The plane dipped down over the desert, skimmed low over a dazzling white surface spotted with clumps of sage and greasewood. The shadow cast by the big ship seemed inky black as it scudded along over the ground below. Then the wheels touched the ground. The plane settled, and taxied up to where attendants were waiting.
“This is it,” I said to Bertha.
The man who was seated next to me said, with some surprise, “Are you getting off here?”
“Yes.”
“So am I.”
Bertha smiled at him. “That’s nice. Perhaps we’ll be seeing you.”
“Staying long?” the man asked me as we settled ourselves in the automobile which would take us to town. “I don’t know.”
“Business?”
“Yes.”
Bertha Cool was up in the front seat beside the driver. The man leaned over so his lips were close to my ear.
“I take it then you aren’t acquainted here in Las Vegas?”
“No.”
We rode on for a while, then he said, “The Sal Sagev Hotel is a nice place to stay. Name’s hard to remember until you realize that it’s just Las Vegas spelled backwards. This certainly is a great town. Reno gets the advertising, but Las Vegas has just as much color as Reno. Sometimes I think more. It’s more distinctive, more individual.”
“I’ve been to both places.”
“Well, you know what it’s like then. I get a kick out of it.”
Bertha Cool turned in the seat. “This desert air certainly makes you feel good.”
The man next to me said with a little bow, “It certainly makes you look good. You’re the picture of health.”
“My war paint,” Bertha said.
“That sparkle in your eyes didn’t come from a drugstore, and if you have any make-up on, it’s simply gilding the lily. Persons who have your smooth, fine skin texture don’t need make-up.”
It had been a long time since Bertha had heard anything like that. I looked for her to tell him off. Instead she tried a smile. It melted into a simper as she turned around to face the windshield.
At the Sal Sagev Hotel, Bertha Cool inscribed her scrawl on the register. The man said, “That’s interesting. I’m to meet the representative of a man by the name of Cool.”
Bertha looked at him. “You’re Whitewater?” she asked suddenly.
“Whitewell,” I amended.
He stared in surprise. “But — but — I—” He turned to me. “Are you Lam?”
I nodded.
“Don’t tell me that B. Cool is a woman.”
Bertha said, “I run the agency under the name of B. Cool because it saves a lot of explanation.”
Whitewell said, “Let’s go upstairs and talk. Your room, Mrs. Cool?”
“Yes,” she said, “in ten minutes.”
His room was a floor below our rooms. After he’d left the elevator, Bertha said, “He’s nice.”
“Uh huh.”
“Refined — sort of distinguished looking.”
“Uh huh. Aren’t you going to eat that chocolate bar?”
“Not now, lover. I have a little headache. I’ll save it. Run along to your room, but be sure you’re back in ten minutes. I don’t want to keep Mr. Whitewell waiting.”
“I’ll be there.”
I washed up, and got to the door of Bertha’s room in exactly nine and one-half minutes. Whitewell came down the corridor just as I knocked.
Bertha let us in. She smelled of hand lotion and toilet water. “Come right in, Mr. Whitewell,” she said. “Come right in and make yourself comfortable. Donald, sit over there in that chair.”
We sat down. Whitewell glanced quizzically at me, and said, “He isn’t exactly the type I’d expected.”
Bertha dragged a coy smile out of moth balls, draped it over her face, and said, in a voice that sounded kittenish, “And I surprised you, too, didn’t I?”
“Very much. I simply can’t picture a dainty, refined woman in such a business. Don’t you find it sordid?”
“Oh, not at all,” Bertha said in stilted tones of mealymouthed politeness. “It’s really very interesting. Of course, Donald takes over the sordid part. What was it you wanted us to do?”
“I want you to find a young woman.”
“Donald’s good at that. He just finished one of those cases.”
“Well, this is a little different.”
Bertha asked cautiously, “Are you her father?”
“No. I’m the father of a young man who is very much concerned — too much concerned, in fact.”
