Four

The morning papers had the story.

They’d had to throw it in at the last minute. It was a routine double-suicide death pact, the way the papers sized it up, but it had ‘angles’. If these developed, it could be a whale of a sex scandal. The papers wanted to be free to play it up or drop it, whichever way the cat jumped.

Headlines said, ‘SAN ROBLES BROKER IN DEATH-PACT KILLS FORMER SECRETARY, THEN TURNS GUN ON SELF... LOVE TRYST IN MOTOR COURT TERMINATES IN TRAGEDY.’

The story followed the usual line, but emphasised that there were certain ‘peculiar circumstances’ which police were investigating.

The dead woman was Mrs. Stanwick Carlton, who had been Dover Fulton’s secretary for a period of years. She had left his employ about three years ago to marry Stanwick Carlton, a mining man, and had been living in Colorado.

Two weeks ago she had told her husband she wanted to “visit relatives in California.” She had driven her own car on the trip, arriving ten days ago. During those ten days she had apparently been in company with Dover Fulton on several occasions. The proprietor of the KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT remembered that the same couple had rented a cabin there the week before under the name of Mr. and Mrs. Stanwick Carlton.

The thing which puzzled the police, however, was that while the proprietor of the KOZY DELL had insisted the parties to the tragedy had arrived in the Colorado car, Dover Fulton’s own automobile was found parked in the driveway of the auto court. The car was locked both inside and out, but the car keys were not found on Dover’s body. A woman’s coin purse was on the floor of the car. It contained about ten dollars in small change and a ‘business card’.

To further complicate matters, police had received a call just a few minutes before the time of the shooting, advising them that Dover Fulton’s car had been stolen.

The time of the shooting was fixed as being between ten and ten-thirty in the evening. Several occupants of adjoining cabins had heard the sound of the shots but had thought they were caused by a car back-firing. The bodies were discovered when occupants of an adjoining cabin complained of the blaring radio next door.

One point which police were trying to clear up was why three shots had been fired. Apparently Fulton had killed his mistress with one shot through the back of the head. He had then turned the gun on himself, but two witnesses insisted there had been three shots, and after some considerable search, police found where the third bullet had entered a suitcase identified as belonging to Mrs. Carlton.

Stanwick Carlton, husband of the dead woman, had, as it turned out, arrived in the city by plane only an hour or so before the shooting. He had, he explained, “Felt something was wrong.” He was ‘stunned’ when located at a down-town hotel and advised of his wife’s death. Dover Fulton, a prominent broker in San Robles, left a widow, Irene Fulton, and two children, one a girl four years old, one a boy of six. He had apparently been happily married and Mrs. Fulton “was at a loss to account for his actions,” refusing at first to believe that he could possibly have been the person who had committed suicide. Not until she was confronted with the body did she believe what had happened.

Perhaps the strangest thing of all, however, was the fact that while Dover Fulton and Mrs. Carlton had registered as Mr. and Mrs. Stanwick Carlton and had been assigned cabin number three, it appeared a second couple had rented cabin number eleven in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Dover Fulton, and these people had given the licence number of Dover Fulton’s black sedan, which was found parked and locked in front of the cabin which had been assigned to them.

The woman who ran the place described the girl as being a beautiful blonde who appeared somehow to be intensely nervous; the man with her, according to the best recollection of the woman who managed the motor court, was of medium height and weight, with dark, wavy hair, and what the witness described as ‘expressive eyes’. She said she had felt certain “there was something phony” about this second couple.

The newspaper account stated:

While apparently there can be no question but what the tragedy was a routine version of a death-pact by people who found themselves in love, but who were separated by marital entanglements there are certain phases of the case which the police are investigating.

The paper then went on to state that police had given Stanwick Carlton a severe grilling and were not entirely satisfied with his answers. They were investigating his movements after getting off the plane and going to the down-town hotel where he had registered.

The revolver from which the shots were fired was a .32-calibre revolver owned by Dover Fulton. Mrs. Fulton stated that her husband had been working almost every evening for the past ten days and that about ten days ago he had opened the drawer, taken out the small-calibre revolver and had been carrying it with him ever since. She was prostrated by shock.

