"But Nayre wasn't at all intrigued by the situation. You thought he was
woman proof. No wonder! If he'd admired you, as you deserved, he could have put
away his gun and relied on his own personality, and the moonlight, to convince
you that you ought to help him. Therefore, comparing the Nayre that Brady knew
with the Nayre you met, we must assume -"
"That Nayre is in love!" exclaimed Margo, as Cranston purposely paused.
"Gone completely ga-ga over some girl in Centralba! That explains why he's gone
back there!"
There was a nod from Cranston.
"Precisely," he said. "Having settled the problem of Colin Nayre, I can
now consider the case of Murk Wessel. Having met him three times, I might very
well help the hunt for him. Sorry, Margo. It looks like New York for me."
Margo couldn't withhold her disappointment.
"You talked of an air cruise down to Rio, Lamont. That's why I was here in
Miami, to begin with."
"I know. The cruise starts tomorrow. You'd better take it, Margo. You'll
like the crowd, and the pilot, too. His name is Kent Allard. Quite a celebrated
flier; I forget what it was that made him famous, but he is. You'll hear from
him."
CRANSTON was gone, and Margo, standing in the gathering dusk, felt very
much alone. She wished she'd said she wouldn't take the cruise, but it was too
late, now, to change her mind. By now, Lamont was speeding to the airport in a
cab, and Margo knew his ship was ready for an immediate take-off.
All she could do was stand and watch from the rail of the high roof.
Darkness had settled, a half hour later, when she saw two lights rise to the
northwest and blink a signal from above the airport. Then those lights were
dwindling to the north.
Their flash had been Lamont's parting signal. He knew that Margo would be
watching for it.
It hurt, parting with a friend like Cranston. The darkened waters of
Biscayne Bay reflected the lights from the Venetian Way with a dewy dance, when
Margo looked in that direction. It couldn't be the waves that blurred the
mirrored lights, for there were none. The trouble was that Margo's eyes were
just about as dry as the bay itself.
From a table secluded among the palms that sprinkled the hotel roof, a
guest who had just arrived looked across and saw Margo gazing over the rail.
His face was different from Cranston's, but his lips phrased the same low
whispered laugh, a tone that belonged to The Shadow.
Those blinking lights had marked the departure of Cranston's plane, under
the control of a hired pilot. The Shadow, himself, had returned, for his future
course lay southward, not to the north. Margo Lane wasn't going to find herself
without a friend when she took the air cruise, tomorrow.
As happened often, The Shadow's theory regarding the whereabouts of a
missing criminal was as at direct variance with that held by the law. He still
intended to look for Murk Wessel, but in the last place where anyone would
expect to find the missing murderer!