We waited for him to go on. He crossed his knees, clipped the end off a cigar, and asked, “Mind if I smoke?”
“Oh, please do,” Bertha said. “I like to see a man smoke a cigar. It’s so thoroughly masculine.”
He lit the cigar, carefully dropped the match into a tray, and said, “I have an only son, Philip. I run an advertising agency. Philip is coming in with me. I’m going to incorporate the business. I intended to give Philip a half interest as his wedding present.”
“That’s nice.”
“You see, he didn’t care much about settling down in an office. Perhaps I’ve been too indulgent. But when he fell in love, it changed all that. He was simply crazy over this young woman. She worked as secretary to one of the officials in an airplane factory and is strong for work and self-reliance. She imbued Philip with her ideas, and he suddenly decided he wanted to take his coat off and dig in. It was a miraculous transformation.”
“Must have made you feel pretty good.”
“It did — in a way — but—”
“Didn’t you want him to marry her?”
“At first, I didn’t want him to marry anyone until he’d become settled in a career. He’s twenty-eight, and has never done anything except play and travel. I could never get him interested in hard routine work.”
“I see. What’s happened to the woman?”
“Two days before the wedding, on the tenth, to be exact, she disappeared.”
“Leave any notes or anything?”
“Not a thing. She simply vanished into thin air, and hasn’t been heard from since.”
“If you didn’t want him to get married, why not let it go at that?” Bertha asked. “She had some reason for leaving. It’s probably something that would make her — well, even less desirable as a daughter-in-law.”
Whitewell made a little gesture with his hand. “I’ve thought of all that.”
“What’s the answer?”
“Philip. I told you she’d completely changed him. Frankly, I’m opposed to the match. But the circumstances surrounding her disappearance are such that I simply have to find her — for Philip’s sake if for nothing else. Philip isn’t sleeping; he isn’t eating. He’s going around in a half daze, losing weight, and looking like the devil.”
Bertha said, “All right, Donald will find her.”
He turned to me.
“Tell me all you know,” I said.
“As I’ve said, Corla was employed as secretary to one of the executives in the Randolf Aircraft Company. She lived with another girl in an apartment. On the day of her disappearance, she seemed moody and distraught. The girl with whom she was living tried to find out what was the matter. Corla said everything was all right.
“About ten minutes past eight, on the morning of the tenth, she started for work. She showed up on the job. Her employer said she seemed the same as usual, except she was very quiet. She’d already given notice that she was going to leave as soon as they could find someone to take her place. She and Philip were going to defer their honeymoon until later. Corla was exceedingly efficient as a secretary, and her employer had tried on several occasions to get her to remain on the job. I’m mentioning this because I want you to understand how thoroughly conscientious she was in regard to her work. Even if something had happened to make her take a run-out on Philip, she wouldn’t have left her employer in the lurch.”
“Go ahead,” Bertha said.
“She took dictation until about ten o’clock, then she started transcribing. Among the letters she had taken was a very important and confidential communication, dealing with a new model plane. Also there were some interoffice memos which were important and confidential.
“Her boss stepped out of the office after he’d finished his dictation to have a brief conference with one of the other executives. The conference lasted about twenty minutes. When he returned, he noticed that Corla was not at her desk. A sheet of paper was in the typewriter. She’d started to write the first letter, but had only transcribed a few words. She’d stopped typing in the middle of a sentence.
“Her employer thought she’d gone to the restroom. He went on into his office, sat down at his desk, and started work. About fifteen minutes later, he thought of another Letter that had to go out, and pressed the buzzer for Corla. When she didn’t show up, he went out to the outer office and found things just as they were when he had come in.
“About ten or fifteen minutes later, he summoned one of the other secretaries and sent her into the restroom to see if Corla was ill. Corla wasn’t there. They’ve never found a trace of her from that time on. Her handbag was lying on her desk. There were fifty-odd dollars in it in currency, every cent the girl had in the world. She didn’t have a bank account. Her lipstick, powder, rouge, keys, everything, were in that bag.”