The newspaper had photographs, pictures of Dover Fulton and of Minerva Carlton, pictures of the bodies, of the interior of the cabin. This last picture showed the sprawled figures, the open bathroom door, a double towel-rack with two hand towels on the upper rod, a bath-towel on the lower.

I folded the newspapers back into place and did a little floor pacing. No matter how I looked at it, the thing was completely cock-eyed.

I rang Bertha on the telephone. “Seen the newspaper?” I asked.

“Don’t be a sap!” Bertha yelled back at me. “I haven’t seen anything. I’m trying to get some sleep — that is, I was trying.”

“Take a look at the morning newspaper,” I told her. “Late edition. Front page. Lower right-hand corner, with a continuation over on page three.”

“What the hell’s it all about?” Bertha asked.

“Something you should know,” I said. “Call me back when you’ve finished reading it. Be careful what you say over the phone. Good-bye.”

I could hear Bertha Cool’s indignant sputtering in the telephone receiver as I dropped it back into its cradle on the bedside stand.

It was a full fifteen minutes before she called me.

Apparently she had made up her mind to put me in my place by not calling back, but when she read the news it was so disturbing she had forgotten her anger.

“Donald,” she said, “what’s up?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re the one who drove that second car…”

“Careful!” I interrupted.

“And the name... well, it’s in your handwriting?”

“That’s right.”

“Why the hell did you sign his name?”

“Because I didn’t want to sign mine.”

“You put down the right licence number?” Bertha asked after a second or two.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Reasons.”

“Did you think any questions were going to be asked later on?”

“I considered it as a possibility.”

“Well, you’ve got yourself in a nice mess,” she said.

“You don’t know the half of it,” I told her. “There’s a chance that ‘business card’ in the coin purse was mine.”

“The hell it was!”

“I don’t know. It could have been. Now you just keep completely out of it and tell me where I can find this Claire Bushnell. I want to talk to her.”

Bertha said, “I wrote her address on a sheet of paper and stuck it under the corner of my blotter.”

“Any telephone number?”

“I don’t know, lover. I don’t think so. It came in too late to file, so I just took the data and left it all under the blotter on my desk. It was Saturday morning, and…”

“You cashed the cheque?” I interrupted.

“Don’t be a fool. Of course I cashed the cheque.”

“And it was good?”

“I had you go out there, didn’t I? If the cheque hadn’t been good I’d have had the little tart thrown in the can. Do you think it’d be smart to go to the police and tell them the whole story?”

“Not yet,” I told her. “Later on perhaps. When we tell the police, I want them to have something to work on.”

“They’d have something to work on if we told them, now, wouldn’t they, lover?”

“Yes!” I said. “Me!”

I slipped the receiver back on the cradle and went up to our office building. I signed the register the porter kept in the lift, and he took me up to our floor. I walked down to the offices where the frosted glass bore the legend COOL & LAM and down in the lower left-hand corner, Investigations. Walk in.

I entered the office, swung past the door to my private office and on into Bertha’s private office. Every piece of furniture was stamped with the individuality of Bertha Cool, from the creaky swivel chair behind her desk to the locked cash drawer over on the right-hand side — a drawer which locked with a separate key from any of the other drawers in her desk. It was always a safe bet that Bertha had everything under lock and key. She didn’t trust the secretary, the porters, or, for that matter, her partner.

I sat down in Bertha Cool’s swivel chair.

The squeak seemed to have been built into it, a peculiar squeak which came just at one place whenever I moved. I raised the blotter.

The memorandum was there.

I studied it. The address I wanted was 1624 Veronica Way.

Down underneath that in Bertha’s strong masculine hand writing, appeared the words, “Wants her aunt shadowed.”

Then Bertha had crossed out the ‘aunt’ and inserted ‘stock salesman’ in place of ‘aunt’.

Below that, Bertha had started doodling, evidently while she’d been talking with Claire Bushnell.

Bertha had started out writing ‘one hundred dollars’ in words. Then she had made ‘$100.00’ in figures. Then she had written ‘one hundred dollars’ two or three times. Then she had crossed out all of the ‘one hundred dollars’ and written ‘one hundred and fifty dollars’. Then she had written, ‘thinks stock salesman might be boy friend — thinks some cause for alarm here — something she is not telling us — wants Donald.’

