He said, “I’m sorry, Meade, but I’ll have to ask you to be a little more explicit about Nora Carson.”
The couple separated quickly. Christine looked up into Shayne’s gaunt face and gasped, dropping her glass to the stone flagging where it shattered loudly.
Joe Meade drew his big frame slowly from the chair. He scowled and asked, “Who the devil are you?”
“The name is Shayne. I’ve been eavesdropping behind the stone wall. I want to know where Nora Carson is.”
Meade snarled, “The hell you do.”
The patio was suddenly quiet as people began to notice the two men standing in the shadow.
Shayne nodded. “Why not step around here where we can be alone and talk it over? No use creating a scene that will involve Miss Forbes.”
“That’d be swell,” he said thickly.
Christine’s dilated eyes followed Shayne as he stepped back toward the end of the wall. She was still in her chair. Meade hunched his shoulders and followed the detective.
When they were out of sight, Shayne stopped and said, “All I want to know is what—”
Joe Meade swung on him without warning. He had the stance and swiftness of a trained boxer. Shayne was going away with the blow, but the fist glanced off his bony jaw with enough force to swing him sideways.
He laughed and caught Joe’s wrist with both hands, levering it down hard. Meade dropped to his knees, cursing with pain. Out of the corner of his eye, Shayne caught a glimpse of Christine coming around the wall with a bottle of club soda swinging from her right hand.
Patrick Casey’s moonlike face showed behind her. He caught her arms from behind and pinioned them close to her body.
Shayne nodded his thanks and released Meade’s wrist The young man floundered to his feet and rushed him, his boxing science forgotten in his rage.
Shayne coolly sidestepped and tripped him as he went by. Meade went down heavily, but bounced up again. His eyes were crazed.
Held tightly by Casey, Christine Forbes pleaded, “Joe—don’t. Please don’t”
Joe disregarded her, came forward again, but more cautiously. The rangy redhead waited for him with doubled fists, breathing lightly.
Just in time, he saw that Joe’s right hand held a heavy rock which he had picked up on his last trip to the ground. He waited for Joe’s lunge, ducked a vicious swing of the rock, then buried his fist in Meade’s midsection. Joe doubled forward with the breath driven from him. He went to his knees, hugging his solar plexus.
From behind Shayne, Casey asked interestedly, “What’ll I do with this she-wildcat? She still thinks it would be fun to christen you queen of the festival.”
With his eyes on Meade, Shayne said, “Take the bottle away from her and let her go.”
Joe was getting his breath back. He crouched forward on hands and knees like an animal.
Christine rushed to him and dropped to her knees beside him, begging, “Tell them, Joe. You haven’t anything to hide.”
Meade snarled an oath and flung her aside. Shayne saw his hand groping for another rock. He stepped forward and put his foot on Meade’s wrist and ground hard. Joe yelped with pain and sank back on his haunches. The madness went out of his eyes, but his face remained surly.
He muttered thickly, “What’s this all about, anyhow?”
“It’s about Nora Carson.” Shayne towered above him on widespread legs. “Where is she?”
“How do I know? I’m not Nora Carson’s guardian.”
Shayne said, “But I am. Start spilling what you know.”
“You can’t do this to me,” Meade complained. “There must be some law around here.”
Shayne laughed shortly. “I’m beginning to get the western viewpoint. I might do all right out here after I get the hang of things. I heard you tell Miss Forbes that you were responsible for Nora Carson’s absence from the theater tonight. I don’t give a damn about that angle, but I want to know where she is.”
“I didn’t say anything like that. I just said—”
“I heard every word of it. You said that Miss Forbes needn’t worry about Nora coming back. That she was in for good. That you’d fixed it that way.”
“I didn’t,” Meade repeated sullenly. “I didn’t say that.”
“You’ve got a bad memory.” Shayne scowled and doubled his right fist. “Maybe I can repair it for you.”
Christine flung a protective arm around Joe’s neck. She flared, “You can’t hit a man when he’s down.”
Shayne’s upper lip came back from his teeth. “I can kick his face to a pulp if he doesn’t start talking.”
“Don’t you dare, you big bully,” the girl screamed. She laid her cheek against Joe’s and begged, “Tell him, Joe. It doesn’t matter. Tell him where Nora is.”
