Gold Comes in Bricks

Chapter eleven

No one talked much as I drove the car to the main highway, turned into the automobile camp, and switched off the lights and motor. I got out and started to open the door on the other side, then saw a car I hadn’t seen before, and got a glimpse at an E embedded in a diamond on the license plate.

I didn’t say a word to the others, but walked directly toward my own cabin.

Two men stepped out of the shadows. One of them said, “Your name Lam?”

I said, “Yes.”

“Donald Lam?”

“Yes.”

“Come on in. We want to talk with you. We have telegraphic instructions to pick you up.”

I was hoping that Ashbury and Alta would have sense enough to keep out of it. They got out of the car and stood by the door. Alta’s face was white in the moonlight.

“Who are these folks?” the officer asked, indicating Ashbury and his daughter with a jerk of his head.

“They picked me up down the road a piece and asked me if I wanted a ride.”

One of the officers wore the uniform of the state highway patrol, and the other, I gathered, was a local officer.

“What do you want?”

“Didn’t you leave rather suddenly?”

“I’m working.”

“On what?”

“I’d prefer not to make any statements.”

“Did you know a man named Ringold?”

“I read in the paper about his murder.”

“Know anything about it?”

“No, of course not. Why?”

“Weren’t you in the hotel the night he was killed? Didn’t you talk with a blonde at the cigar stand, and again with a clerk, trying to pump them about Ringold?”

“Gosh, no!” I said, backing away a step or two and staring at them as though I thought they were mad. “Say, wait a minute. Who are you birds, anyway? Are you officers?”

“Of course we’re officers.”

“Got a warrant?”

“Now listen, buddy. Don’t go getting hard, see? And don’t start playing wise guy. Right now we’re asking questions. That’s all.”

“What do you want to know?”

“According to the D.A., you could have had an interest in Ringold.”

“How do you figure?”

“Well, buddy, it’s this way. Jed Ringold was working for the Foreclosed Farms Underwriters Company, see? And that company has a bunch of land up here near Valleydale. Now the president of the Foreclosed Farms Underwriters Company — Cripes, it tangles my tongue to say the damn thing. What did they want to get a name like that for? Well, anyway, the president is a guy named Tindle, and you’ve been out living with him and taking orders from him.”

I said, “You’re nuts. I’ve been visiting out at Ashbury’s house. Tindle is Henry Ashbury’s stepson.”

“You ain’t been workin’ for him?”

“Hell, no. I’ve been taking some fat off Ashbury. I’m giving him jujitsu lessons.”

“That’s what you say. Tindle’s got interests up here. Ringold is working for Tindle. Somebody goes into the hotel and bumps Ringold off. This guy has a description that’s a helluva lot like yours, and—”

I moved forward to stare at him. “Is that what’s eating you?” I asked.

“That’s right.”

“All right, when I get back, I’ll go call the cops and tell them how crazy they are. There were a couple of people who saw the guy that went into the hotel, weren’t there? — Seems to me, I remember reading about it in the papers.”

“That’s right, buddy.”

“All right, I’ll be back in a couple of days, and we’ll clean it up.”

“Well, now, suppose you ain’t the guy that was in the hotel?”

“I’m not.”

“You’d like to get it cleaned up, wouldn’t you?”

“Not particularly. It’s so absurd I’m not even bothering about it.”

“But suppose you are the guy? Then something might happen, and you just wouldn’t remember about going back.”

“Well, you’re not going to take me back just because I happen to know the president of this corporation, are you?”

“No, but the D.A.’s office got hold of a photo of you, Lam, and showed it to the clerk at the hotel, and the hotel clerk says, ‘That’s the guy you want.’ So now what?”

Ashbury and his daughter had taken the hint. Instead of going on into their cabin, they’d got back into the car and turned it around. Ashbury rolled down the window on the driver’s side, leaned out, and asked, “Is there anything I can do for you, my friend? Are you in any trouble?”

“Nothing,” I said, “just a private matter. Good-night, and thanks for the lift.”

