Top of the Heap

High Praise for ‘TOP of the HEAP’!

“An ingenious story.”

—Kirkus Reviews“One of the best in the series... An illegal casino, bogus mines, former strippers and dead bodies abound... You can only love a book where everyone gets exactly what they deserve in triplicate.”

—Karen Ellington, The Mystery Read“A fine elaborate business of stock manipulation and (to fit in with the current worries of us all) income tax deception.”

—Anthony Boucher, The New York Times“It’s a neatly knotted puzzle and Donald unties it very neatly, too.”

—New York Herald Tribune Book Review“A fast-paced, action-packed story.”

—Springfield Republican

Rave Reviews for Erle Stanley GARDNER!

“The best selling author of the century... a master storyteller.”

—The New York Times“Gardner is humorous, astute, curious, inventive — who can top him? No one has yet.”

—Los Angeles Times“A fast and fiery tough tale... very very slick.”

—Kirkus Reviews“Erle Stanley Gardner is probably the most widely read of all... authors... His success... undoubtedly lies in the real-life quality of his characters and their problems... “

—The Atlantic“A clean, economical writer of peerless ingenuity.”

—The New York Times“One of the best selling writers of all time, and certainly one of the best-selling mystery authors ever.”

—Thrilling Detective“Zing, zest and zow are the Gardner hallmark. He will keep you reading at a gallop until The End.”

—Dorothy B. Hughes,

Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster

The blonde nervously took a cigarette case from a black bag and tapped the cigarette on the side of the polished silver. I snapped a match into flame, and she leaned forward for the light. I could see the long curling eyelashes, the mischievous glint of saucy hazel eyes, as she looked me over.

“Thank you,” she said.

Abruptly the floor manager glided up to the table. His smile was reassuring. “I have been asked,” he said, “to invite you to step into the office, Miss Marvin, and the boss would like to see Mr. Lam, too.”

The floor manager escorted us deferentially to a big door marked Private. He didn’t come in. The door clicked shut behind us. I turned to look. There was no knob on the door.

Channing shook hands with both of us. “How are you, Lam?” he said.

“Fine,” I told him.

I didn’t see Channing give the signal, but abruptly the door from the outer office opened and a man in a tuxedo stood quietly on the threshold.

“Mr. Lam,” Channing said, “had a card when he entered the place. He doesn’t wish to produce that card. I’d like very much to look at it.”

The newcomer reached forward and grabbed my wrist. I tried to jerk the arm free. I might as well have tried to pull against a steel cable.

Swift, efficient fingers did things to the wrist. The other hand hit against my elbow. My arm doubled around, flew up against my back, the wrist doubled into a grip that pulled the tendons until it was all I could do to keep from screaming.

“The card,” Channing said...

SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY:

MONEY SHOT by Christa Faust

ZERO COOL by John Lange

SHOOTING STAR/SPIDERWEB by Robert Bloch

THE MURDERER VINE by Shepard Rifkin

SOMEBODY OWES ME MONEY by Donald E. Westlake

NO HOUSE LIMIT by Steve Fisher

BABY MOLL by John Farris

THE MAX by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

THE FIRST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins

GUN WORK by David J. Schow

FIFTY-TO-ONE by Charles Ardai

KILLING CASTRO by Lawrence Block

THE DEAD MAN’S BROTHER by Roger Zelazny

THE CUTIE by Donald E. Westlake

HOUSE DICK by E. Howard Hunt

CASINO MOON by Peter Blauner

FAKE I.D. by Jason Starr

PASSPORT TO PERIL by Robert B. Parker

STOP THIS MAN! by Peter Rabe

LOSERS LIVE LONGER by Russell Atwood

HONEY IN HIS MOUTH by Lester Dent

QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE by Max Allan Collins

THE CORPSE WORE PASTIES by Jonny Porkpie

TOP of the HEAP

by Erle Stanley Gardner

WRITING UNDER THE NAME ‘A. A. FAIR’

A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK

(HCC-003)

Chapter One

I was in the outer office, standing by the files, doing some research on a blackmailer, when he came in, all six feet of him.

He wore a plaid coat, carefully tailored, pleated slacks, and two-tone sport shoes. He was built like a secondhand soda straw, and I heard him say he wanted to see the senior partner. He said it with the air of a man who always demands the best, and then settles for what he can get.

The receptionist glanced at me hopefully, but I was deadpan. Bertha Cool was the “senior” partner.

“The senior partner?” she asked, still keeping an eye on me.

“That’s right. I believe it is B. Cool,” he announced, glancing toward the names painted on the frosted glass of the doorway to the reception room.

She nodded and plugged in to B. Cool’s phone. “The name?” she asked.

He drew himself up importantly, whipped an alligatorskin card case from his pocket, took out a card, and presented it to her with a flourish.

She puzzled over it for a moment as though having difficulty getting it interpreted. “Mr. Billings?”

“Mr. John Carver Billings the—”

Bertha Cool answered the phone just then, and the girl said, “A Mr. Billings. A Mr. John Carver Billings to see you.”

“The Second,” he interposed, tapping the card. “Can’t you read? The Second!”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “the Second.”

That evidently threw Bertha Cool for a loss. Apparently she wanted an explanation.

“The Second,” the girl repeated into the phone. “It’s on his card that way, and that’s the way he says it. His name is John Carver Billings, and then there are two straight lines after the Billings.”

The man frowned impatiently. “Send my card in,” he ordered.

The receptionist automatically ran her thumbnail over the engraving on the card and said, “Yes, Mrs. Cool,” into the telephone.

Then she hung up and said to Billings, “Mrs. Cool will see you now. You may go right in.”

“Mrs. Cool?” the man said.

“Yes.”

“That’s B. Cool?”

“Yes. B. for Bertha.”

He hesitated perceptibly, then straightened his plaid sport coat and walked in.

The receptionist waited until the door had closed, then looked up at me and said, “He wants a man.”

“No,” I told her, “he wants the senior partner.”

“When he asks for you what shall I tell him?”

I said, “You underestimate Bertha. She’ll find out how much dough he has, and if it’s a sizable chunk she’ll ask me in for a conference. If it isn’t a big wad and John Carver Billings the Second intimates he thinks a woman isn’t as good a detective as a man, you’ll see Mr. John Carver Billings the Second thrown out of here on his ear.”

She looked very demure. “You’re so careful with your anatomical distinctions, Mr. Lam,” she said without smiling.

I went back to my office.

In about ten minutes the phone rang.

Elsie Brand, my secretary, answered, then glanced up and said, “Mrs. Cool wants to know if you can come into her office for a conference.”

“Sure,” I said, and gave the receptionist a wink as I walked past and opened the door of Bertha’s private office.

One look at the expression on Bertha’s face and I knew everything was fine. Bertha’s little, greedy eyes were glittering. Her lips were all smiles. “Donald,” she said, “this is John Carver Billings.”

“The Second,” he amended.

“The Second,” she echoed. “And this is Mr. Donald Lam, my partner.”

We shook hands.

I knew from experience that it took cold, hard cash to get Bertha to assume that ingratiating manner and that cooing, kittenish voice.

“Mr. Billings,” she said, “has a problem. He feels that perhaps a man should work on that problem, that it might—”

“Be more conducive of results,” John Carver Billings the Second finished.

“Exactly,” Bertha agreed with a cash-inspired alacrity of good humor.

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

Bertha’s chair squeaked as she moved her hundred and sixty-five pounds around so as to pick up the newspaper clipping on the far corner of her desk. She handed it to me without a word.

I read:

KNIGHT DAY’S COLUMN — DAY AND NIGHT

BLOND BEAUTY DISAPPEARS. FRIENDS

FEAR FOUL PLAY. POLICE SKEPTICAL.Maurine Auburn, the blond beauty who was with “Gabby” Garvanza at the time he was shot, has mysteriously disappeared. “Friends” have asked police to make an investigation.The police, however, who feel that the young woman was considerably less than co-operative during their investigation into the shooting of the mobster, are inclined to feel that Miss Auburn, who kept her own counsel so successfully a few nights ago, is about business of her own. So far as police are concerned, her failure to pick up milk bottles from the doorstep of her swank little bungalow in Laurel Canyon is a matter of official indifference. In fact, officers pointed out quite plainly that Miss Auburn resented having police “stick their noses” into her private life a few days ago, and the police intend to respect her desire for privacy whenever possible.The story as given to police by “friends” is that three days ago Maurine Auburn, who was the life of the party at a well-known nitery, became peeved at her escort and walked out.Nor did she walk out alone.Her departure was prefaced by a few dances with a new acquaintance whom she had met for the first time at the night club. The fact that she left the place with this newfound friend, rather than with members of her own party, is a circumstance which police consider to be without especial significance. Friends of the young woman, however, regard it as a matter of the greatest importance. Detectives are frank to state they do not consider this occurrence unique in the life of the mysterious young woman who was so singularly unobservant when Gabby Garvanza was on the receiving end of two leaden slugs.When milk bottles began to pile up on Miss Auburn’s doorstep, the peeved and jilted escort, whose name is being withheld by the police, felt that something should be done. He went to the police — perhaps for the first time in his life. Prior to that time, as one of the officers expressed it, the police had gone to him.In the meantime, Garvanza, who has so far recovered that he has been definitely pronounced out of danger, continues to occupy a private room at a local hospital and, despite his convalescence, continues to employ three special nurses.After coming out of an anesthetic at the hospital following the operation which resulted in removing two bullets from his body, Gabby Garvanza listened patiently to police inquiries, then, by way of helpful cooperation, said, “I reckon somebody who had it in for me must have taken a coupla shots at me.”Police consider this a masterly understatement of fact and point out that as an aid to investigative work it is somewhat less than a valuable contribution. There was a distinct feeling at headquarters that both Gabby Garvanza and Miss Auburn could have been much more helpful.

I dropped the clipping back on Bertha’s desk and looked at John Carver Billings the Second.

“Honestly,” he said, “I never knew who she was.”

“You’re the pickup?” I asked.

He nodded.

“And Maurine left the nitery with you?”

“It really wasn’t a night club. This was late in the afternoon, a cocktail rendezvous, food and dancing.”

I said to Bertha, “We might not want to handle this one.”

Bertha’s greedy eyes flashed at me. Her jeweled hand surreptitiously strayed toward the cash drawer. “Mr. Billings has paid us a retainer,” she said.

“And I offer a five-hundred-dollar bonus,” Billings went on.

“I was coming to that,” Bertha interposed.

“A bonus for what?” I asked.

“If you can find the girls I was with afterward.”

“After what?”

“After the Auburn girl left me.”

“That same night?”

“Of course.”

“You seem to have covered a lot of territory,” I said.

“It was this way,” Bertha explained. “Mr. Billings was to have been joined for cocktails by a young woman. This young woman stood him up. He had been attracted to Maurine Auburn, and, when he caught her eye, asked her to dance. One of the men who was with her told Billings to go roll his hoop. Miss Auburn told the guy he didn’t own her, and he said he knew that; he was watching the premises for the man who did.

“It looked like the party might get rough so Billings, here, went back to his own table.

“A few minutes later Maurine Auburn came over to his table and said, ‘Well, you asked for a dance, didn’t you?’

“So they danced, and, as our client says, they clicked. He was nervous because her escorts looked like tough mugs. He suggested she shake them and have dinner with him. She told him about another place she liked. They went there. As far as Billings knows she’s still powdering her nose.”

“What did you do?” I asked Billings.

“I stuck around, feeling like a sap. Then I noticed two girls by themselves. I made a play for one of them and got the eye. We danced for a while. By that time I realized, of course, Maurine had stood me up. I wanted one of these girls to ditch the other one so we could go places. No dice. They were together and they were going to stay together. I moved over to their table, bought them a couple of drinks, danced with them, had dinner, paid the check, and took them to an auto court.”

“Then what?”

“I stayed all night.”

“Where?”

“In this motor court.”

“With both of them?”

“They were in bedrooms. I was on a couch in the front room.”

“Platonic?”

“We’d all had quite a bit to drink.”

“Then what?”

“About ten-thirty in the morning we had tomato juice. The girls cooked up a breakfast. They weren’t feeling too good and I was feeling like hell. I got away from there, went to my own motel, took a shower, and went down to a barbershop, got shaved and massaged and — Well, from there on I can account for my time.”

“Every minute of it?”

“Every minute of it.”

“Where was the motor court?”

“Out on Sepulveda.”

Bertha said, “You see, Donald, these were a couple of San Francisco babes on an auto tour. Mr. Billings thinks they knew each other pretty well, that they may have been relatives, or may have been working together in an office somewhere. Apparently they’d planned an auto tour of the country on their vacation. They wanted to see a Hollywood night spot and see if they could get a glimpse of a movie star. When Mr. Billings offered to dance with them they were willing to play along but they were playing the cards close to their chest and wouldn’t let the party split up.

“Mr. Billings offered to drive them in his car but they said they were going to drive their own car. He — Well, he didn’t want to say good night too soon.”

Billings looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. “One of these babes had gone for me, and I’d gone for her,” he said. “I thought I might get rid of the chaperon if I tagged along. I didn’t. I’d had a little more to drink than I thought. When we got out to the motor court I proposed a nightcap and — Well, either they loaded it on me or I’d already had too much. The next thing I knew I was all alone and then it was daylight and I had a beautiful hangover.”

“How were the girls the next morning?”

“Sweet and cordial.”

“Affectionate?”

“Don’t be silly. They weren’t in the mood any more than I was. We’d all of us been seeing the town.”

“And what do you want?”

“I want to find those two girls.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Bertha said, “he’s uneasy now that it seems Maurine Auburn has disappeared.”

“Why beat about the bush?” Billings said. “She’s Gabby’s moll. She knows who pumped the lead into him. She didn’t tell the police but she knows. Suppose someone should think that she told me?”

“Any particular reason why she should tell you?” I asked.

“Or,” he said hastily, “suppose something’s happened to her? Suppose the milk bottles keep on piling up on her porch?”

“Did Maurine Auburn give you her name?”

“No. She just told me I could call her ‘Morrie.’ It was when I saw her picture in the paper that I knew what I’d been up against.

“The guys with her must have been mobsters. Think of me barging up and asking for a dance!”

“Do that sort of thing often?” I asked.

“Certainly not. I’d been drinking, and I’d been stood up.”

“And then you went out and picked up these two babes?”

“That’s right, only they made it remarkably easy for me. They were on the prowl themselves — just a couple of janes on a vacation looking for a little adventure.”

“What names did they give you?” I asked.

“Just their first names, Sylvia and Millie.”

“Who was the one that you fell for?”

“Sylvia, the little brunette.”

“What did the other one look like?”

“A redhead who had a possessive complex as far as Sylvia was concerned. She knew all the answers and didn’t want me asking questions. She built a barbed wire fence around Sylvia and kept her inside of it. She may have loaded my drink with something besides liquor. I don’t know. Anyway, she produced the bottle for a nightcap and I went out like a light.”

“They consented to let you take them home?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, they hadn’t checked in anywhere yet. They wanted a motor court.”

“You went in their car?”

“That’s right.”

“Did they register when you got to this motor court?”

“No. They asked me to register. That was the nicest way of asking me to pay the bill. In a motor court you pay in advance.”

“Were you driving their car?”

“No. Sylvia was driving the car. I was sitting in the front seat next to Millie.”

“Millie was in the middle?”

“Yes.”

“And you told Sylvia where to drive?”

“Yes. She wanted to know where to get a good motor court. I told her I’d try and get one for her.”

“And you picked this court out on Sepulveda?”

“We passed up a couple that had a sign ‘No Vacancy’ but this one had a vacancy sign.”

“You went in there?”

“Yes, we drove in.”

“Who went to the office?”

“I did.”

“And you registered?”

“Yes.”

“How did you register?”

“I can’t remember the name I thought of.”

“Why didn’t you use your own name?”

He looked at me scornfully and said, “You’re a hell of a detective. Would you have used your name under the circumstances?”

“When it came to putting down the make and license number of the automobile what did you do?”

“There,” he said with a burst of feeling, “is where I made the mistake. Instead of going out and getting the license number of their automobile I just made up one out of my head.”

“And the person who was running the motor court didn’t go out to check it?”

“Of course not. If you look reasonably respectable they never go out to check the license number. Sometimes they just check the make of the automobile and that’s all.”

“What make of car was it?”

“A Ford.”

“And you registered it as a Ford?”

“Yes. Why all the third degree? If you don’t want the case give me back my retainer and I’ll be on my way.”

Bertha Cool’s eyes glittered. “Don’t be silly. My partner is simply trying to get the facts of the case so we can help you.”

“It sounds to me as though he’s cross-examining me.”

“He doesn’t mean anything by it,” Bertha said. “Donald will locate these girls for you. He’s good.”

“He’d better be,” Billings said sullenly.

“Is there anything else,” I asked, “that you can tell us that will help?”

“Not a thing.”

“The address of the motor court?”

“I gave it to Mrs. Cool.”

“What was the number of your cabin at the court?”

“I can’t remember the number, but it was the one on the right at the far corner. I think it was Number Five.”

I said, “Okay. We’ll see what we can do.”

Billings said, “Remember that if you find these women there’s to be a five-hundred-dollar bonus.”

I said, “That bonus business doesn’t conform to the rules of ethics that are laid down for the operation of a private detective agency.”

“Why not?” Billings asked.

“It makes it too much like operating on a contingency fee. They don’t like it.”

“Who doesn’t like it?”

“The people who issue the licenses.”

“All right,” he said to Bertha, “you find the girls and I’ll donate five hundred dollars to your favorite charity.”

“Are you nuts?” Bertha asked.

“What do you mean?”

“My favorite charity,” Bertha told him, “is me.”

“Your partner says contingency fees are out.”

Bertha snorted.

“Well, no one’s going to tell anyone about it,” Billings said, “unless you get loquacious.”

“It’s okay by me,” Bertha said.

I said, “I’d prefer to have it on a basis that—”

“You haven’t found the girls yet,” Billings interrupted. “Now get this straight. I want an alibi for that night. The only way I can get it is to find these girls. I want affidavits. I’ve made my proposition. I’ve given you all of the information that I have. I’m not accustomed to having my word questioned.”

He glared at me, arose stiffly, and walked out.

Bertha looked at me angrily. “You damn near upset the applecart.”

“Provided there is any applecart.”

She tapped the cash drawer. “There’s three hundred dollars in there. That makes it an applecart.”

I said, “Then we’d better start looking for the rotten apples.”

“There aren’t any.”

