Bertha seemed surprised when she saw me coming out to meet her cab as it pulled in at the curb, promptly at seven o’clock. Her diamond-hard eyes were glittering angrily at the world.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Sleep!” she said and made it sound like an expletive.
I gave the cab driver the address out on St. Charles Avenue. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Was it noisy?”
She said, “When I was a girl, women used to let their seductions be carried on usually with secrecy, and all — in silence.”
“Why? What’s the matter? Did you hear a seduction last night?”
“Did I hear a seduction!” Bertha exclaimed. “I heard a whole damn medley of seductions. I realize now why they talk about the young man of today tomcatting around. When they say that they don’t mean a guy’s prowling around so much as that he’s getting out in some public place and yowling about it.”
“I gather that you didn’t sleep well.”
Bertha said, “I didn’t. I can assure you of one thing, though.”
“What?”
“I gave a group of young women a lungful of advice from that balcony.”
“How did they react?”
Bertha said, “One of them got mad. One of them looked ashamed and went home, and the others stood there and laughed at me — starting to pass wisecracks right back at me.”
“What did you do then?” I asked.
“I blasted ‘em,” Bertha said with a vicious snap of her words.
“Did they stay blasted?”
“No.”
I said, “No wonder you didn’t sleep.”
Bertha said, “It wasn’t the noise. I was just too damned mad to sleep. The idea of little hussies prowling around the street with no sense of shame. Oh, well, we live and learn.”
“Are you going to check, out of that apartment?” I asked.
“Check out of it!” Bertha exclaimed. “Don’t be a fool! The rent’s paid! ”
“I know, but after all there’s no use staying in an apartment where you can’t sleep.”
Bertha’s lips came together in a firm, straight line. “Sometimes I could grab you and shake the teeth out of you. One of these days your damned extravagance will bust this partnership.”
“Are we going broke?” I asked.
“We won’t go into all that again,” Bertha said hastily. “You’ve been lucky. Some day you’ll quit being lucky, then you’ll come whining to me, asking me to put up cash to finance the partnership over a tough spot. Right then’s when you’ll learn something about Bertha Louise Cool, and don’t you ever forget it.”
I said, “It’s an intriguing thought. It makes the possibility of bankruptcy sound almost alluring.”
She deliberately averted her head, pretending to stare out at the scenery along St. Charles Avenue. After a moment she said, “Got a match?”
I handed her a match and she lit a cigarette. We rode in silence until we came to the Gulfpride Apartments.
“Better have the cab wait,” I told Bertha. “It’s hard to get a cab here. We may not be long.”
“We’re going to be quite a while,” Bertha said, “a lot longer than you think. We aren’t going to have any taxi meter playing tunes while we’re talking.”
Bertha opened her purse, paid off the cab driver, and said, “Wait here until after we’ve rung the bell. If we get a buzz to go on up, don’t wait. Otherwise, we’ll go back with you.”
The cab driver looked at the ten-cent tip Bertha had given him, said, “Yes, ma’am,” and sat there, waiting.
Bertha found the button opposite the name of Roberta Fenn and jabbed her thumb against it with sufficient force to make it seem she was trying to flatten the bell button.
“Probably isn’t up yet,” Bertha snorted. “Particularly if she was out last night. I wouldn’t doubt if she was one of them that was making that whoopee under my window. Apparently things don’t really get going in this town until around three o’clock in the morning.”
She speared the button with another vicious thumb jab.
Abruptly the buzzer on the door made noise. I pushed against the door, and the door moved inward. Bertha turned and waved dismissal at the taxicab driver.
We started up the stairs. Bertha pushing her chunky hundred and sixty-five pounds with slow deliberation up the steep flight, I moving along behind her, letting her set the pace.
Bertha said, “When we get up there, lover, you leave the talking to me.”
“Know what you’re going to talk about?” I asked.
“Yes. I know what he wants me to find out. Think they have the steepest stairs in the world in New Orleans — damned outrage!”
I said, “It’s the second one on the left.”