“You’re entirely welcome,” Ashbury said and slid the car into gear and whisked out of the auto camp.

“Well?” the officer who had been doing the talking asked.

I said, “There’s only one answer to that. We’re going back. I’ll make the damn clerk get down on his knees and eat those words — every one of ’em. The guy’s just plain nuts.”

“Now that’s the sensible way to look at it. You know we could take you back, but we’d have a lot of notoriety which wouldn’t do anybody any good. If it’s a mistake, the less said about it the better. You know how it is, buddy. It’s kind of hard to identify people from a photograph. We drag you back and get a lot of newspaper publicity that the clerk’s positively identified you as the guy. Then he takes a look at your mug and says he ain’t so certain. Then a while later the real bird turns up. He looks something like you, but not too much, and the clerk says, ‘Sure. That’s the guy.’ But you know what some shyster lawyer would do? He’d make that clerk look like two bits on the witness stand because he’d identified somebody else first.”

“Sure,” I said. “The fool clerk makes a false identification and puts me to a lot of trouble, but it’s the shyster lawyer for the defendant that’s to blame.”

The cop looked at me for a minute. “Say, buddy, you ain’t trying to kid me, are you?”

“How do we go?” I asked.

“We drive you down the road about a hundred miles. There’s an airport there and a special officer that telephoned us to go pick you up. He’s waiting with a plane. If it’s all a mistake, he’ll bring you back, and you can take a stage from the airport right back here.”

“And I won’t be out anything except stage fare and a day’s time,” I said sarcastically.

They didn’t say anything.

I did a little thinking. “Well, I won’t travel on a plane at night for anyone. I’ll drive down with you. I’ll go to an hotel with the officer. I won’t leave until tomorrow morning. I’ve got some irons in the fire I can’t shove to one side—”

“Kinda independent, ain’t you, buddy?”

I looked him in the eyes and said, “You’re damn right. If you want me to go voluntarily, that’s the way I’ll go. If you want to advertise it in the newspapers that the clerk has made a bum identification, you can take me.”

“Okay,” the man said. “Get in. We’re taking you.”

The special investigator for the district attorney’s office who was waiting at the airport wasn’t entirely easy in his mind. My attitude made him a lot less easy, but he was good and sore at the idea that I was going to stay overnight in a hotel and wouldn’t travel by plane at night. He kept trying to argue with me. I told him simply that I was afraid to travel by air at night.

The officer couldn’t figure it out. “Now, listen, Lam, if you want to get back on the job, this is the way to do it. I’ve got this plane here, and it’s chartered. I can put you under arrest and take you back if I have to and—”

“You can if you put a charge against me.”

“I don’t want to put a charge against you.”

“All right, then, we leave in the morning.”

After a while he said to the officers who had brought me down, “Keep an eye on him. I’m going to put through a telephone call.”

He went into a booth and put through a long-distance call. It took him about twenty minutes. The highway patrol and I sat in the lobby of the hotel. They tried to sell me on the idea of going back and getting it over with.

The special investigator came back from the telephone booth and said, “All right, buddy. You asked for it. We’re going back.”

“Going to charge me?”

“I’m going to arrest you on suspicion.”

“Got a warrant?”

“No.”

“I’m going to call a lawyer.”

“That won’t do you any good.”

“The hell it won’t. I’m going to call a lawyer.”

“We haven’t time to wait for a telephone right now. The aviator is ready to take off.”

I said, “I have a right to call a lawyer,” and started for the telephone booth.

They stopped me so fast my head jerked. One of them grabbed one shoulder. The other grabbed the other shoulder. The clerk in the lobby looked at me curiously. A couple of loungers got up and moved away. The investigator from the D.A.’s office said, “Okay, boys, let’s go.”

They gave me the bum’s rush out to the automobile, cut loose with the siren, and got out to the airport in nothing flat. A cabin plane was there with the motors all warmed, and they pushed me inside. The man from the D.A.’s office said, “Since you’re asking for it the hard way, buddy, I’ll just see that you don’t get any funny ideas while the plane’s up in the air and try to start anything.” He slipped a handcuff around my wrist and handcuffed the other loop to the arm of the chair.

