Chapter One

I was awakened at three o’clock in the morning by the sound of a garbage-pail cover being kicked across the sidewalk. A moment later, a woman’s voice, harsh and shrill, shouted, “I am not going with you! Do you understand? ”

I rolled over and tried to drop back into the oblivion of slumber. The woman’s voice pursued me, tearing at my eardrums. I couldn’t hear the man with whom she was arguing.

The air was heavy with humidity. The bed was a big four-poster antique, placed in the back of a high-ceilinged bedroom. Huge French windows opened onto a balcony, lined with wrought-iron grillwork. This balcony extended out over the sidewalk. Directly across the narrow street was Jack O’Leary’s Bar.

When I had tried closing the windows, the heavy, muggy air had made the room stifling. When I opened the big windows, sounds from the old French Quarter of New Orleans came pouring in.

The screaming voice ceased abruptly, and I started drifting off once more into slumber.

Then a fresh disturbance broke out. Someone started playing little tunes on an automobile horn. After a little while, another horn chimed in.

I got up, kicked my feet into slippers, and walking over to the open window, looked across at Jack O’Leary’s Bar.

Apparently some roisterer had gone out to get the car and driven down to pick up the rest of his party. He leaned on the horn with a long blast, then a succession of short blasts to let his companions — and the world at large — know he was there. While he blocked the street, another motorist wanted to get by. Other cars rolled up. Soon the whole street was echoing to the din of repeated clamor. As the pressure behind the motorist who was blocking the road became more insistent, he tried to get action out of his own party by pressing the palm of his hand against the horn button and holding it there.

It was a one-way street, with parking permitted on both sides, leaving only a narrow lane down the center for the traffic. The congestion stretched back for a block now. The clamor was insistent, terrific.

Three people came straggling out from Jack O’Leary’s Bar: a tall, loose-jointed man in evening clothes who seemed to be in no particular hurry, two girls with long gowns trailing the sidewalk, both of them talking at once, looking back over their shoulders into the lighted bar.

The man waved his hand at the driver of the automobile. The horns pulsed into a cacophony.

The man walked leisurely across the sidewalk, stepped out into the street, and gallantly stood by the rear door, holding it open. After a few seconds, one of the women came over to join him. The other one turned back toward the bar. A fat man in a business suit, holding a glass in his hand, came out to talk with her.

The two people who were holding up the procession seemed completely oblivious of it all. They talked earnestly. The man pulled out a pencil, fished a notebook from his pocket, then looked around for a place to set the glass. When he could find none, he tried to hold glass and notebook in one hand while he scribbled.

Eventually it was completed. The young woman pulled up her long skirt, strolled leisurely across the sidewalk to the curb, and got into the car.

Then followed the slamming of car doors. The driver of the automobile seemed to feel that he could best minimize the delay he had caused by starting in low gear with the throttle wide open. He clashed into second gear at the corner. The stream of congested traffic started flowing by.

I looked at my wrist watch. Three-forty-five.

I stood by the window for half an hour because there was nothing else to do. I couldn’t go back to sleep. Bertha Cool was due to arrive on the 7:20 train. I’d told her I’d be at the station to meet her.

During the half hour that I stood, watching the breaking-up of the parties over at O’Leary’s Bar, I got so I could just about classify the potential disturbances before they exploded into noise.

There was the battling foursome that would stand out in front and argue at the top of their voices where they should go next. These usually divided into two people who wanted to go home, and two who insisted that it was just the beginning of the evening. There were the people who had made new acquaintances at the bar. Apparently it never occurred to anyone to try and get names, addresses, and telephone numbers until they reached the sidewalk. There the defect was remedied with much laughter, shouted farewells, and some last bit of repartee which could only be remembered when the parties were almost out of earshot. There were the parties-breaking-up-in-a-brawl type of thing — the women who wouldn’t be seduced — the wives who weren’t going to go home yet.

Quite evidently it was noisy inside the bar. People emerging to Stand on the sidewalk stood close and shouted at each other.

Following the New Orleans custom in the French Quarter, garbage pails were placed on the sidewalks near the curb. Everyone felt it was the height of wit to kick the covers off the garbage pails and listen to them make noise as they slid along the sidewalk.

After half an hour, I crossed over to a chair, sat down, and let my eyes drift around the half-illuminated apartment. Roberta Fenn had lived in this same apartment some three years ago, which would have been 1939. She had rented it under an assumed name; then she had disappeared into thin air. Cool and Lam — Confidential Investigations had been hired to find her.

