In a Deadly Vein Read Free Page A

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.

 
CHAPTER THREE
     
    TWO MEMBERS of the Colorado Courtesy Patrol reached the scene. They were young men, in neat blue uniforms with polished boots and Sam Browne belts. In the absence of local authority they assumed charge, ordering the crowd back and questioning those nearest the body.
    Shayne briefly explained his and Nora’s presence. No one had seen the actual attack. One of the men who had been kneeling over the body was a dentist from Denver. He introduced himself to the young officers:
    “I’m Doctor Adams. My wife and I were on our way to the opera after changing to evening clothes at a friend’s home. We were starting down those steps from above,” he pointed to a flight of wooden steps leading down from the next street level, “when we heard a loud thud and a groan down