“Fasten your seat belts,” the pilot said.

The deputy fastened my seat belt. “It would have been a lot better if you’d done it the easy way,” he said.

I didn’t say. anything.

“Now, when we get down there, you’re not going to make a kick about going to the hotel where this clerk can take a look at you, are you?”

I said, “Brother, you’re the one that’s doing it the hard way. I told you I’d go down tomorrow morning, walk into the hotel or any place you wanted, and let the fellow take a look at me. You got hard — I’m not going to any hotel. If you take me down, you put me in jail, and I tell my story to the newspaper boys. If you want anybody to identify me, you put me in a line-up, and have the identification made that way.”

“Oh, it’s like that, is it?”

“It’s like that.”

“Now, I’m damn sure you’re the one who went in the hotel.”

“You’re just knocking your case higher than a kite,” I said. “The newspapers are going to play it up that you charged me with murder, that the hotel clerk made an identification from a photograph—”

“A tentative identification,” the officer corrected.

“Call it whatever you want to,” I said. “When he tries to identify the real man, there’s going to be hell to pay — and you’re going to catch it.”

He got sore then, and I thought he was going to paste me one, but he changed his mind, went over, and sat down. The pilot looked back, made certain our seat belts were fastened, gunned the motors, took the plane down the field, turned, came up into the wind, and took off.

It was smooth flying. I leaned back against the cushions. Occasional air beacons leered up at me with red eyes that blinked ominously. At intervals, clustered lights marked the location of little towns. I’d look down and think how people, snuggled in warm beds, would hear the roaring beat of the motor echoing back from the roof, roll over sleepily, and say, “There goes the mail,” without realizing it was a plane taking a man on a death gamble, with the cards stacked against him.

The pilot turned around and made signs to us when we started over the mountains. I gathered he meant it was going to be rough. He did. We went way up to try and get over it, but instead of going over it, we went through it. I felt like a wet dishrag when we came slanting down to the airport.

The pilot landed at the far end. The D.A.’s man got up, came over, and unfastened one end of the handcuffs. He said ominously, “Now, listen, Lam, you’re going to get into a car, and you’re going to that hotel. There isn’t going to be any fuss about it, and no publicity.”

“You can’t do that,” I said. “If you’re arresting me, go ahead and book me.”

“I’m not arresting you.”

“Then you had no right to bring me down here.”

He grinned, and said, “You’re here, ain’t you?”

The plane turned and taxied up to the hangars. I heard the sound of a siren, and a car came up. A red spotlight blazed its beam to a focus right on the door of the plane.

The man from the D.A.’s office jabbed me in the small of the back. “Don’t act rough now,” he said. “It would be a shame to have an argument. You’ve been a nice little man so far. Just keep on going.”

They turned the spotlight into my eyes so it would blind me. The deputy pushed me out. Hands grabbed me, and shoved me forward, then I heard Bertha Cool’s voice saying, “What are you doing with this man?”

Somebody said, “Beat it, lady. This guy’s under arrest.”

“What’s he charged with?”

“None of your damn business.”

Bertha Cool said, “All right,” to somebody who was just a shadowy figure in the darkness, and the man stepped forward and said, “I’ll make it my business. I’m an attorney. I’m representing this man.”

“Beat it,” the officer told him, “before something happens to your face.”

“All right, I’ll beat it, but first let me give you this nice little folded paper. That’s a writ of habeas corpus issued by a superior judge ordering you to produce this man in court. This other paper is a written demand that you take him immediately and forthwith before the nearest and most accessible magistrate for the purpose of fixing bail. In case you’re interested, the nearest and most accessible magistrate happens to be a justice of the peace in this township. He’s sitting in his office right now, with the lights on and his court open waiting to fix the bail.”

“We don’t have to take him to no magistrate,” the man said.

“Where are you going to take him?”

“To jail.”

“I wouldn’t advise you to go anywhere without stopping to see the nearest and most accessible magistrate,” the lawyer said.