Meade averted his face and muttered, “Can’t you get it, Christine? I don’t know anything about Nora. I was just—well, I just wanted you to think I’d fixed it to put you over. I was crazy for fear you’d forget me after you became successful. I’m nuts about you, honey. I couldn’t stand that. I thought if I could make you believe I’d arranged for Nora to miss her cue you’d be grateful to me and—oh, hell, I was just putting up a front. See?”
She sobbed, “Oh, Joe. I’m so glad.” Her arms tightened around his neck. “I’d have hated you forever if you’d done a thing like that.”
“You would?” He sounded incredulous. “I’m damned if I don’t believe you mean it.” He turned his head and kissed her.
“That’s a pretty fair sneak-out,” Shayne observed sourly. “But it doesn’t prove a thing to me. You’ll get something else on the kisser if you don’t come across with the truth. You sounded mighty sure that Nora Carson wouldn’t be back to take the role away from your girl. How could you know that if you don’t know what became of her?”
“You misconstrued what you overheard,” Meade declared. “I meant that Christine didn’t have to worry about Nora any more. If you saw her tonight you’d know what I meant. She was so damned good she put Nora in the shade.”
Shayne didn’t say anything. The hell of it was, Joe Meade sounded convincing. He might be telling the truth—and he might not. Shayne snorted and turned away, stalking ahead of Casey around the end of the wall.
Phyllis was waiting at the table, and when he flung himself into his chair she asked acidly, “What were you two bullies doing behind the wall with that nice young couple? It sounded like a riot from here.”
Casey said, “Mike was promoting a little game of post office, but the other guy got the wink.”
“Do you have to brawl, Michael—and on our vacation?” Phyllis wailed. “Couldn’t you ever, just once, solve a case with your brains instead of your fists?”
Shayne regarded her intently, then said in a sour tone, “I’ll always wonder whether that guy would have come clean if I had kicked him in the face. That’s your doing, Phyl. Marriage has softened me. Next thing I know, I’ll be starting, by God, to raise a fund for indigent murderers.”
Casey nodded happily. “’Tis a regular cream-puff you’ve turned into, Mike. I’ve seen the day when you’d have strung that bucko up by the thumbs and put lighted matches between his toes.”
“Michael! Did you ever do that!” Phyllis cried, horrified.
Shayne shrugged and moodily ordered another drink. While he waited for the drink, he repeated the conversation he had overheard between Joe Meade and Christine Forbes, with Phyllis prompting him and dragging it out of him.
“Which gives us just one more headache,” he ended in disgust. “I gather that Joe is a frustrated playwright who might well think up a plot like that to give Christine her chance. On the other hand, he may be an opportunist who seized on Nora’s absence to put himself in solidly with the girl he loves.”
A waiter brought drinks for the three. Shayne seized his avidly, muttering, “I need this.”
Phyllis propped her elbows on the table and cupped her chin in her hands. “With all this dither about Nora
Carson, aren’t you forgetting her father? He’s the corpse in the case. I thought you always concerned yourself with the murderer to the exclusion of everything else, Michael.”
Shayne was staring straight in front of him. He mused, “In this case, I’ll ask nothing more than to keep the murders down to one.”
Phyllis nudged him by placing her foot on his under the table. “Look—Michael!” she whispered.
Sheriff Fleming said, “Pardon me, Mr. Shayne,” lifting his broad hat from his silvery hair. “I heard there was a rumpus out here.”
Shayne turned his head slightly. “Yeh. There was, sort of, sheriff.”
Phyllis smiled up at him brightly. “Wherever there’s a rumpus, Sheriff Fleming, there you’ll find Michael Shayne.”
Shayne stood up. “You remember my wife, Sheriff. And this is Pat Casey, of the New York police.”
“I remember Mrs. Shayne, all right,” the sheriff drawled, bowing slightly. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Casey. New York police, eh? On business or pleasure?”
Shayne grinned and said, “He came on business and stayed for pleasure, after meeting my wife. Anything new on Nora Carson?”
