AT 7:30 THE SUN had sunk far below the mountain ramparts westward and the soft haze of twilight cloaked the rugged contours with illusive beauty. Eureka Street was barricaded to vehicular traffic in front of the hotel and the opera house, and the area was jammed with first-nighters in full evening attire — among them celebrities from every state in the nation — and with gay spectators. There was a generous background of natives in old-fashioned garb, the clanking of spurs on heavy boots, cowboys in full regalia, and miners in clean blue jeans.
The Teller House dining-room and the bar were filled to capacity and the din of merriment rose by the moment.
Somewhat uncomfortable in his dinner jacket, Shayne mopped his brow as he worked his way to the bar with Phyllis clinging close beside him. Over the heads of other bar pressers, he caught the eye of a perspiring waiter and held up two fingers, which, after a week at the hotel, sufficed as an order for straight cognac. There was constant good-natured jostling in the barroom, famous for its legendary “Face on the Barroom Floor,” and no one minded when Shayne reached out a long arm to take a tray from the bartender.
As he turned away, a voice exploded beside him: “Mike Shayne! All dressed up like an undertaker.” Holding the tray high, Shayne ducked his head down and saw a ruddy face near his shoulder. Blue eyes twinkled up at him and a wide smile showed two gold front teeth. His snub nose was generously freckled and a straw hat was tipped back on his bullet-like head.
Shayne said, “By God, if it isn’t Pat Casey. How’d you leave Broadway?”
“Still kicking when I left but I doubt it’ll survive my absence,” Casey told him.
Carefully lowering the tray, Shayne handed Phyllis a glass of cognac and placed the second in Casey’s outstretched hand. He signaled for a third, then explained, “My wife dragged me out here for a vacation. Phyl, Pat’s an old sidekick of mine. A blooming Dutchman by the name of him.”
Casey’s round blue eyes grew rounder. He held out his hand to the slender, smiling girl with lustrous dark hair framing an oval face, who looked not a day over sixteen in her white fur jacket and flowing evening gown.
Casey dragged his gaze away from Phyllis’s loveliness and glared up into Shayne’s amused eyes. “’Tis not true,” he vowed. “By the Saints, Mike, if she can stand your ugly mug, think what’s waiting for a handsome lad like myself.”
“It’s the glamour of being a private op,” Shayne chuckled. “You still on the force in the big town?”
“I’m on special assignment.” Casey lowered his voice to a hoarse rumble though he could not have been overheard had he shouted. “An old pal of yours.” He jerked his head toward the crowded room and complained, “I need a megaphone to tell my secrets in here.”
The bartender shouted, “Hey, redhead!”
Shayne reached for his glass and said, “Let’s find a place to sit down.”
Casey let Shayne’s big frame force a path into the lobby and to a room in the rear. He took Phyllis’s arm and said, “I’m not believing it yet.”
Her eyes were level with his. She smiled into them and murmured, “Confidentially, Pat Casey, I married Michael because he has such interesting friends.” They followed Shayne into a small room with tables. The windows overlooked a patio. Few of the tables were occupied at this late hour and it was comparatively quiet. Shayne drew out a chair for Phyllis and said to Casey, “So, they’re trying to make a detective out of you. I read about New York’s crime wave. Now I know the reason.”
Phyllis intervened before Casey could think of a sufficiently scathing reply. She leaned forward and whispered, “Isn’t that Nora Carson sitting alone near the window? One of the actresses, Mike. We met her a couple of days ago.”
Shayne turned to look at a girl in an orchid evening gown with a black velvet cape partly covering her bare shoulders. She was eating an ice, glancing anxiously at her wrist-watch.
He nodded affirmatively. As he turned back, he stopped to stare at an aged, whiskered face pressed against the window pane and peering into the diningroom with intent absorption.
“Get a load of that,” he muttered. “Looks like the Spirit of ’49. They certainly go in for background at these Festivals.”
A canvas coat was buttoned tightly about the old man’s neck, and a sheepskin-lined collar was turned up to frame his head. He wore a floppy felt hat, and sharp black eyes contrasted strangely with the white stubble on his face.
“Poor old man,” Phyllis whispered. “Do you suppose he’s hungry? The way he’s staring in—”
A scream knifed through the small room. The face at the window disappeared. Nora Carson sprang to her feet. The table overturned, crashing dishes and cutlery to the floor.