Sitting there in the warm darkness, I tried to reconstruct the life Roberta Fenn must have lived. She must have heard the same sounds I was hearing. She must have eaten at the near-by restaurants, had drinks at the bars, perhaps spent some of her time at Jack O’Leary’s Bar across the street.

The heavy, semitropical air emphasized the warmth of the night. I dropped off to fitful sleep.

At 5:30 I wakened enough to stagger over to the bed. I felt I had never been so sleepy in my life. The persons who had been doing the celebrating had gone home. The street was enjoying an interval of quiet. I sank instantly into deep slumber and almost immediately the bell of the alarm clock pulled me back to wakefulness.

Six-thirty!

I was to meet Bertha Cool at 7:20.

Chapter Two

I felt certain the man with Bertha Cool would be the New York lawyer. He was a tall, rangy man in the late fifties with long arms. A dentist had evidently tried to lengthen his face when he made the dental plates.

Bertha Cool was still down to her conservative 165. She’d put on a coat of sunburn from her deep-sea fishing, and the tanned skin contrasted with her gray hair. She came striding toward me with a push of muscular legs that made the New York lawyer lengthen his stride to keep up with her.

I moved forward to shake hands.

Bertha gave me a quick glance from those hard gray eyes of hers, said, “My God, Donald, you look as though you’d been drunk for a week.”

“It was the alarm clock.”

She snorted. “You didn’t have to get up any earlier than I did. This is Emory Hale, Emory Garland Hale, our client.”

I said, “How are you, Mr. Hale?”

He looked down at me, and there was a quizzical expression on his face as he shook hands. Bertha interpreted the expression. She’d seen it before on other clients.

“Don’t make any mistake about Donald. He weighs a hundred and forty with his clothes on, and his jack-knife and keys in his pocket, but he’s got an oversize brain, and enough guts for an army.”

Hale grinned then, and it was just the sort of grin I’d expected. He carefully placed the edges of his teeth together and pulled his lips back — probably just a mannerism, but you kept thinking he was afraid his dental plates would fall out if he gave them a chance.

Bertha said, “Where do we talk?”

“At the hotel. I’ve got rooms. The town’s still pretty crowded — tourist season still on.”

“Suits me,” Bertha said. “You found out anything yet, Donald?”

I said, “I gathered from the air-mail letter you sent to me in Florida that Mr. Hale was to give me the details so I could start work.”

“He is,” Bertha said. “I told you generally what he wanted in that letter. You must have been here three days already.”

“One day and two nights.”

Hale smiled.

Bertha didn’t. She said, “You look it.”

A taxi took us to a modern hotel in the business part of the city. It might have been any one of half a dozen large cities. There was nothing to indicate the romantic French Quarter which was within half a dozen blocks.

“Did Miss Fenn stay here?” Hale asked.

I said, “No. She stayed at the Monteleone.”

“How long?”

“About a week.”

“And then?”

“She walked out and never came back, just disappeared into thin air.”

“Didn’t take her baggage?” Hale asked.

“No.”

“Just a week,” he said. “I can’t believe it.”

Bertha said, “I’ve got a date with a bathtub. You haven’t had breakfast, have you, lover?”

I said, “No.”

“You look like the wrath of God.”

“Sorry.”

“You aren’t sick, are you?”

“No.”

Hale said, “I’ll retire to my room and get some of the dust and grime removed. And I think I can do a little better job of shaving than I did at this early hour on the train. I’ll see you in — how soon?”

“Half an hour,” Bertha said.

Hale nodded and went down the corridor to his own room.

Bertha turned to me. “Are you holding out?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I want to find out more things from Hale before I tell him everything.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know — just a hunch.”

“What are you holding out?”

I said, “Roberta Fenn stayed at the Monteleone Hotel. She ordered a package sent C.O.D., a dress she’d had fitted and on which she’d paid a twenty-dollar deposit. There was another ten dollars due. The dress came after she left. It stayed there for about a week, and then the hotel sent it back to the store. They had a record of it on the hotel books.”

“Well,” Bertha said impatiently, “ that doesn’t tell us anything.”

I said, “Three or four days after the dress was returned, Miss Fenn rang up the store, said if they’d send the package down to Edna Cutler on St. Peter Street, Miss Fenn would leave the money with Miss Cutler to pay the C.O.D.”