Then Bertha had gone doodling again and this time the figure was ‘$175.00’, after which appeared the words, ‘Donald personally’.

Then there was more doodling, then the words, ‘Aunt’s address, 226 Korreander Street.’

Then there were more doodlings of aimless lines, then in Bertha’s handwriting, ‘Aunt’s name, Amelia Jasper; man who is trying to swindle her: Age 35, well-dressed, thick-chested, double-breasted suits, mostly grey: dark-complexioned, long, straight features; nervous laugh, smokes cigarette with long, carved ivory holder, a chain smoker, smoking one right after the other; good profile until he laughs, then mouth seems cruel; laughter harsh, profile beautiful.’

There were more doodlings, then Bertha, as an afterthought, had got the things I’d been trying to impress on her for the last three years: an accurate description of the man she wanted shadowed: ‘Height 5 feet 11; weight 195; dark hair, grey eyes.’

Once more Bertha had written ‘one hundred and seventy-five dollars’, then crossed it out, put in ‘two hundred dollars’, then more doodling, then, ‘Subject has appointment for four o’clock in afternoon. Have Donald shadow, picking up subject at 226 Korreander.’

Down underneath, in firm, angular strokes, appeared the one thing which, so far as Bertha was concerned, terminated the interview: ‘Received cheque, $200.00.’

It was all written on three sheets of legal foolscap which Bertha had clipped together and pushed under the blotter of her desk, intending later on to dictate a memo to go into the case-history file, but since the client had come in just before noon on Saturday, Bertha hadn’t had a chance to get at the dictation.

That was where I’d taken over. Bertha had called me in and I’d staked out at 226 Korreander, a well-designed but small stucco house.

I’d waited out there and the subject had come in exactly on the dot, just as specified, smoking a cigarette in a holder, wearing a double-breasted, well tailored grey suit with blue stripes. He’d remained for approximately an hour and ten minutes.

I’d tagged along behind when he left, keeping in the blind spot where his rear-view mirror couldn’t pick me up, noting the licence number of the car he was driving, watching the traffic, dropping as far behind as possible when I knew I couldn’t lose him, then crowding up close on him. He hadn’t given the slightest indication of being interested in anything that was going on behind him.

Yet the man had checked out of the hotel that night after I’d tailed him there. He must have been smarter than I thought, must have known he was being followed. I couldn’t figure out any other answer at the moment, and that answer bothered me, was bad for my self-respect — that which Bertha would have referred to as my damned conceit. I had always flattered myself on being able to tell when a subject knew he was being followed.

I made up my mind I’d be a lot more cautious with Mr. Thomas Durham in the future — in the event there was going to be any future.

It was typical of Bertha’s memo that she had boosted the price a hundred dollars while she’d been talking with the client, and a clinical record of Bertha’s mental processes was preserved on those sheets of legal foolscap, but she hadn’t even bothered to find out whether the client had a telephone, or anything about the client’s history. She’d received two hundred dollars, and that was that.

I looked under the name of Bushnell in the telephone directory and couldn’t find anything. I got hold of Enquiries, and Enquiries either couldn’t or wouldn’t help me, so I went down to the garage and got out our old agency car ‘Number Two.’

Agency ‘Number One’ was a new job and Bertha usually managed to use that on her business. Agency ‘Number Two’ was a nondescript, stout-hearted little old crock that had rubbed dents in its wings being loyal to the agency business. For over a hundred thousand miles it had trailed other cars, shadowed married men who were explaining to cuties that their wives didn’t understand them, worn out tyres digging up witnesses and chasing down clues in an assortment of murder cases.

I got the motor warmed up and waited until most of the rattles and bangs had ceased to be quite so noticeable before pushing the car in gear and starting out for Claire Bushnell’s place.

1624 Veronica Way turned out to be an apartment house. I looked over the cards and saw the name Claire Bushnell, cut from a visiting card and inserted in a little holder over the button.

I pressed the button.

Nothing happened.

