It was a good thirty minutes before Bertha Cool showed up and she was mad enough to have bitten her initials on an iron fence rail.
She slammed the car to a stop, and I walked around behind, came up on the right-hand side, opened the door, got in beside her and sat down.
Bertha had her chin pushed forward like a prow of a battleship. Her little beady eyes were glittering angrily.
“What the hell have you been into now?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, this is a fine time to start finding out.”
“Isn’t it?”
She jerked the car through the gears, drove savagely to the first intersection, watched her opportunity and swung the car in a U turn that wore rubber off the protesting tyres.
“Nice weather we’re having for this time of year,” I said.
“You go to the devil!” she told me.
We drove on in silence.
After a while her curiosity got the upper hand. “Well,” she said, “tell me about it. What is it all about?”
I said, “Let’s go back to the beginning. Do you remember this afternoon when I was working on a shadow job?”
“That’s right,” she said. “Someone wanted us to find out the name and identity of a man who was selling some sort of stock. Have any trouble?”
“Not a bit,” I said. “It was almost a setup. I picked this man up exactly where I was supposed to find him and followed him without the least bit of difficulty. He went directly to the Westchester Arms Hotel, walked up to the desk and got his key. I made discreet enquiries and found out that he was Thomas Durham and that he had been registered in the hotel for the last two days. No one seemed to know exactly what he did.”
“There was a change of shifts due at six o’clock and I thought I’d wait for the new shift to come on and see if I could get any more information. I only had a little over half an hour or so to wait.”
“Damn it,” Bertha said, “don’t tell me all the sordid details. My God, I’ve worn out my fanny sitting around hotel lobbies, waiting for the night clerk to come on. If you’re in a jam, there’s a girl mixed up in it someplace. Who is she?”
“I don’t know for sure,” I said.
“Another damn redhead, I presume. You can’t ever seem to leave them alone.”
“This one’s a molasses taffy, smooth-as-silk…”
“My God,” Bertha said, “if I ever go in business with another partner, I’ll get one past sixty who…”
“That won’t buy you anything, Bertha,” I told her. “The boys at sixty are peculiarly susceptible. A good-looking girl would tie them in knots and…”
“Past seventy,” Bertha amended.
“That wouldn’t do you any good either. A clever baby would remind them of their childhood sweethearts. You’ll have to get past eighty, and by that time their eyesight will be bad.”
“That’s the worst of it!” Bertha said angrily. “Some damn woman is always upsetting the apple cart. Well, tell me about this broad. What did she do?”
I said, “I keep going back to this Tom Durham case because I’m not entirely certain that my waiting in that hotel was purely the result of an accident.”
“What do you mean, an accident?” Bertha said, and then added parenthetically, “Damn that guy, if he doesn’t get his headlights down. Here, you mug, take that and that and that!”
Bertha angrily clicked the foot switch which sent the lights on the agency automobile bouncing up and down.
The other driver never did lower his lights, and Bertha Cool rolled down the left-hand window. As he swept on past, she shouted epithets at the top of her lungs, then rolled the window up. “What are you beating around the bush for?” she asked.
I said, “I was sitting in this hotel when a girl who said her name was Lucille Hart showed up. She pretended to have been driving an automobile which she said belonged to her sister, but which was registered in the name of her brother-in-law, apparently a chap who wants to be important in the family.”
“Husbands always want to be important,” Bertha said. “What happened?”
“When we walked out of the last joint, where we’d had drinks and dinner, the car very fortuitously was parked only a block away.”
Bertha grunted.
“And shortly before that she’d gone by-by and been out of the picture for twenty minutes.”
I saw Bertha was getting ready to explode so I hurried on: “One thing led to another and…”
“My God,” Bertha told me, “I know the facts of life. You don’t start picking up women in hotel lobbies and restaurants. Well, damn it, yes, that’s where you start, but the start’s always the same. So’s the finish, as far as that’s concerned. Tell me what the hell happened in the middle.”
I said, “We went along this road, I was going home with her and then her brother-in-law was going to take us back to town, then drive the car back again.”
“Humph!” Bertha snorted.
I said, “She had been drinking a lot of ginger ale. She said she was ill and wanted to find a rest-room. She told me to stop the car because she couldn’t go any farther. It was right near an auto court.”
Bertha slowed the car long enough to look at me pityingly. “For God’s sake,” she said, “what does a girl have to do with you? Hit you over the head with something?”
I said, “I got a cabin and by that time she thought she needed air. She walked out and I never saw her again.”
Bertha said, “You’re the one that needed the air! She gave it to you. I’ve told you a dozen times, Donald, that women go nuts over you, but you can’t keep turning them down the way you do. You get some jane all worked up and then wind up by being a perfect little gentleman. My God, I’ll bet she was sore at you. It’s a wonder she didn’t take a wrench out of the car and club you over the head. Why didn’t you take the car — or did she take it?”
