Brett Halliday - Stranger in Town

There was only one man in the front seat, hunched forward over the wheel as the gray car shot past, and Shayne caught only a momentary glimpse of a snap-brim hat pulled low over the driver’s forehead as it went by.

He cursed and whipped his foot from brake to gas pedal and the Hudson accelerated fast from almost a dead stop, but the gray sedan was fleeing ahead like a frightened antelope and made a screeching turn on a side street before Shayne could regain enough speed to remain in sight.

He didn’t attempt to follow the other driver around the corner. With no knowledge of the geography of Brockton, he realized it would likely be useless.

He thought the man in the gray sedan had been Gene. He couldn’t be positive because he hadn’t seen his face, but the snap-brim hat and the tilt of it were definitely remindful of the man who had tried to kill him the preceding evening.

He drove on into town, putting two and two together, and getting five or six for the answer each time he did so. If Gene had followed him from the Sanitarium… if his slowly awakening suspicions about the nature of the place were correct…

Two and two still added up to six no matter how he twisted the meager supply of facts at his disposal. Jean Henderson was still the key to the puzzle. Why had a stranger positively identified her as his daughter and taken her from the hospital? What had she been doing last night in Brockton? Why had she come up to speak to him as he sat alone in a bar-room booth that he had entered by the merest chance? Why had her apparent recognition of him brought on the immediate attack by Gene and his companions?

The questions kept passing through his mind again and again as he entered Brockton’s Main Street, and the image of the girl was clearly before his eyes as he had first seen her standing timidly inside the door of the bar-room less than twenty-four hours before.

So it was almost like a physical materialization of his own concentrated thoughts when he saw the figure in the white silk dress with its distinctive green embroidery of Mexican symbols moving toward him on the crowded sidewalk across the street.

Today, on the street, she wore a wide-brimmed Leghorn hat that hid her features from Shayne, but he would have recognized that distinctive dress anywhere, in any crowd.

She was almost opposite him when he saw her, and he was in a stream of slow-moving traffic that would not allow him to stop at once.

He looked ahead frantically for a parking space, breathed a deep sigh of thanks when he saw an empty spot along the curb a few car lengths ahead.

He set his teeth together and swore harshly when the car directly in front of him slowed and stopped just beyond the parking space, and the woman driver signaled her intention of backing into it.

Normally a polite driver, Michael Shayne shed all pretense of politeness under the sharp necessity of getting his car out of traffic and hurrying back to intercept the girl in the white dress.

He shoved forward and cut in sharply, grazing the left front fender of a parked car, forced his right front wheel up onto the sidewalk and cut it back viciously to squeeze into the curb before the woman could start backing into it.

He snatched his keys from the ignition and leaped out, trotted across the street, disregarding the angry voice of the driver whose rightful place he had preempted.

When he reached the opposite sidewalk, he thought for a moment that he was too late, that Jean had turned in one of the many store entrances along the street where he might never find her again, but as he plowed forward through the stream of pedestrians, he saw her half a block ahead and he breathed more easily.

She was sauntering along looking in the shop windows, and Shayne came up behind her fast. He slowed into step beside her and looked down at the spreading brim of straw that hid her face, and then without speaking he took her bare upper arm in a firm grip and stopped her on the sidewalk.

A gasp of astonishment came from beneath the hat brim and she turned to look up at him indignantly.

He had never seen this girl before in his life.

She was about twenty-five, with a plump, over-rouged face. Her mouth was small and petulant, but the indignation in her blue eyes slowly faded away as she looked the rangy red-head up and down.

Damn it, he couldn’t be mistaken about the dress. There couldn’t be two exactly alike in a town like Brockton. It was obviously hand-embroidered even to Shayne’s untutored eye, not at all the sort of thing that came off a New York assembly line.

She said, “Well…?” and looked down at his big hand still tightly holding her bare arm.

He didn’t let go. He said with a slow grin, “At the risk of sounding trite… I did actually mistake you for someone else.”

From her expression, he gathered that she didn’t know the meaning of the word trite. But she was also apparently willing to be lenient about his mistake. She tossed her head coquettishly and said, “Whyn’t you run along then and look for her some more?”

Shayne said, “Why bother? Now that I’ve found you? How about letting me buy you a drink to make up for my rudeness?”

“Why, I wouldn’t mind, I guess. “Not,” she added sedately, “that I drink with strange men as a rule. But seeing you did make a mistake like you say…”

Shayne looked up the street and saw a sign, COCKTAIL LOUNGE, a few doors up. His fingers tightened on her arm to turn her toward it and he fell into step beside her. “This place be all right? I’m a stranger in Brockton,” he added.

“Sure. The Elite’s real nice. I figured you must be new here, on account I never saw you around before.” She rolled her blue eyes up at him from under the drooping brim of her hat. “And you don’t look like Brockton,” she added, “if you know what I mean.”

He said gallantly, “And you don’t either, if you know what I mean.” He guided her through the door into the dim interior of a cocktail lounge that had red leather benches all around the walls with rows of small tables set close together in front of them.

“I’m not really,” she said with a toss of her head as they sat down in a corner by themselves. “Kind of nice little one-horse town, though. Quiet and easy-like if you’re tired of cities like I was. I been around plenty. West Coast and all over.” She gestured vaguely, leaning both elbows on the table and pushing her pouting mouth forward to let him insert the end of a cigarette between her lips.

A waitress came up to their table and Shayne looked at her with ragged red eyebrows lifted enquiringly as he put a lighted match to the other end of her cigarette. She drew in smoke and let it curl languidly from her nostrils and asked, “Could I have a rum Old-Fashioned, Miss? You know, you make it with rum instead of…”

“One rum Old-Fashioned,” said the waitress.

“And a double brandy,” said Shayne. “Imported if you have it. Ice water on the side.”

He looked at the girl with all the approval he could muster and told her, “I knew right away you didn’t belong in Brockton. Just by that dress you’re wearing for one thing. You didn’t buy that in any store here.”

“N-n-o.” She looked down at the dress with distinct pleasure. “I’m glad you like it. It’s one of my… uh…it sure has got real class, hasn’t it?” she ended complacently.

“Looks like a million dollars. Mexican, isn’t it?”

“Uh… oh sure. That’s right it is. What’d you say your name was?”

“Mike Shayne.” He watched her round face but observed no reaction. “What do I call you?”

“Flo.” She giggled. “That is, you can if we’re going to get real well acquainted. And I bet most of the girls call you Red.”