In a Deadly Vein (3 page)

PHYLLIS SHAYNE was not one to stand idly by and hear her husband aspersed. She stepped between Shayne and Frank with dark eyes blazing. “You’re a fine one to accuse Michael of letting your wife wander off. Why didn’t you stop her?”

“I didn’t know she was going.” He arched his perfect brows in surprise and modulated his voice. “I had to rush like the devil to get ready for my cue.”

“Well, neither did Michael know she was going,” Phyllis countered angrily.

Shayne chuckled and put Phyllis gently aside. “This little hell-cat is my wife,” he explained. “She only gets belligerent when I’m attacked. If your wife went back up the hill, she’s all right. There were officers up there to take care of her. But if she went wandering off on some tangent of her own, we’d better try to find her. Are you sure she didn’t tell anybody where she was going?”

“I don’t think so,” Carson told him, “else they would have had Christine ready when Nora’s cue came. But I haven’t had time to make any inquiries. I’ll see if Celia Moore knows anything. She shares Nora’s dressing-room. She was with Nora when I saw her last.” He turned away alertly and surveyed the backstage turmoil, then began working his way toward a group near the electrician’s booth.

Shayne followed him, holding Phyllis’s arm. “Be easy on Carson, angel. He has taken a stiff jolt tonight and you can’t blame him for being edgy.”

“That doesn’t justify his ugly insinuations against you. He talked as if you’d been hired as his wife’s bodyguard.”

Shayne laughed easily. “I’ve got a tough hide.”

He saw Carson drawing a middle-aged woman aside and recognized her as the woman they had encountered in Jasper Windrow’s store that afternoon. Her dark hair was parted in the middle and drawn back smoothly in a knot at the nape of her neck. Pressing through the crowd, Shayne heard her say:

“No, Frank. Nora didn’t say a word to me.” There was a look of deep concern in her eyes and her rich voice throbbed with pity. “Poor kid. I didn’t even know anything about her father until the end of the first act.”

“Did she seem terribly upset?” Shayne asked as he reached them.

Celia Moore turned brilliant hazel eyes on him, shaking her head. “Not that I noticed. But Nora is a trouper. God knows she must have been hit hard to let Christine horn in—the way they hated each other’s guts.” Her last words were spoken absently. Her eyes had narrowed upon Shayne’s angular face. “Sa-ay, you’re the lug who almost mixed in with my boy friend this afternoon. I thought Jasper was going to take a swing at you.” She chuckled in a delightful baritone.

Shayne nodded impatiently. “The name is Shayne. Now, about Nora—didn’t she give you any intimation that she might not go on?”

“Not a single damn’ intimation. She was putting on her make-up when I left her in the dressing-room.” Celia Moore pursed her lips and glanced speculatively at Frank Carson. “I don’t know a thing about it,” she ended briskly, and laid an apologetic and slightly damp palm on Shayne’s coat sleeve. She looked at him coyly and said, “You’ll have to excuse me now. There’s a gentleman out there somewhere who’s wondering what the hell’s become of me.”

She glided away. Shayne watched her go, and saw Jasper Windrow waiting for her at the rear of the stage. Windrow wore the conventional dress suit required of first-nighters, and a white tie was tilted rakishly beneath his blunt chin.

“Well, what do you think?” Carson demanded. “Mightn’t Nora have left a note for you? Have you looked for one in her dressing-room?”

“I haven’t had time to do anything,” Carson snapped, but the suggestion appeared to relieve his anguished face, “She does, sometimes. I’ll see.”

He plunged toward the wooden stairs leading down to rows of small dressing-rooms in the basement.

Shayne plunged after him, with Phyllis clinging to his arm. It was cold and damp in the room just off the corridor from the stairs. They saw Carson searching frantically through a disarray of jars and tubes of cosmetics on a small table.

Carson shook his head, his mouth grim. “Nothing here. Looks as if she started to make up, though.”

Shayne said, “It looks as if Nora was putting up a front while Miss Moore was in the room. When she left, Nora realized she couldn’t go on. So, she probably went to the hotel to be alone.”

“It isn’t that simple.” Carson ran long, slender fingers through his black hair. “Nora would never leave us in the lurch. She would have told Christine so she could be getting ready.”

“Maybe not.” Shayne frowned. “Miss Moore spoke of them hating each other.”

