Shayne stiffened. In careful detail he described Two-Deck Bryant and his gunmen. “Would they be the men?”
“Could be, but the town’s so dang full of dudes it’s hard to say for sure.”
“Would you recognize them if you saw them?”
“Reckon so. Could try.” Strenk sucked on his half-filled beer mug.
Shayne turned to Fleming. “That might be an important lead, Sheriff. Sounds like a New York gambler who is suspected of being out here on the trail of a welsher. He has a reputation for collecting overdue gambling debts with a gun. It couldn’t be Pete’s trail he was on,” he mused wearily. “I don’t suppose he has been in New York recently.”
“Not in the ten years I’ve knowed him,” Cal Strenk said drowsily. “He ain’t been to Denver—or even Idaho Springs.”
Shayne said, “I’d like to have you see the men I’m thinking of. See if they’re the ones.”
“Glad to, Mister. Yes, sirree, I’ll be glad to ’blige you. Reckon it was one of them give it to Pete tonight?”
“Not necessarily, but there might be some connection.”
“You lead me to ’em” Strenk finished his third beer and combed his whiskers with broken nails. He took a red bandanna from his pocket and blew his nose violently. “Folks’ll mebby be tellin’ you that me an’ Pete had a failin’ out recent on account of I moved out from batchin’ with ’im, but Pete was still my friend an’ I’ll sure he’p all I can to find out who smashed his head in like that.” A watery film spread over the furtive glint in his eyes as they observed Shayne closely.
Shayne said heartily, “That’s fine, Strenk. I suppose you’ve got an alibi for the time Pete was killed.”
“You ain’t thinkin’ I done it?”
“Nothing like that,” Shayne said pleasantly. “Alibis are just a hobby with me when I’m on a case.”
“Waal, I can sure give you one, Mister.” Strenk’s voice trembled with righteous indignation. “But I won’t take it kindly for you to be thinkin’ I done it.”
Shayne waved a big hand. “All I want from you is an alibi.”
“I was playin’ dominoes with Jeff Wharthous, that’s what I was doin’. You can ast him.”
“I will,” Shayne said. “Rather, I’ll ask the sheriff to check it. Right now I want you to go around with me and see if you can identify Two-Deck Bryant. We’ll try the gambling joints first—I beg your pardon, Sheriff—the charity bazaars.”
The sheriff grinned. “From what I’ve heard and seen of the slot machines not paying off, I reckon it couldn’t legally be called gambling. It’s more like a cinch you’re donating to charity every time you pull a lever.”
“Rollered tight?”
“I don’t know what you call it, but it isn’t hardly gambling.” The sheriff pulled his big frame partially erect and squirmed out of the cramped quarters of the booth. “You two go ahead and mosey around some. I got to show my badge in public so folks’ll know there’s some limits in Central City tonight.”
Shayne and Strenk pushed their way out into the street while the sheriff loitered to speak with friends.
It was past midnight, and the night was clear and biting cold beneath a star-studded sky. Shayne shivered and drew the inadequate coat of his tuxedo closer about him while Strenk strolled along comfortably with a sweaty cotton shirt open at the neck and blue jeans flapping about his scrawny legs.
The streets were jammed, and sounds of revelry came from every lighted building. Shayne started across to the two main gambling casinos, saying, “The man I’m looking for is a professional gambler, but they’re always suckers for a game on their night off. Let’s look over here.”
“Them tourists sure go for this kinda trimmin’,” Strenk said scornfully. “They got a idee it’s like it was sixty years ago.”
“Isn’t it?”
Strenk guffawed and spat in the gutter. “’Tain’t no more a parcel of the ol’ times than a painted face is all of a sporty woman.”
Shayne chuckled and led the way into a large room crammed with crap layouts and roulette tables, chuck-a-luck games and faro dealers; with every game of chance besieged by players waiting to lay their money on the long odds against them. At two o’clock, an early hour for the night-long carousal, the crowd was riotously good-natured and still reasonably sober.
Shayne stayed close to Strenk as they made a slow circuit of the room, but neither Bryant nor his two gunsels were in evidence.