She ran to the window and tried frantically to open it, crying, “Father! Don’t go away. Father — please!” The window was stuck tight. Hysterically she pounded on the pane with a small fist, but the old man did not reappear.
Shayne’s face was bleak as he strode toward the girl, but before he reached her she ran past him into the crowded lobby, holding up her long skirt and pleading, “Let me through. Please let me through.” Her slender body pressed futilely at the packed crowd.
Muttering an oath, Shayne lunged after her. He barked, “Come on,” dropped his left shoulder like a battering ram and drove forward, clearing a path to the door. Sobbing wildly, Nora Carson caught hold of his coat and was carried along.
Outside, he stopped and grasped the actress’s arm. She was trembling and sobs welled up from her smooth throat. Her eyes were glazed and vacant when he shook her.
“The man at the window — is he the one you’re trying to catch?”
“Yes — oh, yes! That was my father. Did you see him?”
“I saw him,” Shayne answered. He strode toward the side of the hotel, asking none of the questions that came to his mind. “If he wants to avoid you, he’s had plenty of time to get lost in this crowd while we were getting through the lobby.”
“He wouldn’t — oh, I don’t know!” Her voice fell despondently. They reached the west side of the hotel and looked back toward the patio outside the window, but there was no one there. “I must have sounded insane,” Nora Carson moaned. “But it was my father. I haven’t seen him for ten years, but I know. And he recognized me, too. I could tell.”
Shayne indicated the crowded street hopelessly. “There’s not much you can do right now to find him if he’s trying to avoid you.”
Her eyes were blue, wide-spaced and candid. They met his without faltering. Her chin was softly firm, but her lips trembled uncontrollably. A mass of bright blond hair had tumbled into loose curls about her face and neck.
In a low voice, she said, “I don’t know why Dad would run away from me like that. I know it was he,” she reiterated with conviction. “He has hardly changed at all in ten years.”
Shayne cupped his hand under her elbow to steady her. “Aren’t you jumping to conclusions when you say he recognized you? He might not have changed much, but you were just a little girl ten years ago.”
“But he did recognize me,” she cried. “I could see it in his eyes. And my picture was in the local paper two weeks ago,” she went on. “There was a story about him and how I’ve been looking for him everywhere. He must have seen the picture and read about me.”
“Why hasn’t he looked you up sooner — and why come peering in the window at you?”
She shook her head wonderingly. “I don’t know,” she faltered. “Any more than I can understand why he ran away when he saw me.” She drew in a deep breath and really looked at Shayne for the first time. “I remember you now. You’re Michael Shayne, a detective, aren’t you?”
Shayne nodded.
“Won’t you help me find him? He’s a miner, you see. That’s the reason I let them print that story in the paper. We used to live in Telluride. He ran away from — Mother and me in nineteen thirty-two. We never heard a word from him, and when Mother died I advertised in newspapers in all the mining towns.”
“Why did he leave home?”
“He couldn’t find work, and — well, Mother nagged at him all the time. Oh, I didn’t blame him for going off, but if I could find him now — help him—”
Shayne said, “I’ll be glad to do what I can. Suppose we get together after the play.”
For several minutes he had been conscious of a flow of movement across the street and up a steep, unused road separating the Masonic Hall from an old livery stable. A large and excited group was gathering near the top of the blind street where it ended abruptly against another building.
He saw Nora Carson staring up at the gathering, her face drained of color, and he caught a snatch of conversation from a man hurrying past, “… some old miner, they say.”
Nora Carson drew her arm from Shayne’s hand and started across the street. Shayne followed and again took her arm to help her climb the rocky slope in her dainty, high-heeled slippers.
When they reached the circle of curiously silent people at the end of the narrow passage between the buildings, Shayne stopped and stood on tiptoe to see over the heads of the crowd.
He said quietly, “You’d better go back, Miss Carson.”
Her agonized eyes studied his face. “Is it—?”
Shayne nodded. “It looks as though there has been an accident, and I’m afraid it’s the man who peered through the window.”
The young actress said steadily, “Help me to get to him.”
Shayne spoke to those in front of him and they parted. A single dim light from the street below threw faint illumination on two men kneeling beside a still body. One of the men stood up as Shayne and Nora Carson reached the inner edge of the circle.
“This is bad business,” the man muttered. “Murder.”
Nora Carson swayed to her knees beside the murdered man. Between sobs she spoke close to his battered ear. Her words were unintelligible, soft, crooning sounds, like a mother comforting an injured child.