree pressed, “If I had disappeared wouldn’t that have told you and yours to vamoose, get out of town?”

“No.”