“The police were notified?” I asked.
“Yes. They didn’t do anything.”
“Any clues?”
“Only one.”
“What is it?”
“According to her roommate, Corla had been feeling radiantly happy up until twenty-four hours before her disappearance. I have, therefore, tried to find out something about what happened in that last twenty-four hours. The only thing that I can find that’s at all unusual is that the morning prior to her disappearance she received a letter. Now, that letter was from someone named Framley in Las Vegas, Nevada.”
“How is that known?”
“The landlady distributes mail to the apartments. Her maiden name was Fran ley — with an ‘n.’ Her story is that she wouldn’t think of scrutinizing the mail received by her tenants except for the sole purpose of ascertaining which letter goes to which apartment.”
“No, of course not,” Bertha said sarcastically. “She wouldn’t think of looking over their mail.”
Whitewell smiled briefly, said, “She claims that the name, Framley, in the upper left-hand corner was so much like her own maiden name that she thought for a moment it had been written by some of her family. Then she saw that it was an ‘m’ instead of an ‘n’ in the name.”
“And she noticed it was from Las Vegas?”
“Yes.”
“What address in Las Vegas?”
“She doesn’t remember.”
“Remember the first name, whether it was a man or a woman?”
“No, only that it was from Framley, Las Vegas. That, of course, is a very slender clue, but it’s the only clue we have. There’s nothing in the facts surrounding her disappearance to help us.”
“How about her notebook?” I asked. “The shorthand notebook with the notes on the important and confidential—”
“Lying right there on her desk,” he said. “If that had been missing, I could have got some action from the F.B.I., but there’s absolutely nothing to indicate that her position had anything whatever to do with her disappearance. Apparently it’s purely a private matter.”
“And you think there’s a person named Framley in Las Vegas who knows something about her disappearance?” Bertha asked.
Whitewell said, “Yes, Mrs. Cool. There’s a Helen Framley who lives here in Las Vegas. That is, she’s been here for the last few weeks.”
“You’ve been to her?” I asked.
“What makes you think I’ve been to her?” he inquired cautiously.
I said, “Once you’d located her, you’d hardly pay money to a detective agency unless you’d already tried getting the information yourself — and failed.”
He didn’t answer immediately. He took the cigar out of his mouth, studied it for several seconds, then shifted his position in the chair, and said, “Frankly, I did. It happens that I have some friends here, the Dearbornes. Ever heard of them?”
“I don’t know anyone in Las Vegas,” I said.
He said, “Mrs. Dearborne is a very close friend. Her daughter, Eloise, is quite attractive — for a long time I had hoped that Philip would realize just how attractive.”
“He hasn’t?”
“Well, they’re friends. I had hoped that friendship would ripen into something deeper. I think it would have if it hadn’t been for Miss Burke.”
“Anyone else in the Dearborne family?”
“Ogden Dearborne, a young man who’s employed in the powerhouse at the Boulder Dam. Amateur aviator. Owns a quarter interest in a plane.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes, just the three.”
“And you got one of them to look up Helen Framley?”
“Yes. Ogden made an investigation. I called him on the telephone, asked him to try and find out about a person named Framley. If he could locate such a person, to try and find out what this person knew about Coda. He learned there was a Helen Framley in the city.”
“Did he locate her?” Bertha asked.
“Yes. He found Helen Framley — and that’s all the good it did him.”
“What happened?” Bertha asked.
“Miss Framley told him she hadn’t written any letter, that she had no idea who Corla was or where she was, and didn’t want to be questioned about anything pertaining to her, that she’d never even heard of Corla Burke.”
“Was she telling the truth?” Bertha asked.
Whitewell said, “I don’t know. Ogden seemed to think she was. There’s something very evasive and mysterious about the young woman. That’s why I wanted a professional detective on the job.”
“How about the police?” Bertha asked. “You said they weren’t interested?”