Bertha wheezed up the last few stairs, marched down the corridor, raised her knuckles to tap on the door, and stopped, holding her hand motionless for a half second as she noticed that the door was open about a half inch.
She said, “Evidently she wants us to walk right in,” and pushed the door open.
“Wait a minute,” I said, and grabbed her arm.
The door swung open under the impetus of the push Bertha had given it. I saw a man’s feet propped at a peculiar angle. The swinging door gradually brought the body into view, a body that was sprawled half on and half off a chair, the head down on the floor, one foot hooked up under the arm, the other leg bent around the arm support. A sinister red stream had flowed from a hole in his left breast down across the unbuttoned vest, down through the cloth of the coat, to spread out in a pool on the floor. A singed soft cushion showed how the shot had been muffled.
Bertha said under her breath, “Fry me for an oyster!” and took a quick step forward.
I still had hold of her arm. I used all my strength to pull her back.
“What’s the idea?” Bertha said.
I didn’t say anything, just kept pulling.
For a moment she was angry; then she caught a glimpse of the expression on my face and I saw her eyes widen.
I said, in a rather loud tone of voice, “Well, I guess there’s no one home, after all.” All the time I was tugging at her arm, dragging her toward the stairs.
Once she got the idea, she moved quickly enough. We moved silently along the carpeted corridor, and I all but pushed Bertha past the head of the stairs, where she wanted to stop and argue.
We pell-melled out onto the street, and I pulled Bertha back against the wall and started walking rapidly down St. Charles Avenue.
Bertha collected her thoughts sufficiently to start pulling back. “Say, what’s the idea?” she asked. “What in the world’s got into you? That man was murdered. We should have notified the police.”
“Notify the police if you want to,” I said, “but don’t be dumb enough to think you could have gone into that room and come out alive.”
She stopped walking to stand stock-still, her feet rooted with surprise, staring at me. “What on earth are you talking about?” she demanded.
“Don’t you get it?” I asked. “Someone pressed the buzzer for us to come on up. Then that someone left the door slightly ajar.”
“Who?” she asked.
I said, “You have two guesses. Either the police were in there waiting for someone to show up, which, under the circumstances, is rather unlikely, or the murderer was waiting patiently to claim his second victim.”
Her hard little eyes stared at me, fairly sparkling with the intensity of her thought. She said, “Pickle me for a peach! I believe you’re right, you little bastard.”
“I know I’m right.”
“But it’s hardly possible that we could have been the ones he was laying for.”
“We would have been,” I said, “once we entered that room.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’d have seen who he was then. We might not have been the ones he expected, but once we got in there, he couldn’t afford to let us get out-not after we’d seen his face.”
I saw Bertha’s color change as she realized the narrow escape she’d had. She said, “And that was why you were doing all that talking about no one being in?”
“Certainly. There’s a restaurant across the street. We’ll telephone the police from there and also keep a watch on the apartment so we can see anyone who comes out.”
“Who was that person?” Bertha asked. “Do you know him — the dead man?”
“I’ve seen him before.”
“Where?”
“He came to call on Roberta Fenn last night. I think his visit was unexpected and unwelcome — and I’d seen him once before that.”
“Where?”
“The other night. I couldn’t sleep. I walked out on the balcony. He was just coming out of a bar across the street. Two women were with him, and someone was waiting for them in an automobile.”
Sudden recollection of the night before stabbed at Bertha’s memory. She said, “Was it one of the horn-blowing brigade?”
“The instigator of the damnedest horn-blowing of the evening,” I told her.
She said simply, “I’m glad he’s dead.”
“Shut up! It’s dangerous to joke about such things.”
“Who in hell said I was joking? I mean every word of it. Don’t we have to notify the police?”
I said, “Yes. But we do it my way.”
“How’s that?”
I said, “Come on. I’ll show you.”
We went into the restaurant. I asked very loudly if I could get the proprietor to telephone for a taxicab, or should I telephone for one.
He motioned toward a phone booth, and gave me the number of the cab company. I went back and called the cab office. They assured me a cab would be there within two minutes. From the booth I could watch the door of Roberta Fenn’s apartment house.