“Who was Edna Cutler?” Bertha asked,

“Roberta Fenn.”

“You’re certain?”

“Yes.”

“How did you find out?”

“The woman who rented the apartment to her identified the photograph.”

“Why on earth would Roberta Fenn have done anything like that?” Bertha asked.

I said, “I don’t know either. Here’s something else.” I opened my wallet, took out a personal I had clipped from a morning paper, and handed it to Bertha.

“What is it?” she asked.

“A personal that’s been running every day for two years. The newspaper won’t give out any information about it.”

“Read it to me,” Bertha said. “My glasses are in my purse.”

I read her the ad: “Rob F. Please communicate with me. I haven’t ceased loving you for one minute since you left. Come back, darling. P.N.”

“Been running for two years!” Bertha exclaimed.

“Yes.”

“You think Rob F. is Roberta Fenn?”

“It could be.”

“Shall we tell Hale all this?”

“Not now. Let him tell us all he knows first.”

“And you aren’t even going to tell him about this ad in the agony column?”

“Not yet. Have you got a check out of him?”

Bertha’s eyes grew indignant. “What the hell do you take me for? Of course I’ve got a check out of him.”

I said, “All right, let’s find out what he knows first, and tell him what we know a little later on.”

“How about that apartment? Can we get in and look around?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Without arousing suspicion?”

“Yes. I slept there last night.”

“ You did!”

“Yes.”

“How did you arrange that?”

“I rented it for a week.”

Bertha’s face darkened. “My God, you must think the agency’s made of money! The minute I turn my back on you, you go around squandering dough. We could have got in there just the same by telling the landlady we wanted to rent it, and—”

“I know,” I interrupted, “but I wanted to go over the place with a fine-tooth comb and see if there was anything that she might have left there, any clue to what had happened.”

“Did you find anything?”

“No.”

Bertha snorted. “You’d have done a lot better to have stayed here and got a night’s sleep. All right, get the hell out and let Bertha get cleaned up. Where do we eat?”

“I’ll show you a place. Ever had a pecan waffle?”

“A what?”

“A waffle with pecans in it.”

“Good God, no! I’ll eat my nuts as nuts, and my waffles as waffles. And I’m going to check out of this hotel and go live in that apartment. We won’t have it a dead expense if I do that. When it comes to money matters, you—”

I slipped out into the corridor. The closing door bit off the rest of her sentence.

Chapter Three

Hale pushed away his plate so as to clear a place on the table in front of him. “I’m taking the ten-thirty plane to New York,” he said, “so I’ll have to talk while Mrs. Cool finishes her waffle — if you don’t mind, Mrs. Cool?”

Bertha said, her words thickened somewhat by a mouthful of her second pecan waffle, “Go right ahead.”

Hale picked up his briefcase, propped it on his lap, and folded back the flap so he could have ready access to the interior of it.

“Roberta Fenn was twenty-three years old in 1939. That would make her approximately twenty-six at the present time. I have here some additional photographs — I believe Mrs. Cool sent you some photographs by air mail, Lam.”

“Yes, I have them.”

“Well, here are some additional ones showing her in different poses.”

He shot his hand down in the briefcase, pulled out an envelope, and handed it to me. “There’s also a more detailed description in there. Height, five feet four; weight, one hundred and ten; hair, dark; eyes, hazel; figure, perfect; teeth, regular; complexion, clear olive, skin very smooth.”

Bertha Cool caught the eye of the Negro waitress and beckoned her over. She said, “I want another one of those pecan waffles.”

I asked Bertha, “Are you trying to fit those clothes you threw away a year ago?”

She became instantly belligerent. “Shut up! I guess I—” She realized a cash customer was present and bottled up her temper. “I eat only one good meal a day,” she explained to Hale with something that wasn’t a smile, not yet a smirk. “Usually it’s dinner, but if I eat a heavy breakfast and go light on dinner, the result is the same.”

Hale studied her. “You’re just the right weight to be healthy,” he said. “You’re muscular and vigorous. It’s really surprising the amount of energy you have.”

Bertha said, “Well, go ahead with the facts. I’m sorry we interrupted you.” She glared at me and added, “And I didn’t throw those clothes away. I’ve got them stored in a cedar closet.”