It was Sunday and she might be loafing around or she might be out taking a walk. From the name on the card, she evidently didn’t have a husband, so I decided to be informal. I played a little tune on the bell, a long, two shorts, a long, a short, a long, a short, then a long followed by three quick shorts.

That did the trick. The buzzer announced the door was being opened.

I took a look at the number, saw it was Apartment 319, and went inside.

It was a gorgeous day outside, with beautiful clear sunlight, and the air had a nice fresh tang to it that had made me want to take the agency car way out on the highway, park under some trees and watch the birds. Inside the apartment house the air was stuffy and stale. After the bright sunlight outside, it was difficult to see things down the hall.

The owners of the apartment must have decided to conserve electricity so the big industrial users could have all they wanted.

I finally found the lift, and rattled and banged up to the third floor. It didn’t take me long to locate Apartment 319.

The door wasn’t open.

I tapped on the panels.

Nothing happened.

I tried the knob and went in.

It was an ordinary furnished apartment, the kind that used to be medium-priced. It was an old building with something of rambling incoherency about its design, and the apartments had been figured out, not on a basis of the greatest efficiency, but on a sort of hit-or-miss basis. I gathered perhaps the building had at one time consisted of flats or larger apartments, and had been cut up.

There was water running in the bathroom, and as I closed the door behind me, a woman’s voice called out. “It’s a wonder you didn’t show up with the car earlier. It’s a nice day outside and…”

I walked over to a chair by the window and sat down.

When I didn’t say anything, the voice from the bathroom quieted down, and then the water shut off and a door opened.

Claire Bushnell, wearing a bath-robe and slippers, her eyes wide with startled curiosity, came shuffling into the room.

“Well, I like that!” she exclaimed.

There was a Sunday paper on the table. I’d already seen all of it that interested me, mostly about the mess out at the KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT, but I thought it was a good time to appear nonchalant. I picked up the paper and said, “Don’t let me interfere with your bath. Go ahead and get your clothes on.”

“Get out!” she said.

I lowered the paper and looked up over the top of it with mild surprise registered on my face.

“What’s that?”

“You heard what I said. Get out!”

“But I want to see you.”

“Get out. I thought you were…”

“Yes?” I asked as she hesitated.

“Who are you?”

I said, “Didn’t you want a detective agency to shadow...?”

“No!” she screamed at me.

“I think you did.”

“Well, you’re completely wrong. I never hired a detective agency in my life.”

I put down the paper, took my card-case from my pocket, extracted a business card, got up out of the chair, walked over and handed it to her.

She took the card, read it, looked at me suspiciously for e moment, then said, “Oh!”

I went back to the chair and sat down.

She looked at the card again.

“You’re Donald Lam?”

“That’s right.”

She thought things over for a moment, then said, “Got anything on you to identify you?”

I showed her my driver’s licence and my licence as a private detective.

She said, “I was just taking a bath.”

“So I gathered.”

“Well,” she said, “no use telling you to make yourself at home. Do you have this much assurance with all your clients?”

“I knocked at the door,” I said. “You didn’t answer.”

“I left it unlocked. I thought you were — a girl friend.”

“Well,” I said, “I couldn’t help that. I didn’t want to stand out in the hall and shout my identity for the benefit of your neighbours.”

“No,” she admitted, “I suppose not. All right, I’ll get some clothes on.”

There evidently was a bedroom on the other side of the bath. She went through the bathroom, pulled the door shut, and I heard the bolt shoot into position. She trusted me about as much as a canary trusts a house cat.

I waited for about fifteen minutes; then she came back.

Bertha Cool was right. She was a slick-looking chick, easy on the eyes.

She had nice lines, lively black eyes which probably could twinkle with humour on occasion, hair so dark that it seemed almost blue-black in some lights, and a very, very neat figure.

She looked cool, clean and comfortable, as she sat down and said, “Suppose you tell me what it’s all about. What have you found out?”

I said, “I’d like to have you fill in a few details.”

“I gave Mrs. Cool all the information.”

I said, “You probably did, at that, but she didn’t write it down.”

“Why, yes she did. She was sitting there with a pencil and a pad, making notes of everything.”

