In a Deadly Vein by Brett Halliday Page B

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