After a thorough search, Strenk said, when they reached the door again, “Didn’t see any of ’em in there.”
They repeated the procedure next door where a fraternal order was raking in charitable donations across the green baize, with the same negative result. When they were once again on the boardwalk outside, Shayne shivered and asked, “Any more joints open?”
“No more big ones like these city fellers’ve put up for the festival. Slot machines around most everywhere, an’ there’s a poker game runnin’ down to the pool hall. Small stakes, I reckon.”
“Bryant wouldn’t be interested in small stakes,” Shayne told him. “He’s a plunger.”
“Tell you what.” Strenk lowered his voice and tugged at Shayne’s sleeve. “I heard talk about a backroom game bein’ mebby open tonight. Not for no charity. Regular ol’ time gamblin’. It’s sorta secret-like, but I reckon you’re awright—not bein’ the real law.”
“Hell, no. I’m not the law. Haven’t even a private license in this state.”
“It’s down the street here—couple of buildin’s past Windrow’s store.” Strenk’s flapping jeans led the way past the old bank building on the corner, across Eureka Street and east, past the dark fronts of shuttered buildings on the north side of the highway leading in from Black Hawk.
“Right acrost yonder,” Strenk pointed south across the bottom of the canyon to the steep barren slope rising beyond, “is our ol’ cabin—Pete’s an’ mine. You can see it in the daytime, settin’ there all by itse’f—”
He stopped abruptly, sucking in his breath. “Looks like a light up there right now. That’s what it is. See it yonder?”
His voice and his pointing finger shook with excitement.
Shayne saw a light flicker like a will-o’-the-wisp a couple of hundred feet up the opposite slope and some distance east. It flickered out as he looked.
“Ghost lights,” Cal Strenk whispered, awed. “Nobody up there now with Ol’ Pete dead. Ghost lights. That’s what. Ha’nting our ol’ cabin.”
The light appeared again in the cabin high on the slope. It shone steadily.
“That’s a flashlight,” Shayne scoffed. “Ghosts aren’t that modern. How do we get up there?”
“They’s a path right acrost the street here. Leads over the end of the flume an’ up the hill. What you reckon—”
“I don’t reckon,” Shayne said curtly. “I want to take a look.”
He started across the street.
Strenk loped ahead of him, past a gasoline pump and down the sharp slope to the bottom of the ravine where the wooden flume emptied into the gulch east of town.
Their shoes thumped hollowly on the flume, mingling with the rushing sound of water that snarled downward; then they were following a narrow path angling up the rocky, precipitous incline.
The old miner went steadily, bent forward at the waist, as sure-footed and long-winded as a mountain goat. Shayne strained to keep pace with him. His heart pounded mightily and his lungs worked like bellows, striving to draw in enough of the rarefied atmosphere to keep him going.
They were halfway up the hill when the sharp report of a pistol spanged through the high stillness from the cabin above them.
Cal Strenk stopped abruptly and Shayne stumbled into him. The echo of the single shot continued to reverberate between the rocky walls of the gulch for a long time. There was no light in the cabin now. It was cloaked in darkness and in silence.
CHAPTER TEN
“SOUNDED LIKE A PISTOL SHOT,” Cal Strenk falte
red. His hunched figure looked shrunken.
Shayne demanded, “Is there another trail away from the cabin?”
“Nope. You can mebby slide down an’ ford the crik to the road on the other side if it ain’t flooded too high from that rain in the mountains. You got a gun, Mister?”
The pistol Shayne had taken from one of Bryant’s men sagged in his coat pocket. He drew it, gave Strenk a light shove.
“Go ahead. You know the trail. Drop to the ground if we meet anyone.”
Strenk hunched his body for balance on the steep slope and moved upward as silent as an Indian. Shayne followed clumsily, straining his ears for further noise from the cabin. The only sound in the thick silence was the rumble of floodwaters from Clear Creek below them, and an occasional echoing shout from the lighted village which appeared fantastically remote from this high vantage point.
Cal Strenk stopped again after they had gone a hundred paces. He pointed to the shadowy bulk of the cabin squatting against the hillside.
