In a Deadly Vein Read Free

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