Hale said, “Well, let’s see. Oh, yes, Roberta Fenn was twenty-three when she disappeared. She was an agency model in New York. She posed for some of the ads, the petty stuff. She never got the best-advertised products. Her legs were marvelous. She did a lot of stocking work — some bathing-suit and underwear stuff. It seems incredible a young woman who had been photographed so much could disappear.”

Bertha said, “People don’t look at the faces of the underwear models.”

Hale went on: “Apparently it was a voluntary disappearance, although we can’t find out why. None of her friends can throw any light on it. She had no enemies, no financial troubles, and as far as can be ascertained, there was no reason why she should have vanished so suddenly — certainly not the usual reasons.”

“Love affair?” I asked.

“Apparently not. The outstanding characteristic of this young woman was her complete independence. She liked to live her own life. She was secretive about her private life, but her friends insist that was only because she was too independent to have confidants. She was a very self-sufficient young woman. When she went out with a man, she always went Dutch, so she wouldn’t feel under any obligations.”

“That is carrying independence altogether too far,” Bertha announced.

“Why do you want her now?” I asked. “In other words, why let the case lie dormant for three years, and then get in a dither about finding her, rush detectives down to New Orleans go flying around the country, and—”

The two rows of regular teeth glistened at me. He was nodding his head and smiling. “A very astute young man,” he said to Bertha. “Very smart indeed! You notice? He puts his finger right on the keynote of the whole business.”

Bertha’s waitress handed her the plate with the waffle. Bertha put on two squares of butter. The waitress said, “There’s melted butter in that pitcher, ma’am.”

Bertha tilted the pitcher of melted butter over the waffle, piled on syrup, said, “Bring me another pot of pure coffee and fill up that cream pitcher.” She turned to Hale. “I told you he was a brainy little cuss.”

Hale nodded. “I’m very well satisfied with my selection of the agency. I feel quite certain you’ll handle the matter satisfactorily.”

I said, “I don’t want to seem insistent, Mr. Hale, but—”

He laughed aloud. For the moment, his teeth almost parted. “I know. I know,” he said. “You’re going to come back to the original question. Well, Mr. Lam, I’ll tell you. We want to find her in order to close up an estate. I regret that I can’t tell you anything else. After all, you know, I am working for a client. I am governed by his wishes. It would be well for you to adopt a similar attitude.”

Bertha washed down a mouthful of waffle with a gulp of hot coffee, said, “You mean he’s not supposed to start backtracking in order to find out what it’s all about?”

Hale said, “My client will see that you are given the necessary information, and inasmuch as he is in reality your employer — well, I think you can appreciate what an embarrassing circumstance it would be if friction should develop.”

Bertha Cool frowned across at me. “You get that, Donald,” she said. “Don’t go playing around with a lot of theories. You stick to the job in hand. Find that Fenn girl and quit worrying about who wants her. You understand? Forget that romantic angle.”

Hale glanced over at me, to see how I was taking it. Then he looked back at Bertha. “That’s being put a great deal more bluntly than I’d have said it, Mrs. Cool.”

Bertha said, “I know. You’d have done a lot of palavering around. This gets it over with. There’s no misunderstanding this way. I don’t mince words. I hate beating around the bush.”

He smiled. “You’re a very direct woman, Mrs. Cool.”

There was a moment of silence.

“What else can you tell me about Roberta Fenn?” I asked.

Hale said, “I gave Mrs. Cool most of the details while I was on the train.”

“How about close relatives?” I asked.

“She had none.”

I said, “Yet you’re trying to find her to close up an estate?”

Hale put a big hand on my arm in a fatherly gesture. “Now, Lam,” he said, “I thought I’d made myself clear on that.”

“You have,” Bertha said. “Do you want daily reports?”

“I should like them, yes.”

“Where will you be?”

“In my New York office.”

“Suppose we find her, then what?”

Hale said, “Frankly, I doubt if you will. It’s a cold trail, and a tough assignment. If you do find her — I shall be very much pleased. You will, of course, let me know at once. I feel certain my client will make some substantial acknowledgment by way of a bonus.”

Hale looked around cautiously. “I feel that I should tell you: Don’t do any talking. Make your inquiries casual. If you have to ask direct questions, ask them in such a way as not to arouse suspicion. Pose as a friend of a friend. You happened to be coming to New Orleans, and your friend suggested you should look up Roberta Fenn. Make it casual and entirely natural. Don’t be too eager, and don’t leave any back trail.”