Carson didn’t reply immediately. He appeared more relieved than at any time since Shayne approached him. He faced Shayne squarely and said, “That’s not the way we do things in the theatrical world. There is plenty of professional jealousy everywhere. Nora suspected Christine of plotting to supplant her, but Nora wouldn’t let that cut any ice if it came to a showdown.”

Shayne caught the lobe of his left ear and worried it between right thumb and forefinger. After a brief silence, he said:

“After seeing Nora’s understudy handle the part, I don’t blame her for feeling a trifle insecure. That means she felt a terrific compulsion to go on, no matter how distasteful it was to her. I would guess that when she left the theater she intended to return in time to catch her cue.”

“I agree,” Carson said hesitantly, “but why the devil did she go out at all? She knew there wasn’t much time.”

Shayne released his earlobe and massaged his chin. “Something came up,” he speculated. “Or, she thought of something in connection with her father’s death. She might have dashed out to find me, expecting to hurry back.”

Frank Carson threw his arms out dramatically, his fingers clenched. “I don’t know—I just don’t know,” he raved. “I’ll see you outside as soon as I get this damned grease off and get on some decent clothes.”

Outside, Shayne and Phyllis simultaneously drew in deep breaths of the clean, cold air. Phyllis looked up at the star-studded sky and breathed, “It’s hard to believe anything can be wrong on a night like this. Don’t you think you’re worrying a lot about nothing, Michael?”

Shayne said, “No.”

She lengthened her step to keep pace with his swift stride. “But, Michael, it was perfectly natural for Nora not to feel up to facing an audience after what happened, and she knew Christine Forbes was competent to take her place.”

“You don’t know much about actors, angel. They give up a part about as easily as you’d give up your life.” He led her out into the street to avoid plowing through the crowd still lingering in front of the opera house. “It had to be something damned important to keep her off the stage tonight.”

Eureka Street was again jammed with celebrants intent upon a long night of revelry, now that the play was ended. They sauntered on boardwalk and street, drifting from the square dance to the casinos, from fortune-telling booths to the tintype photograph booths where old-fashioned costumes were miraculously revived for personal adornment. They swarmed before the Teller House, trying to get through to the night club where the midnight floor show was getting under way.

Shayne hesitated on the fringe of the throng in front of the hotel and was hailed by Patrick Casey from the boardwalk which rose high above the street level. Shayne beckoned and Casey came down, using the shoulder of a convenient spectator to steady his jump, and sauntered toward Shayne with half of an unlit cigar protruding from his mouth.

Shayne asked, “Have you been up to see the body?”

“I hung around until they carted him off to the undertaker’s ten minutes ago. We turned up a big rock smeared with blood, but nothing else.”

“Did you see the girl up there?”

“Nary a girl,” he said sadly, “blast it.”

“And you went right after we left?”

“Sure. ’Twas the favor you asked of me.”

Shayne said, “I’m going into the hotel.”

He used his right shoulder to force a path to the lobby. Phyllis and Casey were engulfed behind him, reaching him as he turned away from the desk to ascend the winding mahogany stairs.

“Any luck?” Phyllis panted.

“The clerk hasn’t seen Nora go up or down since dinner. But that doesn’t mean a damned thing in this madhouse. She could have gone in and out a dozen times without being noticed. The room key is out,” he added as the trio gained the first landing.

They turned into a dark-paneled corridor, and after a quick look at room numbers, Shayne muttered, “One-twenty-three should be down this way.”

He stalked ahead of them, stopped in front of a closed door and knocked. The sound was echoed back from dead silence inside the room. No light showed around the door or through the keyhole. The muted infusion of merriment drifting up from revelers in the night club below was irritating.

Shayne frowned and knocked again, loudly. Phyllis shivered. The high corridor reeked with the musty smell of disuse during most of the year. Until now the smell had been ghostly and alluring, a part of choosing Central City for a vacation spot. But now it chilled her as ominous, portentous, when Shayne’s knock was unanswered.

Sweat formed little rivulets on Shayne’s gaunt cheeks when he fumbled for his key-ring. He dropped to his knees and went to work on the lock with a sliver of tempered steel.

Casey stood aside and chewed on his cigar butt, his eyes round and owlish. Phyllis held her breath when Shayne finally opened the door and switched on a light to reveal an enormous, high-ceilinged room with antique furnishings.

Shayne made a quick circuit of the room, looking in the closet and under the four-poster walnut bed. He came to an abrupt stop in front of a marble-topped walnut chest of drawers in the far corner. Planting his hands on his hips, he stared somberly at a note.