“Not a thing. Looks like she just flew the coop without telling anybody. Her husband has been giving me fits.” Fleming paused, then continued diffidently, “I’ve been checking around on Screwloose Pete like you said. I reckon you’d be interested to hear what Cal Strenk’s got to say. That’s his partner I told you about. If you’re not busy right now—”
“I’m not.” Shayne reached for his brandy glass and emptied it. He shook his head at Phyllis when she started to get up. “I wish you’d stick around, angel, and try to get acquainted with Christine Forbes—and with Celia Moore. Get them to talk if you can. It shouldn’t be hard, with so much informality at this hour. You needn’t tell Christine you’re the wife of the guy who had a run-in with Joe Meade”
Phyllis sank into her chair and made a wry face. “I could find out more from her boy friend,” she challenged in a hurt tone.
Shayne turned to Casey and asked, “Want to sit in on this?”
Casey waggled his round head negatively. “I’ll have to tend to my own knitting. Two-Deck will feel neglected if he’s without a tail too long.”
Shayne patted Phyllis’s shoulder as he turned to go with the sheriff. He noted, in passing, that Celia Moore and Jasper Windrow were no longer at their table.
CHAPTER NINE
“NO, SIREE, ol’ Screwloose Pete wasn’t as screwy as most folks thought,” Cal Strenk said firmly. His faded blue eyes held a knowing gleam. He drank noisily through lips flattened against toothless front gums and wiped beer foam from drooping mustaches with the back of a gnarled hand. “Reckon I knowed Screwloose better’n most, and Mister, you git to know a man when you prospect these hills ’longside him for nigh on ten years.”
The aged prospector sat opposite Shayne and Sheriff Fleming in a booth at the rear of a musty beer joint on Main Street. The din of a string orchestra and the bang and whir of slot machines from an adjoining building almost drowned his nasal twang. Across the aisle from the booths, the crowd at the bar were mostly natives, with a sprinkling of tourists who had dropped in for local color.
Strenk was bareheaded. Thin, gray hair framed his parched face in wispy locks. Above a straggly growth of gray mustaches his faded eyes held the sly look of an unfrocked priest as he hunched forward, nursing his mug of beer in calloused hands.
Shayne asked, “Didn’t Pete ever speak of the past—didn’t he ever tell you that his name was Dalcor and that he had a family?”
“Nope, Never did. But shucks, that don’t mean nothin’. Not in these here parts. Plenty hereabouts that’d jest as soon not answer questions, eh, Sheriff?” Strenk cackled a toothless laugh and squinted at Fleming.
Sheriff Fleming pushed his hat back and scratched his forelocks.
Shayne asked, “Do you mean you think he had something to hide? A criminal record, perhaps?”
“Wouldn’t want to say that, Mister. I jest mentioned there was some others, mebby, wasn’t usin’ their right names.” Cal Strenk screwed up his face and appeared to be deep in judicial concentration. “I allus had me an idee Screwloose put on a hull lot of his actin’,” he went on, “to keep from answerin’ fool questions. He was quiet-like, you might say. I recollect onct we was gone three months together, packin’ on burros above timber-line, an’ we didn’t have but two talks in the hull of them three months.”
Shayne bent forward, folding his knobby hands. “What did you talk about those two times?”
“Waal, one time Screwloose tol’ me the pack burros had got their hobbles off an’ we’d have to hunt fer ’em. T’other time was when we was comin’ in after bein’ out prospectin’ fer four days an’ he ast me for a chaw off my plug. He’d run plumb out o’ tobaccy. Nossir, Screwloose weren’t one fer wastin’ words when ’twant no need.”
“And you were his closest friend?” Shayne asked, amused.
“Reckon I was his only friend. We batched together in a shack up back o’ town when we wa’n’t out diggin’ around in the hills.”
“Did he have any personal possessions—anything that might possibly connect him with his past?”
“Nary a thing that I knowed about. Ol’ Pete wa’n’t one fer havin’ things. One wearin’ o’ clothes at a time was all he had use for.” Strenk greedily emptied his beer mug and peered over the tilted edge at Shayne. He set it down, pursing his parched, bloodless lips at its emptiness.
Shayne shoved his empty mug beside it and called for a refill.
“No more for me,” the sheriff declined hastily. “I’ve got to set an example tonight. If folks see me drinking more than one or two beers they’ll swear I was staggering drunk and I’d have trouble.”
