The girl said, “If you’ll give me his name I’ll check the passenger list.”

“Dawson,” the woman told her. “But that won’t cut much ice if he was sneaking out on me. He’d probably give another name. It would be in the last ten minutes,” she went on impatiently. “You’d remember him.”

“The last ten minutes have been very busy,” said the girl. “Perhaps you could give me a description of him.”

“He’s a little runt. Had on a gray suit. Not a drop of red blood in his body. He’s nobody you’d get excited about-sort of bald and stupid looking. Funny looking eyes on account of they’re brown, and his eyelashes and brows are pure white.”

Shayne edged closer as he listened. He wondered how a man like Dough-face could be married to a woman like that. There was an impression of tremendous vitality about her. She wasn’t old, not past her middle thirties, yet she gave one the feeling that here was a woman who might have mothered a brood of Vikings, a maiden of Odin straight from the pages of Norse mythology.

The freckle-nosed girl looked as though she were trying hard not to smile. “I do remember him now, Mrs. Dawson. He didn’t give me his name. He got here just before the take-off,” she went on, stroking her cheek with a forefinger. “He said it was terribly important that he get space on Sixty-two, but there simply wasn’t anything for him. We had no last-minute cancellations tonight.”

Shayne was standing at the counter, not more than five feet away from the girl as she spoke. He turned slightly, instinctively tugging his hat lower over his face.

Mrs. Dawson said, “They told me over at the Eastern counter that no other planes have left since then, and that none are due out until morning.” It was more a statement than a question.

“That’s correct.”