I said, “Bertha Cool was mainly interested in the fee. She wrote down the amount of money we were getting quite a few times, but…”

Claire Bushnell threw back her head and laughed.

I said, “First, let’s find out something about your aunt. According to Bertha Cool, she’s Amelia Jasper, and she lives at 226 Korreander. You’re the only living relative she has.”

“That’s right.”

“What else?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

She hesitated for a moment, looking me over as though trying to decide how much to tell me. Then she said, “My uncle died a few years ago and apparently left my aunt some money. No one knows how much.”

I simply sat there.

She started choosing her words, and I knew she was being careful, trying to say exactly what she wanted to say. “My aunt is now fifty-two. During the past few years, I am afraid she has become inordinately vain. She is a very young-looking woman for her age, but she carries it to extremes and is getting positively silly. She has developed a passion for asking people to guess her age — well, you know how that is. Nothing seems to be too absurd for her. As I say, she’s fifty-two. If a person guesses her as forty-five, Aunt Amelia gets just a little bit frosty. If it’s forty, she’ll smile. But if they put her down around thirty-seven, Auntie will simper and beam and really warm up and say, ‘Darling, you never would guess it, but I’m actually forty-one’.”

“Her hair?” I asked.

“Henna.”

“Disposition?”

“Coy.”

I said, “In other words, you’re afraid this man who’s calling on her may have honourable intentions.”

She met my eyes for a long moment and then said, “Exactly.”

“How are you and your aunt? Friendly?”

She said, “Let’s not misunderstand each other, Mr. Lam. Suppose you were fifty-two and wanted people to think you looked thirty-five, and you had a young niece hanging around who was — well, how old do you think I am?”

I looked her over carefully and with a long, steady appraisal. “Thirty-eight,” I said.

Her eyes flashed hot anger; then she threw back her head and broke out laughing.

“I’m twenty-four.”

“Well,” I told her, “after the lecture you’d given me on…”

“My God!” she said. “Do I really look past thirty?”

“No,” I told her. “I figured you about seventeen, but, since you’d explained the psychology of the thing, I thought…”

“Oh, nuts!” she interrupted.

I sat there and waited.

“Well, anyway,” she said after a moment, “you can figure how it is with Aunt Amelia. She is friendly enough so she likes to have me there when no men are around. Particularly since this man has been calling on her, Auntie has let it become apparent that she’d just as soon have me phone before I come. In other words, be sure that I don’t come when the gentleman with the dark hair and the beautiful profile is there.”

“Have you ever been there when he’s there?”

“Once,” she said, “and Auntie got rid of me so fast that it wasn’t even funny.”

“Your aunt introduce you?”

“Don’t be silly!”

“Then you never met him?”

“No.”

“Think he’d know you if he saw you again?”

“Yes.”

“He only saw you for a few minutes?”

“A few seconds.”

“Just that once?”

“Yes.”

“But he looked you over?”

“His eyes burnt holes in my clothes.”

“He’s that way?”

“I think so. His eyes are.”

“Any idea what he’s after — with your aunt?”

“I think he’s selling her something.”

“You told Bertha Cool you were afraid he was selling her stock.”

“You seem to have the right answer,” she said.

“You wouldn’t mind if he nicked her for a little money on a stock transaction?”

She said, “Mr. Lam, if that man could be given an opportunity to swindle Aunt Amelia out of twenty or thirty thousand dollars, I… I’d almost tell him all I knew about Auntie’s psychology so he could go ahead. What I’m afraid of is that’s what he started to do and now I’m afraid he’s trying to sell her merchandise that’s going to cost her more and will be a lot less valuable to her.”

“You mean he’s trying to sell himself?”

“Yes.”

“Would your aunt re-marry?”

“I think so, under proper circumstances. She’s — well, she’s carried this business of being flattered to a point where it’s making her sort of — well, I hate to say it, but—”

“You don’t have to say it,” I said.

“What have you found out?” she asked. “What happened yesterday?”

“I picked up this man and shadowed him.”

“Who is he? Where does he live?”

“His name is Thomas Durham, and he was staying in the Westchester Arms Hotel. He checked out late yesterday night.”

“Checked out!”

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re a fine detective!” she flared.