Bertha Cool said, “Now listen, you, this man’s working for me. I’m running a respectable detective agency. He was working. You yanked him off the job and chased him down here. Don’t think for a minute you’re going to pull this stuff and get away with it.”

The man from the district attorney’s office said, “Just a minute, boys. Stick around.” He said to the lawyer Bertha Cool had, “Let’s talk things over a minute.”

Bertha Cool horned in on the conference. Her diamonds caught the rays from the spotlight, and made blood-red scintillations as she moved her hands. “I’m in on this, too,” she said.

“Now listen,” the D.A.’s man said, obviously worried and pretty much on the defensive, “we don’t want to put any charges against this boy. For all we know, he’s just a nice kid that hasn’t done a thing in the world, but we’re trying to find out whether he’s the man who went into Jed Ringold’s room the night he was murdered. If he isn’t, that’s all there is to it. If he is, we’re going to charge him with murder.”

“So what?” Bertha Cool asked truculently.

The D.A. man looked at her and tried to outstare her. Bertha Cool pushed her face toward him, and, with her eyes glittering belligerently, demanded again and in a louder voice, “So what? You heard me, you worm. Go ahead and answer.”

The D.A.’s officer turned to the lawyer. “There isn’t any need for a habeas corpus, and there isn’t any need to take him before a magistrate because we don’t want to charge him.”

“How did you get him down here if he wasn’t arrested?” Bertha asked.

He tried ignoring her question, and said to the lawyer, “Now the clerk at the hotel takes a look at this guy’s picture and says he thinks this is the bird. All we want to do is to take him into the hotel. The clerk takes a look at him. Now that’s reasonable enough, ain’t it?”

For a fraction of a second the lawyer hesitated. Bertha Cool reached out with an arm and shoved him to one side as easily as though he’d been just an empty bag of clothes. She pushed her face up in front of the deputy from the D.A.’s office and said, “Well, it isn’t all right, not by a damn sight.”

A little group had gathered. Passengers from one of the airliners that had come in, a few of the ground crew, and a couple of aviators. The red spotlight was out of my eyes now, and I could look around and see their faces grinning. They were getting a great kick out of Bertha Cool.

Bertha said, “We know our rights. You can’t identify a man that way. If you’re going to charge him with murder, you lock him up. You put him in a line-up, and you be goddam certain there are two or three other men in that line-up who have the same build and physical characteristics as the man you’re looking for. Then you bring the clerk in and let him look at the line-up. If he picks Donald, that’s an identification. If he picks somebody else, that’s different.”

The D.A.’s man was bothered.

The lawyer said, “As a matter of law, officer, you know that’s absolutely correct.”

“But we don’t want to cause this bird a lot of trouble. It may be just a flash in the pan. If he isn’t guilty, what’s he making such a squawk for?”

I said, “Because I don’t like the way you did this. I told you I’d come down with you voluntarily tomorrow morning, go into the hotel, and talk with anyone you wanted; that I couldn’t leave tonight, that if you brought me down in that plane tonight, you’d have to put me under arrest.”

“Aw, nuts,” one of the officers said.

“What did you do?” I demanded, raising my voice. “You and two highway police grabbed me and gave me the bum’s rush out to the car. You threw me in and dragged me down here without any charge being made against me. That’s kidnapping. I’ll have the federal men on your neck. I’m not going to be pushed around, that’s all. Wait until tomorrow morning, and I’ll go to your damned hotel.”

There was a moment of silence.

I turned to Bertha and said, “You know where this plane came from, and you know a lawyer up there who has pull with the sheriff. Get him on the phone, have him get the sheriff out of bed, and get a warrant for kidnapping issued against this officer.”

“Listen, punk,” one of the officers said, “it isn’t kidnapping when you arrest a man for murder.”

“What do you do with him when you arrest him for murder?”

“We take him down to jail and throw the book at him, and if he acts rusty, we throw something else at him.”

“Swell,” I said. “Take me to a magistrate, and if he says so, you take me to jail, but don’t detour me to any hotels. The minute you do that, that’s kidnapping. Get the point, Bertha?”

