Brett Halliday: In a Deadly Vein

Shayne stopped and looked, nodded casually and said, “When I was up here before I had to remonstrate with a pansy who should have known better. One of Two-Deck Bryant’s hoods.”

He watched Carson closely, but the name didn’t appear to register. The actor shuddered weakly and stood up. “When I saw that blood — my God!”

They descended the stairs and Shayne left him in the lobby and went to the night club in the rear. A name orchestra was cluttering up the acoustics with the latest hit tune and the dance floor was so packed that couples could do little more than sway together with the rhythm.

As he searched from the doorway for Phyllis and Casey, he suddenly recalled that evening attire was required for both the opera and the night club on opening night. This ruled out Casey with his rumpled blue suit and straw hat, and Shayne was reasonably certain that Phyllis would not have deserted the Irishman.

He caught a waiter’s eye and beckoned. “Where besides the bar could a man buy a drink without a tux or tails?”

“There’s a garden terrace,” the waiter suggested. “You can go through the rear door there and down the hallway.”

Shayne found a small terrace roofed by stars and dimly lit by a few bulbs strung on wires. It was comparatively quiet in contrast to the din in the night club and barroom, with a dozen or more couples in informal dress seated at the small tables.

He caught the familiar sound of lilting laughter across the patio and strode toward it. Phyllis turned a flushed face and sparkling eyes toward him when he stopped beside her chair. Her dark, head was snuggled against the turned-up collar of her white fur chubby and she was disconcertingly lovely in the dim light.

“Pat has been entertaining me with some of the adventures you and he had together while you were with the World-Wide Agency in New York. You’re interrupting the one about the nude corpse in the penthouse bathtub.” She reached up and caught his knobby fingers before they hopelessly mussed her hair.

“That story,” said Shayne severely, “can stand a lot of interrupting.” He sighed and dropped into a chair, crooked his finger at a hurrying waiter. “A double Martel Cognac.”

Phyllis put a cool hand on his wrist. “Have you found Nora Carson?”

“No. She must have ridden a broomstick out the hotel window. I can’t find a trace of her since she was in her room.”

“Maybe she disguised herself to hide from you,” Casey suggested, his round eyes owlish.

Phyllis laughed and wrinkled her nose at Casey, then asked, “Hasn’t anybody seen her? Can’t you find out anything, Mike?”

Shayne’s drink came and he downed half of it. “I’m at a dead end,” he confessed. “I’m off my beat in this country. Hell, she may be on the other side of the Continental Divide by now.” He settled back and morosely sipped his cognac.

Phyllis patted his arm. “You’ll find her. You always do.” Then, she giggled. “There comes that Moore woman again with the man whose Indian blankets you insulted this afternoon. I believe she has made a conquest.”

“Or he has,” Shayne amended drily. He told Casey, “That’s the fellow Bryant got me in trouble with today. Jasper Windrow. Two-Deck tried to fix it so the two of us would tangle — and I fell for it.”

Pat Casey craned his short neck around to look at Celia Moore’s escort. He pursed his lips into an appreciative whistle. “’Twould have been some tangle, I’m thinking, if yon piano mover had tied into you. By the looks of him he was nurtured on the milk of a wild ass and cut his teeth on a manhole cover.”

Shayne shrugged and rumpled his red hair irritably. “Yet he clerks behind a ribbon counter,” he burst out. “I’m a total loss out here. Now, take Two-Deck Bryant—”

“You take him,” Casey muttered.

“I know what makes a guy like Bryant tick,” Shayne went on. “And the members of the opera cast — they’re human beings, too. You can figure how one of them will react, but these Westerners are a different breed. Take an old guy who is half nuts. He goes out and locates a million dollar mine. Windrow looks as though he could tear a mountain apart with his bare hands, and he’s a storekeeper. You’d take the sheriff for a retired minister, and I just saw him take a gun from a burly drunk as easily as you or I would take candy from a baby’s hands. These people don’t make sense. You don’t know where you stand.”

“It’s such an isolated community,” Phyllis argued.

“By God, the city people aren’t much different here than in any other city,” Shayne snorted. “Look at Mrs. Mattson. She’s a cultured dame with all the earmarks of respectability. But scratch the surface and you’ll find a primitive female.”

“Who on earth is Mrs. Mattson?” Phyllis demanded.

“She’s an old gal well past her prime, but men still fight over her. Carson did a little civilized flirting with her, and she immediately decides to divorce her husband. So, what does he do? He buckles on his trusty hog-leg and goes gunning for Carson. Mattson is a wealthy Denver businessman, but he’s a Westerner and believes in settling things man to man. Maybe that makes sense — I wouldn’t know.” Shayne slumped down in his chair and stared at the edge of the table.

Phyllis’s roving dark eyes were full of laughter. She didn’t know what he was talking about, but she was perfectly familiar with the play Celia Moore was making. She gurgled, “As far as I can see, Jasper Windrow isn’t any puzzle to Miss Moore. She knows what makes him tick, and she’s got just what it takes to make him do it.”

Shayne glanced at their table with a sour expression. “Back at the theater I had a hunch she was holding out something about Nora Carson.” His gray eyes narrowed as Celia leaned close to Windrow and laughed coyly. “She’s another one who’s past her prime but still has something men will fight over.”

Phyllis tensed and whispered, “There comes the girl who took Nora Carson’s part in the play. Christine Forbes.”

Shayne asked, “Where?” without turning his head.

“They’re trying to find a table. There’s one right by the door, but they don’t seem to care for it,” Phyllis reported. “She’s got a handsome guy in tow. They’re having the waiter move the table over to that shadowy spot by the stone wall.” She lowered her voice and added, “I’ll bet it’s an assignation.”

“You would think of that,” Shayne said.

“You taught me to think of things like that.”

Casey chuckled and thumped the table with his fist “Faith, Mike, you’ve met your match and more.”

Shayne grunted and twisted his head to watch the slender young understudy being seated at the secluded table by a young man who was built like an All-American fullback. His hair was tawny with a crinkly wave. He had blunt, resolute features, and heavy black brows, a startling contrast to his fair hair.

With her blond wig and make-up removed, Christine had become a vivacious brunette. The young man drew his chair up close to hers, and when he sat down he covered her hand with his, leaned close to her in an intimate, almost conspiratorial pose.

Shayne studied the couple for a moment, then said, “There should be some way to slip around the other side of that wall and not be seen.”

“Michael! You’ll be peeking through keyholes next.”

He got up, his expression hardening. “I’ve been getting the run-around too much.” He stalked to a path leading down along the side of the hotel to the street, followed the boardwalk a short distance, then came back unobtrusively to a position on the outside of the stone wall, near the point where it ended against the creek flume, and close to where, on the inside, stood the table of the couple.