I said, “It was all locked up. The last I saw of her, she had the keys. I have a very strong suspicion she may have telephoned the police, stating that the car was stolen and asking them to be on the lookout for it. I’m not at all certain but what I was roped in as a fall guy or something, and it bothers me.”
“Well,” Bertha said, “we’re trying to run a detective agency. God knows, it’s bad enough when I have to go around at night playing taxicab for you. I can’t lose sleep listening to all your wenching troubles, and I can’t go along to hold the script and read your lines for you. Next time take your own car, or carry a walkie-talkie so that when she makes you walk home, you can at least call a taxicab.”
I said, “I didn’t think I wanted a taxicab. I didn’t think it was advisable for me to be seen out there. Just as I was ready to leave the auto court, I heard a sound very much like the back-firing of a truck.”
“How’s that?” Bertha asked, suddenly rigid with attention. “Just like the sound of a truck back-firing,” I said, “only there wasn’t any truck.”
Bertha slowed the car and looked me over.
I said, “I think the place to start is back at that Tom Durham case. The person who contacted the agency on that case talked with you. Tell me about it.”
Bertha said, “She was a girl by the name of Bushnell, pretty easy on the eyes. I remember thinking at the time that it was a godsend I got her. If she’d gone to you, she’d have vamped you into taking the case without any retainer and you’d have turned the office upside down. As it was, I collected two hundred bucks in advance.”
“What did she want?”
“She said that her aunt, the only living relative, and a little bit indisposed at present on account of an automobile accident, had been seeing quite a bit of a relatively young man lately. She had an idea the man might be a slicker who was trying to talk dear auntie out of some money. This Bushnell girl had questioned the maid, trying to find out who the young man was. The aunt got in a huff, said she was fully capable of handling her own business, and didn’t need her niece’s interfering. The niece’s pretty much worked up about it. She wanted the agency to find out all about the man. She wanted something that would cramp his style.”
“Do you think she was afraid he might have dishonorable intentions?”
Bertha snorted. “She paid two hundred bucks. Do you think any dame would part with two hundred smackers to keep a guy from making passes? She’s afraid the thing may get serious. Suppose he should propose matrimony? The aunt’s rich and the niece is the sole heir. That’s the two-hundred-dollar angle, lover.”
I said, “There’s just a chance the whole thing was a plant. Did she want me to work on the case personally?”
“I guess perhaps she did,” Bertha said, “but don’t be so damn conceited. Everyone in the world isn’t thinking about you.”
I didn’t say anything, and Bertha went on after a minute, “She told me how important it was that the thing be handled so skilfully that the man would have no idea he was being shadowed or that anyone was checking up on him. In case he got wise, he’d report back to the aunt and then there would be the devil to pay. If the aunt thought the niece had hired private detectives, there’d be a real estrangement.”
“Meaning the niece wouldn’t inherit the aunt’s money under a will?”
Bertha said, “When I said an estrangement, what do you think I’m talking about? Of course it’d mean the loss of an inheritance. I told her it would be as smooth as a cake of wet soap on the bathroom floor. I guaranteed no one would know there was a thing in the wind.”
“You didn’t warn me to be that careful,” I said.
“Why should I? You’re supposed to know your way around. Anyhow, she paid in advance.”
“I just wanted to get it straight,” I said.
“Well, you’ve got it straight now.”
“And so you told her I’d take over the case?”
“That’s right. I told her I’d have you handle it personally; that it would cost more money that way, but that you were the best operator in the city.”
Bertha waited a few minutes, apparently thinking that over, then frowned, and Said, “When you come right down to it, something is screwy at that. This Bushnell babe wasn’t at all bad-looking.”
“How old?”
“Right around twenty-three.”
“What’s her first name?”
“Claire.”
“Where does she live?”
Bertha said angrily, “I’m not a card index. Get me up in the middle of the night to come and bring you back from your philandering and expect me to give you the address of every client that ever came to the office.”
I didn’t say anything, and Bertha fought it out for a while in silence, then she went on, as though there had been no digression on her part, “With a babe like that, who knew I had a young, brainy partner to handle the case, the normal reaction would have been for her to have gone to him to make the business arrangements, but this chick did nothing of the sort. She said she had unlimited confidence in my ability, that she knew all about our reputation, and she pulled out a cheque-book. She seemed only sort of half-interested — Now, when you come right down to it, that’s funny on the face of it.”
“It’s a little screwy on the face of it, even if you don’t come down to anything,” I said. “Specifically, how much did the girl tell you about her family?”
Bertha said, “Look, Donald, that’s where you and I differ. You always want to go into all the insignificant details that don’t make a bit of difference in the case.”
“In other words,” I said, “she didn’t really tell you anything about her aunt.”
“I got her aunt’s address,” Bertha said. “She told me this personable slicker had an appointment with the old gal for four o’clock in the afternoon.”
“But she didn’t tell you much about the aunt’s affairs, her history, her preferences? You didn’t ask about her love history?”