I said, “His story stinks.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “Two girls drive down from San Francisco, they want to look over Hollywood, and see if they can find a movie star dining out somewhere.”

“So what? That’s exactly what two women would do under the circumstances.”

I said, “They’d driven down from San Francisco. The first thing they’d do would be to take a bath, unpack their suitcases, hook up a portable iron, run it over their clothes, freshen up with make-up, and then go looking for movie stars. The idea that they’d have driven all the way down from San Francisco and—”

“You don’t know that they made it all in one day.”

“All right, suppose they made it in two days. The idea that they’d have driven from San Luis Obispo or Bakersfield, or any other place, parked their car, and gone directly to a night club without stopping to make themselves as attractive as possible, stinks.”

Bertha blinked her eyes over that one. “Perhaps they did all that but lied to Billings because they didn’t want him to know where they were staying.”

I said, “Their suitcases must have been in the car, according to Billings’s statement.”

Bertha sat there in her squeaking swivel chair, her fingers drumming nervously on the top of the desk, making the light scintillate from the diamonds with which she had loaded her fingers. “For the love of Pete,” she said, “get out and get on the job. What the hell do you think this partnership is, anyway? A debating society or a detective agency?”

“I was simply pointing out the obvious.”

“Well, don’t point it out to me,” Bertha yelled. “Go find those two women. The five-hundred-bucks bonus is the obvious in this case as far as I’m concerned!”

“Did you,” I asked, “get a description?”

She tore a sheet of paper from a pad on her desk and literally threw it at me. “There are all the facts,” she said. “My God, why did I ever get a partner like you? Some son of a bitch with money comes in and you start antagonizing him. And a five-hundred-dollar bonus, too.”

I said, “I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you to ask him who John Carver Billings the First might have been?”

Bertha screamed, “What the hell do I care who he is, just so John Carver Billings the Second has money? Three hundred dollars in cold, hard cash. No check, mind you. Cash.”

I moved over to the bookcase, picked out a Who’s Who and started running through the B’s.

Bertha narrowed blazing eyes at me for a moment, then moved to look over my shoulder. I could feel her hot, angry breath on my neck.

There was no John Carver Billings.

I reached for Who’s Who in California. Bertha beat me to it, jerked the book out of the bookcase, and said, “Suppose I do the brain work for a while and you get out and case that motor court?”

“Okay,” I told her, starting for the door, “only don’t strain the equipment to a point of irreparable damage.”

I thought for a moment she was going to throw the book.

She didn’t.

Chapter Two

Elsie Brand, my secretary, looked up from her typing.

“A new case?”

I nodded.

“How’s Bertha?”

“Her same old irascible, greedy, profane self. How would you like to act the part of a falling woman?”

“A fallen woman?”

“I said a falling woman.”

“Oh, I see. Present participle. What do I do?”

I said, “You come with me while I register us in a motor court as husband and wife.”

“And then what?” she asked cautiously.

“Then,” I said, “we do detective work.”

“Will I need any baggage?”

“I’ll stop by my apartment and pick up a suitcase. That should be all we need.”

Elsie walked over to the coat closet, got her hat, and pulled the cover down on her typewriter.

As we left the office I said, “You might be looking this over,” and handed her the description of the two women which Bertha Cool had scrawled on the paper in her heavy-fisted writing.

Elsie studied the slip of paper on the way down in the elevator and said, “Evidently the man fell for Sylvia and hated Millie.”

“How did you know?”

“Good Lord, listen,” she said. “ž’Sylvia, attractive brunette with dark, lustrous eyes; sympathetic, intelligent, beautiful, five feet two, weight a hundred and twelve, swell figure, around twenty-three or twenty-four, fine dancer. Millie, redheaded, blue-eyed, snippy, smart, may be twenty-five or twenty-six, average height, fair figure.’ž”

I grinned. “Well, we’ll now try to find out how much information those women left behind in a motor court that’s been occupied three times since they were there.”

“Suppose the people who run it can tell us anything?”

“That’s why I want you along,” I said. “I want to find out whether it’s a careful motor court or whether it isn’t.”

“Thanks for the compliment.”

“Don’t mention it,” I told her.

I picked up the agency heap at the parking lot. We stopped at my apartment. Elsie sat in the car while I went up and threw a few things into a suitcase. As an afterthought I brought an overcoat along. There was a leather bag for cameras that could have been used by a woman, and I stuck that under my arm.

Elsie looked the collection over curiously. “Evidently,” she said, “we’re traveling light.”

I nodded.

We went out Sepulveda and I drove along slowly, studying the motor courts. At this hour they all had signs in front announcing vacancies.

“That’s the one we want,” I said to Elsie. “The one over there on the right.”

We turned in.

The doors were wide open on most of the units. A Negro maid was hauling out linen. A rather attractive girl wearing a cap and apron was also working around the place. It took five minutes to locate the manager.

She was a big woman about Bertha’s build, except that where Bertha was as hard as a roll of barbed wire, this woman was soft, all except her eyes. They were Bertha’s eyes.

“How about accommodations?” I asked.

She looked past me to where Elsie was sitting in the car trying to look virtuous.

“For how long?”

“All day and all night.”

She showed surprise.

“My wife and I,” I explained, “have been driving all night. We want a rest and then we want to look around the city and pull out early tomorrow morning.”

“I have a nice single at five dollars.”

“How about Cabin Number Five over there in the corner?”

“That’s a double. You wouldn’t want that.”

“How much is it?”

“Eleven dollars.”

“I’ll take it.”

“No, you won’t.”

I raised my eyebrows.

She said, “I don’t think you’ll take anything.”

“Why not?”

She said, “Listen, I’m running a high-class place. If you know this girl well enough to go into a single cabin as man and wife and you have the money to pay for it, that’s okay by me. If you’re selling her on the idea that you’re getting a double cabin I know what that means.”

I said, “There won’t be any noise, there won’t be any rough stuff. You can have twenty bucks for Number Five. Is it a deal?”

She looked Elsie over. “Who is she?” she asked.

I said, “She’s my secretary. I’m not going to make any passes. If I did, I wouldn’t get rough. We’re traveling on a business trip and—”

“Okay,” she said. “Twenty bucks.”

I handed her the twenty, got the key to the cabin, and drove the car into the garage.

We unlocked the door and walked in. It was a goodlooking double cabin, with a little sitting-room and two bedrooms, each with a shower and toilet.

“You going to get any information out of her?” Elsie asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “If she knew anything she wouldn’t tell. She isn’t the type that gabs, and she doesn’t want to have attention focused on the motor court.”

“It’s a nice place,” Elsie said, walking around and looking it over. “Clean as a pin and the furniture’s nice.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Now let’s get busy and try and find something that will give us an idea as to the identity of two women who had this cabin three nights ago.”

“Did I hear you say twenty dollars?” she asked.

“That’s right. She didn’t want to rent it at the regular price.”

“Bertha will certainly scream over that when she sees it on the expense account.”

I nodded, looking around the place.

“Isn’t this something of a wild-goose chase?” she asked.

“It’s all a wild-goose chase,” I told her. “Let’s start looking. We might even find the golden egg.”

We prowled the place and found nothing except a couple of bobby pins. Then when I pulled a bureau drawer all the way out I found a piece of paper that had slipped into a crack in the back of the drawer.

“What’s that?” Elsie asked.

I said, “That seems to be the gummed label that has slipped off a prescription box. It’s a San Francisco prescription made to Miss Sylvia Tucker. It says, ‘Take one capsule for sleeplessness. Do not repeat within four hours,’ and it’s a prescription that can’t be refilled.”

“With the name of a San Francisco drugstore on it,” Elsie said.

“And,” I pointed out, “a prescription number and the name of a doctor.”

“And Sylvia from San Francisco is one of the women we want?”

“That’s right.”

“How fortunate,” Elsie said.

“How very, very, very fortunate,” I observed.

She looked at me.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that it’s very, very fortunate.”

“Well, what about it? The girl was here. She gave John Billings a little shot of sleepy-by medicine. When she did, the label came off the box with the prescription number on it.”

I said, “Sylvia was the girl he liked. It was the other one who gave him the by-by.”

“That’s what he thinks. John Carver Billings the Second may not be such a knockout as he thinks he is. Anyway, the other gal could have borrowed a capsule from Sylvia without her knowing it.”

I stood there, studying the label.

“What do we do now?” Elsie asked.

“Now,” I said, “we go back to the office. Then I take a plane to San Francisco.”

“This was a short honeymoon,” she told me. “Are you going to tell the manager she can have the apartment?”

“No. We’ll keep her guessing,” I said. “Come on, let’s go.”

I saw the puzzled eyes of the woman who managed the place looking at us as we drove out.

Back in the office I put through a phone call for a correspondent in San Francisco who checked with the drug- store and had the information for me within an hour and twenty minutes.

Sylvia Tucker lived in the Truckee Apartments out on Post Street. The apartment number was 608, and the prescription had been for sodium amytal. She was employed as a manicurist in a barbershop on Post Street.

Elsie got me a plane reservation and I stopped in to tell Bertha I was headed for San Francisco.

“How are you doing, Donald, lover?” she asked with her best cooing manner.

“As well as was expected.”

“Well, what the hell does that mean? Are we going to get that five-hundred-dollar bonus?”

“Probably.”

“Well, don’t go running up a lot of expenses.”

“He’s paying them, isn’t he?”

“Sure. But if it’s going to be a long-drawn-out job, he’ll—”

“It isn’t going to be too long-drawn-out.”

“Don’t solve it too fast, Donald.”

“That’s why he offered the bonus. He didn’t want us stalling in order to get more per diems.”

“Who the hell said anything about stalling?”

“You didn’t.”

She glared at me.

“Did you look up John Carver Billings the First?”

“Now that was a swell idea of yours, Donald, dear,” she said. “I have to hand it to you for that one. It gives us background.”

“Who is he?”

“Some banking buzzard from San Francisco. President of half a dozen companies, fifty-two years old, a rich, eligible widower, commodore of a yachting club, lousy with dough. Does that mean anything to you?”

“It means a lot to me,” I told her. “It means the son came by it honestly.”

“The money?” she asked complacently.

“The sport coat,” I told her.

Bertha’s face darkened, then she laughed. “You have to have your smart crack, don’t you, Donald? But just remember, lover, that it takes money to make the wheels go round.”

“And while the wheels are going round and round,” I warned her, “be careful you don’t get a finger caught in the machinery.”

“Fry me for an oyster,” she blazed. “You’d think I was some simple, naïve amateur. You just keep your own nose clean, Donald Lam, and I’ll take care of mine. When Bertha reaches for anything she gets what she reaches for. You’re the one to be careful. You almost dropped a monkey wrench in those wheels that are now spinning around so nicely.”

And Bertha’s complacency puckered into a reproving frown.

“They’re spinning around like crazy,” I admitted. “Personally, I’d like to see what the machine is manufacturing.”

“You can roast me for a duck,” she snapped, “if you aren’t the most gift-horse-in-the-mouth-looking bastard I ever saw. I’ll tell you what the little wheels are manufacturing, Donald. It’s money!”

And Bertha once more gloated over the page of Who’s Who in California.

I eased out of the office and left her to her thoughts.

Chapter Three

It was late afternoon when I disembarked at the San Francisco airport. I got into the barbershop on Post Street just before it was closing.

It didn’t take more than two seconds to pick out Sylvia. There were three manicurists in the place but Sylvia was the pick of the lot, and with the description I had of her it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

She was busy when I walked in, but when I asked her if she’d have time for one more before closing, she looked at the clock, nodded, and started making her fingers really fly over the nails of a big lug who glared at me resentfully.

I went over to the shoe-shining stand and let the boy work on my shoes while I was waiting.

The head barber came over to me. “You waiting for a manicure?”

“Right.”

“There’s a girl ready for you now.”

“I want Sylvia.”

“This other girl’s just as good — in fact a little better than Sylvia.”

“Thanks, I’ll wait.”

He went back to his chair.

“Sounds a little unfriendly to Sylvia,” I told the bootblack.

He grinned, glanced cautiously over his shoulder, said, “She’s sure in the doghouse.”

“What’s the matter?”

“They don’t pay me to gossip.”

“Perhaps they don’t, but I will.”

He thought that over, bent low over my shoes, said guardedly, “He’s jealous. He’s been making a big play for her. Tuesday she phoned she had a headache and couldn’t work; then she never showed up again until this morning. He thinks she was out with a boyfriend. Don’t think she’s going to be here long.”

I slid two dollars down to him. “Thanks,” I said. “I was just curious, that’s all.”

The man Sylvia had been working on got up and put on his coat. Sylvia nodded to me. The boy finished my shoes, and I went over to Sylvia’s table.

The head barber kept his face averted.

With one hand in the bowl of warm, soapy water, I sat relaxing, letting Sylvia’s soft, competent fingers hold my other hand while she started filing my nails.

“Been here long?” I asked after a while.

“About a year.”

“Get any vacations on this job?”

“Oh, yes. I just got back from a short vacation.”

“Swell. Where’d you go?”

“Los Angeles.”

“Alone?”

“Fresh!”

“I was just asking.”

“I had a girlfriend with me. We had always wanted to take a look through Hollywood and see if we could see some of the movie stars in one of the night clubs.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“What stopped you?”

“We went, but we didn’t find the movie stars, that’s all.”

“There’s quite a few of them around and they have to eat, you know.”

“Not when we were eating, they didn’t.”

“How long were you there?”

“A couple of days. I just got back last night.”

“Go on the train?”

“No. My girlfriend has a car.”

I said, “This is Friday. Where were you Tuesday night?”

“That’s the night we got into Hollywood.”

“Suppose you tell me what happened Tuesday night.”

“And suppose I don’t?” she said, her eyes suddenly flashing.

I didn’t say anything more.

She worked over my hands. The silence became oppressive.

“I’m over twenty-one and my own boss,” she volunteered after a while. “I don’t have to account for the things I do.”

“Or the things you don’t do?” I asked.

She looked at me sharply. “Where are you from?”

“Los Angeles.”

“When did you get in?”

“Just now.”

“How did you come?”

“By plane.”

“What time did you arrive?”

“An hour ago.”

“You must have got off the plane and come directly here.”

“I did.”

“Why were you interested in what happened Tuesday night in Los Angeles?”

“Just making conversation.”

“Oh,” she said.

I didn’t say anything more.

She slowed down her pace and started marking time. Two or three times she looked at me curiously, started to say something, then caught herself and quit. After a while she said, “You up here on business?”

“Sort of.”

“I suppose you know lots of people up here.”

I shook my head.

“It must be lonesome to come into a strange town.”

Again I nodded.

She suddenly put down her things and said, “My heavens, there’s one phone call I have to make. I almost forgot it.”

She dashed off to a phone booth; dialed a number, and talked for three or four minutes. Twice, she looked at me while she was talking, as though she were describing me over the phone.

Then she came back, sat down, and said, “Gosh, I hope you’ll pardon me.”

“Sure, it’s all right. I don’t have anything to do. Just so you’re not kept here too late.”

By that time the shop had closed up, the curtains had been pulled, and the barbers were getting ready to go home.

“Oh, that’s all right,” she told me. “I’m not in a hurry any longer. That phone call — My dinner date blew up.”

“Too bad,” I told her.

She worked in silence for a while longer, then said, “Darned if it wasn’t. I had my heart all set on going out to dinner and there isn’t a thing to eat in my apartment.”

“Why not go out with me?”

“Oh, I’d love to. I — Well, now, wait a minute. There’s a lot about you I don’t know.”

“The name,” I said, “is Donald. Donald Lam.”

“I’m Sylvia Tucker.”

“Hello, Sylvia.”

“Hello, Donald. Are you nice?”

“I try to be.”

“I’m not a gold digger, but I like thick and juicy steaks and I know where to get them. They come high.”

“That’s okay.”

“I wouldn’t want you to get any funny ideas.”

“I haven’t.”

“After all, you know, this is — Well, you must think it’s an easy pickup.”

“I hadn’t thought of it as being a pickup,” I said. “I have to eat somewhere, you have to eat somewhere. Why be lonely?”

“That’s a nice way of looking at it. I think you’re a square shooter.”

“I try to be.”

She said, “Ordinarily I don’t pick up. I just have a few friends, but — Well, I don’t know, you’re different, somehow. You don’t seem to be on the make the way most of them are.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way. You’re not — Oh, you know what I meant.” She laughed. “I bet you have a terrific line, but — Well, what I meant was that you weren’t like so many of them. You don’t take it for granted that a girl will date just because she happens to be working at a job of this kind.”

I didn’t say anything.

She worked in silence for a while, then said, “I certainly had one funny experience on the last pickup.”

“Yes?”

“Uh-huh,” she said brightly. “My girlfriend was with me and the fellow was certainly amorous. I had some sleeping-medicine the doctor had given me, and without my knowing anything about it she slipped one of the capsules in his drink. He went out like a light.”

“Why did your girlfriend do that? Didn’t she like the guy? Or did she feel that your virtue had to be protected at all hazards?”

“Not at all She’s a funny girl; a cute little redhead. And I don’t know, perhaps she was a little peeved this fellow wasn’t falling for her. You never can tell about women. He was a nice boy, too.”

“Then what happened?”

“Oh, nothing. I just mentioned it.”

I said, “Uh-huh,” and kept quiet.

She finished with my hands, doing a lot of thinking.

“I’ll have to run up to my apartment,” she said.

“Okay. You want me to come along or shall I pick you up there later?”

“Why don’t you come on up?”

“Promise you won’t give me any sleeping-pills?”

“I’ll promise.” She laughed. “Millie won’t be there. She’s the one that did the dirty work.”

“Must have been quite a joke.”

“It was. I was half mad at the time because I liked this boy, but honestly, Donald, it certainly was funny!

“He was very much the man about town and the daddy of the party. He was just beginning to get really interested in me when this drink took effect. Then he started to make me a proposition in a sleepy sort of a way and went by-by right in the middle of it.

“Millie and I put him to bed on the couch and he was dead to the world until morning when we wakened him for breakfast. You should have seen the expression on his face when he woke up and realized the night and the opportunity had both completely passed.”

She threw back her head and laughed.

“I’ll bet it was funny,” I said. “Where did all this take place?”

“In an auto court. Millie is never one to overlook a golden opportunity. She asked this fellow about where the good auto courts were, so of course he volunteered to take us out and show us, and that meant he registered, and that meant he paid the money.”

“Well, at least he got a good night’s sleep for his invest- ment,” I commented.

That made her laugh again. “Come on, Donald. I’ll take you up to my apartment and buy you a drink. Then we’ll go out.”

