PROLONGED SILENCE followed Joe’s flat statement Crouching against the other side of the stone wall, Shayne held his leaping imagination in leash.
Christine’s voice reached him, incredulous and frightened: “What do you mean, Joe Meade? What do you know about Nora not showing up tonight?”
“Never mind. The less talking I do, the less you’ll have to worry about. You got your big chance tonight. All right. Let it go at that Where’s our waiter? We’ve got celebrating to do.”
“But, Joe! You sound as though you know where Nora is. As though you’d planned it.”
“Do I?” Joe sounded surly, and smug. He snapped his fingers, and Shayne heard him order two more drinks.
“You frighten me,” Christine said in a low, tense tone. “I’ve always known there was a ruthless streak behind your driving determination to get ahead, but—”
“Sure. And don’t tell me you don’t like it. You’ve got to be hardboiled and take what you want in this world. Nobody’s going to hand it to you on a silver platter.”
Shayne decided that Joe was a bit sophomoric in his assumption of toughness. Neither his appearance nor his cultured voice quite fitted the role.
“But I wouldn’t want anything to happen to Nora.” Christine’s voice throbbed with distress. “I wouldn’t want success to come that way. I’ve always played fair.”
“Sure. We both have. And see what it’s got us. You’re understudying Nora Carson who can’t match the talent in your little finger. And me? I’m juggling props backstage while a drip like Saroyan is hailed as the white-haired boy of the American theater. Nuts! I can write rings around Saroyan and all the rest of them. But, can I get my stuff produced? You know the answer.”
“It takes time, Joe. We’re both young. We can afford to wait.”
“Forever? No. Another year of failure will embitter us. We’ll begin to think, by God, that we are failures. Then we’ll be whipped. But it’s not going to be that way, sweet. You’re headed for the top. Producers will listen to you when you bring them a script. A year from now you’ll be playing the lead on Broadway in a Joe Meade play.”
Joe had become savagely exultant. Behind his words Shayne sensed the bitter frustration of talented youth; the concentrated venom engendered by the failure of others to recognize self-appraised genius. Such a man, Shayne realized, was fully capable of almost any action to attain his end; yet nothing that Meade intimated seemed to tie up with Screwloose Pete’s murder or the note in Nora’s room. He held his impatience in check, hoping the young man would become more explicit.
When Christine spoke again, her tone was cool and brittle. “I don’t think I like what you’re telling me. I haven’t ever taken an unfair advantage of anyone.”
“Sure you haven’t. You’re straight. You don’t go to bed with your stockings on. Not yet, you haven’t. But you’ve been waking up — noticing how the others get ahead. And I couldn’t stand that, honey. Honest to God, I’d take a nose-dive to hell if you turned into a floozie like some others I’ve seen. But you won’t have to now. You’re set.” Ice tinkled in a glass. “Come on. Let’s drink up and order another one.”
“But, Joe,” Christine pleaded, “tell me what you mean. I’ve got to know.”
“You don’t have to know anything,” he said with rough tenderness. “I’m not saying another word.”
“Well, all right. I won’t ask you anything else.” The girl laughed briefly and recklessly, and their glasses clinked once more.
Shayne stood up and moved around the end of the wall, stopping two feet from the table where the couple were toasting Christine’s career. He looked down on them soberly. The girl’s dark head lay on Joe’s broad shoulder.
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.