“Nary a sign of anybody,” he said in an awed tone. “No light—no nothin’. Maybe it was a backfire from an auto we heard and it echoed back from up here.”
Shayne sucked a deep breath and grunted, “It was a pistol shot, and it came from up here.” His heart was pounding madly from the exertion of climbing at high altitude. He steadied himself with a hand on Strenk’s shoulder against a wave of faintness. After a moment he strode past the miner and went on to the dark and silent cabin.
The front door was open, sagging back on rusty hinges. The interior was a blot of thick darkness. Shayne stopped near the threshold and shouted, “Hey there—anybody inside?”
The words were echoed back hollowly.
Over his shoulder, he asked Strenk, “Got a flashlight?”
“Not me. I got matches, though.”
“I’ve got matches,” Shayne growled. He slid the automatic into his coat pocket so he could get out a box and strike one. It flickered out as he held it up to peer inside.
He stepped over the threshold before lighting another. It burned steadily, the tiny flame gnawing a small circle out of the blackness. He moved carefully, bumped into a sturdy table in the center of the room. The glass chimney of a kerosene lamp caught the final flicker of the match as it burned out.
He heard Strenk’s measured breathing close behind him as he fumbled for another match. He lifted the chimney and put flame to the wick, dropping his hand to the gun in his pocket while replacing the chimney.
Yellow light flooded the one-room cabin.
Shayne stood very still and his gaze made a complete circuit of the room. He was beginning to catch the jitters from the old miner. He took a step forward and the toe of his shoe struck something yielding on the floor.
He moved the lamp to the edge of the table so its light fell on the figure of a man lying almost under the table.
It was Joe Meade. His left arm was outflung and his cheek rested on it. Blood streamed from a wound in his right forehead. A short .32 revolver lay on the floor a few inches from the curled fingers of his right hand.
Shayne dropped to his knees and found a feeble pulse beating irregularly in Meade’s wrist. The head-wound looked dangerous but not necessarily fatal. The area around it was pitted with exploding powder. As he drew a clean linen handkerchief from his pocket to bind the wound, he snapped over his shoulder:
“Get down the hill fast and get a doctor. This looks bad.”
Cal Strenk backed away. He hesitated in the doorway. “What about the feller that shot him? I ain’t hankerin’ to meet up with no two-time killer out yonder in the dark.”
Shayne pulled the automatic from his pocket and extended it to the miner. He muttered, “This looks like suicide, but—take the gun along with you. The powder burns might be a cover-up for murder.”
Strenk took the weapon and trotted off down the slope. Shayne got his handkerchief bound over the wound to slow the flow of blood. He tried the pulse again and found it was holding its own.
Still on his knees, he leaned over the .32 and sniffed the muzzle. It had been fired very recently. He left it lying there, got up and eased one hip down on a corner of the table, fit a cigarette and stared thoughtfully at Joe Meade.
Had Joe come up to this lonely cabin to commit suicide? In the name of God, why? There was no sign of a struggle in the room, and from his previous encounter with the young playwright Shayne knew he wasn’t the type to stand tamely while someone stuck a gun in his face and pulled the trigger.
But why had Meade come to this particular cabin at all? Did it have some connection with Christine’s reaction when he intimated to her that he’d had a hand in Nora Carson’s disappearance?
His right hand went up to tug at his ear-lobe while his gaze roamed around the orderly interior of the log cabin.
An old wood-stove stood in a corner near the door, with unpainted wooden shelves above it holding battered cooking utensils and tin plates. Two cane-bottomed chairs were drawn up to the table, and an old rocking chair with a rawhide seat stood near the crudely fashioned fireplace in the rear. A double-deck bunk was built solidly against the opposite wall. The lower bunk was neatly made up with patchwork quilts, but the one above was bare of bedding. Everything was in neat order except for the dying man lying on the floor.
Shayne had finished his cigarette when he ended his scrutiny of the cabin. From far down the slope, he heard the sound of excited voices coming nearer. He lit another cigarette and held his lounging, loose-jointed position on the table as men trooped up to the doorway.