“Do we walk or take a cab?”

“It’s about six blocks,” she said.

“We take a cab,” I told her.

We walked out to the curb. “While we’re waiting for a cab,” I asked casually, “where was this court?”

“Out on Sepulveda.”

“When was all this?”

“Why, let’s see — Why, Donald, that was Tuesday night.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why, of course. Why, what difference would it make?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I was just wondering about your vacation.”

“Well, that’s the way it was.”

A taxi pulled in to the curb. Sylvia gave him the address and we settled back in the cushions. At that time of night running six blocks involved a lot of stopping and starting.

“The three of you in the one cabin?”

“Uh-huh. It was a nice double cabin.”

“You had one room, Millie had the other, and you parked this boy on the couch?”

“That’s right. Sort of a davenport.”

“Wouldn’t that make up into a bed also? That’s usually the way in those motor courts.”

“Oh, I guess so, but we didn’t bother. We just parked him, took his shoes off, and I donated a pillow from my bed.”

“Any blankets?”

“Don’t be silly! We put his overcoat over his feet and locked our doors. If he woke up and got cold he could call a taxi and go home.”

“Where,” I asked, “do we eat?”

She said, “I know a nice restaurant. It’s out a ways, but—”

“That’s all right,” I told her. “Only I have a reservation on the ten o’clock plane.”

“Tonight, Donald?” she asked, with keen disappointment in her voice.

I nodded.

She snuggled over close to me and slipped her hand into mine.

“Oh, well,” she said. “You’ll have plenty of time — to eat and catch your plane.”

Chapter Four

Elsie Brand poked her head into my private office and said, “Bertha has the client in her office. He’s asking if there’s anything new.”

“Tell Bertha I’ll be right in.”

She looked at me curiously. “Do any good in San Francisco last night?”

“Quite a bit.”

“Nice trip?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Find Sylvia?”

“Yes.”

“How was she?”

“Up to specifications.”

“Oh.”

Elsie Brand retired to her office and pulled the door shut.

I waited for a few minutes, then went into Bertha Cool’s office.

John Carver Billings the Second seemed to be some- what excited. He was sitting erect in the chair, smoking a cigarette.

Bertha’s eyes glittered as she looked at me. “Are you getting anywhere?”

I said, “The name of the girl who was in the motor court is Sylvia Tucker. She’s employed as a manicurist in a Post Street barbershop in San Francisco. She has an apartment about six blocks from where she works. She’s a cute babe. She remembers the occasion perfectly and is about half sore at her girlfriend for slipping the sodium amytal in Billings’s drink.”

“Do you mean you’ve found her? You’ve got all that information?” Billings exclaimed, jumping up out of the chair.

“Uh-huh.”

Bertha beamed at me. “Fry me for an oyster!” she said affectionately.

“Well, now that’s Billings said. “You’re sure this is the girl?”

I said, “She told me all about going to Los Angeles on a vacation. How she and her friend, Millie, went out to try and track down some famous movie stars at a night club, how they met you and Millie got you to ‘recommend’ a motor court, and then let you register so you’d be stuck with the bill.

“Sylvia had really fallen for you and was a little bit peeved when Millie put the sleeping-medicine in your drink, terminating the romantic possibilities and destroying your wolfish tendencies for the balance of the night.”

“She told you all that?”

“All of it.”

John Carver Billings the Second jumped up and grabbed my hand, pumping my arm up and down. He clapped me on the back, turned to Bertha, and said, “Now, that’s the kind of work I like! That’s real detective work!”

Bertha unscrewed the cap, and handed him her fountain pen.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “What? Oh.”

He laughed, sat down, and made out a check for five hundred dollars.

Bertha beamed as though she wanted to kiss both of us.

I handed Carver a neatly typed report. “This tells how we found Sylvia Tucker,” I said, “what her story is, where she works, and her home address. It also has the story she told me about what happened last Tuesday evening. You can get her to make an affidavit if it’s important.”

“You didn’t ask her about making an affidavit, did you?”

“No, I just got the information. I didn’t even let her know that I was trying to get that information. I just drew it out of her.”

“That’s swell. I’m glad you didn’t tell her it was important.”

“We figure our job is to get information, not to give it.”

“Capital!” he exclaimed. “Lam, you’re all right. That’s fine.”

He folded the report, put it in the pocket of his sport coat, shook hands once more all around, and walked out.

Bertha beamed at me. “You’re crazy as a loon,” she said. “And sometimes I could kill you, but you sure as hell do bring home the bacon.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That was fast work, Donald, lover. How did you do it?”

I said, “I followed the paper trail.”

“What do you mean, the paper trail?”

“I followed the clues that had very carefully been left for me to follow.”

Bertha started to say something, then suddenly blinked her hard little glittering eyes and said, “Say that again, Donald.”

I said, “I followed the clues that had been carefully left for me to follow.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“Just what I said.”

“Who left the clues?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Are you trying to get temperamental with me now?”

“No, not at all,” I said, “but why not think it out for yourself?”

“How come?”

I said, “Well, take the story of John Carver Billings the Second. You’ll remember he told about picking up these two girls who had just arrived in Hollywood on their vacation.”

“Yes.”

I said, “That was Tuesday night. He came to see us yesterday. Today is Saturday.”

“Well?”

“I found a label off a prescription box in the drawer in the motor court. I went to San Francisco and called on the girl. She said she’d just got back the night before and had gone to work yesterday morning.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?”

I said, “According to her story they left San Francisco Monday evening at five o’clock. They drove as far as Salinas, stayed there that night, then drove down to Hollywood the next day. They went directly to a cocktail parlor. Billings picked them up. They went to the motor court. That was Tuesday night. They checked out Wednesday morning and went to another motor court. They were there Wednesday night. Then, early Thursday morning, they left to return to San Francisco. They got to San Francisco late Thursday night and the girls started working again yesterday.”

“So what?”

“Hell of a vacation, wasn’t it?”

Bertha said, “Lots of people have to take short vacations. They can’t get away for longer periods.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Well, what’s wrong with that?” Bertha demanded.

I said, “Suppose you had four days that you could take as a vacation, and you wanted to go to Los Angeles; what would you do?”

“I’d go to Los Angeles,” Bertha said. “Dammit, come to the point.”

I said, “You’d arrange your vacation so it started on Monday or so it ended on Saturday, or both. You’d leave on Saturday morning — or Saturday noon — if you had to work Saturday morning. You’d have all Saturday afternoon and Sunday added to your vacation. You wouldn’t work Monday, then leave Monday night and get back Thursday night so you could go to work Friday.”

Bertha thought that over. “Slice me for an onion,” she said, half to herself.

“Moreover,” I said, “as soon as this girl had me spotted as a detective who was trying to pump her about that particular trip, I quit talking about it and pretended I wasn’t going to do any more talking. For a minute she got in a panic, being afraid she wasn’t going to collect the bonus that had been guaranteed to her for handing me that story. She must have thought I was a hell of a detective. She damn near had to ask me to take her out to dinner. She almost dragged me up to her apartment. She fell all over herself seeing that I got the proper information.”

“Well, you got it,” Bertha said, “and we got the money. What is there for us to worry about?”

“I hate to be played for a sucker.”

“We got three hundred bucks out of that bird when he came in yesterday morning. We got five hundred bucks out of him this morning. That’s eight hundred dollars for a two-day case. And if they want to play Big Bertha for a sucker to the tune of four hundred bucks a day they can move right in.”

Bertha banged her jeweled hand down on the desk by way of emphasis.

“Okay by me,” I told her, got up and started for the door.

“Say,” Bertha said, as I had my hand on the knob, “do you suppose that whole damned alibi is faked, Donald?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “You’ve got the money. What more do you want?”

Bertha said, “Wait a minute, lover. This may not be so good.”

I said, “What’s wrong about it?”

“If there’s anything phony about it, that bastard paid out eight hundred dollars just for the privilege of having us fronting for an alibi that could be phony as hell.”

“Well,” I told her, “you said you didn’t mind being played for a sucker at four hundred dollars a day. You’d better put two hundred dollars into a sinking fund.”

“What for?”

“To buy a bail bond with,” I said, and went out.

Chapter Five

I turned my car into the driveway on the Sepulveda Motor Court.

The manager looked up as I entered the office. Her eyes became angry. “What kind of a shenanigan were you trying to work on me?”

“Nothing,” I said.

She said, “You rent a double cottage and are in there for about fifteen minutes. If it was going to be something like that, why didn’t you have the decency to at least tell me when you were pulling out so I could have rented the apartment last night?”

“I didn’t want you to rent it. I paid you enough for it, didn’t I?”

“That’s neither here nor there. If you weren’t going to use it—”

I said, “Let’s quit beating around the bush and suppose you tell me what you know about the people who were in there Tuesday night.”

“Suppose I don’t. I don’t discuss my guests.”

“It might save you some unpleasant publicity.”

She looked up at me and then said, thoughtfully, “So that’s what it is. It’s a wonder I didn’t realize it before.”

“That’s what it is.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to see the registration for Tuesday night, and I want to talk with you.”

“Is this the law?”

I shook my head.

She started drawing a red, lacquered fingernail across a sheet of letter paper on the desk, then carefully studying the indentation marks the nail had made. Apparently that was the most absorbing thing to do that she had found all day.

I stood there and waited.

Abruptly, she looked up. “Private?”

I nodded.

“What are you after?”

“I want to know who stayed there Tuesday.”

“Why?”

I smiled at her.

She said, “I don’t give out information like that. Running an auto court is a business in itself.”

“Sure it is.”

“I’d have to know why you wanted to know.”

I said, “My business is confidential, too.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

She went back to tracing patterns with the point of her fingernail over the paper.

Abruptly she asked, “Could you keep me out of it?”

I said, “You live here. We live here. I wouldn’t come out to see you this way if I was going to give you a double cross. I’d get the information some other way.”

“How?”

“Having a friendly newspaper reporter or police officer come out.”

She said, “I wouldn’t like that.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

She opened a drawer in the desk, reached in, and after a moment’s search pulled out a card.

It was a registration card. It showed that the cabin had been rented Tuesday night to Ferguson L. Hoy and party, 551 Prince Street, Oakland, and the rental had been thirteen dollars.

I took a small copying camera from my briefcase, set it up on a tripod, turned on an electric light so there would be good illumination, and took a couple of pictures.

“That all?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Now I want to know something about Mr. Hoy.”

She said, “I can’t help you much there. He was just another man, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Young?”

“I wouldn’t remember. Come to think of it, it was one of the women with him who came in. She got a registration card and took it out to him. He was in the car. He signed it and sent back the thirteen dollars in exact change.”

“How many people in the party?”

“Four — two couples.”

“You didn’t see this man well enough to remember him if you saw him again?”

“That’s hard to say. I don’t think so.”

I said, “I was out here yesterday about eleven o’clock.”

She nodded.

I said, “Someone had been in that cabin shortly before I arrived there.”

She shook her head. “That cabin had all been cleaned up and—”

“Someone had been in there shortly before I arrived,” I interrupted.

“I don’t think so.”

“Someone who was smoking a cigarette,” I said.

She shook her head.

“Do the maids smoke?”

“No.”

I said, “There were cigarette ashes on the top of the dresser; just a few that had spilled there.”

“I don’t think — Well, I don’t know. The maids are supposed to wipe off the tops of the dressers when they clean up.”

“I think this had been wiped. The cabin was slick as a pin.”

I took my billfold from my pocket and held it so she could see it.

“Let’s get one of the maids,” I said.

The manager stepped to the door of the office. “They’re down there at the far end. I don’t want to go away where I can’t hear the telephone. If you want to go down to the far end you might ask one of them to step in here. I’d like to have you question her in front of me. We can take them one at a time.”

“Okay by me,” I told her.

I walked out. She started to move even before I was out of the door.

The colored maid was a good-looking, intelligent young woman who seemed to have a good deal of savvy.

“The manager wants to see you,” I told her.

She gave me a searching look and said, “What’s the matter? Is something missing?”

“She didn’t tell me. Just that she wanted to see you.”

“You aren’t accusing me of anything?”

I shook my head.

“You were here yesterday in Number Five?”

“That’s right, I was,” I told her. “And there’s no complaint, but the manager would like to talk to you for a minute.”

I turned and started to the manager’s office and after a moment the girl followed me.

“Florence,” the manager said, when she entered the room, “was anyone in the cabin before this man was in there yesterday? Number Five?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I sat over on a corner of the desk and let one hand move over as though searching for something I could hold on to as a brace. The telephone was there. I let my fingers close around the receiver. It was still warm. The manager had telephoned someone while I’d been down at the far end of the court.

I said to the maid, “Wait a minute. I don’t mean someone who stayed there. I mean someone who came in just for a minute, probably someone who said he’d forgotten something and—”

“Oh,” she said, “that was the gentleman who stayed there Wednesday night. He’d forgotten something. He wouldn’t tell me what it was. Just said to let him in and he’d get it. I told him I didn’t think there was anything in there, but he handed me five dollars and — Lord, I hope I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“That’s all right,” I told her. “Now, I want you to describe him. Was he a tall drink of water, about twentyfive or twenty-six, wearing a sport coat and slacks? He—”

“Lord, no,” she interrupted. “This gentleman was wearin’ a leather coat and a cap with lots of gold braid.”

“Military?” I asked.

“Like the swells on yachts,” she said. “But he sure was tall and string-bean-like.”

“He gave you five dollars?”

“That’s right.”

I gave her five dollars and said, “There’s the mate to it. How long was he in there?”

“He wasn’t in there more’n long enough to just turn around and come back. I heard a couple of drawers opening and closing and then he was right out all covered with grins. I asked him if he’d found what he’d lost and he laughed and said after he got in there he remembered he’d put it in the pocket of his other suit and packed his suit in the suitcase. He said he was kind of absent-minded, and jumped in his car and drove off.”

“Do you know he stayed there in that cabin Wednesday night?”

“Of course not. I go off work at four-thirty in the afternoon. But he said he’d stayed there Wednesday.”

The manager looked at me. “Anything else?”

I turned to the maid. “You’d know this man if you saw him again?”

“I’ll tell the world I’d know him, just like I’d know you. Five-dollar tips don’t grow on bushes on this job.”

I went back to the agency heap, drove to the nearest pay station, telephoned Elsie Brand, and said, “Elsie, I won’t be around for the weekend. I’m going to be in San Francisco. Tell Bertha, in case she wants to know, that whatever we’re working on is going to be in San Francisco.”

“Why?” she asked.

I said, “Because a six-foot string bean with a yachtsman’s cap has been down here in our honeymoon cottage.”

“Some honeymoon,” she retorted. “Give Sylvia my love.”

Chapter Six

Millicent Rhodes was engraved on a strip of cardboard which had been neatly cut from a visiting-card and inserted in the holder opposite the push button on Millie’s apartment out on Geary Street.

I pressed the bell button.

Nothing happened.

I pressed it again for a long ring, then three short rings.

The speaking-tube made noise. A girl’s voice said protestingly, “It’s Saturday morning. Go away.”

“I have to see you,” I said. “And it isn’t morning. It’s afternoon.”

“Who are you?”

“A friend of Sylvia’s — Donald Lam.”

She didn’t give assent specifically, but after a second or two the electric buzzer on the door signified that she had pushed the button which unlatched the door for me.

Millicent had apartment 342. The elevator was at the far end of the hall, but, since the oblong of light showed the cage was waiting at the ground floor, I walked back to it. It took the swaying, wheezy cage almost as long to get to the third floor as it would have taken me to walk up the stairs.

Millie Rhodes opened the door almost as soon as my finger touched the button.

“I hope this is important,” she said coldly.

“It is.”

“All right, come in. This is Saturday. I don’t have to work so I take it easy. It’s probably the one symbol of economic freedom I can afford.”

I looked at her in surprise.

She was a good-looking, well-formed redhead, despite the fact that there was no make-up on her face or lips. She had evidently tumbled out of bed in response to my ring and had simply thrown a silk wrap around her to answer the door. It was quite apparent she was easy on the eyes despite the attire.

“You’re different from the description I had of you,” I said.

She made a little grimace. “Give a girl a break. Let me get some make-up on and some clothes and—”

“I meant it the other way.”

“What other way?”

“You’re a lot more attractive than the description.”

“I guess I’ll have to speak to Sylvia,” she said grimly.

“Not Sylvia,” I told her. “Someone else. I gathered you were a demon chaperon.”

She looked at me with a puzzled frown for a moment, then said, “I don’t get it. Find yourself a chair and sit down. You’ve caught me pretty much unawares, but any friend of Sylvia’s is a friend of mine.”

“I waited as late as I could,” I said. “I was hoping you’d be up and I wouldn’t have to disturb you.”

“Skip it. It’s done now. Anyhow, I’m not working this week. The Saturday sleep is just a deeply entrenched habit.”

She looked as though she needed a cigarette. I offered her one, and she took it eagerly. She tapped the end of it gently on the edge of a little table, leaned forward for my light, settled back on the edge of the bed, then, after a moment, propped her back up with pillows, kicked her feet up, and said, “I suppose I should have kept you waiting while I made the bed, put it up out of sight, and spread the chairs around, but I decided you could take me as I am. Now, what about Sylvia?”

I said, “Sylvia told me an interesting story.”

“Sometimes she does.”

“I wanted it verified.”

“If Sylvia told it to you, it’s verified.”

I said, “It involves a trip you took to Hollywood, a short vacation trip.”

She suddenly threw back her head and laughed. “Now You should have seen him trying to be passionate one minute and drowsy the next. I thought I’d laugh right in his face.”

“I understand he finally passed out.”

“Like a light. We parked him on the davenport, covered him up, tucked him in, and sought our virtuous couches.”

“I trust you made him comfortable.”

“Oh, sure.”

I said, “Sylvia said you took his shoes off. Sylvia made the davenport into a bed, and then you tucked him in.”

She hesitated a moment, then said, “That’s right.”

“You put his shoes under the bed, hung his coat over the back of a chair, and left him with his pants on.”

“That’s right.”

“A warm night?”

“Fairly warm. We covered him.”

“You don’t know his name?”

“Heavens, no. Not his last name. We called him John. You said your name was Donald?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, why talk so much about what happened down there in Los Angeles, Donald? What do you want?”

“To talk about what happened in Los Angeles.”

“Why?”

“I’m a detective.”

“A what?”

“A detective.”

“You don’t look it.”

“Private,” I said.

“Say, maybe I’m talking too much.”

“Not enough.”

“How long have you known Sylvia? I don’t remember hearing her speak of you.”