The lawyer grabbed at it. “That’s right,” he said. “The minute they try taking you any place except in accordance with the statutes in such cases made and provided, it’s kidnapping.”

Bertha whirled to face the officers. “All right, you,” she said. “You’ve heard what the lawyer says.”

“Aw, dry up,” one of the officers said. I could see the district attorney’s investigator was getting little beads of perspiration on his forehead.

Bertha said, “And don’t think you’re going to strong-arm your way out of it simply because you’re in your own county. The kidnapping took place in another county, and if you knew how some of these other counties hate the guts of you men from this part of the state, you’d know what’s going to happen.”

That was the bombshell that did the work. I could see the D.A.’s man cave just as though his knees had buckled. He said, “Now, listen, there’s no use losing our tempers and yelling at each other. Let’s be reasonable. If this man’s innocent, he should be as anxious to prove it as anyone.”

I said, “That’s better. What do you want?”

“We want to find out whether you were the man who had the adjoining room in that hotel on the night of the murder.”

“All right, let’s find out.”

“Cripes, brother, that’s all we were trying to do.”

I said, “Let’s find out in a fair way.”

“What do you think’s a fair way?” one of the officers asked.

I said, “I’ll go down to the jail. You get five or six other people that are generally of my build and complexion, and have them dressed just about the same. While we’re doing it, let’s do it right. How many people saw this man who went to the hotel?”

“Three.”

“Who were they?”

“The night clerk, a girl who runs a cigar counter, and some woman who saw him standing in the door.”

“All right, get those people, put them side by side in three chairs, and tell them not to make any comments until after the whole line-up has filed past. Then ask them separately if anybody in the line-up was the man they saw there the night of the murder.”

The D.A.’s man lowered his voice. “Now, listen,” he said, “you sound like a good egg. Let me give you the low-down. The old girl that was in the upper corridor saw this man standing in the doorway. She had her glasses off. She could see him all right, but — well, you know how it is, brother. She wears glasses during the daytime, and she didn’t have them on. A slick lawyer could catch her on that. The minute we run you into the hoosegow, the newspaper men are going to be on the job. They’ll take flashlight photographs of you, and there’ll be big headlines. ‘POLICE ARREST PRIVATE DETECTIVE ON SUSPICION OF MURDER.’ Then in case the identification falls down, we’re sunk. Now, if you are guilty, go ahead and rely on all your constitutional rights. More power to you. We’ll send you to the gas chamber just as sure as hell. If you aren’t guilty, for God’s sake, have a heart and co-operate.”

I said, “I’m not guilty, but you know what’s going to happen. That pin-head clerk has identified a photograph of Donald Lam as being the man who came in and got the room. You tell him that you’re going to get Donald Lam and bring him in. You come through the door dragging me in, and that clerk’s going to say, ‘That’s the guy,’ before he even gets his eyes focused.”

The D.A.’s man hesitated.

“Of course he is,” Bertha Cool said indignantly. “I saw his picture in the paper. He looks like just that sort of a nitwit, a long, thin drink of water, all mouth and Adam’s apple. What the hell can you expect of a goof like that?”

Somebody in the outskirts of the crowd gave a belly laugh. One of the cops turned around and said, “Beat it, you guys. Go on. Get out of here.”

No one paid any attention to him.

I said, “Wait a minute. There’s one other possibility.”

“What’s that?” the D.A.’s man asked.

“Is there anyone who saw this man go into the hotel but doesn’t know that you’ve picked on me and hasn’t seen my picture?”

“That girl at the cigar counter,” the D.A.’s man said.

“All right. We go up to her apartment. You call her out. Ask her if she’s ever seen me before. If she says I’m the guy, we go to jail, and you book me. If she says I’m not, you turn me loose, the newspapers don’t blow the works, and we forget the kidnapping charge.”

He hesitated, and I went on quickly. “Or you can take the woman who stood in the doorway. You can—”

“Nix on her,” the D.A.’s man said hastily. “She didn’t have her glasses on.”

