In a Deadly Vein (13 page)

He checked the elapsed time when the boy reached him. Exactly seven minutes and thirty-five seconds from the lower end of the flume.

Shayne said, “Now hop in and show me the upper end. I’ll clock you back the same way.”

His car crawled in low gear up the steep grade beyond the courthouse, past dilapidated and deserted mill buildings built along what had once been the bank of the creek.

“Right here,” the boy stopped him. “This is where the flume starts.”

Shayne parked by the side of the street and got out. He followed his eager young guide through the littered back yard of a weatherbeaten cabin to a point where the rock walls of the gulch converged and the flow of water entered the boarded-up flume to be carried underneath the town. Here, again, Shayne searched carefully without finding any clue to indicate it was where Nora Carson had died.

He looked at his watch and started his young helper back, then returned to his car and let it coast down to the opera house in second gear.

Eight and a half minutes had elapsed when the lad reached him again. He snapped his watch shut and told the lad approvingly, “You were right. It’s closer to the lower end. You were coming downhill this time, and it took you a minute longer to make it.”

“Look, Mister. You figure maybe it was somebody here at the opera house last night slipped out and killed her? Then hurried back and pretended they hadn’t been away—for an alibi? That why you were seeing how long it took?”

Shayne chuckled and took a dollar bill from his pocket. “Keep up that sort of guessing and you’ll be a better detective than I am before you’re many years older.”

The lad was offended by the offer of money. He shook his head. “Gosh, no, Mister. I don’t want to get paid. Let me know if you need any more help.”

Shayne gravely promised he would, and the lad swaggered away.

The front doors of the opera house were closed. Shayne went around to the stage entrance. He found a tall, haggard man in shirtsleeves conferring backstage with a man wearing bib overalls and spectacles. They both looked him over sharply when Shayne approached and introduced himself.

“I’m Johnston, the producer,” the tall man told him. “And this is Mr. McLeod, our set designer and chief property man.”

Shayne shook hands with both of them. He explained, “You gentlemen can help me clear the members of your cast of suspicion in Nora Carson’s murder. She was killed while the play was going on. Whoever killed her must have been absent from the opera house for an absolute minimum of fifteen minutes—and that’s allowing no time for the actual murder.”

Both men listened with intent interest.

He continued, “I’m particularly interested in the movements of two men: Frank Carson and Joe Meade. Don’t answer hastily. Take time to think it over. Your answers may be very important. Could either of those men have been absent fifteen minutes during the performance without being missed?”

He took out a cigarette while he waited. His hand shook, striking a match. A hell of a lot depended on the answer to his question. An entire hypothesis he had been mentally building since early dawn.

The producer was first with a definite and positive shake of his head. “I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you, Mr. Shayne. Carson couldn’t possibly have been absent from the theater five minutes without being missed.”

“How about intermissions?”

“Impossible. He’s on-stage at both curtains, and has a complete change of costume between acts. No, I can get a cue-sheet if you wish and go over it with you minute by minute, but I assure you that Carson could not have been away as much as ten consecutive minutes from the first curtain until the last.”

“All right. How about Joe Meade?”

“Mac will have to answer for him.” Johnston turned to McLeod.

The stout, overalled man shook his head. “Naturally, I can’t be quite as positive as Johnston. We don’t have a cue-sheet for the prop men. But I’m afraid I’ll have to alibi Meade also. There’s a change of scenery at the end of each act, and a shift just about halfway between each curtain. It’s very, very doubtful that Meade could have been away as much as fifteen minutes without being noticed.”

Shayne made no attempt to hide his disappointment. He hesitated a moment, tugging at his ear, then asked Johnston, “Does Carson have an understudy?”

“No. We can’t provide understudies for every member of the cast.”

“But there must be someone,” Shayne insisted, “capable of taking his place in case of sickness or something like that.”

“Well, there is, of course,” Johnston admitted reluctantly. “One of the bit players who could substitute for most any of the others in a pinch. Philip Steele. He’s an ambitious youngster and quite talented.”

Shayne’s eyes began to glow. “With a great gift for make-up?” he questioned. “He’d have to be if he’s able to assume the different parts well enough to fool an audience.”

