The house darkened and the curtain went up. For a moment, Shayne didn’t recognize the young actor in his costume and make-up, but when he spoke his first lines, the strong timbre of his voice was unmistakable. As the first act continued, Shayne admitted that his dramatic artistry was undeniably perfect.
Nora Carson did not appear immediately, and his impatience grew as he waited for her to come on. He knew that it would be vastly more difficult for her, but Shayne had faith in his snap judgment of her character as observed under trying conditions, and he waited eagerly for her to justify that faith.
The first scene ended and she did not appear. The lights came on for a brief interval while the scenery was shifted, and Shayne studied his program again. He discovered that Nora was not due on stage until the middle of the second scene and he settled himself to wait.
The two minutes apportioned to the change of scene stretched to ten before the second curtain went up. Sweat was standing on Shayne’s forehead as the time for Nora’s first cue neared. For some obscure reason it was important to him that she appear and play her part well. It didn’t make sense. It shouldn’t matter a tinker’s damn to him, but it did matter terribly.
Something was wrong on-stage. A cue line was spoken and there was no response. The line was repeated.
A slender girl came on hurriedly and the voice Shayne heard was not Nora Carson’s. She wore a blond wig, but her eyes were dark, and her heart-shaped face and pointed chin in no way resembled Nora’s features.
A white-haired patroness of the theater sitting next to Shayne gasped, “That’s not Nora Carson. It’s Christine Forbes, Nora’s understudy. I wonder what has happened to Nora.”
Christine Forbes was adequate in her role. She gave her lines with assurance and with fire. She was graceful and poised throughout a difficult emotional scene. There was thunderous applause when the act was over; Nora’s understudy had captured the audience. They called for her again and again and she took her bows with grace and modesty.
Shayne did not applaud. He got up and made his way down the aisle with a grim look on his angular face. He strode through the foyer and outside. He lit a cigarette and went around the west side of the building toward the stage entrance, passing over the wooden flume that carried the water of Clear Creek directly under the village.
He was halted by a closed gate in a high wooden wall bearing the painted sign, NO ADMITTANCE.
Shayne rattled the gate savagely. It was locked from the inside.
From Eureka Street came the sound of shrill laughter and the wail of square-dance music, and from the flume just behind him was the rushing sound of flood waters, just now reaching town from an evening cloudburst high in the mountains.
His eyes were bleak as he stalked back to the front door and regained his seat in time for the next curtain.
He was silent and morose through the rest of the performance while Christine Forbes turned her opportunity into a personal triumph, and when the final curtain came down, he again strode out while the ancient playhouse echoed with applause.
Phyllis clung to his arm and was silent until they were on the sidewalk. Then she spoke sharply:
“I can’t see that Nora Carson was particularly missed tonight. The other girl was marvelous.”
Shayne grunted. “Yeh. That’s one of the things that tastes bad to me. The Forbes girl is so damned good that I’m willing to bet Nora Carson has lost her part altogether. First, her father whom she has just found after ten years, then an important role that she’s rehearsed for weeks—all in the space of three hours.”
“But you can’t blame yourself, Michael,” Phyllis wailed.
He looked down at her and some of the grimness went out of his face. “You’re not a cop, angel. You don’t know the feeling of being just too late to prevent murder.”
The vanguard of first-nighters was filing from the opera house. Shayne turned toward the side of the building again. He said, “I’m going to see her if I have to break that damned gate down.”
As they crossed over the flume he noticed that the tremendous rushing sound of water had receded. The wooden gate leading backstage was standing open.
They found a door leading into the shadowy region of props and sliding scenery behind the lowered curtain. The stage was a riot of confusion, with members of the cast receiving congratulations from those of the audience who were fortunate enough to find standing room.
Shayne and Phyllis wormed their way through to find Frank Carson in the midst of a bevy of bare backs and flowing skirts. The young actor saw the detective and signaled to him urgently, thrusting aside feminine admirers to make his way to Shayne.
When they met, Shayne said, “I was worried about your wife. How is she holding up?”
Carson’s face darkened under his heavy make-up. “Isn’t Nora with you? You promised to look after things.”
Shayne’s gray eyes narrowed. “Why should your wife be with me?”
“I thought she’d gone back—up there.”
“Do you mean she isn’t in the theater?”
“Hell, no, she isn’t here. Why would I be asking you? She must have gone out right after the play started. I left her in her dressing-room when I went on. She swore she’d be all right. Then she slipped out without telling anyone.”
“No one?”
“No one knew she was gone until just in time for Christine to get in costume. I thought she’d gone back to find you.” Frank Carson took a backward step. Horror and fear were accentuated by heavy mascara and greasepaint, and his fine features were distorted. He said in a low, furious voice, “You didn’t stay? You don’t know what has become of Nora? You let her go out alone—with a mad killer roaming this damned town? What sort of a detective are you?”
“Sometimes I ask myself that same question,” Shayne said grimly, “and don’t receive a very satisfactory reply.”
CHAPTER FIVE
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 she
riff 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.”
CHAPTER SIX
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.
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