“I met her yesterday afternoon, and went to dinner with her.”

“That’s the first time you met her?”

“That’s right.”

“Say, what are you getting at, anyway? What are you after?”

“Information.”

“Well,” she said, “I guess you’ve got it, and your gain is my loss.”

“How do you mean?”

“My beauty sleep. For whom are you working?”

“The man who was with you.”

“Don’t be silly. He doesn’t know who we are. He couldn’t find us in a hundred years. We checked out of the motor court the next morning so he couldn’t. I was afraid he might get suspicious and resentful.”

“No,” I said. “He hired me. I found you.”

“How?”

“Simple enough. You used sleeping-capsules that a doctor had given Sylvia on a prescription. The gummed label fell off the box and was caught in the back of one of the bureau drawers.”

“Say,” she said, “you might be right at that!”

“It had slipped down behind one of the drawers in the bureau.”

She made a little gesture of disgust. “I thought I was being a smart girl. I suppose I could have got into trouble over that deal. What’s this guy going to think? Does he know he was drugged?”

I nodded. “He figured you’d pulled a fast one on him.”

“Before the label was found or afterward?”

“Before.”

“He wasn’t such a bad sort, only he was a little too obvious and impulsive. I guess he has money. That’s probably half the trouble with him. He feels that just because he buys a girl a good dinner and a few drinks he has the right to move right in and share her life.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Who is he, Donald?”

I said, “Suppose you tell me what you know about him.”

“Any reason why I should?”

“No. Any reason why you shouldn’t?”

She hesitated a moment, looking at me from under long lashes and said, “You seem to cut your cake in big pieces.”

“Why do things halfway?” I asked.

She laughed. “I guess you don’t have to.”

I remained silent.

She said, “Sylvia and I were on the prowl. Sylvia is more impulsive than I am. This fellow was on the make. We needed an escort and we needed someone to pay the check. We—”

“Don’t, Millie,” I said.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t go on with that line.”

“I thought you wanted to know.”

I said, “You’re an intelligent girl and you’re a good- looking girl. There’s no percentage with that line. It won’t work. How much is Billings paying you?”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “You’ve overlooked a lot of little things. I just wanted to make certain that you knew him before I called them to your attention.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “If you’d been really adept at the game you’d have insisted I talk with the two of you together. Letting me get you one at a time was a fatal weakness, and shows how amateurish you are.”

“You’re doing the talking now,” she said, her greenishblue eyes hard, wary, and watchful.

“According to Sylvia, he was placed on the couch fully clothed, with only a pillow behind his head. The davenport wasn’t made up into a bed, there were no blankets for him. Sylvia donated a pillow and that was all.”

She hesitated a moment, then said, “Give me another cigarette, Donald.”

I gave her one.

She said, “I could try to juggle this one but I know it wouldn’t do any good. Sylvia phoned me you’d swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. You were young, gullible, and a pushover for a girl who had good-looking legs.”

“I am,” I told her.

She laughed.

“Come on,” she said, after a short silence. “How did you get wise?”

“You mean how much do I know?”

“I’m feeling my way,” she said.

“There were certain things about the story that gave it every appearance of being synthetic,” I told her. “How long have you known John Billings?”

“I just met him. He’s one of Sylvia’s friends.”

“You don’t know all of her friends?”

“Not the ones that have money,” she said, and laughed. “Sylvia plays some things close to her chest.”

“How much did he pay you?”

“Two hundred and fifty bucks. That is, Sylvia passed it over. She said that was my share of the take.”

“Exactly what did she say you were to do in return?”

“She said I could get two hundred and fifty dollars if I was willing to have my picture in a newspaper. She said I’d have to play the part of a fallen woman, but she thought I could be ‘fallen’ in name only.”

“What did you tell her?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s the answer.”

“And then you met Billings?”

“Just over cocktails. He passed over the money and took a look at me so he’d know me when he saw me, and I took a look at him so I could identify him, and we had a drink or two, then he and Sylvia went out.”

“Who fixed up the story?”

“Sylvia.”

“Why does he want an alibi? Do you know?”

“No.”

“You mean that you didn’t ask?”

“There were five nice, crisp fifty-dollar bank notes. I wouldn’t have asked a question of any one, let alone the whole five.”

“How much did he pay Sylvia? Do you know?”

“He and Sylvia are—” She held up her hand with the first and second fingers crossed.

I said, “I’m sorry I disturbed you.”

“Don’t mention it. It was all part of the two hundred and fifty bucks. I rather expected you last night but Sylvia telephoned you had to go back to Los Angeles.”

I nodded.

“You must be wearing out airplanes.”

“I’m moving around.”

“Now what do I do?”

“Keep quiet.”

“Do I ring Sylvia and tell her that you were wise all along, that you trapped me and—”

“Then what would Sylvia do?”

“Oh,” she said, “Sylvia would blame it all on me. She’d swear she’d pulled the wool over your eyes and everything was fine until you came to talk with me, and then I let the cat out of the bag. That’s all right; you couldn’t expect Sylvia to take any responsibility, not with it being one of her boyfriends.”

“How many does she have?”

“Two or three.”

“How many do you have?”

“None of your business.”

“A lot of things are going to be my business. How many do you have?”

She looked at me and said, “None. Not in the way that you mean.”

I said, “That’s the answer that I expected.”

“It happens to be true.”

“I think it is,” I told her and got up from the chair. “Can you tell me why Sylvia happened to pick on you to back up her story?”

“Because we’re friends.”

“Any other reason?”

“And I was available.”

“Meaning what?”

“That I happened to be taking a week of my vacation. That meant no one could check on me and find I’d been at work when I said I’d been in Los Angeles.

“I guess Sylvia would rather have had one of her other friends. We’re not too close. But the vacation business got me the two-fifty. Nice business, isn’t it? Once you can get it. Tell me, Donald, am I in bad?”

“Not with me.”

“With anyone?”

“Not yet.”

“But I shouldn’t stick with the story?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Where are you going now?”

“To work.”

“Can’t I fix you a cup of coffee?”

I shook my head.

“And you’re not going to tell Sylvia I spilled the beans?”

“No.”

“What do I tell her?”

“Tell her I showed up and asked you questions.”

“And that’s all?”

“That’s all.”

She said, “You’re letting me off pretty easy, aren’t you, Donald?”

“I’m trying to.”

She said, “Thanks. I’ll remember it.”

I closed the door, walked down the two flights of steps, and went to police headquarters.

I picked a man who looked as though he might be able to do me some good, got acquainted, showed him my credentials, said, “I want information. It’s information that’s a matter of public record but I want to get it fast. I’m going to need a little help. I’m willing to pay for it.”

I took out a ten-dollar bill.

“What’s the information?”

“I want to get a list of hit-and-run driving accidents on last Tuesday night.”

“Just hit-and-run?”

“I’d like the whole crime list — but hit-and-run particularly.”

“Can you give me the location?”

“Just anywhere around this part of the country.”

He said, “Why the hit-and-run? You got a hunch?”

I shook my head. “I haven’t a thing that will be of any help to you. I don’t even know it’s hit-and-run, but judging from the type of man I’m dealing with I think it might be hit-and-run. That looks like the most obvious explanation.”

“Explanation for what?”

“Explanation for why I gave you ten bucks to dig up the information for me.”

He said, “Sit right here, buddy. I’ll be back.”

I sat there and cussed myself for having associated with Bertha so long I was picking up her ways. Fifty dollars would have done the job. Ten bucks wasn’t enough. However, I’d heard Bertha scream so much about expenses that I’d unconsciously begun to start economizing. I decided in the future to play things my way. A cop who is willing to take anything on the side is apt to regard ten dollars the same way a bellboy looks at a tencent tip.

My man was back, however, in about ten minutes with the information I wanted.

“Two cases are the only ones you could be interested in, buddy. A man was hit at Post and Polk by a car driven by a young fellow who was probably drunk. A jane was sitting next to the driver, and, according to spectators, had amalgamated herself pretty thoroughly with him. She was crawling all over him. He was driving pretty fast. He hit this pedestrian, broke a hip, an ankle, and a shoulder, knocked the guy over to the curb, slowed for a stop, then evidently remembered how many drinks he’d had and went away from there fast. He got a break. No one seems to have taken his license number. It happened pretty fast, you know. A car behind him, halfway down the block, saw the whole thing and took after the hit-and-run. He had good ideas but his execution wasn’t so hot.

“Another car was just pulling out from the curb. They tangled. There was a smashing of fenders and cracking of glass. The road was blocked, no other cars could get through.”

“Any physical clues?” I asked.

“I told you the guy was lucky. The second accident took place right close to where the pedestrian had been hit. We’ve got quite a few assorted pieces of glass and some bits from a broken grill. So far, the assorted junk all came from one or the other of the cars that were in the collision. The car that hit the pedestrian doesn’t seem to have shed anything. If it did, it was mixed up with other stuff.”

I nodded. “What was the other case?”

“The other case I don’t think you’re going to be interested in. A man was driving a car and was pretty drunk. He’s out on bail.”

I got up and said, “Well, I guess that does it.”

He grinned at me and said, “The hell it does.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You’ve got a date with the man who’s working on the case.”

“When?”

“Now.”

I said, “I don’t know a thing. I’m here to get information. I—”

He said, “You tell it to the lieutenant.”

“And furthermore,” I went on, “if I had any information I wouldn’t give it to the lieutenant or anybody else. I’m protecting a client.”

“That’s what you think.”

I said, “When I protect a client I go all the way.”

“You’ve gone all the way now, buddy. You’ve gone from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Try and protect a Los Angeles client up here and see where it gets you.”

I said, “Try and beat information out of me and see where it gets you.”

“We won’t beat it out of you,” he said, grinning. “We just shake it out of you.”

He put a hand on my shoulder, a hand that was big as a ham, with strong fingers that slid down my arm until they took a grip on my elbow. “Right this way,” he said.

Chapter Seven

Lieutenant Sheldon was a tall, slender individual who didn’t look like a cop at all. He was wearing plain clothes and he sat behind a desk, assuming the attitude of a fatherconfessor. He stood up, shook hands, and said, “I’m very glad to meet you, Donald. Anything we can do for you up here we’ll be only too glad to do.”

“Thanks.”

“We like to help the visiting firemen in every way we can.”

“I’m sure I appreciate it.”

“In return we expect a reasonable amount of co-operation.”

“Sure.”

“You’re interested in hit-and-run cases on Tuesday night?”

“Not exclusively. I was interested in the whole crime blotter, but I was giving special attention to hit-and-run.”

“I know, I know,” he said. “You wanted the whole thing. I’ve had it all typed out for you, Lam. Here it is.”

He handed me a three-page list of crimes that included one case of molestation, three stickups, five burglaries, three driving while intoxicated. The list went on with solicitation, prostitution, gambling, and a charge of obtaining money under false pretenses.

I didn’t get to read it all. Lieutenant Sheldon started talking. “Fold it and put it in your pocket, Lam. You’ll have an opportunity to study it at your leisure. What do you know about the hit-and-run charge?”

“Nothing.”

“You have a client, perhaps, who has an automobile that’s been smashed up a little. You’re a shrewd operator. You want to know just what you’re getting into before you represent him, don’t you?”

“No.”

“You should.”

“I mean I don’t have a client who has a broken-up automobile.”

“Tut-tut,” Lieutenant Sheldon said. “Let’s not spar around with each other, Donald.”

“I’m not sparring.”

His eyes twinkled. “And don’t try to get hardboiled. It doesn’t buy you anything — up here.”

“I’m satisfied it wouldn’t.”

“That’s fine,” he said. “So now we understand each other perfectly.”

I nodded. “If I knew anything that would help on that hit-and-run charge I’d let you fellows know.”

“Of course you would,” Lieutenant Sheldon said. “I know you would. In the first place, we’d be very grateful for any co-operation, and in the second we’d be very, very much put out if we didn’t get the co-operation.”

I nodded.

“Now, the way I see it,” Sheldon went on, “is that you’re from Los Angeles. You have a detective agency down there and somebody came to you and said, ‘Look, Lam, I had a little trouble when I was up in San Francisco. I had a few drinks and I had this girl along with me and she was getting affectionate and demonstrative, and there was a crowded street corner and I heard somebody yell. I don’t think I hit anybody, but I’d just like to have you find out. And if I did hit anybody, you try to square it for me, will you?’ž”

I shook my head. “It isn’t like that at all.”

“I know,” Sheldon said. “I’m just telling you the way I thought it might be.”

I didn’t say anything.

“So you come up here and start looking around to try and find out about what happened. Now that’s all right as far as you’re concerned, but as far as the department is concerned we’d like to have the credit of cleaning up the case and solving it. You understand that, don’t you?”

I nodded.

Sheldon’s eyes got hard. “So,” he said, “if you know anything about it, you tell us and we’ll all co-operate and play palsy-walsy; but if you don’t co-operate, Donald, your man will be in one hell of a fix. There won’t be anything he can square. He’ll have the book thrown at him, and whenever you come to San Francisco you’ll wish you’d stayed home.” Again I nodded.

“So,” Sheldon went on, “now that we’ve become acquainted, what have you got to tell us?”

“Nothing, yet.”

“Now, we don’t like that, Donald, I don’t like the ‘yet’ and I don’t like the ‘nothing.’ž”

I didn’t say anything.

He said, “You’re going to want some co-operation at this end before you get done. Now’s the time to lay the foundation for it.”

I said, “You could be all cockeyed in your surmises.”

“Of course I could, of course I could, Donald! You don’t need to tell me that. Good heavens, some man could have walked into your office and said, ‘Look, Donald, my boy went up to San Francisco and when he came home I’m satisfied he’d been in trouble of some sort. Now, he’s a good boy but he does have a tendency to hoist a couple and then go out and get behind a steering wheel. Now, suppose you just slide up to San Francisco and see if there’s any hit-and-run charge up there that hasn’t been accounted for.’

“Or,” Lieutenant Sheldon went on, “some man might have come to you and said, ‘I saw a hit-and-run job up there in San Francisco. I was out with a woman who wasn’t my wife and I simply can’t afford to get mixed into it, but I’ll give you a little information about what I saw and perhaps you can use it to locate the driver of the car and he’ll take care of me in some way.’ It could be any one of a hundred and one things.”

I said, “I have a client. I haven’t the faintest idea whether he knows anything about hit-and-run or not, but I’m interested in finding out. When I go back to Los Angeles I’m going to see that client. I’m going to put it up to him. If he was mixed up in any hit-and-run he’s going to try and square it, and if he tries to square it he’s going to come to you first. Now, how’s that?”

Lieutenant Sheldon got up, came around the desk, grabbed my hand, and pumped it up and down. “Now, Donald,” he said, “you’re beginning to understand how we work in San Francisco; the way we try to co-operate with you fellows when you’re up here. You don’t try to do any squaring on the side. You pick up the telephone and you call for Lieutenant Sheldon, person to person. You get it?”

“I get it,” I said.

“You tell me what you have, and you tell me what you want to do. Then the police, acting on your tip, get busy and solve the case by clever detective work. After we’ve solved the case you start trying to work your fix and we’ll do everything we can up here. We’ll tell you all we know and show you the ropes. If you can square it more power to you.”

I nodded.

“But remember, Donald,” he said, wagging a forefinger at me as though he’d been a schoolteacher and I was a naughty pupil, “don’t try to slip anything over on us. If you know anything, you’d better tell us now. If you know something you aren’t telling and we find it out, it’s going to be too bad, just too bad.”

“I understand.”

“Not only for your client, but it’s going to be too bad for your agency. We co-operate with people who co-operate with us, and we don’t co-operate with people who don’t co-operate with us.”

“Suits me,” I told him.

“Here’s a list of the witnesses on that hit-and-run,” he said, handing me a typewritten list of names and addresses. “That’s all we have to work on at the moment. But I feel sure you’re going to help us get more, Donald. I feel certain of it. You’ll want it squared up, and you’re not dumb.

“Now if there’s anything you want while you’re up here, any information we can get for you, don’t hesitate for a minute. Just tell us what you want, Donald, and we’ll get it for you.” I thanked him and walked out.

I took a taxi to the Palace Hotel, paid off, ducked through to the side entrance, picked up another cab. A car was tailing me. I couldn’t shake it off without tipping off the cab driver and making the driver of the car behind know I had him spotted.

I told the cabbie to drive along Bush Street. When I saw a rather pretentious apartment up near the top of the hill, I told the driver to stop and wait for me. I ran up the stairs, walked in to the desk, and handed the man on duty my card.

“I’m up here working on a case,” I told him.

His eyes were exceedingly uncordial.

“Do you have a tenant,” I asked, “who drives a very dark blue Buick sedan?”

“I wouldn’t know. It’s quite possible we have several.”

I frowned and said, “This is the address I have and it should be here, a dark-blue sedan.”

“I’m sure I couldn’t tell you.”

“Could you find out for me?”

“I’m afraid not. We don’t spy on our tenants.”

“I don’t want you to spy on anyone. I just want a little information. I could get a list of tenants and look up the registrations.”

“Then why don’t you do that, Mr. Lam?”

“Because I can save time this way.”

“Time,” he said, “is money.”

I said, “In this case there isn’t much money.”

“Then you should have lots of time.”

I said, “I’ll see what I can do and come back.”

“Do that.”

I walked out, got in the taxicab, and went back to my hotel. I went up to my room, waited ten minutes, got in a cab, went out to Sutro Baths, and had myself a nice swim. When I got out of the baths I took a cab and started back along Geary Street. When I reached the cross street I wanted I paid off the cab and walked around the block. When I made sure no one was following me I stepped into a drugstore, called another cab, and went to the address of John Carver Billings. A maid answered my ring.

I said, “I’m Donald Lam from Los Angeles. I want to see John Carver Billings the Second, and you can tell him it’s urgent and important.”

“Just a moment,” she said.

She looked at my card, then took the precaution of closing the door while she vanished inside the house. Two minutes later she was back and said, “Come in.”

I went through a reception hall into a big drawingroom, and John Carver Billings the Second came forward to meet me. He was not at all pleased to see me.

“Why, hello, Lam! What the hell are you doing up here?”

“Working.”

“I thought your agency did a very fine job for me,” he said, “but that’s all done — finished. Pau, as they say in Hawaii.”

He didn’t ask me to sit down.

I said, “I have another matter I’m working on.”

“If there’s anything in which I can assist you I’ll be glad to do what I can.” His voice was like cold linoleum on bare feet.

I said, “I’m investigating a hit-and-run case up here. The police are interested in it.”

