“It is. You’re off to the races, sweet.” Joe’s voice was low and emphatic. “Everything dates from tonight, and don’t you forget it. You know how good you were in that role.”
“Tonight was a miracle,” Christine said dreamily. She sighed deeply, but her tone hardened as she went on, “But it doesn’t mean anything, Joe. It was just for tonight. Tomorrow I’ll be Nora’s understudy again.”
“After the performance you turned in tonight?”
“Let’s not kid ourselves. Tonight was a lucky break. I’m still an unknown actress with talent. Nora has the connections and the name.”
Shayne discerned a sneer in Joe’s voice when he said, “That shows how much you know about what’s going on. Think I was going to wait forever to get you a lucky break? I’ve told you before — in this business you’ve got to make your own luck.” His voice roughened. “It’s a tough racket, but I promised you we would go up together. You climbed the first rungs tonight, and don’t forget who held the ladder for you.”
There was another, longer pause.
“But — when Nora comes back—” Christine’s voice was edged with doubt.
“Don’t you worry about Nora Carson coming back,” Joe told her confidently. “You’re in — and don’t ever forget who put you in.”
Chapter eight
PROLONGED SILENCE followed Joe’s flat statement Crouching against the other side of the stone wall, Shayne held his leaping imagination in leash.
Christine’s voice reached him, incredulous and frightened: “What do you mean, Joe Meade? What do you know about Nora not showing up tonight?”
“Never mind. The less talking I do, the less you’ll have to worry about. You got your big chance tonight. All right. Let it go at that Where’s our waiter? We’ve got celebrating to do.”
“But, Joe! You sound as though you know where Nora is. As though you’d planned it.”
“Do I?” Joe sounded surly, and smug. He snapped his fingers, and Shayne heard him order two more drinks.
“You frighten me,” Christine said in a low, tense tone. “I’ve always known there was a ruthless streak behind your driving determination to get ahead, but—”
“Sure. And don’t tell me you don’t like it. You’ve got to be hardboiled and take what you want in this world. Nobody’s going to hand it to you on a silver platter.”
Shayne decided that Joe was a bit sophomoric in his assumption of toughness. Neither his appearance nor his cultured voice quite fitted the role.
“But I wouldn’t want anything to happen to Nora.” Christine’s voice throbbed with distress. “I wouldn’t want success to come that way. I’ve always played fair.”
“Sure. We both have. And see what it’s got us. You’re understudying Nora Carson who can’t match the talent in your little finger. And me? I’m juggling props backstage while a drip like Saroyan is hailed as the white-haired boy of the American theater. Nuts! I can write rings around Saroyan and all the rest of them. But, can I get my stuff produced? You know the answer.”
“It takes time, Joe. We’re both young. We can afford to wait.”
“Forever? No. Another year of failure will embitter us. We’ll begin to think, by God, that we are failures. Then we’ll be whipped. But it’s not going to be that way, sweet. You’re headed for the top. Producers will listen to you when you bring them a script. A year from now you’ll be playing the lead on Broadway in a Joe Meade play.”
Joe had become savagely exultant. Behind his words Shayne sensed the bitter frustration of talented youth; the concentrated venom engendered by the failure of others to recognize self-appraised genius. Such a man, Shayne realized, was fully capable of almost any action to attain his end; yet nothing that Meade intimated seemed to tie up with Screwloose Pete’s murder or the note in Nora’s room. He held his impatience in check, hoping the young man would become more explicit.
When Christine spoke again, her tone was cool and brittle. “I don’t think I like what you’re telling me. I haven’t ever taken an unfair advantage of anyone.”
“Sure you haven’t. You’re straight. You don’t go to bed with your stockings on. Not yet, you haven’t. But you’ve been waking up — noticing how the others get ahead. And I couldn’t stand that, honey. Honest to God, I’d take a nose-dive to hell if you turned into a floozie like some others I’ve seen. But you won’t have to now. You’re set.” Ice tinkled in a glass. “Come on. Let’s drink up and order another one.”
“But, Joe,” Christine pleaded, “tell me what you mean. I’ve got to know.”
“You don’t have to know anything,” he said with rough tenderness. “I’m not saying another word.”
“Well, all right. I won’t ask you anything else.” The girl laughed briefly and recklessly, and their glasses clinked once more.
Shayne stood up and moved around the end of the wall, stopping two feet from the table where the couple were toasting Christine’s career. He looked down on them soberly. The girl’s dark head lay on Joe’s broad shoulder.
He said, “I’m sorry, Meade, but I’ll have to ask you to be a little more explicit about Nora Carson.”
The couple separated quickly. Christine looked up into Shayne’s gaunt face and gasped, dropping her glass to the stone flagging where it shattered loudly.
Joe Meade drew his big frame slowly from the chair. He scowled and asked, “Who the devil are you?”
“The name is Shayne. I’ve been eavesdropping behind the stone wall. I want to know where Nora Carson is.”
Meade snarled, “The hell you do.”
The patio was suddenly quiet as people began to notice the two men standing in the shadow.
Shayne nodded. “Why not step around here where we can be alone and talk it over? No use creating a scene that will involve Miss Forbes.”
“That’d be swell,” he said thickly.
Christine’s dilated eyes followed Shayne as he stepped back toward the end of the wall. She was still in her chair. Meade hunched his shoulders and followed the detective.
When they were out of sight, Shayne stopped and said, “All I want to know is what—”
Joe Meade swung on him without warning. He had the stance and swiftness of a trained boxer. Shayne was going away with the blow, but the fist glanced off his bony jaw with enough force to swing him sideways.
He laughed and caught Joe’s wrist with both hands, levering it down hard. Meade dropped to his knees, cursing with pain. Out of the corner of his eye, Shayne caught a glimpse of Christine coming around the wall with a bottle of club soda swinging from her right hand.
Patrick Casey’s moonlike face showed behind her. He caught her arms from behind and pinioned them close to her body.
Shayne nodded his thanks and released Meade’s wrist The young man floundered to his feet and rushed him, his boxing science forgotten in his rage.
Shayne coolly sidestepped and tripped him as he went by. Meade went down heavily, but bounced up again. His eyes were crazed.
Held tightly by Casey, Christine Forbes pleaded, “Joe — don’t. Please don’t”
Joe disregarded her, came forward again, but more cautiously. The rangy redhead waited for him with doubled fists, breathing lightly.
Just in time, he saw that Joe’s right hand held a heavy rock which he had picked up on his last trip to the ground. He waited for Joe’s lunge, ducked a vicious swing of the rock, then buried his fist in Meade’s midsection. Joe doubled forward with the breath driven from him. He went to his knees, hugging his solar plexus.
From behind Shayne, Casey asked interestedly, “What’ll I do with this she-wildcat? She still thinks it would be fun to christen you queen of the festival.”