Brett Halliday - In a Deadly Vein

There was nothing else in the can. Shayne rocked back on his heels and cursed. Bryant snorted with glee at his discomfiture, and taunted, “Why don’t you keep on digging? Maybe you’ll hit the lost Gregory lode.” Shayne was staring down at the floor in front of the hearth. He nodded suddenly. “I might, at that.” He dug his long fingers into the soft dirt upon which the can had lain. It came out easily, and after a moment, he paused and grinned up at Windrow’s intent face.

“You’re going to love this.” He fumbled in the hole and brought out another tobacco can similar to the first one.

He settled back on his haunches contentedly, murmuring, “One will get any gambler ten if this isn’t the real McCoy.”

Cal Strenk was the only one who spoke. “Damn if Ol’ Pete wa’n’t a slick un. In ten years we lived here he never showed me that other can underneath.”

Shayne turned the lid back and shook the contents of the can out on the hearth in the manner of a magician shaking elephants from a silk hat.

There were three newspaper clippings and an old faded photograph of a man and a young girl. The girl had a sweet, grave face, wore pigtails and a short dress. The man was clean-shaven, wearing a miner’s cap and overalls.

Shayne turned the picture over and read aloud: “Nora and her daddy.”

He laid the picture aside and selected a clipping that was brittle and old in contrast to the comparative newness of the other two: Two columns from an old copy of the Telluride Chronicle neatly clipped to show the name of the paper and the date.

The somewhat indistinct photograph of a man was above the caption: James Peter Dalcor, MISSING.

The man was hatless and wore a short growth of chin whiskers. He was clearly the “Daddy” of the earlier picture.

Shayne glanced through the news story beneath the photograph. It told of Peter Dalcor’s unexplained disappearance from his home in Telluride, Colorado; mentioned the mounting apprehension of his wife and daughter, Nora.

Shayne handed the clipping to Strenk without a word.

The old miner growled, “Danged if Ol’ Pete didn’t think he was a beaut, allus havin’ his pitcher took even way back then. This’n with the whiskers looks some like him”

Windrow snatched the clipping from Strenk and studied it. He snapped, “Nonsense. You can’t prove a thing from this picture. Why, it might be one of Cal, here, taken ten years ago.”

“It’s hard to identify a ten-year-old picture,” Shayne agreed. “But the fact that Pete had them in his possession all this time will be accepted in any court as legal proof of his identity. And here’s one that shows he had recognized Nora Carson as his daughter as much as two weeks ago.”

He held out another neat clipping from the local Register-Call that carried a date two weeks previous. It had a clear likeness of Nora Carson above the cut-line: Actress Continues Ten-Year Search for Father in Colorado Mining Camps.

“I recollec’ seein’ that pitcher,” Strenk exclaimed excitedly. “’Twas on the front page ’longside one of me an’ Ol’ Pete together tellin’ ’bout our strike.”

“This one?” asked Shayne, picking up the last of the three clippings, rudely torn from the center of a front page.

It had a picture of Cal Strenk and Screwloose Pete with their arms around each other’s shoulders and wide grins on their whiskered faces above the caption: Local Men Make Rich Strike.

“Tha’s the one!” Strenk nodded vigorously. “I recollec’ when Pete tore it out, he was that proud. Carried it folded in his pants pocket an’ showed it to ever’one. But he never said nothin’ ’bout that pitcher of the gal bein’ his gal. I never saw him cut it out.”

Shayne refolded the clippings carefully, shaking his head. “That was Pete’s secret. This stuff proves it wasn’t any case of amnesia. He knew who he was all the time, and for two weeks he’d known his daughter was here looking for him. But he didn’t approach her — except to look through the hotel window tonight. And then he ran away to be killed as soon as she saw him.”

MICHAEL SHAYNE followed, alone, behind the procession carrying the body of Nora Carson to the village. His head was bowed in thought, hands thrust deep into his pockets, rangy body inclined backward from the waist to give him balance down the precipitous path.

The death of the girl had hit him hard. She was so young, had been so vibrantly full of life a few hours previous. Screwloose Pete was an old man with lots of living behind him. A cantankerous old man, it appeared, who hadn’t wanted to share his new-found wealth with the daughter whom he had deserted ten years before.

It wasn’t difficult to find a motive for the old man’s death. Men had been murdered for gold since Biblical days, had fought to their deaths for the yellow stuff. Let three men share in a million-dollar discovery and there you were. The wonder of it was that any of the three were still alive.

But how did Nora Carson’s death fit into a coldly calculated scheme of murder for profit? He had all the portions of the puzzle in his hands, but none of them seemed to fit together. At the moment, Joe Meade appeared to be the key to the whole thing. Was his wound self-inflicted, or was it, too, part of the murder plan?

What was he doing at Pete’s cabin, either shooting himself or getting shot?

You had to start with the premise that Joe Meade was not a normally balanced young man. The bitterness of defeat had warped an otherwise brilliant mentality, had grown to be an obsession with him. An obsession that might easily have developed to such a point that getting rid of Nora Carson to insure Christine’s success in the theater would seem a logical step.

All right. Granting that premise, what would be his logical reaction to Christine’s flat and emphatic statement that she did not want success to come that way?

The hell of it was, you couldn’t apply rules of logic to an unbalanced mentality. When Joe boasted to Christine that he was responsible for Nora’s absence, did he know she was already dead? Or had he, with some reason to suspect the truth, slyly turned the knowledge to what he believed was his own benefit by pretending to Christine that she was indebted to him for getting her chance tonight?

Shayne was sure of only one thing about Joe Meade. The young man possessed some guilty knowledge. But what could the actor have had to do with the death of Screwloose Pete? Was it conceivable that he had discovered the relationship, had murdered the old man in cold blood just prior to the performance — thinking thus to strike Nora such a blow that she would be unable to go on? Then, finding his first plan foiled by Nora’s strength which refused to give way to grief, had he felt impelled to carry on the plot by getting rid of Nora also? Later, after Christine had clearly indicated her repugnance and horror of the very thought, had he slipped up here to commit suicide as the only way out for him?

Shayne turned his speculations from Meade to Jasper Windrow with a feeling of relief. Windrow was the sort of man the detective understood. He was ruthless and mercenary, more than normally intelligent. Shayne could easily visualize Windrow cold-bloodedly planning Pete’s death to obtain a greater share of the rich mine for himself, but not if he realized Pete was leaving a legal heir to claim his portion.

Shayne stopped short on the hillside and stared at the lights of the village below with narrowed eyes.

Nora’s identification of her father had not been made public until after Pete’s death. It was merest chance that had given Nora a glimpse of Pete at the hotel window a few minutes before his death. One of those weird and inexplicable coincidences that are forever popping up to ruin the best-laid plans of men, something which the murderer could not possibly foresee.