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.”