Murder Takes No Holiday by Brett Halliday

head fell forward in his hands. Shayne started the motor, but hesitated a moment, thinking, before putting the little car in gear. When Alvarez made his phone call, Shayne wanted to be where he could hear it.
    He headed downhill in what he hoped was the right direction. When he recognized Bay View Road, he made the turn. Alvarez raised his head.
    “Where are you going?”
    “I’ve got a cottage out here,” Shayne said, putting the gas pedal on the floor. “Be there in two minutes. You need a shot of something to get the buzzing out of your ears.”
    “Have you lost your mind? We will find a policeman waiting for us.”
    “I don’t think so,” Shayne said. “It’s too late at night to start checking cottages and transient houses. They wouldn’t expect me to register under my own name. But I’ll look it over first.”
    He remembered a little turnaround short of the Lodge, where sightseers could park overlooking the bay. He turned out his lights, pulled off and told Alvarez to wait. He slipped off silently into the darkness. In a minute or two he was back.
    “No sign of anybody.”
    He drove on to the driveway to the cottages without turning on his lights. Arriving in front of his own cottage a moment later, he shut off the motor, got out and went around to help Alvarez. The Camel had opened the door, and Shayne caught him before he fell. He half-carried the Venezuelan into the cottage, knocked over a chair on the way across the living room. He dumped his burden on the sofa and turned on a lamp.
    Alvarez was goggling up at him, gasping. “This pain—do you have an aspirin?”
    Shayne laughed. “You need more than an aspirin, amigo. You need a head X-ray and a few weeks in a nursing home.”
    Shayne produced glasses and his bottle of cognac. After a quick search through his suitcase he found a tin of aspirin tablets. He gave this to Alvarez, who gulped down four, two at a time, and followed them with a stiff peg of cognac.
    He shuddered as the cognac took hold. “That is better. Where is your phone?”
    “In the bedroom, if you can make it,” Shayne said.
    “I can make it.”
    He came erect, and stood swaying for a moment, leaning on the back of a chair.
    “Want some help?” Shayne asked, watching him narrowly.
    Alvarez shook his head and reached the bedroom doorway in three lurching steps. There he rested again. Gathering his strength, he plunged forward and collapsed on the bed.
    Shayne handed him the phone. He waited, breathing hard. After the sixth long breath he rattled for the operator.
    Shayne took off his white coat, which was badly soiled where Alvarez had grabbed it, and changed back into the gray tropical worsted he had worn from Miami. Alvarez rattled the phone impatiently.
    “What is the matter with this damned operator? Shayne, get me some ice. This pain is so bad I can’t think. And I must think. In a towel, a wash-cloth—anything.”
    The redhead went to the little kitchenette. He opened the midget refrigerator and turned on the hot water faucet. Leaving the water running, he quietly returned to the living room so he could hear what his guest was saying. Alvarez was talking very rapidly in Spanish. It was too fast for Shayne. He listened for a moment. When Alvarez didn’t switch back to English, Shayne returned to the kitchenette.
    The ice-tray was an ancient model. He had to wait till the water ran hot before it would warm up the tray enough to release the cubes. He wrapped half a dozen in a dish-towel and took them to the bedroom, where Alvarez seized them gratefully and pressed them to his temples.
    “Yes, yes,” he said into the phone in English. “But yesterday! Yesterday. I want to know his exact words. Did he say he had not decided if he would do it? Or precisely what?”
    Shayne returned to the living room and sat down to his cognac. His eyes were hard.
    “And in the end?” Alvarez said. “How did you leave it? You persuaded him?”
    He listened for some time.
    “All