SHAYNE FOLLOWED FLEMING into the barroom. Circled by a group of men and women spectators, a big, ruddy-faced man was pounding the mahogany and proclaiming loudly:
“You bet I’m not taking it lying down. Not John Mattson.” His pudgy hand caressed the butt of a long-barreled, single-action.45 thrust into the waistband of his gray business suit. His voice was thick with liquor and rage; bloodshot eyes peered around defiantly at the circle of amused faces. He should have been a ludicrous spectacle of middle-aged drunkenness, but he wasn’t even slightly funny to Shayne, who stopped in the doorway while Fleming pushed his way forward.
John Mattson was dangerously in earnest. Drunkenness removed the normal inhibitions that govern civilized man. He thumped an empty glass on the bar and straightened his bulky body, folded his arms across his chest in a posture of dignified solemnity, and delivered a speech which brought nods of approval from the crowd:
“This is still a free country where a man can fight for his rights and his home. Trying to steal my wife, by God. Thinks he’s back in N’York where people trade wives like we trade horses out here. Sneaking behind my back and making up to her with his slick talk. That’s what he did. Where is he? That’s all I wanta know. Where is he?”
He took a step forward, but swayed back against the bar. His right hand dropped to the butt of his frontier weapon again.
“Somebody bring him here,” he shouted. “Tell him we still shoot coyotes when they sneak into our back yards.”
Sheriff Fleming was efficiently working his way toward Mattson, moving slowly, his rugged face now retaining its good humor as he spoke quietly to open a passage through the circle. He stopped in front of the drunken man and laid a sinewy hand on his broad shoulder. In the silence his slow drawl was clearly heard throughout the barroom:
“Better take a walk in the cold air with me, Mister. Seems sort of stuffy in here.”
Mattson’s bloodshot eyes glowered at Fleming, then wavered away. Behind the sheriff’s drawl was the cold ring of authority, and Shayne began to understand why Gilpin County had remained crimeless with Sheriff Fleming in office.
“Best to come on along with me,” Fleming urged. “Cold air is mighty fine medicine for what ails you.”
Mattson squinted between puffy lids at the sheriff’s badge. He squared his shoulders and thrust out a blunt jaw and shouted, “I’m taking the law in m’own hands. I’ll handle things in my own way.”
“Why, no. I reckon we can’t have anything like that. You’re disturbing the folks that came up here to have fun.” The sheriff’s big hand tightened on Mattson’s shoulder and drew him forward, though Mattson hung back like a balky mule.
From his position of vantage on the threshold, Shayne’s attention was attracted by a gasp from a tall, willowy woman standing in the doorway leading to the lobby. Her brown eyes were riveted in terror upon the sheriff and his unwilling companion, and there was a shocked look of comprehension upon her white face. She was quite tall, sheathed in a trailing gown of ice-blue. Diamonds glittered on her fingers and pearls circled her thin neck. Shayne guessed she would be on the short side of forty.
Shayne’s gaze moved to the right. Standing a few feet back of the woman, he saw Two-Deck Bryant’s saturnine features. He, too, watched the sheriff and Mattson with more than a normal spectator’s interest.
A grin twitched Shayne’s wide mouth. Bryant was getting an eyeful of how the law worked Out West.
Shayne turned his attention to the woman again. Some of the terror had gone from her eyes, leaving a sickly and desolated apprehension. Her thin lips were tight. She turned and went slowly into the hotel lobby.
Shayne followed Fleming and Mattson outside. The sheriff suggested, persuasively, “Better give me your shooting iron until you cool off.”
Mattson started to be damned if he would, but his voice trailed off to a mumble. He surrendered the frontier relic to the sheriff who let it dangle on his forefinger by the trigger guard.
Fleming said, “We’ll take a little walk up the street and let some of the liquor in you cool off.”
The disarmed man wet his thick lips. “Guess I’ve been a fool,” he admitted humbly. “I’m — look here, sheriff — I’m John Mattson, from Denver. You won’t have to — this won’t have to go any further, will it? The publicity—”
“Reckon I won’t lock you up. Hate to spoil my record.” He chuckled. “I just want to make sure you don’t stumble into more trouble.” He urged the big man up the street with a hand on his elbow.
Before they had gone ten feet, the tall, glittering woman slid out of the shadows and confronted them. She sobbed, “John! Oh, John, what made you do that awful thing!” and flung bare arms around her husband’s thick neck.
The sheriff stepped back and almost bumped into Shayne.
Mattson said, “Olivia!” and the word was smothered by her teary voice:
“Oh, John! How could you ever have been so silly! I didn’t know you cared that way. As if I’d ever leave you. You know I love you, John. You know I do.”
Mattson took her arms from around his neck and demanded harshly, “What about Carson? You were drooling about him this afternoon.”
She sobbed, “That was nothing, John. Honestly it wasn’t. If I’d thought for a moment you’d take me seriously—”
“Seriously? Good God ’lmighty. You were demanding a divorce this afternoon so you could marry Carson. Yes, and by God, you wanted half my money to turn over to him. Now you say you weren’t serious.”
Olivia Mattson laughed scornfully. “Marry that youngster? I guess I was just a silly old woman wanting some flattery, John. But it’s all over now. I wouldn’t trade you for a hundred Frank Carsons.”
Sheriff Fleming touched Shayne’s arm and they withdrew. The sheriff muttered, “Frank Carson,” in a troubled voice. “Would he be the husband of Pete’s girl?”
Shayne said, “He would. See you later.” He retraced his steps and shouldered his way inside the barroom.
Frank Carson grabbed his arm and pulled him aside before he could look around for Phyllis and Casey. Carson asked in a desperate voice, “Have you found Nora yet?” His face was drawn and white, and his left eyelid jerked nervously.