“You mean the police hired a private detective from Los Angeles to—”

“I didn’t say that. I said the police were interested.”

“In a hit-and-run case?”

“Yes.”

“They should be.”

“A fellow down on the corner of Post and Polk Streets,” I said, “hit a man and broke him up a bit, then kept right on going. Someone tried to follow him and ran into a car that was just pulling out from the curb. That enabled the guy to make a getaway — temporarily.”

“What are you trying to do? Find the fellow?”

“I think I know who he is,” I said, looking him right in the eye. “I’m trying to find some way of fixing it up for him now.”

“Well, I can’t say I wish you any luck. These hit-and-run drivers are a menace. Was there anything else, Lam?”

I said, “Yes. Let’s have a little talk.”

“I’m rather busy now. I’m in conference with my father and—”

I said, “If you were sick and walked into a doctor’s office and asked him to give you a prescription for penicillin, he gave you one with no questions asked and let you walk out, what would you think?”

“I’d think he was a hell of a doctor. Is that what you want me to say?”

“That’s what I want you to say.”

“All right. I’ve said it.”

I said, “That’s what you did. You walked into a detective agency, described the medicine you wanted, and then walked out.”

“I gave you a very specific assignment, if that’s what you mean. There wasn’t any medicine and I wasn’t sick.”

“You may not have thought and temperature.”

“Just what are you driving at, Lam?”

I said, “You fixed up a fake alibi, then you went out and planted it. You wanted us to uncover it for you. In that way you could act very innocent and say that you’d paid good money to get a detective agency to find the people who—”

“I don’t think I like your attitude, Lam.”

“The weakness of such a scheme,” I went on, “is that you don’t dare to approach a perfect stranger. You have to get someone you’re friendly with, and then your friendship for that person can be proven. Furthermore, in order to make Sylvia a fallen woman in name only, as well as to bolster your alibi, you insisted on having two people, so Sylvia got her friend Millie.”

“Do you have any idea what you’re talking about? Because I don’t.”

“And,” I went on, “after you’d made certain we were going to handle the case and everything was all fixed, you went dashing out to that motor court, put on a leather jacket and gold-braided cap, and went in where you could plant the evidence for me to find.

“I don’t know just how it happened that you picked that particular motor court. You may have stayed there before and thought there was a little something phony about it, or you may have just picked one at random.

“Now,” I went on, “if I knew what you were trying to cover up on Tuesday night, I might That’s what we’re for. To help you if we can.”

He said, very slowly, in cold anger, “I’d been warned about private detectives. I’d been told they tried to blackmail clients if they could get anything on those clients. I see now the warning was one that I should have heeded. I shall instruct my bank the first thing Monday morning to dishonor that check which was given to your agency. I am sending your agency a wire that payment on the check has been stopped. I don’t appreciate your meddling in my private affairs; I don’t appreciate your attempt at blackmail; and I don’t like you.”

I played the last card. “Your dad,” I said, “might resent it if his son received a lot of publicity as being the driver of the hit-and-run car. There is always the chance that we can square these things and—”

“Just a minute,” he said, “wait right there, Lam. I have something for you. That last remark really gave me an idea. Wait right there, don’t go away.”

He turned and left the room.

I walked over to a comfortable chair and sat down.

Steps sounded, a door opened, and Billings was back in the room with an older man.

“This is my father,” he said. “I have no secrets from him. Dad, this is Donald Lam. He’s a private detective from Los Angeles. I hired his firm to find out the people who were with me Tuesday night in a motor court in Los Angeles. He did an excellent job of getting the people located. I have his report here in writing showing that he located and talked with at least one of them, and that everything is exactly as I reported it to him.

“I gave his agency a check for a five-hundred-dollar bonus in accordance with an understanding I made with them. I am not at all certain it was ethical for me to do that. I think perhaps that constituted a contingency fee and may be a breach of ethics on the part of the agency.

“Now he shows up and tries to blackmail me. He accuses me of having tried to fake an alibi and is intimating that I was mixed up in a hit-and-run charge Tuesday night, some accident which I believe occurred near Post and Polk. What shall I do?”

John Carver Billings the First looked at me as though I might have been something that had just crawled under a crack in the door and he wanted to get a good look at me before he stepped on me.

“Throw the son of a bitch out,” he said.

“Your son wasn’t in that motor court Tuesday night. He’s been trying to fix up a fake alibi. He’s made a clumsy job of it and if there should be any investigation the very fact that he had tried to fix up that fake alibi would fasten the brand of guilt on him, and at the same time alienate the sympathy of the court and the public. I’m simply trying to help the guy.”

The elder Billings continued to regard me with cold, patronizing scorn. “Are you quite finished, Mr. — Mr.—”

“Lam. Donald Lam.” ‘

“Are you quite finished, Mr. Lam?”

“Quite.”

Billings turned to his son. “Just what’s this all about, John?”

John moistened his lips with his tongue. “Dad, I’ll tell you the truth. I was on the loose in L.A. I picked up a girl. All I did was ask her to dance. After that she picked me up. Then she stood me up.

“It turned out this girl was the moll of a notorious gang- ster. Now she’s disappeared.

“After she stood me up I fell in with a couple of nice girls from here. I didn’t know their names. The three of us spent the night in a motor court.

“I hired this man to find out who the girls were so I could, if necessary, prove that I wasn’t with this moll, Maurine Auburn.

“He did a good job of finding them. Now he’s trying to invalidate the result of his own investigation. He may have been given money or he may want some. Or it may be that one of the girls who hated my guts has lied to this man so she can cut herself a piece of cake.”

“That’s all you have to tell me, John?”

“So help me, Dad, that’s all.”

Billings turned to me. “There’s the door. Get out.”

I smiled at him. “Now,” I said, “you interest me.”

He walked over to the telephone, picked it up, and said, “Police headquarters, please.”

I said, “Lieutenant Sheldon is the man you want to ask for. Sheldon is investigating a hit-and-run accident that took place on Post and Polk Streets Tuesday night at about ten-thirty.”

John Carver Billings the First never turned a hair. He said into the telephone, “Yes. Is this police headquarters?... I want to speak with Lieutenant Sheldon.”

It could have been a bluff. There might have been a switch that kept the phone from being connected. I couldn’t tell.

I waited. A moment later the receiver made a squawking noise, and Billings said, “This is John Carver Billings, Lieutenant. I am being annoyed by a private detective who apparently is trying to blackmail my son... He has given me your name... What’s that? Yes, a private detective from Los Angeles. The name is Donald Lam.”

“The firm name is Cool and Lam, Dad,” his son prompted.

“I believe he is of the firm of Cool and Lam of Los Angeles,” the old man went on. “He apparently is trying to find a fall guy to take the place of some client who quite apparently was mixed up in a hit-and-run case last Tuesday night... Yes, yes, that’s it. That’s what he said. At Polk and Post Streets at about ten-thirty... That’s the one. What shall I do? Shall I?... Very well, I’ll try to hold him until you can get here.”

I didn’t wait to hear any more. If it was a bluff they had more blue chips than I did, and they sure as hell had pushed theirs into the center of the table, the whole damn stack. I turned around and walked out.

No one made any effort to stop me.

Chapter Eight

Two taxicabs later I found myself on the south side of Market. It wasn’t a dive, it was a dump. It was good enough for what I wanted. It had to be.

At a little store on Third Street I picked up a shirt, some socks, and underwear. A drugstore sold me shaving things. Then in the dingy, stuffy inside room I sat down at a rickety little table and started checking over what had happened.

John Carver Billings the Second had needed an alibi and his need had been so urgent that he had spent a great deal of money, time, and effort in a clumsy attempt to fabricate something that would stand up.

Why?

The most logical thing was the hit-and-run charge, but that hadn’t seemed to faze him when I put it up to him. Therefore he was either a better poker player than I figured, or I was on the wrong track.

I went down to a phone booth and phoned Elsie Brand at her apartment. Luckily I found her in.

“How’s Sylvia?” she asked.

“Sylvia’s fine,” I told her. “She wanted to be remembered to you.”

“Thank her very much,” she said icily.

“Elsie, I think I’m on the wrong trail up here.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know. It bothers me. I think perhaps the answer may have been in Los Angeles, after all. I wish you’d start pulling wires down there and get a list of all of the crimes that were committed in Los Angeles on Tuesday night.”

“That’s going to be quite a list.”

“Specialize first on the hit-and-run charges,” I said. “I’m looking for a case where a pedestrian was hit, badly injured, and the car wasn’t hurt enough so there were any clues left on the spot. Do you get me?”

“I get you.”

I said, “That also might cover anything in the immediate vicinity of Los Angeles. Oh, say, within fifty or a hundred miles. See what you can do, will you?”

“Is it urgent?”

“It’s urgent.”

She said, “You don’t care a thing about a girl’s weekend, do you?”

“You’ll have lots of weekends after I get back,” I told her.

“And a lot of good they’ll do me,” she retorted.

“What was that last?”

“I simply said to give my love to Sylvia,” she observed, and then asked, “Where can I call you?”

“You can’t. I’ll call you.”

“When?”

“Sometime tomorrow morning.”

“Sunday morning!”

“That’s right.”

“You’re getting more and more like Bertha every day,” she told me.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll give you more time and more sleep. Let’s make it at the office Monday morning. I’ll call collect because I’m running short of cash.”

“Make it Sunday if you want, Donald. Anything I can do—”

“No, you won’t be able to get the information by then.”

“How do you know? A police detective is buying my dinner tonight.”

“You do get around.”

“Just local stuff. I don’t need to go to another city.”

I laughed. “Make it Monday, Elsie. That’ll be soon enough.”

“Honest?”

“Honest.”

“žBy now,” she said softly, and hung up.

I went out to Post and Polk and looked around. It was a nice intersection for an accident. Someone coming along Post Street and seeing a Go signal at Van Ness would start speeding to try and make the signal if he thought he had a clear run for it at Polk Street.

A kid was selling newspapers on the corner. There was quite a bit of traffic.

I took from my pocket the list of witnesses that Lieutenant Sheldon had given me and wondered if it was complete.

There was a woman whose occupation was listed simply as a saleslady, a man who worked in a nearby drugstore, a motorist who “saw it all” from a place midway in the block, and a man who ran a little cigar stand had heard the crash, and run out to see what it was all about.

There wasn’t anything about a newsboy.

I started thinking that over, then I walked up and bought a paper, gave the kid two bits, and told him to keep the change.

“This your regular beat?” I asked.

He nodded, his sharp eyes studying the people and the traffic, looking for an opportunity to sell another paper.

“Here every night?”

He nodded.

I said suddenly, “How come you didn’t tell the police what you knew about that hit-and-run case last Tuesday night?”

He would have started to run if I hadn’t grabbed his arm. “Come on, kid,” I said, “let’s have it.”

He looked like a trapped rabbit. “You can’t come busting up and start pushing me around like this.”

“Who’s pushing you around?”

“You are.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” I told him. “How much money did they pay you to clam up?”

“Go roll a hoop.”

“That,” I told him, “is what is known as compounding a felony.”

“I’ve got some friends on the force here,” he said. “Fellows that aren’t going to stand for having me pushed around.”

“You may have some friends on the force,” I said, “but you’re not dealing with the force now. Do you know any good judges?”

I saw him wince at that.

“Of course,” I said, “a good friend who is a judge might help you. This isn’t the police. I’m private, and I’m tough.”

“Aw, what are you picking on me for? Give a guy a break, can’t you?”

“What difference does it make to you?” I asked him. “Did somebody give you money?”

“Of course not.”

“Perhaps trying a little blackmail?”

“Aw, have a heart, mister. Gee, I was going to play it on the square and then I realized I couldn’t.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

“Because I was in trouble down in Los Angeles. I skipped parole. I ain’t supposed to be selling papers. I’m supposed to be reporting to a probation officer every thirty days and all that stuff. I didn’t like it and I came up here and been going straight.”

“Why didn’t you report the hit-and-run?”

“How could I? I thought I was going to be smart. I took down the guy’s number and figured I’d make a grandstand with the cops, and then I suddenly realized what it would mean. The D.A. would call me as a witness and the smart guy who was defending the fellow would start ripping me up the back and down the front and show that I had skipped out on parole, the jury wouldn’t believe me, and I’d get sent back to L.A. as a parole violator.”

“Pretty smart for a kid, aren’t you?”

“I ain’t a kid.”

I looked down into the prematurely wise little face with the sharp eyes sizing me up, studying me for a weak point where he could take advantage of me, felt the bony little shoulder under my hand, and said, “Okay, kid. You play square with me and I’ll play square with you. How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“How are you getting along up here?”

“I’m doing good. I’m keeping on the straight and narrow. The trouble down in L.A. I had too many friends. I’d get out with the gang and they’d start calling me sissy if I didn’t ride along.”

“What were they doing?”

“Believe me, mister, they were getting so they were doing damn near everything. It started out with kid stuff, then when Butch got to be head of the outfit he said the only fellows who could run with the gang were the ones who had guts enough to be regular guys. I mean he’s tough.”

“Why didn’t you go to the probation officer and tell him all that?”

“Think I was going to rat?”

“Why didn’t you just stay home and mind your own business?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“So you took a powder and came up here?”

“That’s right.”

“And you’re going straight?”

“Like a string.”

“Give me the license number and I’ll try to keep you out of it.”

He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket that had been torn from the edge of a newspaper. On it was scribbled a number, written with a hard pencil so that it was all but illegible.

I studied it carefully.

He went on in an eager, whining voice. “That’s the car that hit the guy. The driver came tearing down the hill and almost hit me. That’s when I got so mad I started to take his number. He was a fat, middle-aged guy with a little blonde plastered up against him. She started to kiss him just as they got to the corner, or he was kissing her, or they were kissing each other, I don’t know which.”

“What did you do?”

“I jumped out of the way and thought the guy was going to crash into the curb. I took his number — that is, I got out the pencil and was writing it down on the edge of the paper when he smacked right into this guy.”

“Then what?”

“Then he slowed down for a minute and I thought he was stopping; then the wren said something to him and changed his mind. He stepped on it.”

“No one after him?”

“Sure. A guy tried to nail him just as some goof swung out from the curb. They smashed up and littered the street with broken glass. By that time people were running around giving help to the old man, and all of a sudden I realized that I was in a spot; that if I told the police who the fellow was I’d be a gone coon.”

“Who was he?”

“I tell you I don’t know. All I know is he was driving a dark sedan, he was going like hell, and he and this babe were pitching woo right up to the time they hit the street intersection.”

“Drunk?”

“How do I know? He was busy doing other things besides driving the automobile. Now I’ve given you a break, mister. Let me go.”

I handed him five dollars. “Go buy yourself a Coca- Cola, buddy, and quit worrying about it.”

He looked at the five for a moment, then swiftly crumpled it and shoved it down into his pocket. “That all?” he asked.

I said, “Would you know this gent if you saw him again, the one who was driving the car?”

He looked at me with eyes that were suddenly hard and shrewd. “No,” he said.

“Couldn’t recognize him if you saw him in a line-up?”

“No.”

I left the newsboy and looked up the registration of the number he had given me.

It was Harvey B. Ludlow and he lived in an apartment way out on the beach. The car was a Cadillac sedan.

Chapter Nine

I slept until noon Sunday, in my south-of-Market dump. Breakfast at a nearby restaurant consisted of stale eggs fried in near-rancid grease, muddy coffee, and cold, soggy toast.

I got the Sunday papers, and went back to my stuffy room with its threadbare carpet, hard chair, and stale stench.

Gabby Garvanza had made news of a sort.

He’d discharged himself from the hospital, and his departure had given every indication that he was a worried, apprehensive man.

He had, in fact, simply vanished into thin air.

His nurses and physician insisted they knew nothing about it.

Garvanza was recuperating nicely and had been able to travel under his own power. Attired in pajamas, slippers, and bathrobe, he had announced his intention of walking down the hall to the solarium.

When his special nurse went to the solarium a few minutes later she drew a blank. A frantic search of the hospital yielded no clues and no Gabby Garvanza.

Theories ranged from the fact that the gambler had taken a run-out powder to abduction by the enemies who had tried to rub him out.

The mobster had left behind clothes which had been taken to him by Maurine Auburn on the day following the shooting.

The three-hundred-and-fifty-dollar suit of clothes, the silk shirt, and the twenty-five-dollar hand-painted tie which he had been wearing on the night he was shot, had been impounded as evidence. The bullet holes in the bloodstained garments were expected to yield perhaps some clue on spectrographic analysis as to the composition of the slugs which had penetrated Garvanza’s body.

The day after the shooting Maurine Auburn had brought a suitcase containing another three-hundred-andfifty- dollar tailor-made suit, a pair of seventy-five-dollar made-to-order shoes, another twenty-five-dollar handpainted necktie, and an assortment of silk shirts, socks, and handkerchiefs.

All of these had been left behind. When he vanished the gambler had been wearing only bathrobe, pajamas, and slippers.

The hospital staff insisted that a man so clothed could not possibly leave the hospital by any of the exits, and pointed out that it would be virtually impossible for him to get a cab while clad in that attire.

Police retorted that whether or not it had been possible, Gabby had disappeared, and that he hadn’t needed a cab.

There was some criticism of the police for not posting a guard, but the police countered that criticism with the fact that Gabby Garvanza had been the target. He had not done any shooting and had, in fact, been unarmed at the time he was shot. Police had other and more important duties than to assign a bodyguard for a notorious gambler who seemed to be having troubles with competition that wished to muscle in on what the press referred to as “a lucrative racket” — despite the fact that the police insisted the town was closed up tight and there was no gambling worthy of the name.

I took my knife, cut the clipping out of the newspaper, and folded it in my wallet.

Since I was, for the moment, at a standstill, and since I dared not circulate around too freely, I spent a long, tiresome day reading, thinking, and keeping under cover.

Monday I went out to get a morning paper.

The story was on the front page.

The body of Maurine Auburn had been found buried in a shallow grave near Laguna Beach, the famous ocean and resort city south of Los Angeles.

A shallow grave had been dug in the sand above hightide line, but air had seeped through the loose sand, the odor of decomposition had become noticeable, and the body had been uncovered.

From its location authorities felt the grave had been hastily dug at night, and that the young woman was already dead when a car drove down a side street, stopped near a cliff, and the body was dumped over the cliff to the sand below. The murderer then had hastily scooped out a grave in the soft sand and made his escape.

From an examination of the body, the coroner believed she had been dead about a week. She had been shot twice in the back — a cold-blooded, efficient job. Either bullet would have resulted in almost instant death.

Both of the fatal bullets had been recovered.

