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was going to drop her there but she asked me to wait for her. She acted rather peculiar. She wasn’t in the station more than ten minutes, and when she came back to the car she asked me—right out of a clear sky—” Neal paused dramatically, gesturing with his pipe. “She asked me if I knew my way around in Storyville.”
    Shayne frowned. “The old red-light district?”
    “It knocked me for a loop,” said Neal. “I still don’t believe she knew what the district actually was. She was quite naive about things like that.” He paused again and Shayne had to prompt him.
    “When I recovered from my surprise,” he continued, “I told her I had been there a few times. Then she asked if I’d mind driving her there. I tried to argue with her, Mr. Shayne. I hinted that it was no place for a decent girl even in daylight, but she just compressed her lips and said she had to go and if I didn’t drive her she’d take a cab. So I drove her.”
    “Where—what address?” Shayne asked.
    “She had an address written on a piece of paper that looked as though it had been torn from the telephone pad here at the house. She referred to it and told me she wanted to go down along Iberville. She kept watching numbers as I drove, and finally told me to stop at the next corner.
    “I tried to get her to let me go with her, but she wouldn’t, and she wouldn’t tell me the address. She insisted that I let her out on a corner and drive on. Well, I let her out and turned around the corner while she started back along the street. I found a parking place and swung into it and hurried back on foot to see where she went.”
    Neal smiled wryly. “It was spying on her, but it really wasn’t mere spying. At least I convinced myself that I was worried about her. I was in time to see her go up the walk and enter an old building.
    “I waited fifteen or twenty minutes and she finally came out. I dodged back around the corner before she saw me, and drove back to town to do my errand. I didn’t mention it to her later.”
    Shayne got out a pencil and pad and jotted down the Iberville address Neal gave him. He said, “You’ve given me a lot to think about. Thanks.”
    Shayne went out to his car and drove slowly through the business section until he found a barber shop with all the chairs filled and men waiting. He parked and went in. Before sitting down he picked up a newspaper from a table, looked at the date, and began turning the pages.
    The item which Katrin Moe had evidently clipped was a brief account of a prison break from the State penitentiary the preceding morning. Two convicts, Anton Hodge and Raymond Gillis, had made their escape early Tuesday morning by the simple ruse of getting inside a laundry truck and concealing themselves under a pile of dirty clothes. Once outside, they had conked the driver and made their getaway toward New Orleans in the truck, abandoning it near the city.
    Anton Hodge was described as twenty-eight, blond and slender, of medium height, serving a seven-year term for burglary. Gillis was twenty-three, also blond, weight one hundred and seventy-five pounds, height five-feet seven inches, serving a ten-year term for aggravated assault. Both were described as dangerous.
    Shayne laid the paper down after reading the item. He yawned and looked at his watch, got up and went out to his car and drove to Iberville. He parked near the corner Neal had mentioned.
    The house Katrin Moe had visited the afternoon before she died was a decrepit old frame structure with a faded sign over the door that read: Rooms 50¢.
    He opened the door and entered a dark hallway thick with the stench of half a century of accumulated odors. A sign over an open doorway said Office. The room was foggy with smoke from half a dozen cigarettes roiling up to cloud a lone light bulb over a table where six men were playing cards.
    A hulking man got up and came toward Shayne. His eyes were wary, and he grunted, “Watcha want?”
    “Some