Shayne’s head nodded almost imperceptibly. He muttered, “She intended to return to the theater in time for her cue — but she didn’t.”
Chapter six
PATRICK CASEY had been pacing back and forth, his short legs taking slow, measured steps. He came back to the high chest of drawers where Shayne and Phyllis stood. He said, “I don’t get any of this. An old man looks in a window and a girl screams. You go tearing after her through the lobby. You come back and say the guy is her father. Now, you can’t find the girl. What about her?”
“You should learn the formula for how much liquor you can carry to the square inch,” Shayne told him.
Phyllis intervened hastily. “It’s this way, Pat. Nora Carson slipped away from the opera house as soon as the play started. This note indicates she had an urgent reason for contacting the sheriff. I think Mike’s afraid that — well, that maybe the person who killed her father knew she had an important clue.” She turned breathlessly to Shayne and asked, “Isn’t that it, Michael?”
Shayne nodded indulgently. “Something prevented Nora Carson from getting back to the theater,” he said, not looking at either of them. He clawed bony fingers through his coarse red hair, then broke out angrily:
“She was a walking invitation to death if she had information pointing to the killer, and if that information was even hinted to anyone she was doomed. Murder breeding murder. I’ve seen it happen so damned often. The fact that she hasn’t shown up yet—” He broke off abruptly at the sound of movement in the doorway.
Two men stood in the opening of the hotel room They were enough alike to be twins, dressed exactly alike in belted sports coats, blue slacks and tan and white shoes. They were of the same slimness and height with snap-brim fedoras tilted to the right and downward over hatchet faces indelibly stamped with the pastiness of city night life. Faces that seldom felt the sun. Their eyes were pale and furtive with an alert wariness characteristic of men who live in the shadow world of lawlessness; their stance held the distinctive swagger of defiance, an attribute of men who have successfully challenged the law for a long time.
Patrick Casey turned to look at them. His exhaled breath made a faint whistling sound through his lips. He tilted his straw hat far back on his bullet head and asked, “You boys looking for somebody?”
“For you, Casey.” The man on the left spoke in a hushed, rasping tone. His face was blank of expression, stony calm, as was that of his twin.