The first man inside was a rosy-faced little fellow wearing nose-glasses and an unshakable air of propriety. He carried a physician’s bag and he hurried to the wounded man without asking questions.
Sheriff Fleming and a uniformed courtesy patrolman were directly behind the doctor. Shayne met them in the doorway, warning:
“Let’s leave everything as is until the doctor gets through.”
“Who is it this time, Mr. Shayne?” The sheriff’s weatherbeaten face showed grave concern. “Cal Strenk came running and yelling there was another dead man up here—”
Shayne shook his head. “He isn’t dead—yet. That is—” He turned his head. “How about it, Doctor?”
The doctor rocked back on his heels and said briskly, “There’s little I can do for him here. He must be removed to a hospital at once.”
“Will he live?”
“I can’t say,” the doctor snapped. “Certainly not unless he receives immediate care under the best conditions.”
Shayne whirled on the dumpy physician, his features strained and bleak. “Can you give him something to bring him around long enough to answer a few questions?”
The doctor raised himself to his full height, bringing the top of his head level with Shayne’s chin. “I might, but it would probably be fatal. The longer he remains in this coma the better his chances of ultimate recovery. Sheriff Fleming, will you get some men in here to carry him down the hill?”
“You bet I will, Doc.” While the sheriff ordered two husky young men in to strip a quilt from the bunk, Shayne caught the doctor’s arm. “Just a moment. Is it suicide?”
The doctor snorted, “For a guess—yes. The shot was fired a few inches from his face. Here—take him gently, you men,” turning away from the detective to superintend the placing of Meade’s limp body on the quilt.
Shayne drew back and watched the slow procession move out into the night. Fleming and the patrolman entered, and Shayne told exactly what had happened, beginning with the first flicker of light he and Strenk had seen from below.
“Just the one shot—and that thirty-two on the floor has been fired,” he ended.
The sheriff stared down at the weapon. He shook his head and muttered, “First it’s murder—then suicide.”
Shayne said, “Maybe.” He nodded toward the gun. “If we can get some fingerprints off the corrugated butt of that thing we’ll be lucky. Just because a wound is powder-burned it does
n’t definitely prove suicide.” He was arguing the point with himself.
“But there wasn’t anyone else to’ve done it.”
“We didn’t see or hear anyone else,” Shayne corrected him. “Strenk says a man could go straight down to the creek and ford it if the water is low enough.”
“That’s right. A man sure could. But who do you reckon—and who is the fellow they carried out?”
“His name is Joe Meade.” Shayne settled down on the table and briefly related to the sheriff and courtesy patrolman what he had overheard between Meade and Christine Forbes on the terrace. “Now, you know as much about the case as I do,” he ended in deep disgust. “If Meade recovers we can ask him what he was doing up here shot through the head. If he doesn’t—” He spread out his hands.
The patrolman cleared his throat diffidently and said, “They tell me this cabin belongs to the old miner who was murdered earlier tonight. Do you suppose there’s any connection?”
Shayne stood up and strode the length of the room, rumpling his coarse red hair. He burst out angrily, “All we can do is suppose. Damn a case that’s all supposition and no facts. I’m about ready to dump it into your lap, Sheriff. My wife was right. I’m on a vacation.”
The sheriff’s face became very grave. He said, “Now, Mr. Shayne, don’t you be—”
He was interrupted by the opening of the outer door and the entrance of Jasper Windrow.
He still wore his tight-fitting dinner coat, and it accentuated his bulk and aggressiveness as he planted himself solidly before the trio and said, “They tell me Pete’s murderer slipped off up here and shot himself.” His eyes, bulging slightly above pronounced puffs, sought Shayne’s and held them “Is that right, or isn’t it?”
Shayne shrugged and said, “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Thought you were a detective. Can’t you say yes or no to a straight question?”
Anger glinted in Shayne’s eyes. He moved slowly toward the big man. In clipped tones he said, “I don’t call a man a murderer until I’ve discovered a motive. Where were you at eight o’clock tonight?”
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