I waited until I heard the horn of the cab outside the restaurant, then dialed police headquarters, and said very casually, “Got a pencil?”
“Yes.”
I said, “The Gulfpride Apartments on St. Charles Avenue.”
“What about them?”
“Apartment two-o-four,” I said.
“Well, what about it? Who is this talking? What do you want?”
“I want to report that a murder was committed in that apartment. If you’ll rush some radio cars down there, you may catch the murderer waiting for another victim.”
“Say, who is this talking?”
“Adolf.”
“Adolf who?”
“Hitler,” I said, “and don’t ask me anything else because I’ve got a mouthful of carpet.” I hung up the phone, and walked out.
Bertha had walked out to hold the taxicab. I came sauntering after her as though there was no particular hurry.
“Where to?” the cab driver asked.
Bertha started to give him the name of the hotel, but I beat her to it, and said, “Union Depot. No hurry. Take it easy.”
We settled back against the cushions. Bertha wanted to talk. I jabbed my elbow into her ribs every time she started to say anything. Finally she gave it up, and sat glowering at me in seething, impotent rage.
We paid off the cab at the depot. I piloted Bertha through one entrance, swung her around, and out another. “Monteleone Hotel,” I told the driver.
Once more I held Bertha to silence. I felt as though I were holding down the safety valve on a steam boiler. I didn’t know at what moment an explosion might occur.
We arrived at the Monteleone Hotel. I escorted Bertha over to a row of comfortable chairs, settled her in the deep cushions, sat down beside her, and said quite affably, “Go ahead and talk. Talk about anything in the world you want to — except anything that’s happened in the last hour.”
Bertha glared at me. “Who the hell are you to tell me what to talk about and what not—?”
I said, “Every move we’ve made up to this point will be traced. It’s what we do from here on that really counts.”
Bertha snapped, “If they trace us here, they’ll trace us the rest of the way.”
I waited until the clerk’s eye drifted our way; then I got up, walked over to the desk, smiled affably, and said, “I believe the bus comes here to pick up passengers for the plane north, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. It will be here in about thirty minutes.”
“It’s all right for us to wait here for it?” I managed to seem meek and uncertain of myself.
“Quite all right,” he assured me, smiling.
I rejoined Bertha. After the clerk’s attention was diverted elsewhere, I strolled over to the newsstand. A few moments later I gave Bertha a signal to join me; then we walked around to the entrance to the drugstore. I stopped long enough to play a pinball machine; then we were out on the street.
“Where to?” Bertha asked.
“The hotel first — long enough to get packed up and checked out.”
“Then where?”
“Probably the apartment.”
“Both of us?”
“Yes. That studio couch can be made into an extra bed.”
Bertha said, “What’s the idea? You’re running away as though you’d done it.”
“Don’t be too certain the police won’t think so.”
“Why?”
I said, “Roberta Fenn was working in a bank. They’ll ask the banker what he knows. He’ll say that yesterday afternoon a man came to see her, claiming to be an investigator trying to clean up an estate. Roberta Fenn talked with him. The young man was waiting for her at the bank when she got off work. He put Roberta in a taxicab, and they drove off. The young man was in her apartment when the man who was murdered called last night. The man was jealous.”
“Where’s Roberta while all this was going on?” Bertha Cool asked.
“Roberta,” I said, “is, one, the one who pulled the trigger on the gun, or, two, sprawled out on the floor where we couldn’t see her without going into the room, or, three, the person for whom the murderer is waiting.”
Bertha said, “I think the thing to do is to get into a taxicab, go down to police headquarters, and tell them the whole circumstances.”
I stopped, swung her around to the curb, and pointed to a cab that was parked on the opposite side of the street. “There’s a cab,” I said. “Get in.”
Bertha hesitated.
“Go ahead.”
“You don’t think so, do you, Donald?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“There are lots of reasons.”
“Name some.”
I said, “It stinks.”
“What does?”
“The whole business.”
“Why?”