Los Angeles police, who had been inclined to wash their hands of the attractive moll after her distinct refusal to co-operate in giving the police information concerning the shooting of Gabby Garvanza, now had no comment to make. The sheriff of Orange County was breathing smoke, fire, and threats to gangsters.

In view of these developments, search was being redoubled for a young man with whom it was known Maurine Auburn had disappeared on the night that police now felt certain was the night of her death. Police had a good description and were making a “careful check.”

I went to a phone booth and rang up Elsie Brand at the office, putting through the call collect.

I heard the operator at the other end of the line say, “Mrs. Cool said she would take any collect calls from Donald Lam.”

A moment later I heard Bertha’s hysterical voice screaming oven the wire. “You damn little moron. What do you think you’re doing? Who the hell do you think is masterminding this business?”

“What’s the matter now?” I asked.

“What’s the matter?” she yelled. “We’re in a jam. You’ve tried to blackmail a client. They’re going to revoke our license. The client has stopped payment on the five-hundred- dollar bonus check. What’s the matter? What’s the matter? You go sticking your neck out there in San Francisco. The San Francisco police have a pickup on you, the agency is in bad, the five hundred dollars has gone down the drain, and you’re calling collect. What the hell do you think’s the matter?”

“I want to get some information from Elsie Brand,” I said.

“Pay for the call, then,” Bertha screamed. “There won’t be any more collect calls on the phone at this end.”

She slammed up the receiver so that it must have all but pulled the phone out by the roots.

I hung up the telephone, sat there in the booth, and counted my available cash.

I didn’t have enough to squander any money on telephoning Elsie Brand.

I went to the telegraph office and sent her a collect telegram.

WIRE ME INFORMATION PREPAID WILL CALL WESTERN UNION BRANCH FIRST AND MARKET.

Bertha probably wouldn’t think to stop collect telegrams.

I went back to my hole-in-the-wall hotel and kicked my heels, marking time while waiting for information.

The noon editions of the San Francisco newspapers blossomed out with useful information. The killing of Maurine Auburn suddenly assumed importance because it had a swell local angle.

Headlines across the front page said: Son of Wealthy Banker Volunteers Information in Gangster Killing.

I read that John Carver Billings the Second had voluntarily reported to police that he had been the one who had asked Maurine Auburn to dance at an afternoon rendezvous spot, that he had been the one whose fascination had charmed the attractive “moll” into leaving her companions.

The young man’s amatory triumph, however, had been swiftly eclipsed by humiliation when the moll had gone to “powder her nose” and had failed to reappear.

Young Billings reported that he had thereafter “become acquainted” with two San Francisco girls, and had spent the “rest of the evening” with them. He had not known their names until he had located them through the efforts of a Los Angeles detective agency which had uncovered the identity of the two young women.

Billings had given police the names of these two women, and, since they were reputable young ladies employed in San Francisco business establishments, and inasmuch as it seemed their contact with Billings had consisted merely in making a round of night spots and using him to “show them the town,” police were withholding their names. It was known, however, that they had been interviewed and had confirmed Billings’s story in every detail.

The newspaper carried an excellent picture of John Carver Billings, a good, clear photograph taken by a newspaper photographer.

I went around to the newspaper office and hunted up the art department. A couple of two-bit cigars got me a fine glossy print of the picture, a real likeness of John Carver Billings the Second.

I strolled back to the telegraph office. There was no wire from Elsie.

I took a streetcar to Millie Rhodes’s apartment.

I found her home.

“Oh, hello,” she said. “Come on in.”

Her eyes were sparkling with excitement. She was wearing an outfit which evidently had just been removed from a box bearing the label of one of San Francisco’s most expensive stores.

“No work?” I asked.

“Not today,” she said, smiling enigmatically.

“I thought your vacation was up and you were due back to work.”

“I changed my plans.”

“And the job?”

“I’m a lady of leisure.”

“Since when?”

“That’s telling.”

“Like it?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“You’re burning bridges, Millie.”

“Let ‘em burn.”

“You might want to go back.”

“Not me. I’m going places, not going back — ever.”

“That’s a new suit, isn’t it?”

“Isn’t it divine? It does things for me. I found it and it fits me as though it had been made for me. It didn’t need the slightest alteration. I’m crazy about it.”

She had been standing in front of the full-length mirror. Now she raised her hands slightly and turned slowly around so I could see the lines.

“It’s a nice job,” I said. “It does things for you.”

She sat down, crossed her legs, and smoothed the skirt over her knees with a caressing motion.

“Well,” she said, “what is it this time?”

I said, “I don’t want you burning bridges. It was all right to lie to me about the John Carver Billings alibi.”

“John Carver Billings the Second,” she amended with a smile.

“The Second,” I admitted. “Lying to me was one thing — lying to the police is another.”

“Look, Donald,” she said, “you look like a nice boy. You’re a detective. That makes you have a nasty, suspicious mind. You came here and intimated that I was lying in order to give John Carver Billings the Second an alibi. I rode along with you in order to see what you’d say.”

I said, “You broke down on cross-examination, and couldn’t tell a consistent story.”

She laughed as though the whole thing was very amusing. “I was just sounding you out, Donald, riding along with the gag.”

She moved over to the davenport and sat down beside me, put one hand on my shoulder, said softly, “Donald, why don’t you grow up?”

“I’ve grown up.”

“You can’t buck money and influence — not in this town.”

“Who has the money?” I asked angrily.

“Right at the moment,” she said, “John Carver Billings the Second has money.”

“All right. Who has the influence?”

“I’ll answer that question. John Carver Billings.”

“You left off the Second,” I told her sarcastically.

“No, I didn’t.”

“You mean that?”

She nodded. “I mean John Carver Billings, the old man. He’s calling the turns.”

I thought that over.

She said, “You stuck your neck out. You did things you shouldn’t have done. You said things you shouldn’t have said. Why didn’t you ride along, Donald?”

“Because I’m not built that way.”

“You’ve lost five hundred dollars, you’ve got yourself in bad with the police, there’s an order out to pick you up, and you’re in a sweet mess. Now, if you wanted to grow up and be your age you could have that all straightened out. The police would withdraw their pickup order, the fivehundred- dollar check would be reinstated, and everything would be hunky-dory.”

“So you’ve gone back to the alibi story.”

“I never abandoned the alibi story.”

“You did to me.”

“That’s what you say.”

“You know you did.”

She said almost dreamily, “John Carver Billings the Second, Sylvia Tucker, and I all tell the same story. You come along and claim that I changed my story to you. I deny it. John Carver Billings the Second says you tried to blackmail him. Police say you were snooping around trying to get something which you could use to blackmail a client. That’s not being smart, Donald.”

“So you’ve decided to sell me out?”

“No. I’ve decided to buy me in.”

“You can’t get away with it, Millie. Don’t try it,” I pleaded.

“You run your business. I’ll run mine.”

“Millie, you can’t do it. You can’t get away with it.

Within two minutes of the time I started to cross-examine you, you had yourself all mixed up.”

“Try cross-examining me now.”

“What good would it do if I trapped you again? You’d simply be that much wiser and you’d lie out of it.”

“I’m wise now, Donald. Why don’t you get wise?”

I said, “You’re dealing with a bunch of amateurs. They think they can fix things up. You’re a nice girl, Millie. I hate to see you get mixed up in this thing. You could get in pretty bad over this.”

“You’re the one who’s in bad now.”

I started for the door and said angrily, “Stick around and see who’s in bad.”

She came running to me. “Don’t leave like that, Donald.”

I pushed her to one side.

Her arms were around me. “Look, Donald, you’re a swell guy. I hate to see you get in bad. You’re bucking power and influence and money. They’ll crush you flat and throw you to one side. You’ll be discredited, convicted of extortion, you’ll lose your license. Donald, please. I can fix it all up for you. I told them they’d have to square things for you or I wouldn’t go along. They promised.”

I said, “Millie, let’s look at it from the standpoint of cold-blooded logic. It cost John Carver Billings the Second almost a thousand dollars to manufacture that alibi, and that isn’t taking into consideration what they paid you. I have an idea Sylvia was softhearted and they didn’t pay her much. They paid you two hundred and fifty dollars the first time. When they came back this second time they really decorated the mahogany.

“You started buying clothes and suitcases. You’re going to make an affidavit and then you’re going traveling, perhaps a trip to Europe.”

“All right,” she said hotly, “they sent for me. They paid me money, big money, and they gave me the protection of influence, big influence. I’m not going to Europe. I’m going to South America. Do you know what that means?”

“Sure I know what it means,” I said. “You’re making an affidavit and then you’re getting on a boat, where, for a time at least, you’ll be out of the jurisdiction of the court.

They can only question you by interrogations forwarded through the American Consulate. You’ll—”

“It isn’t that,” she said. “You’re looking at it from the other person’s viewpoint. I am looking at it from my viewpoint.

“Do you know what it means when a girl comes to the city and gets on her own? She doesn’t have any difficulty meeting a lot of boys — playboys. That’s all they want to do, play.

“At the start you think you’d like a little playing yourself. You’re on the loose. For the first time in your life you’re grown up, with all that it means. You’re an individual, completely free and unhampered. You have an apartment, you are your own boss, you’re making your own living. You don’t have to ask anybody for anything. Or, that’s what you think. You feel there’s lots of time to settle down whenever you get ready. You have a job and you’re getting a regular paycheck. You can buy clothes and you can do what you want when you want.

“It’s a fine sensation for a while and then the sugar coating wears off and you begin to taste the bitter that’s underneath.

“You’re not independent. You’re a cog in the economic and social machine. You can get just so high and no higher. If you want to play you can get acquainted with a lot of playboys. If you want anything else you’re stymied.

“After a while you begin to think about security. You begin to think about a home, about children, about — about being respectable. You want to have some one man whom you can love and respect, to whom you can devote your life. You want to have kids and watch them grow up.

You want to have a husband and a home.

“You don’t meet anybody who wants to be a husband or to make a home. You’re tagged as a playgirl. You’ve been having fun and there’s a tag on you. The homely little bookkeeper marries the bashful guy in the filing-department. You don’t get proposals. You get propositions. The headwaiters all know you and make a fuss over you — You’re tagged.

“The married men at the office all make passes at you in their spare time. The boss slaps your fanny, tells you an off-color joke or two, and thinks he’s being devilish. You meet a lot of guys who look all right on the surface and who swear they’re bachelors on the loose. After the fifth drink they pull a wallet out of their pocket and show you pictures of the wife and kids.”

“I’m going on a boat, Donald. No one’s going to know anything about me or about my background. I’ll have good clothes. I’ll be chic and interesting. I’ll sit in a deck chair and have all day to look over the passengers. I’ll spot the ones who are eligible.”

“And throw your hooks into the first one you can get?” I asked.

“I’m not that anxious,” she said, “and I’m not that low, but if I find someone who interests me and find that I’m interesting him, I’ll have an opportunity to talk with him, to find out what kind of a chap he is, what he wants out of life. I’ll really get acquainted.

“The way it is now, somebody introduces me to a goodlooking fellow. He wants to take me to dinner. I rush home and take a shower, put on a party dress and war paint. We go out to dinner. He shows what he wants and what he expects inside of the first ten minutes. From then on it’s the same old routine and it turns out he’s a buyer from Los Angeles who has a wife and two kids. He’s crazy about his family but he thinks he’s a wolf, and I’m supposed to ride along.

“I’d like to spend an afternoon with a man sometime. I’d like to visit and get acquainted with new people. I’d like to go ashore in Rio de Janeiro and prowl through the shops with some interesting man who wasn’t thinking in terms of making your acquaintance, getting a pass to first base, stealing second, and crossing the home plate, all within two hours.”

I said, “You’ve been reading the steamship ads; some- body’s handed you a bunch of folders with pictures of a girl and a fellow outlined against a path of moonlight in tropical waters, with pictures of happy couples dancing to the rhythm of romantic music. You—”

“Don’t, Donald,” she said, laughing. “You’re taking all the joy out of it.”

There was a catch in her laugh. I turned to look at her. Her eyes were filled with tears.

I said, “You came here, Millie. You got in with a carefree bunch. Your friends are that type. All right, so you’re tagged. But why not go to a new place, get a job, make new friends?”

“How you talk!” she interrupted. “I’d have to give up everything I’ve worked for. I’d start out on a starvation salary and I’d die of loneliness.

“I need action, Donald. I want to get out and circulate. I want to see people. I crave action and variety. I’m no stick-in-the-mud. I’m no stay-at-home. I want to see good shows, listen to good music, dance at the best night spots. I want luxury.”

“You can’t have all that unless you have the connections — or money.”

“I can if I travel first-class.”

I said, “It’s a swell air castle, Millie, but you can’t get away with it.”

“Don’t tell me I can’t get away with it.”

“You’ll wind up facing a charge of perjury.”

“Don’t throw cold water, Donald. I’ve made a date with fortune. I’m going to keep it. Lots of times in my life I’ve been tempted not to do the things I wanted to do because of things that conceivably could happen. I’ve always found out that lots of things happened, but none of the things I was afraid would happen. If you don’t do something you want to do you very definitely haven’t done it. That’s final and complete and you’ll probably regret it. If you do what you want to do, you may get into a mess, but getting into the mess and getting out of the mess is better than shutting yourself up in a closet and hiding from life. Donald, I’m going through with it. I’m leaving for Rio.”

“When?” I asked.

She smiled. “The when and the how are secrets I’m not supposed to discuss, but I’m going and you’d be surprised if you knew how soon.”

“Okay,” I told her. “It’s your funeral.”

“Wrong,” she said. “It’s my wedding.”

“Send me an invitation, will you?”

“I sure will, Donald — Donald?”

“What?”

“Are you married?”

There was a wistful half-smile on her lips.

“No,” I said, and opened the door.

“I knew that would do it,” she said as I stepped out into the corridor.

I went to the Western Union Office and sent Elsie Brand another wire collect.

DISREGARD ALL CRIMES EXCEPT MURDER. STAKES ARE TOO BIG FOR ANYTHING SMALLER WIRE REPLY RUSH.

Chapter Ten

I had a bowl of chili and went to the telegraph office.

A wire was waiting for me.NO MURDERS ACTUALLY COMMITTED BUT ONE THREATENED IN THE OFFICE. YOU HAVE OF COURSE READ ABOUT MAURINE. COULD THIS BE THE ANSWER OR IS THAT TOO SIMPLE? LOVE.

ELSIE.

I was putting the message in my pocket when the operator said, “Wait a minute, Mr. Lam, here’s another one coming in for you. It’s longer.”

I sat around and waited while one of the operators took tape from a Teletype and pasted it on a message.

When they finally handed it to me I saw the clerk looking at me with that type of curiosity the average public reserves for famous criminals, private detectives, and prostitutes.

“Sign here,” she said.

I signed.

The message read:FOR YOUR INFORMATION G.G. WHO TOOK POWDER FROM HOSPITAL IS ABOARD UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT NUMBER 665 LEAVING LOS ANGELES THREE P.M. ARRIVING SAN FRANCISCO AIRPORT FOURTHIRTY TODAY. HE IS TRAVELING UNDER NAME GEORGE GRANBY AND THINKS HE IS ALL COVERED UP. I GOT IT FROM CONNECTION MENTIONED ON PHONE SO KEEP CONFIDENTIAL. BERTHA BLOWING TOP EVERY THIRTY MINUTES LIKE OLD FAITHFUL GEYSER IN YELLOWSTONE. YOU MUST BE LOW ON MONEY UNABLE CHISEL FROM FIRM BUT AM SENDING YOU LOAN FROM PRIVATE SAVINGS TRY TO MAKE IT LAST AS THERE ISN’T ANY MORE. ALL MY LOVE TO SYLVIA. YOURS.

It was signed, Elsie.

“Do you,” asked the person behind the counter, “have anything to show your identity? A business card, a driving license, things of that sort?”

I showed her my driving license and my business card as a private investigator.

“Sign here,” she said.

I signed.

She started counting out money. Three hundred and fifty dollars in twenties and tens. It was one of the most welcome sights I had ever seen.

Gabby Garvanza’s plane would already be in, but I made a list of five of the principal hotels and started calling, asking if they had a George Granby registered.

In the third hotel I struck pay dirt. George Granby was registered and was in.

I waited on the line until a voice that sounded sullen and a little resentful said, “Hello.”

I said, “I want to talk to you about the Maurine Auburn case. I’m a private detective from Los Angeles. I’ve been cutting corners and the police have issued a pickup on me. I don’t want to be picked up and I don’t want to be quoted. I want to talk.”

Gabby Garvanza lived up to his reputation of being taciturn.

“Come up,” he said, and slipped the phone back on the receiver.

I took a taxi to the hotel and went up to George Granby’s room without being announced.

“Come in,” a voice called as I knocked on the door.

I hesitated.

“Come on in, the door’s unlocked.”

I opened the door.

The room seemed empty.

I stepped inside and could see no one.

Abruptly the door was kicked shut. The heavy-set gorilla who had been standing behind the door came toward me.

The bathroom door opened and a sallow-looking man, who was evidently Gabby Garvanza, closed in from the other side.

“Up,” the heavy-set man said.

I elevated my hands.

He was a big, burly fellow with a cauliflower ear and a face which showed the ravages of conflict. He gave me a complete and thorough frisking.

“He’s clean,” he said.

Gabby Garvanza said, “Sit down. Tell me who you are and what the hell you want.”

I sat down and said, “I’m interested in finding out what happened to Maurine Auburn.”

“Who isn’t?”

I said, “I’m a private detective. I’m working on a case.”

I handed him a card.

He barely glanced at the card, tossed it to one side, then thought better of it, took it up, looked at it again, gave it thoughtful consideration, and pushed it in his pocket.

“You’ve got a nerve, Lam.”

I said nothing.

“How did you find me?”

“I’m a detective.”

“That doesn’t tell me anything.”

“Think it over and it will.”

“I don’t like to think. You do it — out loud.”

I shook my head.

“I’m supposed to be under cover,” Gabby went on. “If it’s that easy to lift the cover I want to know about it.”

I said, “I’m here. Therefore it’s that easy.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. I only know I have connections. They know I’m protecting them.”

He said, “You talk big as hell for a little guy.”

“That makes for a fair average,” I told him.

He laughed at that and said, “I like your guts.”

“Thanks.”

“What’s your problem?” Gabby asked after a minute.

I said, “It involves John Carver Billings the Second, the fellow who said he was with Maurine when she walked out on the party she was with.”

“Go on.”

“That’s all.”

He shook his head.