Phyllis hurried to him, her heart panting violently again after recovering from the expectancy of seeing Nora Carson’s body in the room. She pressed against her husband and read the note in a small, awed voice:
“Frank darling, I must find the sheriff at once. I’m writing this so you won’t worry if I should have to miss tonight’s performance. Nothing matters now but Father. Lovingly, Nora.”

Brooding silence held the trio. There was stark, uncompromising bitterness in Shayne’s gray eyes.

“Mike—don’t look like that,” Phyllis cried. “Nora wasn’t looking for you. She went to find the sheriff.”

Shayne’s head nodded almost imperceptibly. He muttered, “She intended to return to the theater in time for her cue—but she didn’t.”

PATRICK CASEY had been pacing back and forth, his short legs taking slow, measured steps. He came back to the high chest of drawers where Shayne and Phyllis stood. He said, “I don’t get any of this. An old man looks in a window and a girl screams. You go tearing after her through the lobby. You come back and say the guy is her father. Now, you can’t find the girl. What about her?”

“You should learn the formula for how much liquor you can carry to the square inch,” Shayne told him.

Phyllis intervened hastily. “It’s this way, Pat. Nora Carson slipped away from the opera house as soon as the play started. This note indicates she had an urgent reason for contacting the sheriff. I think Mike’s afraid that—well, that maybe the person who killed her father knew she had an important clue.” She turned breathlessly to Shayne and asked, “Isn’t that it, Michael?”

Shayne nodded indulgently. “Something prevented Nora Carson from getting back to the theater,” he said, not looking at either of them. He clawed bony fingers through his coarse red hair, then broke out angrily:

“She was a walking invitation to death if she had information pointing to the killer, and if that information was even hinted to anyone she was doomed. Murder breeding murder. I’ve seen it happen so damned often. The fact that she hasn’t shown up yet—” He broke off abruptly at the sound of movement in the doorway.

Two men stood in the opening of the hotel room They were enough alike to be twins, dressed exactly alike in belted sports coats, blue slacks and tan and white shoes. They were of the same slimness and height with snap-brim fedoras tilted to the right and downward over hatchet faces indelibly stamped with the pastiness of city night life. Faces that seldom felt the sun. Their eyes were pale and furtive with an alert wariness characteristic of men who live in the shadow world of lawlessness; their stance held the distinctive swagger of defiance, an attribute of men who have successfully challenged the law for a long time.

Patrick Casey turned to look at them. His exhaled breath made a faint whistling sound through his lips. He tilted his straw hat far back on his bullet head and asked, “You boys looking for somebody?”

“For you, Casey.” The man on the left spoke in a hushed, rasping tone. His face was blank of expression, stony calm, as was that of his twin.

His companion amplified. “You was told to keep your nose clean, Casey,” in a flat monotone.

Phyllis Shayne drew closer to her husband, appealing to him with dark, frightened eyes.

Shayne’s gaze was negligently fixed on the two men. His rangy body was relaxed. He struck a light to a cigarette.

Casey smiled blandly at the two gunsels and tilted his straw hat to a cockier angle. He said, “All right, boys. You caught up with me.”

“Bryant’s got a bug to put in your ear,” the rasping voice told him, jerking his head toward the corridor.

They touched shoulders and moved into the room, separating when they reached Casey to allow him to pass out between them.

Casey said, “Maybe I got a bug to put in Bryant’s ear. A hornet, maybe.” He put his hands in his pockets and sauntered through the doorway, a gunman on either side.

Shayne said to Phyllis, “Casey knows the angles. Don’t worry about him.”

Casey’s voice boomed into the room from the hallway, hard and demanding: “Hello, Two-Deck. What have you got for me?”

Shayne heard Bryant’s voice but couldn’t distinguish the words. He stalked to the door with smoke rolling through his nostrils.

Phyllis caught his arm and pleaded, “Don’t, Mike, please.”

He did not look at her terrified eyes. His face was flinty. He put her restraining hand from his arm and kept moving toward the door.

In the corridor, the two gunsels intercepted him with snarling faces. “Watch your step, lug,” they said in unison.

Phyllis edged toward the doorway, gripping it with white knuckles.

Casey was saying, “You’re a card, Bryant. By God, if you ain’t. I’m out here to soak up some scenery and get some culture—just like you are. Think I’d follow a cheap chiseler around the country?”