I said, “Wait a minute. The instructions that I had were to shadow this man and find out who he was — that was all. You didn’t want a twenty-four-hour shadowing job, and you didn’t pay for one.”

“Well, I wanted to find out something about him.”

“You’re going to,” I told her. “I’m working on it.”

“Why did he check out?”

“I don’t know, I intend to find out. In order to find out, I’ve got to get a little more information.”

“Well, go get it.”

“I want to get some here.”

“What about?”

“Let’s start with you. You’ve been married.”

“Yes.”

“What happened to the marriage?”

“It went on the rocks.”

“Who was the man?”

“A Mr. Bushnell,” she said. “A James Bushnell. Mrs. Bushnell’s little boy, Jimmie, you know.”

“Oh, yes,” I said, “Jimmie — good old Jimmie! Well, well, well! And what was wrong with Jimmie?”

“A little bit of everything.”

“How long have you been on your own?”

“A year.”

“Alimony?”

“Go fly a kite.”

“I was just asking.”

“I was just answering.”

“Are you dependent on your aunt financially?”

“No.”

“Any other relatives?”

“No.”

“In other words, you’re the sole heir?”

“If she should die, I presume I would be, but, of course, she has the right to do anything she wants to with her property.”

I said, “You’re not being very helpful.”

“I’m answering questions.”

“You’re not volunteering anything.”

“I hired you to get me information.”

“Your attitude towards your aunt seems a little detached.”

She said with feeling, “I’d like to be closer to her. She’s my only relative. At times she misses me. Then she gets these boy-struck ideas. But so far she’s always drawn the line at matrimony. She’s been afraid someone would get her money. She’s tight as a new shoe. When she’s lonely she loves me and wants me to come stay with her. A few weeks ago she had an auto accident. Since then she’s had attacks of sciatica. She thinks they were caused by injuries received in the accident. She makes a great to-do over it, rests on an air cushion in a wheel-chair and all that.”

“And the insurance company?”

“Thinks the accident was her fault.”

“And she’s a little man-crazy?”

“That’s putting it mildly!”

“Too bad,” I said. “She might get over it with a little financial pruning.”

“She might... I can’t see what she’s trying to get. I simply can’t understand her-yes I can, too. I understand and I sympathize, but I can’t…”

“Condone?” I asked.

“Who am I to condone?” she asked.

“Well, suppose you quit trying to justify yourself to yourself, and start telling me the facts.”

“My parents died when I was three. They perished together in a shipwreck. Aunt Amelia took me to bring up. I can’t even remember my parents. I can remember Aunt Amelia, all of her virtues, which are many, and all of her faults.”

“Go ahead,” I said.

“Aunt Amelia was a very, very beautiful woman,” she went on. “She married Uncle Dave out of pity, and she was disillusioned. She didn’t believe in divorce. She learned after a few years that the man to whom she was married had an incurable ailment. She desperately, passionately, tried to keep herself young so that when Uncle Davie died she could — well, keep as much of her youth as possible. She wanted to begin all over again.”

“That’s understandable,” I said.

“Then Uncle Dave died and she met Uncle Fred. By that time I think Aunt Amelia had become shrewdly calculating. I only know that the first memories of my childhood are of Auntie standing in front of mirrors, studying herself carefully from every angle, turning me over to a nurse; then to a private school.

“You can see what happened, Mr. Lam. During those years when Auntie was waiting for the man she had married to die, trying to keep herself young, she had formed a habit of thinking of herself exclusively, dreaming about her youthful appearance. That was the primary thing in her life. If Aunt Amelia could only be jarred out of that, she’d be a very wonderful woman. She’s witty, intelligent and... and selfish.”

“She’s been injured?”

“Yes, this automobile accident. Only minor injuries, but she’s trying to keep them alive. Every so often she has a relapse and takes to her wheelchair.”

“Who pushes it?”

“Susie Irwin, maid, housekeeper, companion, cook and chauffeur.”

“Any other help in the house?”

“No.”

“Your aunt is stingy?”

“Both stingy and secretive.”

“Rich?”