I said, “I’m interested in finding out where John Carver Billings was that night.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“Nothing.”

“Go ahead and find out, then.”

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“You’re not getting very far here.”

I grinned and lit a cigarette.

The bodyguard looked at Gabby, questioning him with a glance whether I should be tossed out of the window or kicked out into the corridor.

I blew out the match and said, “Young Billings says he picked up Maurine and then went out to a nitery and she went into the powder room and never came out.”

“Sound reasonable to you?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“Keep talking,” he invited.

I said, “The way I size it up, Maurine Auburn was out with fellows that know their way around. They were giving her protection. Young Billings tells a nice story about drifting in and picking her up and taking her away from the party she was with, just as though she’d been some secretary out with a couple of filing clerks and accountants from the office. I don’t think it would have happened that way.”

“Keep on thinking — out loud.”

“So,” I said, “I hate to see young Billings getting in bad over something he didn’t do, something he couldn’t have done. And I wondered if perhaps you came up here to question him.”

Gabby Garvanza laughed.

I quit talking.

“Go on,” Garvanza said.

“That’s all there is.”

“There’s the door.”

I shook my head and said, “I want to know whether you’re going to question young Billings, whether you’re going to check up on him, whether that’s why you came up here, whether—”

“Go peddle your papers,” the bodyguard said.

I sat still.

Gabby Garvanza nodded his head. The bodyguard came toward me.

I said, “I might be in a position to do you a favor sometime.”

“Hold it,” Gabby said to the bodyguard.

“Not now,” I told him. “Later.”

“How much later?”

“When I find out why a man should jump into the frying pan.”

“Well, why did he?”

“There’s only one possible reason — to get out of the fire.”

“What fire?”

“That’s what I’m looking for.”

“When and if you find it, you could get the hell burned out of your fingers.”

“They’ve been burned before. I’m wearing gloves.”

“I don’t see ‘em.”

“I had to take them off to come here.”

“I’ll say you did.”

Gabby Garvanza thought things over, then said, “You haven’t any idea how uninterested I am in this Billings guy.”

“His story indicates you should be interested.”

“His story stinks.”

“You don’t believe it?”

Gabby said, “You’re a credulous guy. A Hollywood sport in plus fours comes in and tells you about how he walked into a lion’s den, grabbed a chunk of horse meat away from a lion, slapped his face, and walked out, and so you go to ask the lion if it’s true.”

“Are you the lion?”

Gabby met my eyes and said, “You ask too many questions, but your nerve interests me. I’ve told you all I’m telling. Now get the hell out of here.”

The bodyguard jerked the door open.

I went out.

Going down in the elevator I did a lot of thinking. John Carver Billings the Second must have picked a murder case that he thought he could beat because he was afraid that otherwise he might get mixed up in a murder case he couldn’t beat.

There wasn’t any murder recorded in San Francisco on that date, but I felt certain I’d been overlooking a bet. I decided to check the list of missing persons. There was just a chance I might find someone who had disappeared on Tuesday night.

I called our San Francisco correspondent, told him I was under cover, to check the list of missing persons, with special reference to Tuesday night, and bill the Los Angeles office. I told him I’d call later for the information.

Chapter Eleven

The evening newspapers saved me the trouble of asking my correspondent for a report. I read those papers and had the answer — or thought I did. It was the only answer I could find.

One George Bishop, a wealthy mining man, had left San Francisco Tuesday night to go to his mine in northern California.

He had never arrived.

Early today, the papers reported, his Cadillac automobile had been found where it had been driven off the road above Petaluma. There were blood spatters on the lefthand side of the front seat, and definite blood spatters on the inside of the windshield.

From the indications on the ground officers decided the automobile had been there for at least five days, perhaps longer. Putting two and two together, it looked as though Bishop had been waylaid late Tuesday night, probably by hitchhikers whom he had picked up and who had killed and robbed their benefactor.

It was known Bishop was in the habit of carrying large sums of cash with him on his business trips. On this trip he had expected to drive nearly all night in order to reach his mine in Siskiyou County early Wednesday morning.

In the trunk of the car police found a suitcase and leather handbag, both of the most expensive design, and filled with George Bishop’s personal wearing-apparel and toilet articles. Bishop’s wife had made a positive identification.

Police were now making an intensive search for Bishop’s body in the vicinity of the automobile. Judging from the position of the bloodstains it was assumed he had been killed by bullets fired by someone sitting in the back seat of his car. This led police to believe Bishop had picked up more than one hitchhiker. They reasoned that a lone hitchhiker would have been sitting in the front seat beside Bishop. If there had been two or three, however, the back seat would have been occupied.

From the nature of the blood spatters police were not at all certain two people had not been killed. At least one of the homicide experts felt that someone seated on the driver’s right had either been killed or seriously wounded.

Police, trying to reconstruct Bishop’s trip, felt that the car might have been driven some little distance after Bishop’s body had been dumped out inasmuch as there was no sign of the body anywhere near the car.

The most intensive search was along the main traveled highway, the assumption being that the murderers would have disposed of the body as soon as possible, and only after that had been done would they have driven the automobile up the little-used side road and then down the narrow lane to the place where it had been found. The murderers hardly dared risk driving any great distance with the body in the car, according to police reasoning.

The paper published a photograph of Bishop’s wife making an identification of the contents of the suitcase. The picture showed that she was a good-looking babe, and while she was supposed to have been “overcome with grief“ she had, nevertheless, been carefully conscious of the camera angles at the time the picture was taken, or else the photographer had been pretty clever about posing her.

The address was out in Berkeley and I decided to have a look for myself.

Bertha would have approved of my economy. I was trying to keep Elsie Brand’s money as intact as possible. I went by bus.

The bus let me off within three blocks of the place and when I got to it I found there were two official-looking automobiles parked in front of it. I waited for nearly half an hour, prowling around the neighborhood.

The place was quite some mansion, a half-hillside sweep of grounds with a big house, a view, a swimmingpool, and a back lot where tons of crushed rock had been dumped into a fill.

I felt there was a good big seventy-five thousand dollars in real estate and improvements, and a lot more money was going to be spent on the place.

At the end of about a half hour the last car was driven away and when it was out of sight around the terraced turn in the road, I went boldly up the front steps and rang the bell.

A colored maid answered the door.

I didn’t waste any time. I flipped a careless hand toward the left lapel of my coat, said, “Tell Mrs. Bishop I want to see her,” and pushed on in without taking my hat off.

The maid said, “She’s pretty tired now.”

“So am I,” I said, and, still with my hat on, walked over to slide one hip over a mahogany library table.

I felt certain no one was ever going to say anything to me about impersonating an officer. I could well imagine the chagrin of the police department if the maid got on the stand and said, “Yes, sir! I knew he was an officer from the way he acted. He didn’t tell me nothin’. He just walked in with his hat on, so I knew he must be an officer.”

The woman who entered the room after about three minutes was tired to the point of being mentally numb.

She wore a simple, dark-colored dress that had a V in front low enough to emphasize the creamy smoothness of her skin. She was brunette, slate-eyed, nice-figured, in the mid-twenties, and ready to drop in her tracks.

“What is it?” she said, without even bothering to look at me.

“I want to check up on some of your husband’s associates.”

“That’s been done already a dozen times.”

“Did he know anyone by the name of Meredith?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t heard him speak of any — Man or woman?”

“Man.”

“I haven’t heard him speak of any Meredith.”

“Billings?” I asked.

For a swift instant I felt there was a startled flicker of expression in her eyes, then she said in the same flat, weary voice, “Billings — That name is familiar. I may have heard George use it.”

“Can you tell me a little something about his trip?”

“But we’ve gone over this, over and over and over.”

“Not with me, you haven’t.”

“Well, what’s your interest in it?”

I said, “I’m trying to solve the case. I’m going to save you a little trouble.”

“We don’t know there is any case yet,” she said. “They haven’t found — found anything to justify their conclusions. George may be working on some sort of a secret deal and he might go to almost any lengths to conceal what he was doing.”

I waited for her to look up from the carpet; then I said, “Do you seriously believe that, Mrs. Bishop?”

“No,” she said.

Her eyes started to lower, then she raised them to mine once more. “Go on,” she said, and this time I could see that her brain was coming out of the mental fog of weariness in which it had been wrapped.

“He has a mine up north?”

“Siskiyou County.”

“A paying mine?”

“I don’t know much about his business affairs.”

“And he left Tuesday?”

“That’s right. Along about seven o’clock in the evening.”

“Wasn’t that rather late?”

“He planned to drive most of the night.”

“Did he make a habit of picking up hitchhikers?” She said, “You keep going over and over the same things. Who are you, anyway?”

“The name,” I told her, “is Lam,” and threw another question at her quick before she had a chance to think that over. “Just what did he say to you prior to his departure?”

She didn’t fall for it. Her eyes kept fastened on me. “Just what’s your capacity, Mr. Lam?” she asked.

“Sometimes a quart. The results are usually disastrous. I take it your husband was away a good deal of the time?”

“I mean what’s your capacity with the police force?”

“Zero-zero-point-zero. If you’ll answer my questions, Mrs. Bishop, instead of asking questions, we’ll get finished a lot faster.”

“If you’ll answer my questions instead of throwing more questions at me, we may terminate the interview a lot faster,” she said, angry now and very much alert. “Just who are you?”

I saw then she was going after it until she had an answer. I didn’t want to appear to dodge around the bushes. I said, “I’m Donald Lam. I’m a private detective from Los Angeles. I’m working on a case that I think may have some angles to it that will be of some assistance.”

“Assistance to whom?”

“To me.”

“I thought so.”

“And,” I said, “perhaps to you.”

“In what way?”

I said, “Just because you’re beautiful is no sign you’re dumb.”

“Thank you. But you can skip all that stuff.”

I said, “Your husband was wealthy.”

“What if he was?”

“The newspaper gave his age as fifty-six.”

“That’s right.”

“You’re evidently a second wife.”

“I’ll put up with just about so much of this,” she said, “and then I’ll have you thrown out.”

“There was probably insurance,” I went on. “If you’re dumb enough to think that the police haven’t suspected you of having a young lover, and planning to get rid of your stodgy, middle-aged husband so you could inherit his money and go places with the boy you really like, you’re ivory from the ears up.”

“I suppose, Mr. Lam, that the ultimate purpose of all this is to frighten me into retaining you at a handsome salary?”

“Wrong again.”

“What is the purpose?”

“I’m working on another case. I think the solution to it may have a great deal to do with your husband and what may have happened to him. Are you interested?”

She said, “No,” but didn’t make any move to leave the room.

I said, “If you’re guilty of anything at all, don’t stick around and answer my questions. There’s a phone over there. If you have anything on your conscience go call a good lawyer, tell your story to him and to no one else.”

“And if I’m not guilty of anything?”

“If you’re not guilty of anything at all, if there’s nothing you’re afraid to have the police find out, talk with me and I may be able to help you.”

“If I’m not guilty of anything I don’t need any help.”

“That shows what an optimist you are. Sometime when you haven’t anything else to do, get Professor Borchard’s book Convicting the Innocent, and read the sixty-five cases of authenticated wrongful convictions that are set forth in that book. And, believe me, that’s just scratching the surface.”

“I don’t have time to read.”

“You will.”

“What do you mean by that?”

I said, “Unless you show a little savvy you may be spending the long afternoon hours in a cell.”

“That’s a cheap, shoddy attempt to frighten me.”

“It is,” I admitted.

“Why are you doing it if you don’t want money?”

“I want information.”

“Yet you tell me that I shouldn’t give out information, that I should see a lawyer.”

“If you’re guilty.”

“What else do you want to know, Mr. Lam?”

“Garvanza,” I said. “Ever hear your husband mention that name?”

This time there could be no mistaking the little start that she gave; then her face was a poker face once more. “Garvanza,” she said slowly. “I’ve heard that name somewhere.”

“Your husband ever talk with you about a Garvanza?”

“No, I don’t think he did. We discussed business very infrequently. I am not certain whether he knew a Mr. Garvanza or not.”

I said, “When I mentioned Meredith, you wanted to know whether it was a man or a woman. On the Garvanza question you popped right out with a denial without asking whether it was Mr. Garvanza or Miss Garvanza or Mrs. Garvanza.”

“Or the little Garvanza baby,” she said sarcastically.

“Exactly.”

“I’m very much afraid you and I aren’t going to get along at all, Mr. Lam.”

“I don’t see any reason why not. I think we’re doing fine.”

“I don’t.”

“As soon as you get over the act of righteous indigna- tion that you’re using to cover up your slip when I mentioned Garvanza’s name, I think we’re going to be real chummy.”

The slate-colored eyes studied me for four or five seconds which felt like as many minutes; then she said, “Yes, Mr. Lam. He knew Gabby Garvanza. I don’t know how well. I’ve heard him speak of Mr. Garvanza, and when he read in the papers that Gabby Garvanza had been shot down in Los Angeles he was very, very much worried. I know that. He tried to keep me from seeing it, but I know that he was. Now I’ve answered your question. Where do we go from there?”

“Now,” I said, “you’re beginning to talk. Garvanza never called on him at the house here?”

“I have heard him mention Mr. Garvanza’s name. And I know that he knew Gabby Garvanza. Offhand, I don’t know exactly when Garvanza was shot. Let me see, that was on the Thursday before my husband disappeared. He was reading the paper, and all of a sudden he gave a startled exclamation, a half-strangled cry.

“It was at breakfast. I looked up at him and thought he might have something stuck in his throat. He coughed and reached for the coffee cup as though to take a swallow of liquid, then kept on coughing, putting on an act of having choked over something he’d eaten.”

“What did you do?”

“I played right along. I got up and patted him on the back a few times, told him to hold his head down between his knees, and then, after a while, he quit coughing and smiled at me and said that a piece of toast had gone down his windpipe.”

“You knew he was lying?”

“Of course.”

“So what did you do?”

“After he’d left for the office I folded the newspaper over in just the position it had been in when he’d been reading, and looked for the item that had alarmed him. It must have been the one about a Los Angeles mobster, Gabby Garvanza, being shot. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why that would have made any difference to George, but I remembered it. The paper said Garvanza would recover.

“I knew something was really bothering him all Sunday night and all Monday. When he told me he was going to the mine Tuesday I felt certain that in some way it had something to do with the thing that had been on his mind.

“You understand, Mr. Lam, I haven’t any evidence for all this. It’s simply womanly intuition, and I don’t for the life of me know why I’m letting my hair down and telling you all this.”

“Probably,” I said, “because I called the turn and you do have a young lover. Therefore, you’d like very much to get the case cleared up before the police start messing around.”

She said, “I don’t know what it is about you, but you can say things and get away with them that would cause me to start slapping your face if it weren’t for — for the way you say them. Sometimes — I don’t know — you seem to be sincere.”

“All right, you haven’t answered the question.”

“No, Mr. Lam. You’re wrong. I haven’t any lover, and I don’t give a damn how much the police mess into my present.”

“How about your past?”

Again her eyes held mine steadily. “That,” she said, “I wouldn’t like.”

“Vulnerable?”

“I’m not answering questions on that. Anyway, I’ve given you all the information I have because I think you might be on the right track. While the police haven’t started suspecting me as yet they will before very long, and I’d like to avoid that phase of the case. My husband took out insurance in my favor about six weeks ago.”

“You haven’t told the police that?”

“They haven’t asked me.”

I said, “Tell me about this mine up in Siskiyou County.”

“It’s owned by one of my husband’s corporations. He had several different companies.”

“Just where is this mine?”

“Somewhere up in the Seiad Valley. That’s a wild country in the back part of Siskiyou County.”

“What happens at the mine?”

She smiled. Her voice was that of a patient parent. “People work the mine. The ore is dumped into conveyors and carried down to the railroad. It’s put aboard flat cars and shipped to the smelting company.”

“That’s another one of your husband’s corporations?”

“He controls it, yes.”

“And then what happens?”

“He gets checks from the smelting company for the amount of mineral that’s in the ore.”

“Big checks?”

“I think so. My husband makes big money.”

“Who handles your husband’s accounts? Does he have an office?”

“No, my husband has no office in the conventional sense of the word. He’s a mining man. His office is under his hat. His accounts are kept by an income tax man — a Mr. Hartley L. Channing. You’ll find him listed in the phone book.”

“Know anything else that could be of help?”

She said, “There’s one thing. My husband is terribly superstitious.”

“In what way?”

“He is a great believer in luck.”

“Most mining men are.”

“But my husband has this one fixed superstition. No matter how many mines he opens and closes, one of them, usually the best one, must be named ‘The Green Door,’ and so carried on the books.”

I thought that over. There was a gambling joint in San Francisco known as The Green Door. I wondered if she knew of that, and I wondered if her husband did. Perhaps he’d been lucky in the gambling house one night and felt the name would bring him luck in connection with his mining companies.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Well, yes — in a way—”

“Go on.”

“When my husband left Tuesday evening he knew that he was going into danger.”

“How do you know?”

“He was always a little apprehensive about leaving me alone.”

“Why?”

“I’ve tried to figure that one out, too. I think it’s largely because he was an older man and I was so much younger and — Well, I think under those circumstances a man gets a little more possessive than would otherwise be the case, and is — shall we say, a little more apprehensive.”

“So what?”

“So he made it a point to keep a gun in the bureau drawer. He had carefully instructed me how to use it.”

“Go on.”

“When he left Tuesday he took that gun with him. It was the first time he’d ever done that when he went on a trip,”

“But he intended to drive all night?”

“A good part of the night.”

“Then wouldn’t it be natural for him to take the gun?”

“He’d driven all night lots of times before, but had never taken it. He’d always left it here for me.”

“Did your husband tell you he was taking the gun?”

“No.”

“How then do you know it was gone?”

“Because when I looked in the bureau drawer after he had left the gun wasn’t there.”

“It had been there before?”

“A couple of days before. I know that much.”

“You don’t know whether your husband was carrying it with him or whether he put it in a suitcase?”

“No.”

“Now, you identified the contents of the suitcase?”

“Yes.”

“How, when and where?”

“They took me to Petaluma. The car was being held there.”

“It was your husband’s car?”

“Yes.”

“Where do the Berkeley police get in on it?”

She said, “Don’t be silly. They’re investigating all angles. If I’d had a young lover, as you suggested, and had conspired to kill George off, the conspiracy would have taken place here in this county and the lover would be here. Therefore, the Berkeley police are working on it. They’re pretending that it’s a matter of co-operation with the Sheriff of Sonoma County, but I’ve known all along what they were up to.”

“Tell me about the suitcase.”

“It was just exactly as I had packed it.”

