Brett Halliday - In a Deadly Vein

The actor had gotten hold of himself. He said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and clamped his lips together tightly.

Shayne said, “The beginning of the whole thing was the gambling debt Bryant came out to collect. First, you planned to get the money from Mrs. Mattson. But you would have to marry her, and Nora wouldn’t divorce easily, and Bryant wanted his money in a hurry. Then you read in the local paper about a simple-minded, nameless old prospector who’d just made a rich strike. You knew all about Nora’s missing father, and you worked out a plan to get Pete identified as your father-in-law and then get rid of him immediately afterward.”

“He was her father,” Frank insisted. “She recognized him. She said so. After he was dead.”

“But she hadn’t recognized his picture in the paper,” Shayne reminded him. “She didn’t until you made yourself up to look like her father had looked, and showed your face to her briefly through the hotel window. Then, like Mr. Raton just now, she was convinced she had seen Peter Dalcor. You ran away, met Pete up on the hillside where you had him planted, and smashed in the old man’s head with a rock so he was scarcely recognizable.

“Your psychology was perfect,” Shayne went on swiftly. “And your timing of the whole affair was also perfect. She ran out of the hotel looking for her father. She was overwrought, and when she saw the body of an old man superficially resembling her father, dressed exactly as she had just seen him, with his face smashed and bloody, she naturally leaped to the conclusion that he was the same man she’d just seen out the window.”

Carson laughed hollowly. “You should be writing mystery stories instead of trying to solve them. You saw me there yourself a few minutes after he died.”

“Philip Steele just duplicated the stunt in exactly six minutes,” Shayne reminded him. “A dentist and his wife saw a bearded man in miner’s clothing run away from the body. That was you, in your disguise.

“And you had timed it so Nora had only a few minutes with the body before you rushed her off to the opera house. She was weeping and torn with grief, in no condition to make a close examination of the corpse. Then, of course, she had to die, too — to prevent her from later discovering Pete wasn’t actually her father — and to make sure that the legacy went directly to you.”

Carson laughed again. “Of all the goddam fairy tales,” he marveled.

“It’s the way it has to be,” Shayne argued. “I showed Raton that recent picture of Screwloose and he couldn’t identify the man as Dalcor either. Just as Nora couldn’t. Why, then, did she suddenly do so through the window last night?”

“How do I know?” snarled Carson. “Just the right light — a familiar expression on his face—”

Shayne shook his head. “You made a half a dozen other mistakes. After you killed Nora, you knew there was no further need to keep on with Mrs. Mattson to get the money, so you told her off. And those clippings you supplied Bryant to hide under the hearth were from Nora’s scrapbook — with the exception of the one of Pete himself which he had torn out of the paper. The others were neatly clipped with scissors to show the date and source — as every actor clips his notices.”

“All that adds up to exactly nothing,” Carson cried scornfully. “You admit Nora was dead before the play ended. I can easily prove I couldn’t have been absent from the theater for as much as five minutes. And it takes longer than that to get to the end of the flume where her body could be thrown in the creek.”

“Yes,” Shayne agreed. “I timed it this afternoon. It takes fifteen minutes to reach the nearest end of the flume. And that gives you a swell alibi, Carson. Except for the trap-door into the flume from the old cellar under the opera house. Until I saw that opening into the flume this afternoon, I confess I didn’t see how you’d managed it. You didn’t have to leave the building to kill her. You got her into the cellar during the first act, killed her and dropped her body through the trap-door into the rushing water that carried her into the creek below town.”

Carson’s face was a ghastly yellow, but he still managed a sneer of bravado. “You’re forgetting that Meade admits leaving a note to lure her away.”

“He left a note in her dressing-room, all right, but Nora never saw Joe’s note. She was already dead. He didn’t know that, of course. He really supposed she’d gone to her death on account of his note.”

“You’re crazy,” Carson insisted strongly. “According to your insane theory, I killed her inside the opera house. But she was in her hotel room after the play started. She left that note for me—”

Shayne laughed. “That note was your first and most flagrant blunder. I was quite sure it hadn’t been written by Nora as soon as I read it. That’s why I asked you to identify the writing. When you said, positively, that it was Nora’s writing, I knew you must have forged it and left it there yourself — which meant you had planned she would be dead and couldn’t deny authorship.”

Carson’s defenses were crumbling under the impact of Shayne’s remorseless logic. In a stricken voice, he asked, “What makes you think she didn’t write it?”

“Because I’m an egoist, Carson. Just before Nora went to the opera house, she begged me to take the case, showing a lot of faith in my reputation and ability. If she’d had a clue, I felt reasonably certain she would have gone looking for me, not for the sheriff as the note stated. You also explained the presence of the note by saying one of her heavy coats was missing. There was no coat on her body, nor was one found any place in the vicinity. You haven’t a leg to stand on, Carson. I believe they use cyanide eggs in Colorado. That’s a quick, painless death — the same as you gave Nora and Screwloose Pete.”

“It was his fault,” Carson cried wildly, jumping up and pointing a trembling finger at Bryant. “He put me up to it. He planned it all after he got chummy with Pete. I had to do it. That or be killed. He threatened me—” He fell back on the settee sobbing incoherently.

Shayne nodded curtly to the sheriff. “That ought to mean a good stretch for Two-Deck even if he does escape going to the death-house with Carson.”

“But, what’s it all about?” Phyllis wailed. “Wasn’t Screwloose Pete Nora’s father?”

Shayne exclaimed, “By God, Phyl, do you need a blueprint?”

“Yes, I do,” she asserted stoutly. “If Pete wasn’t Nora’s father, who was he?”

“I suppose no one will ever know. Just an old prospector who’d lived alone too much.”

“Then, who is Peter Dalcor?” Phyllis asked helplessly.

“Good heaven, Phyl, I don’t know that one either. He may have been dead these ten years for all we know. Frank Carson made himself up to look like Dalcor last night — and Philip Steele repeated the performance for us just now.” He shrugged. “Isn’t that clear enough?”

“Just about,” said Phyllis sweetly, “as clear as mud.”

And later that evening, when they were back at the hotel and Shayne was having a noggin of cognac while Phyllis took a quick shower, she stuck her head out of the bathroom door, holding a bath towel up in front of her dripping body. “Oh, darling,” she cried breathlessly. “It just came to me like a flash. I understand it all now.”

A grin quirked Shayne’s mouth. “Such sudden intuition must have been a severe shock to your nervous system.”

“But, would it have worked?” she asked dubiously. “Frank’s plan, I mean. He couldn’t have proved Pete was his father-in-law.”