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“I wonder if I could trouble you for a drink of water before I go?”
    “But yes, Señor.” She went into the kitchen and Shayne turned back to the table. He pocketed the recent snapshot of Marquita Morales, and was waiting at the kitchen door when Mrs. Morales returned with a brimming glass of water. He drank it and thanked her, went out and drove away in the police coupé.

CHAPTER NINE
    When Shayne stopped at the hotel desk to pick up his key, the clerk said, “There’s a party here inquiring for you, Mr. Shayne. He’s sitting right over there on that circular lounge.”
    Shayne turned to look at the man indicated by the clerk. He was an old man with deep-set eyes beneath shaggy brows. He had sunken cheeks, a weak chin, and a long scrawny neck. He wore a shiny black suit and was obviously ill at ease in the marbled grandeur of the Paso del Norte lobby. A dirty black felt hat was tipped far back on his gray head and he was sucking noisily on a short-stemmed briar.
    After studying him for a moment, Shayne was positive he had never seen the man before. He walked over to him and said, “You wanted to see me? I’m Shayne.”
    “The detective I read about in the papers?” He came hastily to his feet.
    Shayne nodded.
    “Then I wanta see you, I reckon. Yes, sir, I sure do.” He bobbed his head up and down several times as he spoke.
    “What about?” Shayne made a move to sit down on the circular lounge.
    “It’s sorta private,” the old man quavered, glancingaround the crowded lobby. “Couldn’t we go out some place to talk?”
    Shayne dangled his room key and suggested, “I’ve got a drink up in my room.”
    “Now, that’d be right nice. Yes, sir, I say that’d be right nice.” The old man chuckled and held out a blue-veined hand, gnarled and callused by long years of hard work. “Name’s Josiah Riley,” he announced.
    Shayne shook hands with him and led the way toward the elevator. They went up to his room, and he indicated a chair while he went into the bathroom to wash out the two glasses he and Carmela had drunk from. He came back and uncorked the bottle of rye he had ordered after Lance Bayliss left, poured out two drinks, and handed one to Josiah Riley.
    “I take this right friendly of you,” the old fellow told him. “Yes, sir, it’s a real gentleman that offers a man a drink without knowin’ what his business is.”
    Shayne sat down and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “What is your business, Mr. Riley?”
    “I’m what you might call retired,” the old fellow chuckled. “Yes, sir, I reckon that’s what you might call it. Live by myself in a little shack on the river flats north of the College of Mines. Mighty pleasant an’ quiet an’ comfortable livin’ by myself thataway.” He put the glass of rye to his lips and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down until the glass was empty. He sighed gustily and licked his lips. “Got kind of usta livin’ by myself back in the old days when I was prospectin’.”
    “So you retired after making your pile?”
    “I’m not rightly sayin’ that, Mr. Shayne. No, sir. I never made what you could call a fortune. Seemed like I had bad luck, sorta.” He looked wistfully at the whisky bottle, but Shayne made no motion toward it.
    “What brings you to see me, Riley?”
    “Well, sir, I see by the paper that you come all the way up from New Orleans to help clear Jeff Towne in that there accident last Tuesday where the soldier got killed.”
    Shayne sipped from his glass and watched the old prospector thoughtfully and didn’t say anything.
    Josiah Riley hunched himself a little closer. His old eyes glittered hotly. “I’m thinkin’ maybe you and me can do business.”
    “What sort of business?”
    “I reckon you’ve done found out the soldier was dead before Towne’s car ever run over him, hey?”
    Shayne looked surprised. “What makes you think that?”
    Riley waggled his head knowingly. “Maybe I got a reason for thinkin’