“You packed your husband’s things?”

“That was one of the wifely duties I took over when I married him.”

“How long have you been married?”

“About eight months.”

“How did you happen to meet him?”

She smiled and shook her head.

“Was Bishop a widower?”

“No. There was a first Mrs. Bishop.”

“What happened to her?”

“He bought her off.”

“When?”

“After she began to — to get suspicious.”

“There was a divorce?”

“Yes.”

“A final decree?”

“Certainly. I tell you we’re legally married.”

“You wouldn’t have taken a chance otherwise, would you?”

She looked me straight in the eyes. “Would you?”

“I don’t know. I’m asking.”

She said, “I have had my eyes open for a long time, and I went into this with my eyes open. I also went into it with the determination to play square in the event I got a square deal.”

“Did you get a square deal?”

“I think I did.”

“Do you ever get jealous?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think there’s anything to get jealous about, and even if there were, I wouldn’t run up my blood pressure over something you can’t help, something that’s — well, unavoidable.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”

“How much later?”

“I don’t know.”

She said, “For your information I think the police will be having the house watched. They seem to think there’s something pretty shady about the situation. They’ve handed me a good line and now they’re going to keep a watch and see if George comes back home or if some other man should happen to come here.”

“In that case,” I said, “they’ve probably got me tagged already.”

“Perhaps,” she said.

“Your line will be tapped,” I told her. “You say your husband’s things were just the way you had packed them?”

“Yes.”

“He hadn’t unpacked a thing?”

“No.”

“Then no one else had unpacked them?”

“What do you mean?”

“No one had searched the suitcase or the bag?”

“I don’t think they had.”

“Do the police have any idea you know what they’re up to?”

“I can’t tell.”

“Have they questioned you — about your married life?”

“They’ve questioned me, but not about that.”

“How much money did your husband carry with him?”

“He always carried several thousand dollars in a money belt.”

“You don’t know anything else that would help?”

“Nothing except what I’ve told you.”

“Thanks,” I said, and started for the door.

“You won’t say anything about what I’ve told you — to the police — about Garvanza?”

I shook my head.

“After all, it’s only a hunch, a vague suspicion.”

“That’s all.”

“But somehow,” she said, “I think I’m right.”

“So do I,” I told her, and walked out.

Chapter Twelve

It must have taken John Carver Billings the Second two days of concentrated thought to think up the alibi he had hired us to “discover.”

It took the police less than two hours to bust that alibi wide open.

The last radio news of the evening announced that Los Angeles police, somewhat skeptical of young Billings’s alibi in the Maurine Auburn murder case, had asked San Francisco police to check.

San Francisco police had checked.

The two girls who had been “located” by a private detective agency for John Carver Billings the Second had been sought by police.

One of the young women had purchased a new wardrobe and started on a vacation trip for South America. She was not immediately available. The other one, Sylvia Tucker, twenty-three, employed as a manicurist in a local barbershop, had at first sought to substantiate the alibi, but when police confronted her with proof that she had been in San Francisco on the Tuesday in question, she broke down and admitted that the whole alibi was phony, that she and her girlfriend had been well paid by the banker’s son to concoct an alibi which would protect him for Tuesday night.

She claimed she didn’t know why.

John Carver Billings the Second branded this as a brazen falsehood, an attempt on her part to get him into trouble, but from extraneous evidence police were convinced hers was the correct story and young Billings was caught in a trap of his own devising. John Carver Billings the Second, son of a well-known San Francisco financial figure, had therefore become the number-one suspect in the Maurine Auburn murder case.

I was in my pajamas preparatory to getting into bed in the stifling closeness of the cheap hotel bedroom, but after hearing the news broadcast I dressed, called a taxicab, and had it cruise past the Billings residence.

Lights were blazing. There were cars in front of the place. They were both police cars and newspaper cars. As I watched the place, from time to time I saw the lighted windows flare into brief oblongs of dazzling white light — newspaper reporters shooting pictures with synchronized flash guns.

I paid off the cab, took up a station in the shadows, and waited for an interminable interval until all the cars had left.

I didn’t know whether there was a police shadow on the place or not. I had to take a chance. I prowled the back alley, got in through a garage, and tried the back door.

It was locked.

The blade of my penknife told me the key was in the lock. There was a good-sized crack under the back door. I had noticed a closet for preserved fruits on the back porch. I opened it and explored the shelves. They were lined with brown paper. I took out the jars of preserved fruit, took the stiff brown-paper lining from one of the shelves, slid this brown paper through the crack under the door, then punched out the key with the blade of my knife.

The key fell down on the paper. I gently slid the paper out from under the door, bringing the key with it.

I unlocked the back door, carefully replaced the key in the lock on the inside, replaced the brown paper on the shelf, put the preserves back into place, and quietly walked through the deserted kitchen toward the lighted part of the house.

There were no lights in the huge dining-room, but beyond it in a library there were subdued lights and deep, comfortable chairs.

A door was open into a den behind the library. Two men were in there. I could hear low voices.

I stood for a moment and listened.

Evidently John Carver Billings the Second and his dad were holding a low-voiced conference.

I couldn’t hear what they were saying and didn’t try. A sudden impulse made me strive for the highly dramatic.

I sank down into one of the deep, high-backed readingchairs that was turned partially away from the center of the room, and waited.

After a few minutes young Billings and his dad came back into the room.

I heard young Billings say something to his dad which I couldn’t get. The father’s reply was a monosyllable, then I caught the last words of Billings’s closing sentence, “... that damn, double-crossing detective.”

I said without moving, “I told you you were like a patient going to a doctor’s office and ordering penicillin.”

I couldn’t see them but from the sudden silence I knew they were standing rigidly motionless; then I heard the father say, “Who was that? What kind of a trick is this?”

“You’re in a jam,” I told him. “Let’s see if we can’t do something about it.”

They located my voice then.

The son ran around the table so that he could confront me.

“You damn crook!” he blazed.

I lit a cigarette.

Young Billings took a threatening step toward me.

“Damn you, Lam. This much pleasure I’m going to have out of this situation. I’m going to—”

“Wait, John,” his father said with a voice of quiet authority.

I said, “If you folks had put the cards on the table in the first place and asked us to clear you in the Bishop case, we’d have saved a lot of time.”

Young Billings, who had been making with chest and fists, wilted like a punctured tire.

“What the devil do you mean about the Bishop case?” the father asked.

I said, “Bishop disappeared. Your son has been trying to get an alibi. The way I look at it, the answer has to be George Bishop. Now what do you want to tell me about it?”

“Nothing,” young Billings said, recovering something of his poise. “How did you get in here?”

“I walked in.”

“How?”

“Through the back door.”

“That’s a lie. The back door was locked.”

“Not when I walked in,” I told him.

“Take a look, John,” the father said in a low, authoritative voice. “If it’s unlocked, for heaven’s sake lock it. We don’t want any more people dropping in on us.”

The son hesitated a moment, said, “I know it’s locked, Dad.”

“Make sure,” the older man said crisply.

The son went out through the dining-room and the butler’s pantry to the kitchen.

I said, “He’s in a lot of trouble. Perhaps I could help him — if there’s still time.”

He started to say something to me, then thought better of it and waited.

After a moment, the son came back.

“Well?”

“The key’s in the door, all right, Dad. I guess I must have neglected to turn it, but I certainly thought I locked that door after the servants left.”

“I think we’d better have a talk, John,” the father said.

“If Lam hadn’t talked to the police we’d have been all right,” John said. “We—”

“John!” the older man snapped crisply.

John ceased talking, as though his father’s voice had been a whiplash.

There were several seconds of silence. I puffed away on the cigarette. Despite anything I could do my hand was trembling. I hoped no one noticed it. It was sink or swim now. If they called the police, I was all finished. This time it would be blackmail. They’d throw the book at me.

“I think you and I had better have a little talk, John,” the father repeated, and led the way back to the den, leaving me sitting there.

I fought back a temptation to walk out. Now that the chips were in the center of the table I began to wonder if I held the right cards. If they decided to call the police, I was licked. If they didn’t, I was going to have to start work on a case that had been so terribly, so hopelessly messed up that it was a thousand-to-one shot.

The comfortable overstuffed chair felt like the hot seat in the death house. Beads of perspiration kept forming on my forehead and hands. I was angry at myself because I couldn’t control my nerves — but the perspiration kept coming just the same.

John Carver Billings the First came back and sat down in the chair opposite me. He said, “Lam, I think we are about ready to confide in you, provided one point can first be clarified.”

“What is that?”

“We would want some assurance that the activity of the police in questioning the alibi of my son was not inspired by any action from your agency.”

“Grow up,” I said bitterly. “Your son went to considerable expense to try to establish an alibi. It was an alibi that was as flimsy as tissue paper. It wouldn’t stand up. I knew it wouldn’t stand up. He should have known it wouldn’t stand up. I tried to find out why he wanted to establish that alibi and then give him some measure of decent protection rather than to rely on a fabrication which was all but self-evident.

“As a result, I’ve had five hundred dollars of our compensation taken from us. The police are searching for me as a blackmailer. My license as a detective may be revoked. My partner has become so frightened she’s dissolved the partnership and instructed the bank to honor no more checks on the partnership account signed by me.

“That’s what comes of my trying to give your boy something worthwhile instead of merely taking his money and calling it a day.

“Now, does that answer your question?”

John Carver Billings nodded his head in slow acquiescence. “Thank you, Mr. Lam, that answers my question.”

I said, “You folks have wasted three or four days of time and probably several thousand dollars in cash. You’ve tried to extricate yourselves by methods that have backfired and left you in hot water. Now suppose we talk turkey?”

“What do you know about Bishop?” Billings asked.

“Not very much. I know most of what I know from reading the papers.”

“There was nothing in the papers about us.”

“Not in the papers,” I said, “but you went to a lot of trouble to establish an alibi for last Tuesday night. The police know it. I know it. The question is, why? At first I thought the answer was a hit-and-run. Now I think it has to be more serious than that.

“There weren’t any murders committed Tuesday night that the police knew about, so I started looking around to see if there might not have been one committed the police didn’t know about.”

“And you found?”

“I found George Bishop.”

“You mean you’ve found him, you’ve found—”

“No,” I interrupted. “Don’t get me wrong. I unearthed the Bishop case. I went to see Mrs. Bishop about it.”

“What did she say?”

“I questioned her as to whether there was a young lover in the picture, and whether she had deliberately planned her husband’s murder. I felt that might have been where your son entered the picture. He couldn’t afford scandal and he wanted the woman.”

“What did she say?” the elder Billings asked.

“Just about what you’d expect.”

“Perhaps what I’d expect and what you’d expect are two different things.”

“Make it this way, then. Just about the answer that I expected.”

“That doesn’t mean a great deal to me,” he said.

“And it didn’t to me.”

He paused to look me over pretty carefully, then said, “So now you’re going to be cagey, eh?”

I said, “Try putting yourself in my position.”

He thought that over.

“Let me question your son about Mrs. Bishop and see what he says.”

“You’re away off on the wrong track, Lam,” he said.

At the moment, silence was my best weapon, so I sat silent.

Billings cleared his throat. “What I’m going to tell you, Lam, must be held in the strictest confidence.”

I merely took a drag at the cigarette.

“This entire situation has become exceedingly embarrassing to me, personally,” John Carver Billings said.

“That,” I told him, “is a masterpiece of understatement. Exactly what happened Tuesday night?”

“I have no firsthand knowledge of that. I got the information from my son.”

“What information?”

“We have a yacht,” he said, “a rather pretentious, sixtyfive- foot cabin cruiser. We call it the Billingboy and it is moored at one of the exclusive yacht clubs here in the bay.”

“Go on.”

“Tuesday, my son persuaded Sylvia Tucker, a young woman who has been a passing fancy — an attractive manicurist — to ring up the place where she works and say she had a headache and couldn’t come to work. Then she went out in the boat with my son.

“They were together all day Tuesday until about four o’clock in the afternoon when they returned from their outing, and my son took her to her apartment.

“Then my boy had a few drinks and left her there. He knew that I didn’t approve either of Sylvia or of the idea of trips of this sort, and I think he rather dreaded meeting me.

“So he stopped in several places for drinks with which to nerve himself; then argued himself into believing that he could cover things up so I need never know he had used the yacht.

“With that in mind he went down to the yacht planning on changing his clothes and fixing things so it would seem he had spent the biggest part of the day working on the boat.

“Now, in order to definitely understand what followed, Mr. Lam, it’s going to be necessary to explain something of the nature of the yacht club.”

“Go ahead and explain it.”

“The club is so situated that we could very easily be plagued with sightseers and, of course, we don’t want to have the general public climbing around over boats. They do not understand, or do not appreciate, the care that should be given a boat. Nails in the heels of shoes, for instance, would work irreparable injury upon the highly varnished decks of an expensive yacht.”

I said, “You’re trying to tell me that the yacht club is carefully closed off so that the public is excluded?”

“Exactly.”

“What else?”

“There is a high fence running on the land side, a fence topped with barbed wire, and so arranged that it would be virtually impossible for anyone to climb over the fence. The top three strands of barbed wire are on posts at an angle to the meshed wire so that they make an overhang. No one could climb the fence and get in over the top.”

I nodded. “Go ahead.”

“There is but one gate. There is always a watchman on duty to check the persons who come in and the persons who go out. That is intended both as a safeguard and so the caretaker will know who is actually present at the club at any particular time in case telephone calls should be received.”

“In other words, whenever you go into the yacht club the attendant marks down the fact that you are there?”

“The time of arrival and the time of departure in a book which is kept for that purpose, just as one registers in an office building after hours.”

“Isn’t that rather embarrassing at times?”

“Perhaps with a club that had more of a rowdy membership it might be, but this is a very conservative club. Members who are inclined to throw wild parties on their yachts find it expedient to join some other club which has more lax standards.”

“All right, go ahead. What happened?”

“Now, to get back to this Tuesday evening. My son went down to the yacht, planning to arrange things so I would think he had been working on it all day, and therefore when he found that the watchman at the gate was engrossed for the moment in a telephone conversation, with his back turned, it seemed like a providential opportunity, so my son slipped on through the gate. There is an electric connection so an electric buzzer sounds whenever one starts down the ramp to the mooring-float. For some reason this was not working at the moment. My son went down to the yacht. No one saw him. No one knows he was there. No one can ever prove he was there. You must at all times remember that, Mr. Lam.”

“All right, then what?”

“When my son boarded the yacht, unlocked the door, and entered the main cabin he found — well, he found himself in a very grave predicament.”

“What sort of predicament?”

“The body of George Tustin Bishop was lying on the floor. He had been shot, and apparently the killing had taken place within an hour or so of the time my son boarded the yacht.”

I digested that information. The sweating started again. My palms were once more moist. I was in it now, all right. A nice murder, and I was tied up with the Billings boy, fake alibi and all.

“My son reached a decision,” Billings went on. “It was not a commendable decision, but, nevertheless, having reached it, it was irrevocable and we must deal with it as an accepted fact.”

My silence showed him how I felt about that.

“In order to understand the circumstances,” Billings went on, hastily, apologetically, “you must realize that my son felt that I might have been involved in the matter.”

“In what way?”

“There had been some trouble with Bishop.”

“What was the nature of that trouble?”

“It was a financial matter.”

“You owed him money?”

“Good heavens, no, Mr. Lam. I owe money to no man.”

“What was the nature of the trouble, then?”

“Bishop was a promoter, a mining promoter.”

“He owed you money?”

“Yes, but that was not the issue; that is, he owed the bank money. Not individually, but as a majority stockholder of the Skyhook Mining and Development Syndicate.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m afraid all of the details would take too much time.”

“Go ahead. Tell me. We have time now. Later on, we may not have it.”

“Well, it’s a long story.”

“Give me the highlights.”

“Bishop was a peculiar character. He was a very heavy individual depositor in the bank of which I am president. In addition to that he had huge interests in various mining development companies, the nature of which we do not clearly understand. In fact, as we begin to investigate his mining activities, they become more and more mysterious.”

“What about the money he owed you?”

“Well, as I mentioned, he has perhaps a dozen various companies in which he holds apparently the controlling interest, but where stock is offered to the public.”

“With the permission of the corporation commission?”

“Oh, of course. He gets permission to sell the stock. They are listed as highly speculative stocks and there are ample safeguards to see that the promoters do not make the money at the expense of the public. However, now that the bank has started an investigation we find that there is a certain peculiar overall pattern in connection with these corporations.”

“What?”

“They are formed; money is borrowed at the bank for development. A certain amount of development work is done, and then the mine has a tendency to become inactive and—”

“What about the loans?”

“The loans are paid off promptly when they become due.”

“What about the stockholders?”

“That is the peculiar thing, Mr. Lam. It is something I cannot understand.”

“Go ahead.”

“A certain amount of stock is sold to the public; not a great amount. Most of that stock is held in escrow. Then apparently — and you understand I didn’t know this until the last forty-eight hours when our investigators reported — the stock is bought up by someone who pays the stockholders just about what they paid for the stock.”

“Suppose the stockholders don’t want to sell?”

“The stock that is not sold back—”

“Wait a minute, you say ‘back.’ What do you mean by that?”

“We have every reason to believe that the person who buys the stock is the representative of George Tustin Bishop.”

“All right. What about the people who don’t want to sell?”

“They’re permitted to hold their stock for another six months or a year, and then an offer is resumed. Eventually they either sell the stock or it becomes valueless. The mine languishes with no further development work being done.”

“Now, what,” I asked, “would be the idea of making a wash transaction of that sort? There must be considerable overhead.”

“There is. Not only are there legal expenses, but there is the selling commission. There is, however, no great drive to sell the stock. A prospectus is put out and the stock is sold in every instance entirely by mail. After a small percentage has been sold, selling activities are discontinued. Then the corporation goes through a quiescent period, after which the stock is bought back.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“All right, tell me about this Skyhook Mining and Development Syndicate.”

“Now, there we have a very peculiar situation. The organization of that corporation apparently followed the usual pattern. Permission was given to sell the stock at par value, allowing a fifteen-percent commission for the salesmen, but with the understanding that all of the balance of the money must go into the treasury of the corporation, and that there could be no disbursements until certain prerequisites in the nature of development work had been done.”

“How was the money secured for the development work?”

“The understanding of the corporation commission was that the sales of the stock would be handled by a syndicate, and that the fifteen percent, together with contributions made in the form of a loan by the organizers, would go toward the initial development.”

“So that the stockholders would be getting a free ride?”

“If you want to put it that way, yes.”

“And that was done?”