“Is this flume open to the surface anywhere between here and the opera house?” he asked the lad.
“You’re the detective, ain’t you?” The boy’s freckled face shone happily.
Shayne nodded. “I’m trying to find the closest spot to the opera house where a body could have been placed in the creek. If the flume is covered all the way, this looks like the nearest place.”
“Sure. It’s covered over solid all the way through town.” The youth’s sky-blue eyes danced with excitement. “Runs right under that store building and under Main Street. And the Teller House and opera house are both built right slap kadab square on top of it.”
“How about the other side of town?” asked Shayne. “How far in that direction is the creek flumed in?”
“A long ways up. Lots farther than from here to the opera house. You reckon they might of put her in the flume up there and she washed right under the whole town and come out here?” The lad’s eyes were round and awe-struck.
“Could have,” Shayne assented absently. “The smooth walls of the flume wouldn’t offer any obstacle to the passage of a body. I’d like to check the time it takes to get from the opera house to both ends of the flume. How’d you like to help me?”
“Help you detect? You bet.”
Shayne took out his watch. “Starting from here, I’ll time you to the opera house. Go the nearest and fastest way. Hurry, but don’t run. I’ll drive my car up and be waiting at the opera house when you get there.”
The lad nodded and scrambled up the slope toward Eureka Street. Shayne backed around and followed him, passed the hurrying lad opposite the post office and continued on to park in front of the opera house.
He checked the elapsed time when the boy reached him. Exactly seven minutes and thirty-five seconds from the lower end of the flume.
Shayne said, “Now hop in and show me the upper end. I’ll clock you back the same way.”
His car crawled in low gear up the steep grade beyond the courthouse, past dilapidated and deserted mill buildings built along what had once been the bank of the creek.
“Right here,” the boy stopped him. “This is where the flume starts.”
Shayne parked by the side of the street and got out. He followed his eager young guide through the littered back yard of a weatherbeaten cabin to a point where the rock walls of the gulch converged and the flow of water entered the boarded-up flume to be carried underneath the town. Here, again, Shayne searched carefully without finding any clue to indicate it was where Nora Carson had died.
He looked at his watch and started his young helper back, then returned to his car and let it coast down to the opera house in second gear.
Eight and a half minutes had elapsed when the lad reached him again. He snapped his watch shut and told the lad approvingly, “You were right. It’s closer to the lower end. You were coming downhill this time, and it took you a minute longer to make it.”
“Look, Mister. You figure maybe it was somebody here at the opera house last night slipped out and killed her? Then hurried back and pretended they hadn’t been away — for an alibi? That why you were seeing how long it took?”
Shayne chuckled and took a dollar bill from his pocket. “Keep up that sort of guessing and you’ll be a better detective than I am before you’re many years older.”
The lad was offended by the offer of money. He shook his head. “Gosh, no, Mister. I don’t want to get paid. Let me know if you need any more help.”
Shayne gravely promised he would, and the lad swaggered away.
The front doors of the opera house were closed. Shayne went around to the stage entrance. He found a tall, haggard man in shirtsleeves conferring backstage with a man wearing bib overalls and spectacles. They both looked him over sharply when Shayne approached and introduced himself.
“I’m Johnston, the producer,” the tall man told him. “And this is Mr. McLeod, our set designer and chief property man.”
Shayne shook hands with both of them. He explained, “You gentlemen can help me clear the members of your cast of suspicion in Nora Carson’s murder. She was killed while the play was going on. Whoever killed her must have been absent from the opera house for an absolute minimum of fifteen minutes — and that’s allowing no time for the actual murder.”
Both men listened with intent interest.
He continued, “I’m particularly interested in the movements of two men: Frank Carson and Joe Meade. Don’t answer hastily. Take time to think it over. Your answers may be very important. Could either of those men have been absent fifteen minutes during the performance without being missed?”
He took out a cigarette while he waited. His hand shook, striking a match. A hell of a lot depended on the answer to his question. An entire hypothesis he had been mentally building since early dawn.
The producer was first with a definite and positive shake of his head. “I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you, Mr. Shayne. Carson couldn’t possibly have been absent from the theater five minutes without being missed.”
“How about intermissions?”
“Impossible. He’s on-stage at both curtains, and has a complete change of costume between acts. No, I can get a cue-sheet if you wish and go over it with you minute by minute, but I assure you that Carson could not have been away as much as ten consecutive minutes from the first curtain until the last.”
“All right. How about Joe Meade?”
“Mac will have to answer for him.” Johnston turned to McLeod.
The stout, overalled man shook his head. “Naturally, I can’t be quite as positive as Johnston. We don’t have a cue-sheet for the prop men. But I’m afraid I’ll have to alibi Meade also. There’s a change of scenery at the end of each act, and a shift just about halfway between each curtain. It’s very, very doubtful that Meade could have been away as much as fifteen minutes without being noticed.”
Shayne made no attempt to hide his disappointment. He hesitated a moment, tugging at his ear, then asked Johnston, “Does Carson have an understudy?”
“No. We can’t provide understudies for every member of the cast.”
“But there must be someone,” Shayne insisted, “capable of taking his place in case of sickness or something like that.”
“Well, there is, of course,” Johnston admitted reluctantly. “One of the bit players who could substitute for most any of the others in a pinch. Philip Steele. He’s an ambitious youngster and quite talented.”
Shayne’s eyes began to glow. “With a great gift for make-up?” he questioned. “He’d have to be if he’s able to assume the different parts well enough to fool an audience.”
“It happens that he is particularly good at make-up,” Johnston assented. “In fact, he’s a wizard at it. But if you’re thinking that Carson might have arranged for Steele to substitute for him on the stage while he slipped out and murdered his wife, the idea is absurd.”
“I was thinking something like that,” Shayne admitted. “It would give Carson a swell alibi. How can you be sure Steele didn’t fool you last night? With his extraordinary gift for making himself up to resemble—”
“See here, Mr. Shayne. I’m the producer. I was right here in the wings every moment. I’d have to be either drunk or crazy for such a substitution to go unnoticed two minutes. I was neither drunk nor crazy last night.”
Shayne said, “All right. But this is murder and I can’t afford guesswork.”
“I’ll take my oath on it,” Johnston said. “You’d better look outside the theater for your murderer.”
“I’ve got plenty of other candidates,” Shayne admitted cheerily. “So many that I’ve got to go through this process of elimination.” He turned to McLeod again. “I’ve just remembered something. I saw the play last night, and there was a hitch in the first change of scenery. The curtain was down so long the audience began to get restless. What occasioned the delay?”