I said, “Hale came to Los Angeles. He hired us to come to New Orleans and find Roberta Fenn. Why didn’t he get a New Orleans detective agency on the job?”
“Because he had confidence in us. We’d been recommended to him.”
“So rather than get a New Orleans detective agency for a routine job, he pays us a fancy price, and traveling expenses, and a per diem from Los Angeles here.”
“You were already in Florida. He seemed to be pleased when I told him that. I told him you could be here a couple of days before we arrived.”
“All right, he was pleased. He hired us to come in and work on this case because he had confidence in us. And he knew where Roberta Fenn was all the time. ”
Bertha stared at me as though I’d done something utterly incomprehensible like tossing a brick through the plate-glass window in the drugstore behind us.
“It’s the truth!” I said.
“Donald, you’re absolutely crazy! Why should a man come all the way to Los Angeles and hire us at fifty dollars a day with an extra twenty for expenses, to find a woman in New Orleans whom he said was missing, but who wasn’t?”
“That,” I said, “is the reason I’m not getting in any taxicab and going to police headquarters. You may if you want to. There’s the cab, and knowing you as I do, I feel quite certain you have enough money to pay the fare.”
I started walking toward the hotel.
Bertha came striding along after me. “You don’t need to be so damned independent about it!”
“I’m not being independent. I’m simply keeping my nose clean.”
“What are you going to say when the police do get hold of you and make things tough because you didn’t report the murder?”
“I did report the murder.”
She thought that over.
“The police aren’t going to like it, just the same.”
“No one asked them to.”
“When they finally get their hands on you,” Bertha warned, “it’s going to be just too bad! ”
“Unless we can give them something else to distract their attention.”
“Such as what?” she asked.
“The murderer who was in that room, or, perhaps, a brand new murder case. Something that will keep their minds occupied.”
Bertha automatically fell into step with me, thinking things over.
She said at length, “Donald, you’re crazy about that Hale business.”
“What about it?”
“About him knowing where Roberta Fenn was.”
“He had already found her.”
“What makes you think so?”
I said, “The waiter at The Bourbon House saw her coming out of Jack O’Leary’s Bar with Hale.”
“You’re certain?”
“Reasonably so. The waiter described him to a T, said he looked like he was holding something in his mouth.”
“When was this?”
“About a month ago.”
“Then she knows who Hale is?”
“No. Hale knows who she is. She thinks Hale is Archibald C. Smith of Chicago.”
Bertha sighed. “This is too damn much for me. It s one of those Chinese puzzles that you like. I don’t like them.”
“I’m not crazy about this one myself. This isn’t a question of whether we like it or not. It’s something we’re in — right up to our necks.”
Bertha said, “Well, I’m going to get in touch with Hale and call for a showdown. I’m—”
“You’re going to do nothing of the sort,” I interrupted. “You’ll remember that Hale told us he didn’t want us making any investigation as to why we were hired, or who had hired us. We were hired only to do one thing, to find Roberta Fenn.”
I could see that Bertha was thinking things over all the way to the hotel. Just before we entered the lobby, she said, “Well, I’ve made up my mind to one thing.”
“What?”
“We’ve found Roberta Fenn. That’s what we were hired to do. And we collect that bonus. Now I’ve got to get back to Los Angeles. That construction-company business is important.”
I said, “It’s okay by me.”
Bertha entered the lobby, marched up to the desk, and said, “When’s the next train out of here for California?”
The clerk smiled and said, “If you’ll inquire at the porter’s desk, he’ll— Wait a minute. Aren’t you Mrs. Cool?”
“Yes!”
“You were registered here. Checked out last night, didn’t you?”
“That’s right.”
The clerk said, “A telegram came in for you this morning. We sent it back to the telegraph company. Just a moment. Perhaps it hasn’t gone out yet. No. Here it is.”
He picked it out and handed it across to Bertha Cool.
She tore it open and held the message so I could read over her shoulder. It was dated Richmond the night before and read: After talking with you on telephone have decided return New Orleans first available plane. Emory G. Hale.