hurry his short legs to keep pace.
Shayne and the Mexican police captain loitered along the full block behind, through a section of respectable business houses, and on into the furtive darkness of unlighted streets lined with heavily curtained houses crowding close to the sidewalks. They moved closer after leaving the lighted avenue behind, up to within fifty feet of the rear pair. The others were still slightly ahead, evidenced by Marquita’s light giggle from time to time, and answering laughter from her tipsy companions.
“I think Marquita will go first to Papa Tonto’s,” Rodriquiz whispered cautiously after they had traversed three blocks in this manner. “We have the report that she is seen there much. It is a bad place,” he went on in answer to Shayne’s unspoken query. “If they turn down the alley in the next street, we will know.”
There were no streetlights at all now, and thin clouds partially obscured the moon, but the trailing men were close enough to hear the others moving steadily ahead.
There was a queer tightness in Shayne’s chest and his mouth was dry as he continued on doggedly. He was thinking of Carmela Towne in her living room last night — and, later, crumpled unconscious in her bed. He should have stayed with her until the liquor wore off. She had been in no condition to be left to awaken alone in that echoing stone house. He thought, God knows how she must have felt when she woke up and found me gone.
And tonight she was walking down a squalid street in Juarez by the side of Neil Cochrane whom she detested. Why? Where was she going? What was the meaning of this secret meeting with Cochrane?
There was a sudden break in the clouds overhead, and a bleary moon shone down on the street briefly, outlining Carmela’s bare head and squared shoulders and the shambling figure of Neil Cochrane by her side as they approached the alley entrance. Ahead of them, the street was empty. Rodriquiz nodded wisely and murmured, “It is as I thought. They have turned in the alley to Papa Tonto’s.”
Even as he spoke, the pair ahead of them turned into the alley also. At the same time, the clouds came together again, hiding the moon behind a heavier veil than before. Far off toward the river a burro brayed dismally, and Shayne shuddered in spite of himself. He gripped Rodriquiz’s arm and urged him forward roughly, muttering, “I don’t like this. Let’s hurry-”
The muffled brup of a small-caliber pistol from the darkness of the alley interrupted him. A single scream followed the shot, then two more sharp, blasting reports in quick succession. Shayne was lunging into the alley, and Rodriquiz panted by his side.
They halted beside a blurred shape in the alley, and Shayne dropped to his knees and put his arms about Carmela’s shaking shoulders. She was crouched, sobbing, over the lifeless body of Neil Cochrane, and her face was a blurred oval of whiteness in the dark when she lifted it to look at him. “Michael?” she sobbed. “Hurry! You’ve got to find Lance. In that place! Papa Tonto’s.” She sank back in his arms limply.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Captain Rodriquiz was squatting beside them and he twitched a stubby pistol from Carmela’s fingers before she dropped it. He said swiftly to Shayne, “I will stay here if you wish. Papa Tonto’s is where the light shines at the end of the alley.”
“The killer ran that way, too,” Carmela moaned. “I shot at him but I don’t think — I hit him.”
Shayne let her lax body down on the ground and stood up. Inhabitants of the neighborhood, aroused by the three shots, were beginning to stream toward them. Shayne muttered, “I’ll take a look in Tonto’s — for the other three who were ahead, and for Lance.”
He trotted down the alley to a closed wooden door with a dim light bulb glowing above it. The door was unlocked, and he strode into a dark hallway. Light showed through curtains at the other end of the hall.
An old Mexican came out of an alcove to confront him as he started forward. He had thin white hair, and luminous eyes set in a wrinkled face. He laid a palsied hand on Shayne’s arm and protested, “No, Senor. I am not know you, an’ you cannot-”
Shayne thrust him off with a force that sent him reeling back against the wall. He went on to the curtains and thrust them aside. The low room was lighted with a few bulbs in the ceiling, partially obscured by a heavy pall of smoke hanging above the couples who sat at small tables or half reclined in booths about the wall. The smoke was acrid and biting in his nostrils, heavy with the noxious fumes of marijuana. The couples were young and mostly Mexican. They looked up at him vacantly as he threaded his way between the tables, and those in the booths didn’t change their amorous attitudes as he paused to peer in at each couple. Neither Marquita Morales and her escorts nor Lance Bayliss was in the room.
The old man from the entrance panted up to him when he finished his inspection at the far end of the room. “Que busca usted?” he demanded.
“I’m looking for a girl and two Americans who just came in,” Shayne growled. “Any other places where people hide out in here?”
“But no, Senor.” His voice trembled angrily. “Nadie se esconde.”
Shayne snorted, and jerked aside another curtain over the entrance to a short corridor leading off from the main room. The odor of opium swept out strongly. Four doors opened off the corridor into small cubicles fitted with beds and smoking equipment. Two of the cubicles were empty. A middle-aged American woman lay on her back in another bed. Her mouth was open and she was snoring. The small room was stifling with opium smoke. Shayne closed the door hastily after one look at her. The fourth cubicle had two occupants, and two pipes were going strongly. They were young, a Mexican and an American girl. They didn’t pay any attention to Shayne when he looked in on them. They were off in a dream world of their own.
The corridor dead-ended, and there was no other exit. Shayne stalked back through the main room and out through the curtains into the dark entrance hallway. The old Mexican’s eyes blazed at him balefully from the alcove as he went by, but he didn’t speak.
In the alley an ambulance and a police car were drawn up at the entrance, with their lights shining on a group of people near the end. Neil Cochrane’s body was being loaded into the ambulance. Carmela hurried toward Shayne, with Rodriquiz a few paces behind. Carmela’s face was white and her smoothly braided hair was disarranged. Her eyes burned into his as she caught his arm and cried frantically, “Where is he, Michael? Did you find him? Was Lance there?”
Shayne shook his head. He put his arm about her shoulders and told the Mexican police captain, “Marquita and her friends evidently didn’t go into Tonto’s. What have you done out here?”
“We will find them,” Rodriquiz assured him confidently. The pistol he had taken from Carmela still dangled from his fingers. He glanced down at it and suggested politely, “If you will ride in the car with me?”
Carmela leaned against Shayne with her face pressed to his chest. “I don’t understand, Michael. Where’s Lance? I don’t-” She began to sob violently.
Shayne nodded to Rodriquiz and picked her up in his arms. He carried her to the police car and got in the back seat with her. Captain Rodriquiz got in the front beside a uniformed driver. The ambulance was already backing away. Rodriquiz turned to tell Shayne, “We have blocked off this section and are searching for Marquita and her two soldiers. The man you looked for in Papa Tonto’s-?”
Shayne shook his head. Carmela sat beside him, supported by his arm about her, with her head resting against his shoulder. She said tiredly, like a small child just awakened from deep sleep, “They told me Lance was there. I don’t know-”
Shayne said, “We’ll talk about it when we get to headquarters.” He tightened his arm about her, and she sighed and didn’t say anything else.
At the police station, Captain Rodriquiz escorted them back to a private office. He seated himself gravely at a desk and had a stenographer brought in, laying Carmela’s pistol in front of him. She sat beside Shayne and held his hand tightly. Before the captain could begin asking questions, Shayne asked him, “What about the man who was killed, Captain?”
“Quite dead.” Rodriquiz raised his expressive eyebrows. “One bullet fired against his body penetrated the heart.” He looked at Carmela. “Will you tell us, please, how it happened?”
“Wait a minute,” Shayne said. “She should be told anything she says may be used against her. And you can consult an attorney first,” he told Carmela, “or refuse to testify at all, if you wish.”
