Murder Takes No Holiday by Brett Halliday

where she could reach it.
    “I’m—I’m sorry, Michael. It’s just—seeing you like this, after so many years—”
    Taking her by the shoulders, he gave her a quick shake. “Stop it. I won’t tell you how glad I am to see you, because we don’t have time. I know it’s serious. You and Paul are in trouble, and if you want me to help you you’ve got to tell me a few things. What about the gun?”
    She blew her nose and said faintly, “I don’t know how to begin. I’ve been expecting something to happen for months. I thought—”
    She couldn’t go on, and Shayne said, “You thought it had something to do with the smuggling?”
    Her eyes widened. “Of course. You heard he’d been arrested, and you didn’t like the idea of an old friend of yours being married to a criminal. I don’t like it either. But he’s stopped, Michael! You don’t have to worry about us. He won’t do anything like that again.”
    “It’s a little more complicated than that,” he said. “I heard about it from the customs agent-in-charge in Miami, Jack Malloy. Do you remember him?”
    “Of course,” she said quietly. “Another old friend who thinks—”
    Her eyes filled, and Shayne said quickly, “Keep talking about it, Martha. It may not seem so bad when it’s out where we can look at it.”
    “Michael, don’t you see?” she said desperately. “I knew about it. I’m as much to blame as Paul. Oh, I argued against it, but he could tell I didn’t mean it. He just laughed at me. and went right ahead. I didn’t refuse to take the money he made by it, you notice! Certainly not. That might have convinced him I was serious. I finally laid down the law, gave him a clear-cut set of alternatives, but not until after he’d been caught! I’m so ashamed.”
    “How long has it gone on?”
    “Oh, Michael, for months and months. A man came to Paul and offered to sell him some cheap perfume for export. He—”
    “Was his name Alvarez?”
    She drew in her breath in surprise. “Luis Alvarez. Yes. Do you mean Jack Malloy knows about that?”
    “Not yet. Go on.”
    “Well, Alvarez explained it. What he wanted our firm to handle was bottled as toilet water. Actually it was the concentrated essence of some famous French perfume, worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars an ounce. Paul didn’t tell me about it till it was all over. It was simplicity itself. He consigned the shipment to a dummy company, picked it up and forwarded it to a big perfume company up north. For this trifling service, he was paid fifteen hundred dollars! I was horrified, but apparently not quite horrified enough. Actually, I used to feel irritated by the price my friends paid for imported perfume, and I suppose that smuggling it past the customs didn’t seem like such a terrible crime. Paul put the money in the business, and it just disappeared. Although I’ve suddenly begun to wonder if he could have spent it on—but never mind. Alvarez had another proposition soon afterward. There was never any trouble, and Paul paid less and less attention when I tried to get him to think about what he was doing. Then all of a sudden he was arrested, and it did something horrible to him, Michael. I’ve never seen a man so reduced. And all for a silly little handful of watch movements!”
    “You think that was all he had?”
    She frowned. “I assumed—but they have some kind of X-ray machine, don’t they? I’ve always been told that once they’re suspicious of you, you can’t bring in as much as a carpet tack without their knowing about it.”
    “Jack Malloy has a theory, but there’s probably nothing to it. You said you gave Paul some alternatives?”
    “Yes, I told him that if he didn’t stop for good, I’d leave him. From now on they’ll take extra precautions when Paul comes in. I used to think I was a fairly honest person, but I’m learning some unpleasant truths about myself. Did I give him that ultimatum because what he was doing was wrong, or because