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nineteen.”
    “But you don’t! You’re just nice to talk to. Please don’t spoil it.”
    “I won’t.” He made his voice very gentle. “Relax, child. I was just trying to find out something about you in my own inimitable way.”
    “Did you?” she asked in a small voice.
    “I think so.” Shayne took another sip of cognac and made his voice briskly businesslike again. “Take your own time about getting it off your chest.”
    “Would you like to make fifty thousand dollars?”
    “Sure. Who wouldn’t?”
    “But… is that enough to… to induce you to kill a man?”
    “Who do you want killed, Jane?”
    “My stepfather.”

 
5
     
    The two words lay harsh and ugly on the floor between them. Jane Smith gulped in her breath unevenly after she spoke, and closed her eyes tightly. Her body went lax and she lay huddled at one corner of the sofa like a limp rag doll. Two tears squeezed out from under her eyelids and coursed slowly down her cheeks.
    Slowly her head bent forward as though the weight were too much for the slender column of her neck, and she lifted both hands, spread-fingered to cover her face in an attitude of utter despair. Her shining black hair fell forward to form a lacy curtain in front of her hands.
    Shayne sat very still and watched her, his gaunt face deeply trenched, gray eyes narrowed to slits.
    She spoke first without shaking back her hair or removing hands from her face. Her voice was tremulous and frightened:
    “There. Now I’ve said it out loud. To someone else. I’ve said it to myself so many times. I thought it would sound ugly and nasty and vicious. But it doesn’t.” Her voice took on a wondering note. She slowly lifted her head and brushed back the hair on both sides of her face. Her cheeks were tear-wet, but her eyes were luminous and steady on Shayne.
    “Thank you for not looking shocked,” she said softly. “I know it is shocking. But if you only knew… how I hate him. If you only understood how I loathe and despise the very thought of him. How often I’ve wished him dead, and planned to kill him in my thoughts. If you will only listen to me.”
    Shayne said steadily, “I’m listening, Jane.”
    “His name is Saul Henderson. He married my mother four years ago.” She spoke rapidly, as though she had carefully memorized the speech. “I liked him at first. He seemed gentle and kind, and mother needed him. Mother always needed a man. Someone to make a fuss over her and look after her. He didn’t have much money but that didn’t matter because mother had plenty. And he was good to her, and good for her. She positively bloomed the first few months. It was a marvelous transformation and it made me very happy. And then…” Her voice faltered. She continued to stare at him unblinking and he saw the humiliation and pain in her eyes.
    “Oh, I can’t tell you, Mike Wayne. I simply can’t. I thought I could after I met you tonight, but now the words won’t come out. I can’t form them on my lips. I’ll die of shame. Oh my God! what shall I do?”
    Like an uncoiling spring she came out of her crouching position on the sofa and flowed across the room to him. A paroxysm of weeping shook her slender body as she dropped to the floor in front of him and clutched his knees with both arms, burying her face between his thighs.
    Shayne sat rigidly motionless while her tempest of emotion spent itself. Then, without lifting her head, her voice muffled and toneless, she began talking again.
    “He debauched me when I was sixteen. He raped me in a bedroom beside the one where my mother lay dying of cancer. I couldn’t cry out and let her know. I couldn’t.”
    Again her bowed shoulders shook with violent sobbing. “Even now I’m glad I didn’t. I’m proud that I submitted to him and she never knew. He was all she had to cling to. She adored him. And she died adoring him.”
    She jerked her head up and stared at Shayne fiercely. “Do you understand that I’m glad and proud…