“Guess you’re right at that,” Shayne agreed. He lit a cigarette, studying the old miner in silence while they waited. He had an uneasy feeling that Strenk was intentionally drawing him on—holding something back. For a price, perhaps, or out of perverse delight in forcing a detective to probe for information which no one else could give.
When the beers came, Shayne asked Strenk, “What’s your idea about what happened to Pete tonight? Who had a reason to murder him?”
Strenk shook his head warily, buried his whiskers in beer foam and drank. He wiped his mouth carefully before answering, “I sure dunno, Mister Shayne. It beats me. Ol’ Pete was as harmless as a steer in a herd of bullin’ cows. Most folks hereabouts was mighty happy for the ol’ coot when he fin’ly struck it rich.”
Shayne detected a faint emphasis on the word “most.”
He looked sharply at Strenk, but the old miner’s eyes were looking past him, reminiscent and far away. He bent his head over the beer mug and started drinking again.
Shayne asked impatiently, “How many are in on Pete’s discovery? How many besides you will share the mine?”
“How many?” The old man appeared to come back to reality with a jolt. “Why, jest me an’ Pete and Jasper Windrow. Me an’ Pete located the claims side by side, an’ Jasper was grubstakin’ us both. Jasper gets a third,” he ended with the suspicion of a whine.
“Jasper deserves it, too,” Fleming said after a long silence. “He has been grubstaking half the prospectors in Central City for years. It’s high time he got something back. A man can’t keep on doing credit business.”
“Wall, I dunno ’bout that.” The slyness came again to Strenk’s pale eyes. “Notice he still gets to N’York every year on what he calls buyin’ trips. I reckon he ain’t so doggone broke.”
Shayne was conscious of a tension between the sheriff and the aged prospector. Though the words of both had been spoken without stress, there was the impact of a clash across the narrow wooden table. More than ever, he recognized his inability to gauge these men of the West by their spoken word.
Sheriff Fleming said, “Jasper figures he gets better discounts buying direct from New York than in Denver.”
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Wrinkled lids veiled Cal Strenk’s watery eyes. He wiped foam from his mouth with elaborate unconcern. He gazed absently past both Shayne and Fleming and said, “Mebby so. Feller like me wouldn’ be knowin’ much about business. There’s some that think Jas is doin’ right well by hisself. Seems like he does some smart steppin’ with the swells durin’ Festival time.”
“A man’s got a right to have some fun once a year like we do in Central,” the sheriff said indulgently. “If you’d put on a clean shirt, Cal, and scrape off your whiskers you might sport some of the ladies around.” He grinned amiably.
Strenk was unresponsive to his humor. He drained the last drop of beer from the glass and sucked noisily at the foam. Shayne ordered a third round for the two of them.
Strenk’s grizzly chin sunk against his chest and his blue-lidded eyes were half closed. He began talking drowsily:
“Funny thing about Pete since we come back an’ filed our claims. Seemed like he got all over hatin’ to have folks come to the cabin. He ast ’em in, b’gosh, an’ sometimes talked hull sentences. Seemed like he got a kick outa havin’ his pitcher took an’ hearin’ Eastern folks say how quaint he was. Quaint, by God. Makes a he-man sick to his stummick. Me, I had to move out.”
“That was after news got around about Pete’s rich strike,” Sheriff Fleming explained to Shayne. “There was a piece about him in the Register-Call with his picture, and the Festival crowd pestered him a lot. You got to admit that striking it rich changes a man a little,” he ended apologetically.
Shayne said, “Yeh. That’s natural, of course. Any particular people you can mention?” he asked Strenk.
The old miner’s expression changed quickly from disgust to one of sly pleasure. The provocative hinting at untold secrets filmed his eyes again. He waggled his head and said, “Don’t know’s I can name any of ’em—me not takin’ any part in it and not bein’ quaint enough for pitchers to be sent back home.”
“Could you describe any of Pete’s visitors?” Shayne asked.
“Waal—yes. A couple of flashy sports an’ a older one not so flashy. They was allus buyin’ drinks for Pete ’round town.”
In a Deadly Vein Page 6