Bertha said, “Leave it to us.”

Hale looked at his watch, then beckoned the waitress. “The check, please.”

Chapter Four

Bertha Cool looked around the apartment, peering here and there into odd corners as a woman will.

“Darn good antique furniture,” she said.

I didn’t say anything, and after a moment she added, “If you like it.” She walked over to the windows, looked out on the balcony, turned back to look at the furniture, and said, “I don’t.”

“Why not?” I asked.

She said, “My God, Donald, use your head! For years I was weighing around two hundred and seventy-five pounds. Somebody was always inviting me out to dinner and throwing a Louis the Quinze chair at me, some damn spindle-legged imitation of a narrow-seated, lozenge-backed abortion in mahogany.”

“Did you sit in them?” I asked.

“Sit in them, hell! I wouldn’t have minded so much if the hostesses had used their heads, but none of them did. They’d lead the crowd into the dining-room, and then rd stand and look at what had been assigned as a parking place for my fanny. In place of doing anything, the nitwit hostess would stand there, looking first at me and then at the damn chair. You’d think it was the first time she’d realized I had to sit down when I ate. One of them told me afterward she just didn’t know what to do, because she was afraid I’d feel conspicuous if she had the maid bring me another chair.

“I told her that wouldn’t make me feel half as conspicuous as sitting down on one of those gingersnaps on ornamental stilts and having the damn thing fold up with me like a collapsed accordion. I hate the stuff.”

We prowled around the apartment some more. Bertha Cool picked a studio couch, tried it tentatively, then finally settled back, opened her purse, fished out a cigarette, and said, “I don’t see we’re a damn bit nearer what we want than when we started.”

I didn’t say anything.

She scraped a match on the sole of her shoe, lit the cigarette, glowered at me belligerently, and said, “Well?”

I said, “She lived here.”

“What if she did?”

“She lived here under the name of Edna Cutler.”

“What difference does that make?”

I said, “We know where she lived. We know the alias she was using. During the time she was here, there was a lot of rain in New Orleans. She’d be eating out. Particularly on the rainy days, she wouldn’t go very far. There are two or three restaurants within two blocks of the place. We’ll cover those and see what we can find out.”

Bertha glanced at her wrist watch. I got up, walked over to the door, and went out.

There was a flight of noisy stairs down to a patio, then a long passageway. I made a right-angled turn past another patio, and came out on Royal Street. I walked down to the corner and saw a sign, Bourbon House. I walked over there.

It was typical of the real French Quarter restaurant — not the tourist-trap affairs that put on a lot of glitter and charge all the traffic will bear, but a place where the prices were low and the food good. There were no frills or la-de-dah, and the place catered to regular customers.

I knew I’d struck pay dirt. Anyone who was living in that section of the Quarter would hang out there pretty regularly.

I walked over to the door that led to a bar, then turned back to the room that had the lunch counter, a couple of pinball machines, and a juke box.

“Want something?” the man behind the counter asked.

“Cup of pure coffee and some nickels for the pinball machine,” I said, tossing four bits on the counter.

He handed me the nickels and drew off the coffee.

Two or three men were hanging around one of the pinball machines, giving it a good play. I gathered from their conversation they were regulars around the place. The juke box clicked into noise. A feminine voice said, “May I have your attention, please. This song is dedicated to the management.” Then the juke box started playing Way Down Upon the Swanee River.

I took from my pocket the pictures Hale had given me. Just as I tasted the coffee, I gave an exclamation of disgust.

“What’s the matter?” the man behind the counter asked. “Something wrong with the coffee?”

“No,” I said. “Something wrong with the photographs.”

He looked puzzled, but sympathetic.

I said, “The photographer gave me the wrong ones. I wonder where mine are.”

There was no one else at the counter at the moment. The man leaned across the bar, and I casually swung the pictures around so he could take a look.

I said, “I suppose now I’m out of luck. They’ll have mixed the films up, given mine to someone else, and I’ll never see them again.”

“Perhaps they just switched the orders,” he said. “You got this girl’s pictures, and she got yours.”

“That isn’t going to help any. How am I going to find her?”

He said, “Say, I’ve seen that girl! I think she used to eat in here once in a while. Wait a minute. I’ll ask one of the boys.”

He motioned to the colored waiter, handed him one of the pictures. “Who’s this girl?” he asked.