“Not yet. Have you been up to your room?”
“I just came from the theater. Got tied up in that mob backstage. You know what a madhouse it was.”
“Nora left a note for you in her room,” Shayne told him gruffly. “Said she was going to look for the sheriff and might not be back in time to play her part.”
“The sheriff? Maybe she found him, then. Maybe everything is all right.” Carson gripped his arm with surprising strength.
Shayne shook his head. “Fleming hasn’t seen her, and he has been right around all the time where she could have located him easily.” He paused, then added drily, “The sheriff was in here a moment ago disarming a drunk named John Mattson who wanted to use a baby cannon on you.”
Frank Carson’s eyelid fluttered uncontrollably. His gaze met Shayne’s brooding eyes and flickered away. He wet his lips and muttered, “We’ve got to find Nora. Nothing else matters.”
Shayne asked, “When did you last see Olivia Mattson?”
A shudder left Carson’s wide shoulders drooping. He tried to smile, but it was a ghastly grin. “You know about that, eh?” With sudden fierceness, he said, “That fool woman! You don’t know how to figure them out here. Kid around a little and they take you seriously. That’s what held me up at the theater,” he confessed. He wiped sweat from his forehead. “God! what a filthy scene. I had to tell her off in front of a lot of people. Imagine her coming around with crazy talk about divorcing her husband. She knows I’m married to Nora. I had to tell her off,” he repeated dismally.
“You shouldn’t lead a lady on,” Shayne grinned. “If you’d met her husband before the sheriff got hold of him you might have carried off a lead souvenir.”
The actor’s sensitive features registered deep disgust. “I didn’t lead her on. She entertained the cast at her home a couple of times. You know how a thing like that gets started.”
“No, I wouldn’t know.”
“Why do we stand here talking when Nora may be in danger?”
Shayne stopped grinning. “The clerk didn’t notice her going in or out. I suppose you both had keys to your room?”
Carson nodded. “Maybe that note is a plant,” he hazarded. His dark eyes were excited. “Suppose she didn’t come to the hotel at all.”
Shayne said, “Could be, though I don’t see why anyone would go to that trouble. We’ll go up and have a look at the note. You should know her handwriting.” Carson plunged ahead impatiently. Shayne followed him through the lobby and up the stairs. Carson sprinted ahead to the door of 123 which was standing open as Shayne had left it. When Shayne reached the door he stopped and leaned against the casing, lit a cigarette, and watched Carson read the note.
Carson turned, crumpling the paper in his hand. He said, “It’s Nora’s handwriting. No question about that.”
Shayne let his cigarette dangle from his lips as he massaged his left ear. “Why do you suppose she came up here if she was in such a hurry to find the sheriff and get back to the performance? Why didn’t she leave the note in her dressing-room?”
Carson furrowed his high smooth brow and reasoned slowly, “Perhaps she dashed out of the opera house on a sudden impulse — then decided she needed something warmer than her evening cape. She thought of leaving the note while she was up here getting a coat.” He hurried across to the closet and looked through the hanging garments. He came out nodding. “That must have been it. A woolen coat is missing.”
Shayne stopped punishing his earlobe. “That gives us a starting point, but that’s all we do have. Where did she go after coming up here and leaving the note? The sheriff was on the job all evening, yet she didn’t contact him. Damn it, Carson, I’m beginning to get worried.”
“You’re beginning to get worried?” He laughed harshly, put biting emphasis into his words. “You’re beginning to get worried. I told you something awful had happened. I knew it as soon as she didn’t answer her cue. Why don’t you do something!”
“What, for instance?” Shayne growled. “I don’t know the Rocky Mountains like I do Flagler Street and Biscayne Boulevard.” He stepped backward into the hall and said, “If you expect me to start crawling on my belly through Cousin-Jack mine tunnels hunting for her, you’re nuts. All we can do is keep asking questions until we get a lead.”
Carson shuddered beside him as they started down the corridor. Suddenly he dropped to his knees and exclaimed:
“Look here! Do you see what I see — not more than ten feet from our room door?” He pointed a shaking finger to a damp spot on the floor. “It’s blood! Fresh blood!”
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.
He sank back on his haunches and heard Christine Forbes’s voice full of pride and happiness:
“Let’s drink to the Central City Festival, darling.”
“No,” her escort said emphatically. “To you, Christine. To your career — gloriously launched tonight.”
Their glasses clinked and there was a pause. Then Christine teased, “You sound so solemn, Joe — as if it was all over but the shouting.”
“It is. You’re off to the races, sweet.” Joe’s voice was low and emphatic. “Everything dates from tonight, and don’t you forget it. You know how good you were in that role.”
“Tonight was a miracle,” Christine said dreamily. She sighed deeply, but her tone hardened as she went on, “But it doesn’t mean anything, Joe. It was just for tonight. Tomorrow I’ll be Nora’s understudy again.”
“After the performance you turned in tonight?”
“Let’s not kid ourselves. Tonight was a lucky break. I’m still an unknown actress with talent. Nora has the connections and the name.”
Shayne discerned a sneer in Joe’s voice when he said, “That shows how much you know about what’s going on. Think I was going to wait forever to get you a lucky break? I’ve told you before — in this business you’ve got to make your own luck.” His voice roughened. “It’s a tough racket, but I promised you we would go up together. You climbed the first rungs tonight, and don’t forget who held the ladder for you.”
There was another, longer pause.
“But — when Nora comes back—” Christine’s voice was edged with doubt.
“Don’t you worry about Nora Carson coming back,” Joe told her confidently. “You’re in — and don’t ever forget who put you in.”