“I tell you, no one knows. She inherited some money. She’s made investments. She always seems to have money, but she hates to spend it and if you really want to make her mad, ask her one question, just one single question about her financial affairs.”

“Tell me about the accident.”

“Oh, it was one of those street intersection things, with each party claiming the other was in the wrong.”

“Settled?”

“Auntie sputtered and fumed for a while, but the insurance company decided she was in the wrong and made a settlement with the owner of the other car. He had three witnesses with him. Auntie was driving alone. She was furious. She cancelled her insurance with the company because of it.”

“Taken out any since?”

“No, she swears she’ll carry her own insurance. She feels the other people should have been sued and made to pay. She may have been right. Auntie’s very careful and observing and her reactions are quick, but, as I said, the other car had three witnesses. They might have been coached by a gramophone record, the way they told their story.”

I said, “Let’s be frank with each other. Mrs. Bushnell…”

“I go under the name of Miss Bushnell.”

“All right; then, let’s be frank with each other, Claire.”

She said, “You work fast, don’t you, Mister Lam?”

“Not so fast,” I said. “I just don’t think we have time to waste getting acquainted. Let’s get down to brass tacks. This is a medium-priced, furnished apartment. You…”

“You ought to pay the rent on it if you think it’s medium-priced.”

“I know, but it’s in that general’ classification. You haven’t a car. You probably have some income, perhaps alimony. You have good clothes, as cheap an apartment as one can live in comfortably and still have a little elbow room. You don’t have a telephone. You aren’t rich. You don’t have any big income.”

Her eyes were angry.

I said, “But you gave Bertha Cool two hundred bucks in order to find out about the man who is hanging around your aunt. That two hundred dollars didn’t come easy.”

“Well, it went easy,” she flared.

I nodded and said, “You’re not getting my point. It took quite a motive for you to part with two hundred dollars. You didn’t do it simply because you were suspicious of a man who was dancing attendance on your Aunt Amelia.”

“I said he was trying to sell her something.”

“Bertha Cool talked with you for quite a while. Then she made the two-hundred-dollar price and you didn’t argue with her. You didn’t try to bargain…”

“Was I supposed to have done so?”

“Some of them do.”

“Then what happens?”

“They get the worst of it. But I’m not talking about Bertha. I’m talking about you.”

“So it would seem.”

“In other words,” I said, “you had some motive that you haven’t told us.”

She bounced up out of her chair and said angrily, “Will you get busy and do what you’re paid to do, instead of hanging around here and insulting me?”

“I’m trying to get information so I can help you.”

She said sarcastically, ‘Believe me, Mr. Lam, if I had known the answers, I certainly wouldn’t have paid your estimable, grasping, avaricious Bertha Cool two hundred dollars in order to get those answers for me. When I turned that money over to your partner, I was foolish enough to think that I could get someone who would go out and start collecting information for me, not hang around my apartment on a Sunday morning making passes…”

“I haven’t made any passes,” I told her.

“I know,” she said, “but you will.”

“Want to bet?” I asked.

She looked at me scornfully, then said, “Yes.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred dollars,” she said, and then added hastily, “No, wait a minute. You’d... I’m talking about the way you came in when I was taking a bath, the way you... I mean for two hundred dollars you wouldn’t.”

“Make it a hundred.”

“No.”

“Fifty.”

“No.”

“Ten.”

“That’s a go,” she said. “It’s a bet. You’d be a gentleman for twenty, but you’d be willing to lose the ten if you thought you could get to first base.”

I said, “Okay. You’ve made a bet. Now, let’s get back to the case.”

“What do you want to know?”

I said casually, “Ever lived in Colorado?”

“No.”

“Don’t happen to know a Dover Fulton?”

“No.”

“His wife?”

“No, never heard of them.”

“Don’t happen to know a Stanwick Carlton?”

Her eyes became round. “What does that have to do with it?”

“Nothing, perhaps. I wanted to know.”

“Why I… I know Minerva Carlton. I’ve known her for years. She’s a close friend. I don’t know her husband. I’ve never met him.”

“Where does Minerva live?”

“In Colorado.”

“Heard from her lately?”

“No.”

“Read the papers?” I asked.