“Damn it,” Bertha said, “she signed her name on the bottom of a cheque for two hundred bucks! Don’t talk to me about what I should have done.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I just wanted to do a little thinking.”
“I see,” Bertha said sarcastically. “I suppose now you’re going to bed and dream of some little babe who had to draw you a diagram. My God, you were driving her home, way out in the suburbs! Then her brother-in-law was going to drive you back! How nice! How cosy! You went driving along with both hands on the wheel. I suppose you were talking about books, or astronomy, or some of the good shows you’d seen lately, and the poor thing finally had to take that auto court and—”
“She did, for a fact,” I interrupted.
“Well, let that be a lesson to you.”
I said, “When you’re driving through town, go along Seventh Street. I want to stop at the Westchester Arms Hotel. I think I’ll begin to give Mr. Thomas Durham a little highly specialized attention.”
“You be damn careful you don’t let the cat out of the bag,” Bertha said. “The whole thing sounds to me as though you’d spilled the beans. If Durham knew he was being followed…”
“If he knew I was following him,” I said, “he’s a mind-reader and a veteran crook. I did a pretty smooth job.”
Bertha snorted. “He dragged out his red herring within ten minutes of the time you trailed him to the hotel.”
“Not ten — twenty.”
“Okay, twenty. Just time enough for him to get on the phone, call some frail that he knew had plenty of this and that and these and those, and turn her loose on you. I tell you, the guy could take one look at you and tell you’d be a pushover for a bit of fluff — and then she had to stop the car in front of an auto court and tell you she was feeling ill! My God!”
I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say.
Bertha drove down Seventh Street, pulled the car to a stop in front of the Westchester Arms Hotel.
“Don’t stay right here,” I said. “Drive on half a block down the street and park. I’ll catch you when I’m ready.”
“The hell you will!” Bertha said angrily. “I’m going home and get some shut-eye. This is your job. I went out and picked you up, when you couldn’t get a taxi, but all you have to do here is step out and grab yourself a cab whenever you’re ready to go. And be sure you itemise it on the expense account so I can collect it from the client as necessary travelling expense.”
I closed the door. Bertha slammed the car in gear and took off, leaving behind her a trail of exhaust gas.
I went into the Westchester Arms.
There were a few people around the lobby. I looked the place over and made certain Durham wasn’t there. I looked in the cocktail lounge. He wasn’t there. I went over to the house telephones and said, “I’m looking for a man by the name of Jerome K. Durham from Massachusetts. Is he registered here?”
She waited long enough to thumb through some records, then said, “No, he isn’t here.”
“That’s funny. Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any Durhams at all?” I asked.
“Not at present,” she said. “There was a Thomas B. Durham staying here for a couple of days, but he checked out about an hour ago.”
“Thank you,” I said. “That’s all I wanted to know,” and hung up.
I started a quiet investigation with the bell-boys and the doorman. Durham had checked out. He had a bag, a briefcase and a suitcase that had two little brass padlocks on it.
The bellboy had taken the baggage to the doorman. The doorman remembered it being there. He’d been busy getting some people loaded into taxicabs, and the three pieces of baggage had vanished by the time he’d turned around to see if their owner wanted a cab.
The doorman was certain Durham hadn’t taken a cab. I asked if a private car could have picked him up. The doorman thought not. I asked where Durham could have gone and the doorman merely grinned and scratched his head.
The entrance to the cocktail lounge was within a few feet of the hotel entrance, but I hardly thought the manager would appreciate being questioned.
Neither did I think he’d have welcomed Durham if he’d entered the place lugging a brief-case, a bag and a suitcase.
In other words, Tom Durham had disappeared without a trace.
He’d either been smarter than I thought he was or I’d been even dumber than Bertha had thought I was. I’d have sworn he hadn’t known I was following him to the hotel.
I looked at my watch. It was late, but there was one other possibility I could explore.
I went into the telephone booth, found a suburban directory, looked under San Robles, and ran down the pages until I found a Dover Fulton residing at 6285 Orange Avenue. Evidently, then, that much of the story had been true.
From a phone booth, I called the Fulton number. A few moments later the operator told me to deposit twenty cents for three minutes. After the dimes had trickled into the coin-box, I heard a sleepy feminine voice at the other end of the line.
“I’m very sorry to disturb you at this late hour,” I said, “but it’s quite important that I get in touch with Mr. Dover Fulton. Is he there, please?”
“Why, no,” the woman said, “he’s not here right now. He’s been detained in the city. I’m expecting him home almost any time.”
“Could you take a message for him?” I asked her.
“Yes.”
“Is this Mrs. Fulton?”
“That’s right.”
“Then you’ll pardon the question, Mrs. Fulton, but do you have a sister?”
“A sister?” she echoed.
“Yes.”
“Why, no.”
“A Miss Lucille Hart?” I insisted. “Isn’t she your sister?”
“I never heard of her. She’s certainly not my sister. I tell you, I have no sister.”
“I’m very sorry, then. There’s been some mistake,” I said, and hung up before she could ask for any explanation.