The waiter took the picture, turned it toward the light, and said instantly, “Ah don’ know her name, but she ate heah about two-three years ago quite regular. Ah don’ think she comes heah no mo’.”

“Left town?” I asked.

“No, suh. Ah don’ rightly think so. Ah seen her on the street about a month ago. She just ain’t been in heah, that’s all.”

I said, “Well, there’s a chance the photographer may know. She seems to have been in there recently with this roll of pictures. They’re nearly all of her.”

“Ah’ll tell you where Ah seen her,” the colored boy said. “Ah seen her about a month ago comin’ out of Jack O’Leary’s Bar. Somebody was with her.”

“Man?” I asked.

“Yes, suh.”

“You didn’t know the man?”

“No, suh, Ah don’. He was a tall man with kinda big hands, carryin’ a briefcase.”

“How old?”

“Maybe fifty, maybe fifty-five. Ah don’ remember rightly, suh. He was a stranger to me. Ah just happened to remember the girl and that she didn’t eat here no mo’. Ah used to wait on her when she was here.”

“Can you tell me anything more about this man?” I asked.

The waiter thought for a minute, then said, “Yes, suh.”

“What?”

“He looked like he was holdin’ somethin’ in his mouth,” he said.

I didn’t press the inquiry any further. I paid for the coffee, went over and stood watching the boys who were playing the pinball machine, and after a few minutes walked out.

I went down to Jack O’Leary’s Bar. At this hour there wasn’t so much of a crowd. I climbed up on one of the stools and ordered a gin and Seven-Up.

The bartender brought my drink, waited on another customer, then drifted over my way.

“What’s the picture?” I asked, showing him the photograph.

“Huh?”

I said, “It was here on this stool next to me, face down. I thought it was a piece of paper and was going to crumple it up. Then I saw it was a photograph.”

He took a good look at it and frowned,

I said, “She must have dropped it here — must have been someone who was here a minute ago, sitting on that stool.”

He shook his head, even while he was trying to think, said, “No. She wasn’t there a minute ago, but I’ve seen her. Wonder how that picture got there. She was in here — seems like it was quite a while ago. I’m certain she hasn’t been in today.”

“Know her?” I asked.

He said, “I know her when I see her, but I don’t know her name.”

I put the picture in my pocket. He hesitated a moment as though debating the ethics of the situation, then moved away.

I finished my drink and went out to stand on the street corner, thinking things over.

I put myself in the position of a young woman-hairdresser, manicure, cleaning and dyeing.

There was a beauty shop across the street and part way down the block. A woman who seemed bubbling over with good-natured friendliness came to the door when she saw me fumbling around with the knob.

“What is it?” she asked.

I said, “I’m trying to find out something about a woman. She’s a customer of yours,” and pushed the best picture of Roberta Fenn in front of her.

She recognized the picture instantly, said, “She hasn’t been here for as much as a couple of years, I guess. She used to come in quite regularly. I can’t think of her name now, but she was a good customer — came down here from Boston or Detroit or some place up north. I think she was looking for work when she first came here, and then she didn’t seem to worry about it any more.”

“Perhaps she got a job.”

“No. She didn’t. She used to come down weekdays around the middle of the day. I used to see her going out for breakfast around eleven o’clock, sometimes not until afternoon.”

“You don’t know whether she’s still in town?”

“I don’t think she is, because she’d have been in. We were friends — well, you know, she liked my work and liked to talk with me. I think she was-say, why do you want to know?”

I said, “I — well — she’s a nice girl. It means a lot to me — I should never have lost track of her,”

“Oh.” She smiled. “Well, I wish I could help you, but I can’t. I’ve got a customer in there. In case she shows up again, do you want to leave a message for her?”

I shook my head and said, “If she’s in town, I’ll find her myself,” and then added with a little smile, “I think it would be better that way.”

“It would for a fact,” the woman said.

I trudged on down the street to a cleaning establishment. It was a combination residence and business place, with a counter half across the front room. I pulled out the picture, said, “Know this girl?”

The woman who was in charge of the place looked at the picture, said, “Yes. She used to place a lot of work through me. That’s Miss Cutler, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Know where she is now?”

“No, I don’t — that is, I can’t tell you where she’s living.”

“She’s here in town, isn’t she?”

