A couple of years had elapsed since he had operated professionally in the Miami area, and a great many changes had taken place. Changes, particularly, in the organization and identity of the mobs ruling the resort city’s underworld. Two years ago, he reflected morosely, it would have been a cinch to contact the present holders of the ruby bracelet. There wasn’t any doubt in his mind that it had been a professional job, the sort of thing Ray Huggins might have planned and executed in previous days. A word dropped in any one of half a dozen saloons would soon have reached Huggins, and negotiations for the return of the stolen gems would have begun promptly. But Ray Huggins had slipped from power eighteen months ago and there had probably been two or three uneasy successors since then, men who might not even know Mike Shayne except by reputation, and who certainly had no way of knowing he was back in business at the old stand. Shayne’s belly muscles tightened as these vagrant thoughts drifted through his mind.
