Michael Shayne's Long Chance

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Michael Shayne’s gray eyes were bleak, his face was set in gaunt lines, his bushy red brows were drawn together over a vertical furrow which had deepened during the past two months. He dumped the last of the junk from the steel filing cabinet into a huge cardboard box. The battered oak desk was cleared of a useless accumulation of papers and what-not, and the small first-floor apartment which had served him as an office for nine years was littered with boxes and wastebaskets, waiting for the trashman.

The spacious corner apartment on the floor above, where he had spent many happy months with Phyllis, was vacant, awaiting new tenants.

Shayne stood in the middle of the muss and rumpled his bristly red hair. Lying atop one of the boxes was a short piece of rubber hose which he had snatched from a girl’s mouth: the Lenham case. A fake kidnap note that had sent a woman into screaming hysteria was torn to bits in the wastebasket: the Hanson case. A pile of telegrams, scribbled notations, the blackjack wrested from Pug Myers that stormy night down on the Florida Keys — relics which had once held such deep significance were now mere rubbish.

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