“Oh, yes. I saw her on the street about — oh, let me see, I guess it was about six weeks ago. I don’t get uptown very often. This place keeps me tied down. I can’t leave it unless I have someone else to put in charge.”

“What street?” I asked.

“Canal. It was — let me see, it was just about five-thirty in the evening, and she was walking down the street. I don’t think she recognized me. I have a pretty good memory for faces, and I see lots of my customers when I’m out on the street.” She smiled. “Lots of times they know they’ve seen me before, but can’t place me, because they’ve been accustomed to seeing me behind the counter here. I never speak to them unless they speak to me.”

I thanked her and went back to the apartment. Bertha Cool was lounging back in a chair, smoking a cigarette, with a glass of Scotch and soda on the little table by the side of the chair.

“How you doing?” she asked.

“Not too good.”

“Like hunting for a needle in a haystack,” Bertha said. “My God, Donald, I’ve found the most wonderful restaurant.”

“Where?”

“Right up the street here.”

“I thought you’d had your one meal for the day. I didn’t know you were hungry. I just came back now to see if you wanted something to eat.”

“No, lover, not now. I find I get along better if I don’t let myself get too hungry. Just eat a little something to take the keen edge off my appetite.”

I nodded and waited.

A dreamy look of satisfaction came over Bertha’s face. She all but smacked her lips. “Gumbo with rice,” she said, “I thought it would be light.”

“Was it?”

“It was a meal, but what a meal.”

“Had enough?” I asked. “Want to go out for a bite to eat with me now?”

“Don’t you say food to me again, Donald Lam! I’ve had my quota for the day. I’ll have some tea and toast tonight and that’ll be all.”

I said, “Well, I’m going to grab a bite to eat and stay on the job.”

“What can I do?”

“Nothing yet.”

Bertha said, “I don’t know why I’m here.”

“Neither do I.”

She said, “That lawyer insisted on my coming. He said that after you’d found her I could talk with her better than you could. He had the money to pay for it, and since he was giving the party, I decided to attend.”

“That’s right.”

Bertha said, “It would be swell if we could get that bonus.”

“Wouldn’t it?”

“How do things look?”

“I can’t tell yet. Well, I’m on my way.”

I went back to Royal Street and walked down toward Canal, picking my way along the sidewalk which had been paved years ago by embedding huge, flat-surfaced rocks in the dirt and connecting them with cement. Some of the rocks had sunk more than others. Some of them had tilted slightly. The general effect was artistic, but not conducive to blind walking.

I was halfway to Canal Street when the idea struck me. I went into a telephone booth and started calling the business colleges.

The second one gave me everything I needed. No, they didn’t know any Edna Cutler, but a Miss Fenn had taken a course and had been a very apt pupil. Yes, they’d been able to place her. She was in one of the banks. She was secretary to the manager. Just a minute and they’d give me the address.

It was that simple.

The manager of the bank was a human sort of chap. I told him that I was trying to get some information which would enable me to close up an estate and asked him if I might talk with his secretary. He said he’d send her out in a few minutes.

Roberta Fenn looked exactly like her pictures. She was perhaps twenty-six from the standpoint of statistics, but she looked around twenty-two or perhaps twenty-three. She had a quick smile, clear, alert eyes, and a well-modulated, pleasant voice. “Something that you wanted to know?” she asked. “Mr. Black said you were trying to close up an estate.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I’m an investigator. I’m trying to find out something about a man who’s connected with a family named Hale.”

Her eyes showed me I’d drawn a blank.

I said, “He has a relative whose name I don’t know, but I believe you’re acquainted with him. I’m not certain exactly how he’s related to Hale.”

“You don’t know this man’s name?”

I said, “No.”

She said, “I don’t have a very wide circle of acquaintances here.”

I said, “This man is tall. He has a high forehead, rather bushy eyebrows, and his hands are very thin with long, tapering fingers. His arras are long. He’s about fifty-five.”

She was frowning thoughtfully as though searching her mental card index.

I watched her closely, said, “I don’t know whether it’s just a habit or whether his teeth don’t fit. Whenever he smiles, he—”

I saw the expression change on her face.

“Oh,” she said and laughed.

“You know who I mean?”

“Yes. How did you happen to come to me?”

I said, “I heard he was in New Orleans and someone said he was going to look you up on a matter of business.”

“But you don’t know his name?”

“No.”

She said, “Archibald Smith is his name. He’s from Chicago. He’s in the insurance business up there.”