He moved his shoulders. “Just another missing person so far as they’re concerned. They’re going through the motions of trying to locate her, but that’s all. They insist that a certain percentage of young women who disappear that way are either going to have a baby or are running away with some man. They seemed to think Corla was really in love with someone else, had decided to marry Philip because he looked like a good catch, and then had changed her mind.”
“Would he be a good catch?” Bertha asked.
“Some mothers have so considered him,” Whitewell said dryly.
“And you want Donald to break through on this Framley girl?”
“I want him to find out what happened to Corla, why she disappeared, where she is now.”
“Just what do you want him to find?” Bertha asked.
“I want to establish that her disappearance was voluntary. I’m hoping the reason back of it will not only set my son’s mind at rest, but make him realize the advantages of strengthening his friendship with Eloise Dearborne. After what’s happened, I feel Corla wouldn’t be exactly the sort I’d want as a daughter-in-law — too much notoriety — this disappearance business— Bah! She’s a nice girl, but the Whitewells can’t stand for anything like that.”
Bertha said, “Donald will turn Helen Framley inside out. Girls fall for Donald, and fall hard.”
Whitewell looked approvingly at Bertha. “I’m very well satisfied indeed,” he said, “that your organization is exactly what I want — although I’d hardly expected to find a woman at the head of a detective agency, nor such an attractive woman.”
I asked, “Have you a picture of Corla Burke?”
He nodded.
“I’ll want it, also a description, also an introduction to Ogden Dearborne. You can telephone him and tell him I’ll be out. Ask him to tell me anything I want to know.”
Whitewell thought for a moment, then said, “Yes, I guess that will be the best way.”
“And the address of Helen Framley if you have it.”
“I’ll write that out for you.”
“Got that picture handy?”
He took two photographs from his inner pocket, and passed them over. One of them was a small-sized studio photograph of a girl with light hair, a slightly turned-up nose, and wistful eyes. The other was a snapshot. The shadows were pretty dark. The camera had been slightly out of focus, but it showed a girl on the beach in a bathing-suit. The camera had caught her just as she was reaching to throw a beach ball. She was laughing, and her mouth showed even rows of regular teeth. Her eyes were too shaded and blurred to give expression, but there was something in the poise of the figure the camera had caught, a dashing verve, a zest for life. Such a girl would never be quiescent, would never settle down. She was thoroughly volatile. She’d make mistakes as she went through life, but she’d keep moving.
I put the pictures in my pocket. “Don’t forget to call the Dearbornes and tell them that I’ll be out to see Ogden.”
“I could run you down there and—”
“No. I’d prefer to go by myself.”
“All right.”
“Donald,” Bertha said, “works very fast.”
Whitewell said, “I think I am to be congratulated.” He was looking steadily at Bertha as he spoke.
Bertha lowered her eyes. I’d never seen an expression on her face like that in all the time I’d been with her. She looked coy.
“What’s all this going to cost me?” Whitewell asked.
Bertha’s face changed as though someone had jerked off a mask. “Twenty-five dollars a day and expenses.”
“Isn’t that high?”
“Not for the service we give.”
“I understood a private detective—”
“You’re not hiring a detective, but an agency. Donald will be out on the firing line. I’ll be in the office, but very much on the job.”
“At that figure,” Whitewell said, “it seems to me you should guarantee results.”
Bertha’s eyes glittered into his. “What the hell do you take me for?” she asked.
He said, “There’s got to be some limit.”
Bertha said, “We’ll keep the expenses down.”
“How about expenses for entertainment?”
“There won’t be any. And we’ll want two hundred dollars in advance.”
Whitewell started making out his check. “If you can either find her or get proof that she left of her own free will within a week, I’ll give you a bonus of five hundred dollars. And if you can find her, I’ll make it an even thousand.”
Bertha looked across at me. “You get that, Donald?”
I nodded.
“Well, get out and start working. I may have been cooped up in a sanitarium for six months, but I don’t need any help to sign a receipt.”