Shayne said to the gunsels, “I’m going out,” in a placid voice. His big hands dropped and swung loosely from his shoulders.

“Says who?” one of the punks asked. He put the palm of his hand on Shayne’s chest and pushed.

Shayne’s right looped to the point of his sharp chin in a long uppercut. The back of the gunsel’s head thumped against the wall. He wavered there for an instant, then slid to the floor.

His twin ripped out an oath and clawed under his coat for a shoulder holster, backing away.

Shayne moved swiftly on the balls of his feet, his gray eyes points of steel. He said, “Don’t try it.” He lunged, caught the gun and the man’s hand in a crushing grip, and laughed as an ejaculation of pain dribbled from thin lips. With his right palm up, Shayne caught the automatic as it fell from nerveless fingers. He pocketed the weapon and said, “You need more practice on the draw.”

“You said you weren’t working, Shamus.”

Shayne whirled to face Two-Deck Bryant’s cold blue eyes glaring at him.

Shayne said, “I knew, by God, you were going to spoil my vacation.”

Casey chuckled, standing behind Bryant. “Nice layout you’ve got here, Mike.”

One of Bryant’s bodyguards was slumped against the wall with the knuckles of his injured hand pressed against his mouth. The other was out cold.

Shayne’s eyes bored into Bryant’s. He said, “I’ve been looking for you all day. What angle are you playing—trying to get me in Dutch by saying those Indian blankets were phony?”

Bryant laughed uproariously and unpleasantly. “You were made for a fall guy, Shamus. I figured the big yokel would smear you up good, especially when the sheriff was standing right behind you.”

Shayne slapped Bryant a backhanded blow that brought a trickle of blood from the gambler’s upper lip.

Bryant wiped the blood away with a white linen handkerchief. In a low, furious voice, he warned, “You’re going to swing on the wrong guy one of these days.”

“Not as long as you set up tenpins in my alley.” Shayne turned to Casey and asked, “Are you having trouble with Bryant?”

“Oh, he thinks every dick in the country is after him. Just a bad conscience, Mike.”

“You’ve been told,” Bryant said thickly, “and it goes for Shayne, too. Keep out of my way.”

“Or you’ll sick a couple of panty-waists on us?” Shayne grinned. “That just scares hell out of us, Bryant.” He caught sight of Phyllis’s terrified eyes over the balustrade and hurried to her, tucked her arm in the crook of his elbow and said, “Scared, angel?”

“That Bryant man—he looks like a murderer, Michael. The way he looked at you,” she whispered frantically.

“He looked more like a little boy who’s had his candy taken away after we handled his gunmen.”

Casey chuckled behind them. “You went and spoiled my set-up, Mike,” he said when they were halfway down the stairs.

“What’s Two-Deck’s lay now?” Shayne asked.

“Running a wired clip joint out on the Hudson Parkway. Lots of floss outside and the same old jipperoo when you lay money on the line.”

“Running his own place?” Shayne mused. “That’s a forward step for him. How does that tie with the two of you popping up here in Central City?”

Casey stopped at the top of the stairs. A welter of sound blasted upward from the merrymakers in the lobby below.

“That’s the job I started to tell you about. We got a tip that Two-Deck was heading west to put the clamps on some bird that fed his joint a handful of rubber markers.” He paused to mop his forehead. “Happens there’s a couple of unsolved murders on the books. Both of them were suckers that bet over their heads in Two-Deck’s place before they ate lead. Well, we figure maybe those killings wouldn’t be unsolved if Bryant didn’t have so many connections in the city where he can buy alibis a dime a dozen. So, the Chief hopes he’ll maybe get careless out here and not waste money on an alibi, so I tag along just for a look-see.”

Phyllis was amazed to see her husband nod his head, indicating that he understood Casey’s gibberish perfectly. He muttered, “Too bad he pegged you for a tail. He’ll wipe his chin every time he spits from now on.”

They went down the stairs. Upon reaching the crowded lobby, Shayne tucked Phyllis’s arm into Casey’s. “Make her buy the drinks this time,” he suggested. “I’ve got to nose around and see if Nora Carson has turned up.”

He went outside and glanced speculatively over the heads of the milling throng and spotted the uniform of a courtesy patrolman. It was Stout, one of the officers who had been with Pete’s body when he left.