I said, “Suit yourself.”

The investigator reached his decision. “Okay, boys,” he said. “Has anybody got the name and address of that girl?”

“Yeah,” one of the men said. “Her name’s Clarde. I was talkin’ with her right after the shootin’. She gave me a description of the man. It fits this guy to a T.”

I yawned.

My lawyer said hurriedly, “Look here, Lam, that’s rather an unfair test you’re giving yourself. The officers drag you up there. She looks at you, and you alone. She knows you’re suspected—”

“It’s okay,” I said wearily. “I was never in the damn joint in my life. Let ’em get it out of their system.”

“And you’ll co-operate so we can keep it absolutely on the QT?” the D.A.’s man asked.

“I don’t give a damn what you do. I want to go to bed and get some sleep. Let’s get it over with.”

Bertha Cool said, “Now listen, Donald, I think that other way was the best. You go down to the jail and—”

“My God!” I shouted at her. “You act as though you thought I was guilty, both of you.”

That quieted them. Bertha looked at me in a dazed sort of a way. The lawyer was a good guy in his place, but he’d shot his broadside. When he made his demand and passed over the papers, he didn’t have anything for a follow-up.

“And just so there won’t be any mistake about it,” I said, “Mrs. Cool and my lawyer are going to ride in the same car with us.”

“Okay,” the D.A.’s man said. “Let’s get started.”

While we were screaming through the streets, making time behind the siren and red lights, the D.A.’s man did a lot more thinking. He said, “Now, listen, Lam, you know the position we’re in. We don’t want a false identification any more than you do.”

“Personally,” I said wearily, “I don’t give a damn. If she identifies me, I can spring an iron-clad alibi for the whole damn night. It’s just the principle of the thing, that’s all. If you’d played fair with me, I’d have come down and gone to the hotel with you in the morning. I didn’t like that bum’s rush, that’s all.”

“Well, you’re sure rusty when you get rusty. How the hell did you get that woman and the lawyer tipped off so they were waiting at the airport?”

I yawned.

“Any leak out of your place, Bill?” the investigator asked one of the officers.

The officer shook his head. “It looks fishy to me,” he said.

The D.A.’s investigator stared at me. “Say, listen, suppose you tell me about your alibi first. Maybe we could check on that, and we wouldn’t have to bother getting this girl up out of bed. Why didn’t you tell me about that sooner? I could have used a telephone and maybe saved you a trip down.”

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t think of it. The way you folks gave me the rush act — you know how it is. Try thinking where you were every minute of the time two or three nights ago, and—”

“Well, where were you? What’s the alibi?”

I shook my head. “We’re down here now,” I said, “and it’ll be easier to get this girl out of bed than to get all of my witnesses out of bed.”

“How many are there?”

“Three.”

He leaned over and whispered something to one of the officers. The officer shook his head dubiously.

Bertha Cool looked at me with her forehead puckered in lines of worry. The lawyer looked smugly down his nose as though he’d actually done something.

We hit the city, and went screaming through the streets. The intersections whizzed past. The distances of city blocks dissolved under the wheels of the speeding automobile. That siren certainly flattened out traffic. In no time at all we were at the door of the apartment house where Esther Clarde lived.

I said to Bertha Cool, “Come on. I want a witness.”

One of the officers stayed with the car. The other one came along with us. The lawyer also got in on the party. We sounded like an army on the march pounding up the stairs. It was a walk-up, and the D.A.’s investigator, putting me in the lead, kept prodding me from behind. I think he thought he was going to leave Bertha Cool behind, but he reckoned without Bertha. She hoisted her two hundred and fifty-odd pounds up those stairs, keeping her place in the procession.

We got up to the third floor. One of the officers pounded on Esther Clarde’s door. I heard her voice saying, “Who is it?” And the D.A.’s man said, “The law. Open up.”

There was silence for four or five seconds. I could hear Bertha’s breathing. Then Esther Clarde called out, “Well, what do you want?”

“We want to come in.”

“Why?”