“It happens that he is particularly good at make-up,” Johnston assented. “In fact, he’s a wizard at it. But if you’re thinking that Carson might have arranged for Steele to substitute for him on the stage while he slipped out and murdered his wife, the idea is absurd.”

“I was thinking something like that,” Shayne admitted. “It would give Carson a swell alibi. How can you be sure Steele didn’t fool you last night? With his extraordinary gift for making himself up to resemble—”

“See here, Mr. Shayne. I’m the producer. I was right here in the wings every moment. I’d have to be either drunk or crazy for such a substitution to go unnoticed two minutes. I was neither drunk nor crazy last night.”

Shayne said, “All right. But this is murder and I can’t afford guesswork.”

“I’ll take my oath on it,” Johnston said. “You’d better look outside the theater for your murderer.”

“I’ve got plenty of other candidates,” Shayne admitted cheerily. “So many that I’ve got to go through this process of elimination.” He turned to McLeod again. “I’ve just remembered something. I saw the play last night, and there was a hitch in the first change of scenery. The curtain was down so long the audience began to get restless. What occasioned the delay?”

McLeod’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses. He thumped a solid fist into his palm. “That I should ever forget that! It’s lucky for Joe Meade he went off and shot himself last night. He was to blame. He’d sneaked off for a smoke and didn’t show up to give us a hand until the job was nearly done. I bawled him out proper, you may be sure of that.”

“Slipped off for a smoke?” Shayne repeated. “How do you know that’s what he was doing?”

“So he said when he—” McLeod stopped suddenly. His square jaw sagged.

Shayne nodded. “Exactly. So he said. But you don’t know he was smoking. If he strolled off to commit murder, he wouldn’t be likely to tell you so.” Shayne’s tone was scathing. “That’s what I warned you against when I told you to think your answers over carefully. When was that change of scene?”

“We were a few minutes behind schedule last night. Eight-fifty—a few minutes one way or the other.”

Shayne nodded grimly. “That may be damned important.” He turned to Johnston. “Could I see Miss Carson’s dressing-room again?”

“Of course.”

Nervousness had replaced the faint hostility both men had shown at first. The producer led the way to the steps leading down to the concrete basement, switching on lights ahead of him.

Shayne shivered in the damp, chill air as they reached the bottom.

Johnston smiled thinly. “Air-conditioning wasn’t in vogue when this opera house was built.” He gestured toward an opening in the corridor. “There’s an old furnace in the cellar there, but we don’t use it during these summer revivals.”

Shayne stepped to the doorway and muttered, “This would be a swell place to store an unwanted corpse if it stays this cold in here all summer.”

“It does.” Johnston hesitated, then came back with a harried look on his face. “You’re not expecting to find any more bodies?” he ejaculated.

Shayne hesitated. There was a groping look on his gaunt features; as though he was tantalized by an elusive perception just beyond his reach.

He asked, “Is there a light inside?”

Johnston’s teeth chattered and the blood left his face. “There’s a switch just inside the door.” He reached past the detective, fumbled for it, and the big unfloored basement room was flooded with light.

The hard-packed dirt was damp underfoot. The cellar was littered with discarded pieces of furniture and sets that must have been accumulating for decades. Shayne walked forward, saying grimly:

“I’m nuts, of course, but there
is
one character missing from last night’s murder charade. And we’re short one corpse according to an old theatrical superstition.”

The producer followed him hesitantly. The top of the wooden flume was flush with the dirt floor, running through the middle of the cellar. Just beyond it was a squat iron furnace, big enough, as Shayne pointed out, to conceal a dozen bodies. He was not satisfied until he had opened the big iron door of the firebox and peered inside, then carefully poked around in all the likely-looking shadows without finding anything.

He grinned ruefully as they emerged from the cellar.

“Next thing,” he prophesied, “I’ll be looking for corpses under my bed at night. But if I wanted to dispose of a body, I wouldn’t look for a better place than that morgue. Let’s see, this was Nora Carson’s dressing-room, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. She shared it with Miss Moore.” Johnston stood in the doorway while Shayne entered and looked around.

