Blood on Biscayne Bay

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It was late in the afternoon of a day in late November when Michael Shayne sauntered into the lobby of a downtown apartment hotel in Miami, Florida. An indefinable feeling of restlessness possessed him. He recognized the symptom, and he welcomed it.

Very simply and very definitely he knew it was time he was moving on. His vacation had been a long and lazy one, and he had enjoyed every moment of it. But now it was over.

With the end of summer, the Magic City’s tempo was quickening. This was the first “Season” since peace had come to a war-weary world, and already tourists were crowding in, eager to spend their inflated money and clamoring for the frenzied gaiety which Miami knows so well how to offer.

Shayne was suddenly very tired of the tourist-filled city, and bored with inaction. He wanted to get back into the harness. Thinking of Lucy Hamilton, his attractive secretary in New Orleans, trying to keep his office intact while he was away, gave him a feeling of nostalgia which had never touched him before. He wondered about Lucy a lot. In a sense, he realized that this protracted vacation in Miami had been an inward protest against his growing fondness for her. He had felt after the Timothy Rourke affair had been cleared up that he needed to stay away from his New Orleans office for a time to gain perspective, and to examine impersonally his feelings toward the dark-haired and brown-eyed girl who was so much like Phyllis.

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