“We want you to look at a man.”

“Why?”

“We want to see if you know him.”

“What does the law have to do with that?”

“Nuts. Open up. Let us in.”

“All right. Wait a minute. I’ll let you in.”

We waited. I lit a cigarette. Bertha Cool looked at me with a puzzled expression in her eyes. The lawyer looked as important as a rooster in a hen yard. The officers fidgeted, exchanged looks.

Esther Clarde opened the door. She had on that black velveteen housecoat with the zipper up the side that she’d worn the night before. Her eyes looked a little sleepy. She said, “Well, I guess it’s all right. Come on in and—” She saw me and jerked the door shut. She yawned and said, “Okay, what is it?”

The investigator from the D.A.’s office jerked his thumb at me. “Ever see this guy before?” he asked.

The lawyer corrected meticulously, “Any of these men before. After all, you should be fair—”

Esther Clarde shifted her expressionless eyes over my face, looked at the lawyer, pointed her finger at him, and said, “You mean this guy? Is he the one?”

The district attorney’s man took my shoulder and pushed me forward. “No, this guy. Is he the one who was in the hotel the night of the murder?”

I looked at Esther Clarde and didn’t move a muscle in my face. She looked at me, frowned a minute, and said, “Say, he does look something like the same guy.”

She squinted her eyes and looked me over, then she slowly shook her head. “Say,” she said to the officer, “don’t let anybody kid you. There’s a resemblance, all right.”

“Well, are you certain it isn’t the same one?”

“Listen,” she said, “I’ve never seen this guy in my life before, but, no fooling, he looks like the man who was in there. If you want to get a good description, you can take this man to work on. That fellow was just exactly the same height, and almost the same weight. He was a little bit broader-shouldered than this guy. His eyes weren’t quite the same color, and there’s a difference about his mouth, and the shape of the ears is a lot different. I notice people’s ears. It’s a hobby of mine. This man that was in the hotel, I remember now, didn’t have any lobes on his ears at all.”

“That’s a valuable point,” the officer said. “Why didn’t you tell us that before?”

“Never thought of it,” she said, “until I got to looking this man over. Say,” she asked me, “what’s your name?”

“Lam,” I said. “Donald Lam.”

“Well,” she said, “you sure do look a lot like the man who was in the hotel. Taken from a distance, a person might make a mistake.”

“But you’re sure?” the officer asked.

“Of course I’m sure. My gosh, I talked with the guy that was in there. He leaned up against the cigar counter and asked me questions. This man’s ears are different, and his mouth is different. He isn’t quite as heavy. I think he’s just about the same height. Where do you work, Lam?”

“I’m a private detective. This is Bertha Cool. I work for her. It’s B. Cool — Confidential Investigations.”

“Well, say,” she said, “you’d better keep out of the way of that old biddy who looked out of the room door on the fourth floor. She told me afterward that without her glasses all she could see was a blur, but she knew it was a young man, and—”

“Never mind that,” the officer interrupted.

Esther Clarde said casually, “Walter — that’s Walter Markham, the night clerk — didn’t get such a good look at him either. He was asking me only this morning about some things, trying to make sure about the color of the man’s eyes and hair. I guess I’m the only one that did get a good look at him.”

The D.A.’s investigator said, “Okay, that’s all.”

“How do I get back to where I was picked up?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Take a bus.”

“Who pays the fare?”

“You do.”

I said, “That’s not right.”

Esther Clarde said, “Well, I guess I’ve lost enough of my beauty sleep.” She took keys from her pocket, unlocked the spring latch on her door, and went in. We heard the bolt turning on the inside.

The whole procession trooped down the stairs. Bertha Cool was in the rear. Out on the sidewalk, I said, “Now listen, I was picked up several hundred miles from here. It cost me money to get there and—”

The officers opened the door of the police car. The district attorney’s investigator piled in. The door slammed. The car shot smoothly away from the curb and left us standing there.

Bertha Cool looked at me with eyes that were bugged out in astonishment, said softly under her breath, “I’ll be a dirty name!”