In a Deadly Vein Read Online Free PDF

when Nora’s cue came. But I haven’t had time to make any inquiries. I’ll see if Celia Moore knows anything. She shares Nora’s dressing-room. She was with Nora when I saw her last.” He turned away alertly and surveyed the backstage turmoil, then began working his way toward a group near the electrician’s booth.
    Shayne followed him, holding Phyllis’s arm. “Be easy on Carson, angel. He has taken a stiff jolt tonight and you can’t blame him for being edgy.”
    “That doesn’t justify his ugly insinuations against you. He talked as if you’d been hired as his wife’s bodyguard.”
    Shayne laughed easily. “I’ve got a tough hide.”
    He saw Carson drawing a middle-aged woman aside and recognized her as the woman they had encountered in Jasper Windrow’s store that afternoon. Her dark hair was parted in the middle and drawn back smoothly in a knot at the nape of her neck. Pressing through the crowd, Shayne heard her say:
    “No, Frank. Nora didn’t say a word to me.” There was a look of deep concern in her eyes and her rich voice throbbed with pity. “Poor kid. I didn’t even know anything about her father until the end of the first act.”
    “Did she seem terribly upset?” Shayne asked as he reached them.
    Celia Moore turned brilliant hazel eyes on him, shaking her head. “Not that I noticed. But Nora is a trouper. God knows she must have been hit hard to let Christine horn in—the way they hated each other’s guts.” Her last words were spoken absently. Her eyes had narrowed upon Shayne’s angular face. “Sa-ay, you’re the lug who almost mixed in with my boy friend this afternoon. I thought Jasper was going to take a swing at you.” She chuckled in a delightful baritone.
    Shayne nodded impatiently. “The name is Shayne. Now, about Nora—didn’t she give you any intimation that she might not go on?”
    “Not a single damn’ intimation. She was putting on her make-up when I left her in the dressing-room.” Celia Moore pursed her lips and glanced speculatively at Frank Carson. “I don’t know a thing about it,” she ended briskly, and laid an apologetic and slightly damp palm on Shayne’s coat sleeve. She looked at him coyly and said, “You’ll have to excuse me now. There’s a gentleman out there somewhere who’s wondering what the hell’s become of me.”
    She glided away. Shayne watched her go, and saw Jasper Windrow waiting for her at the rear of the stage. Windrow wore the conventional dress suit required of first-nighters, and a white tie was tilted rakishly beneath his blunt chin.
    “Well, what do you think?” Carson demanded. “Mightn’t Nora have left a note for you? Have you looked for one in her dressing-room?”
    “I haven’t had time to do anything,” Carson snapped, but the suggestion appeared to relieve his anguished face, “She does, sometimes. I’ll see.”
    He plunged toward the wooden stairs leading down to rows of small dressing-rooms in the basement.
    Shayne plunged after him, with Phyllis clinging to his arm. It was cold and damp in the room just off the corridor from the stairs. They saw Carson searching frantically through a disarray of jars and tubes of cosmetics on a small table.
    Carson shook his head, his mouth grim. “Nothing here. Looks as if she started to make up, though.”
    Shayne said, “It looks as if Nora was putting up a front while Miss Moore was in the room. When she left, Nora realized she couldn’t go on. So, she probably went to the hotel to be alone.”
    “It isn’t that simple.” Carson ran long, slender fingers through his black hair. “Nora would never leave us in the lurch. She would have told Christine so she could be getting ready.”
    “Maybe not.” Shayne frowned. “Miss Moore spoke of them hating each other.”
    Carson didn’t reply immediately. He appeared more relieved than at any time since Shayne approached him. He faced Shayne squarely and said, “That’s not the way we do things in the theatrical