Stout nodded affably when Shayne approached. “I’ve always wondered how a private detective works. Got that murder solved?”

“Not quite. Seen anything of the girl who identified the old man as her father?”

“The actress? Not since she started for the opera house with her husband.”

“She’s not in circulation. I wish you would pass the word around quietly among the other officers. No use starting a panic.”

“Sure thing—right away,” Stout said.

Shayne saw Sheriff Fleming’s broad hat down the street and moved in that direction. He caught the sheriff’s eye and beckoned to him. When they met, Shayne inquired about Nora.

“I sure haven’t seen her,” the sheriff said. “Not since she was up the hill there.”

“Have you been around all the time?”

“You bet. Right up and down the street, sort of keeping an eye out to see no trouble comes of all this drinking and whoopee. We want folks to cut loose and have a good time, but we got to be careful.”

“Of course. But, damn it, that girl started out to find you three hours ago. If you were around all the time, how did she miss you?”

“By golly, I don’t know. Mighty big crowd out here, but she could of asked anybody.”

“That,” said Shayne, “is just what I’m afraid she did—asked the wrong person.” He shrugged and rubbed his lean jaw. “Any leads on Pete’s death?”

“Haven’t had time to do much work on that.” Fleming was apologetic. “Been asking questions around. Screwloose has been in town a couple of weeks celebrating his new prospect up on Arrow Mountain. Poor old devil. First time in ten years he’s hit pay-rock, and all he gets is a smashed head.”

“Do you mean to tell me he has recently located a rich mine?”

“Plenty rich, I reckon. I heard Pete had turned down a cold hundred thousand for his third share just on the first assays. With that kind of money offered for a prospect, you can bet your boots it’ll pan out near a million.”

Shayne whistled softly. “I thought all the gold was taken out of the hills forty years ago.”

“All the gold in them mountains? Look at ’em.” The sheriff waved his hand toward the peaks rising black and ominously against the sky. “The surface hasn’t hardly been scratched yet. Why, there’s a dozen mines producing gold the year ’round in a mile of here.”

“A million dollars,” Shayne mused, “is motive enough for a dozen murders. You said he had a third share. Who are his partners?”

“Well, sir, there was another old-timer in with him by the name of Cal Strenk. And Jasper Windrow grubstaked them both. So it’s got to be split three ways.”

A muscle twitched in Shayne’s cheek. “The storekeeper?”

“That’s right.” Fleming cleared his throat elaborately. “Fellow you had a run-in with this afternoon. He’s been grubstaking Pete and Cal for years, and now he’s due to clean up.”

“Then Strenk and Windrow will profit by Pete’s death,” Shayne mused aloud.

“I don’t rightly see how,” the sheriff said. “I reckon Pete’s girl will get his third.”

“But, if the daughter hadn’t shown up?” Shayne said harshly. “No one knew who Pete was until tonight. Suppose he had died without an heir? Wouldn’t his share revert to his partners?”

“I don’t know what the law’d be on that. But I don’t see how it matters. His own girl identified him. You saw her do it. She’ll come into his share, all right.”

“It does matter,” Shayne grated. “Whoever killed him didn’t know he was Nora Carson’s father—that by a strange coincidence she was going to see and recognize him a few minutes before he was murdered. That was pure chance. Something the killer hadn’t reckoned on. Looking for a motive, we can leave the girl’s identification of Pete out of it. See what I mean?”

“I reckon maybe I do,” Fleming said dubiously, “but I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. Nobody hereabout would of killed Pete. I’m betting it was one of these city dudes the town’s got more of than a hound dog has fleas.”

Shayne said, “Maybe. But Westerners aren’t immune to gold-fever any more than they were sixty years ago. They’ve murdered each other for gold plenty of times.”

“That’s just fool talk,” the sheriff said angrily. “Central City has been a gold town sixty years and nothing like that ever happened here. But when you start bringing in Easterners, look out. Liquor does funny things to a man when he’s a mile and a half up.”

“Thanks for the tip. I’ll wander into the bar and investigate that angle.”

Shayne was half a dozen long strides away when an excited man ran past him shouting, “Sheriff! Sheriff Fleming! Come here quick!”

Shayne stopped to listen.

“There’s a man in the bar threatening to kill one of the actors—fellow named Carson. You better get hold of him before there’s trouble. He’s shooting drunk.” The sheriff bolted through the crowd, his bronzed face perplexed and angry.