He nodded with satisfaction when he saw a black evening wrap hanging on a hook. “I’m slipping. For the life of me I didn’t know whether I saw that wrap hanging there last night, or whether I just conjured up the memory of seeing it there.”

“It’s Miss Carson’s cloak,” Johnston volunteered. “Is it an important clue?”

Shayne’s face was cheerful. “Not particularly important—except that it ties up with a lot of other things. It helps explain why she might have gone up to her room for a coat last night—and indicates she was in a terrific hurry when she left this dressing-room. Either that,” he frowned, “or when she went out of this room she had no expectation of leaving the building. Well, thanks for showing me around. I guess this is all I can do here.”

Johnston followed him upstairs. “Glad to have been of help. And I’m glad, too, I could set your suspicions of Carson at rest. Do you think Joe Meade is guilty?”

Shayne stopped and faced both Johnston and McLeod. “You both know Meade better than I do. What do you think?”

They looked at each other.

Johnston asked, “How about it, Mac?”

McLeod shook his head. “You can’t make me believe it without proof. He’s a strange one and given to wild ideas, but I wouldn’t put murder among them.”

Shayne said pleasantly, “I never make a case against a man without proof,” and went out into the sunlight.

He found Phyllis waiting impatiently in their room, and as soon as he entered, she reproached him, “You slipped away before I awoke this morning.”

He grinned and swept her into his arms. “I was out garnering some early worms while the lazy birds overslept. A regular human dynamo, that’s me.”

She snuggled against him. “Did you get any?”

“Some nice fat juicy ones.” He kissed her lingeringly, then put her aside to pour himself a moderate portion of cognac.

“Dr. Fairweather called while you were out.”

Shayne whirled on her. “How’s the patient?”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “If you’d been here in bed with me where you belonged instead of out gathering worms, you could have questioned Joe Meade. But the doctor put him back under a hypo when I confessed I didn’t know where you were nor when you’d be back. If you’d only
tell
me things, Michael—”

Shayne didn’t appear overly disappointed. “How is the wound?”

“Dr. Fairweather says he’s out of danger. You can grill him to your heart’s content this evening when the drug wears off.”

Shayne nodded happily. “Right on schedule.” He sat down with his drink.

Phyllis came over and insinuated herself into his lap. She rubbed her cheek against his, and teased, “Tell me, Mike. About the worms you’ve been gathering while I slept.”

“The blow-off is set for seven o’clock tonight. You don’t deserve a preview.”

“Then you’ve solved it?” Phyllis cried delightedly.

“With a few ifs and buts and ands and maybes. Some few of which I hope to clear up before tonight.” His fingers drummed impatiently on the arm of his chair and his eyes suddenly took on a faraway look.

He said, “Do you know something, Phyl?”

“How can I?” she pouted. “You never tell me anything.”

He said, “Honest to God, angel, this is the first time I’ve stopped to ask myself why I’ve been running around working my head off on this case.”

“Because you’re a famous detective and people expect you to solve it.”

Shayne shook his head angrily and drank some cognac. “I’m slipping, all right. I’ve figured every angle except my own pay-off. Damn it, Phyl. I haven’t even thought about collecting a fee.”

“For once in your life, it wouldn’t kill you to do something just because it was right.”

Shayne narrowed his eyes and said musingly, “There’s always a money angle—if you look hard enough.”

Phyllis wailed, “Do you have to be mercenary? And on our vacation?”

He pushed her gently from his knees and stood up. The questing look in his gray eyes had been replaced by a bleak and driving intensity. He said, “There wouldn’t be any vacations if I didn’t collect on my cases. Murder is an ugly business, but it’s my business. And by God, I’m not going to pass up any dividends.”

He seized his hat, crushed it down on his unruly red hair, and stalked from the room.

IT WAS LATE THAT AFTERNOON when Shayne encountered Sheriff Fleming in the Teller House barroom. His eyes lighted when he saw the detective. “Been looking for you,” he drawled. “I got a government report on the dingus that measures high water in the creek. Got a man to come out from Denver when I told him it was official business.”