She said, “The comic section and the magazine part. What on earth does Minerva have to do with all this?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “You’re a close friend of hers?”

“Yes, very close.”

“When did you hear from her last?”

“Oh, I don’t know — a month or so ago. We write constantly.”

“Don’t happen to have a picture, do you?”

“Why, yes, I’ve got a photograph she sent, and I have some snapshots taken when we were at the beach this summer.”

“Let’s take a look at the snapshots.”

“But why?”

“I want to see them.”

“But what does that have to do with this man who’s been calling on Aunt Amelia?”

“I don’t know. I want to take a look at the pictures.”

She said, “You’re the most arbitrary man I think I ever knew, outside of…” she hesitated.

“You mean Mrs. Bushnell’s little boy, Jimmie?”

“Exactly,” she said.

I said, “Okay, get the pictures and we’ll call it square.”

She went to a cupboard, rummaged around in a drawer, came out with an envelope of the kind put out by concerns that specialize in developing and printing pictures. There was a pocket on one side for films, a pocket on the other for prints.

She took out the prints and started running through them. A half-smile played around the corners of her mouth as she hastily put six of the prints back in the pocket. Then she handed me two.

I looked at the photographs. They were good, clear photographs of Claire Bushnell and another girl in very skimpy bathing suits. The pictures showed that Claire Bushnell had a neat little figure. The girl with her was the one I’d seen in the cocktail lounge the night before, the red-headed girl with the contemplative eyes.

“That’s Minerva Carlton?” I asked.

“The one with me, yes.”

“Nice figure,” I said.

“She gets by.”

“Yours, I was looking at.”

“Is this part of the service I get for two hundred dollars, or do you throw this in?”

“I throw this in.”

“You can throw it out, as far as I’m concerned.”

“What are the other pictures?”

She shook her head. “When two girls have a camera and get to playing around on the beach, you can’t tell just what will happen.”

“You have the films for these pictures?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Give me the films for these two, will you?”

“Why?”

“I want them.”

She hesitated a moment, then took films from the pocket on the other side. She walked over to hold them up to the light so she could identify the ones she wanted. She had her back to me. I watched her shoulders move, watched the semi-opaque films coming up to the light.

She picked out the films I wanted, handed them to me.

“Got an envelope?” I asked.

By way of an answer, she dumped the rest of the films out and handed me the empty envelope.

I looked at the films. They were good and clear, two and a quarter by three and a quarter. They’d enlarge nicely.

“Nice exposure,” I said.

“Cut the personal stuff, please.”

“I was referring to the shutter timing,” I said.

“Oh!”

I studied the films. “And well developed.”

“That corner drugstore has done my developing for three years.”

I said, “That time I wasn’t referring to the films. I was talking about your figure.”

She made as if to throw a book at me, but she couldn’t keep the twinkle out of her eyes.

“So you haven’t heard from Stanwick Carlton?” I asked.

She smiled and shook her head and said, “I suspect Stan-wick doesn’t like me. After all I’m linked with Minerva’s purple past.”

“Did she have one?”

“Don’t be silly. He’s jealous, possessive and suspicious.”

I said, “You might read the rest of your paper.”

“Why?”

“Minerva was found dead in the KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT, an auto court about eight or ten miles outside of the city. She…”

Claire Bushnell dashed to the little smoking stand, whipped the paper open, tossing the comic section and the magazine part to the floor. I pointed to the account of the love-pact slaying.

While she was standing there in stupefied bewilderment, or the best imitation of it she could assume, I picked up the rest of the films, slipped them into my pocket and walked out, quietly closing the door behind me.

She didn’t even hear me go. The last I saw of her as I closed the door, she was standing with wide, horror-stricken eyes, reading the account of Minerva Carlton’s death.

The elevator wasn’t on the third floor and I didn’t wait for it. I took the stairs two at a time, climbed in the agency crock and got out of there.

Four blocks down the street I stopped the car to look at the films I had.

Two of them were nudes. In the other four, the girls wore bathing suits, but there was a man with them. Minerva Carlton’s head was resting on his bare torso. They both looked happy.

I put the films all together in the pocket of the envelope. The print order was on the front. “Three each on glossy,” it said.