“Well?” I asked.
“Okay, lover,” she said. “What’s the address?”
The spluttering began all over again when I gave it to her so I hung up.
Three
It was a good thirty minutes before Bertha Cool showed up and she was mad enough to have bitten her initials on an iron fence rail.
She slammed the car to a stop, and I walked around behind, came up on the right-hand side, opened the door, got in beside her and sat down.
Bertha had her chin pushed forward like a prow of a battleship. Her little beady eyes were glittering angrily.
“What the hell have you been into now?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, this is a fine time to start finding out.”
“Isn’t it?”
She jerked the car through the gears, drove savagely to the first intersection, watched her opportunity and swung the car in a U turn that wore rubber off the protesting tyres.
“Nice weather we’re having for this time of year,” I said.
“You go to the devil!” she told me.
We drove on in silence.
After a while her curiosity got the upper hand. “Well,” she said, “tell me about it. What is it all about?”
I said, “Let’s go back to the beginning. Do you remember this afternoon when I was working on a shadow job?”
“That’s right,” she said. “Someone wanted us to find out the name and identity of a man who was selling some sort of stock. Have any trouble?”
“Not a bit,” I said. “It was almost a setup. I picked this man up exactly where I was supposed to find him and followed him without the least bit of difficulty. He went directly to the Westchester Arms Hotel, walked up to the desk and got his key. I made discreet enquiries and found out that he was Thomas Durham and that he had been registered in the hotel for the last two days. No one seemed to know exactly what he did.”
“There was a change of shifts due at six o’clock and I thought I’d wait for the new shift to come on and see if I could get any more information. I only had a little over half an hour or so to wait.”
“Damn it,” Bertha said, “don’t tell me all the sordid details. My God, I’ve worn out my fanny sitting around hotel lobbies, waiting for the night clerk to come on. If you’re in a jam, there’s a girl mixed up in it someplace. Who is she?”
“I don’t know for sure,” I said.
“Another damn redhead, I presume. You can’t ever seem to leave them alone.”
“This one’s a molasses taffy, smooth-as-silk…”
“My God,” Bertha said, “if I ever go in business with another partner, I’ll get one past sixty who…”
“That won’t buy you anything, Bertha,” I told her. “The boys at sixty are peculiarly susceptible. A good-looking girl would tie them in knots and…”
“Past seventy,” Bertha amended.
“That wouldn’t do you any good either. A clever baby would remind them of their childhood sweethearts. You’ll have to get past eighty, and by that time their eyesight will be bad.”
“That’s the worst of it!” Bertha said angrily. “Some damn woman is always upsetting the apple cart. Well, tell me about this broad. What did she do?”
I said, “I keep going back to this Tom Durham case because I’m not entirely certain that my waiting in that hotel was purely the result of an accident.”
“What do you mean, an accident?” Bertha said, and then added parenthetically, “Damn that guy, if he doesn’t get his headlights down. Here, you mug, take that and that and that!”
Bertha angrily clicked the foot switch which sent the lights on the agency automobile bouncing up and down.
The other driver never did lower his lights, and Bertha Cool rolled down the left-hand window. As he swept on past, she shouted epithets at the top of her lungs, then rolled the window up. “What are you beating around the bush for?” she asked.
I said, “I was sitting in this hotel when a girl who said her name was Lucille Hart showed up. She pretended to have been driving an automobile which she said belonged to her sister, but which was registered in the name of her brother-in-law, apparently a chap who wants to be important in the family.”
“Husbands always want to be important,” Bertha said. “What happened?”
“When we walked out of the last joint, where we’d had drinks and dinner, the car very fortuitously was parked only a block away.”
Bertha grunted.
“And shortly before that she’d gone by-by and been out of the picture for twenty minutes.”
I saw Bertha was getting ready to explode so I hurried on: “One thing led to another and…”
“My God,” Bertha told me, “I know the facts of life. You don’t start picking up women in hotel lobbies and restaurants. Well, damn it, yes, that’s where you start, but the start’s always the same. So’s the finish, as far as that’s concerned. Tell me what the hell happened in the middle.”
I said, “We went along this road, I was going home with her and then her brother-in-law was going to take us back to town, then drive the car back again.”
“Humph!” Bertha snorted.
I said, “She had been drinking a lot of ginger ale. She said she was ill and wanted to find a rest-room. She told me to stop the car because she couldn’t go any farther. It was right near an auto court.”
Bertha slowed the car long enough to look at me pityingly. “For God’s sake,” she said, “what does a girl have to do with you? Hit you over the head with something?”
I said, “I got a cabin and by that time she thought she needed air. She walked out and I never saw her again.”
Bertha said, “You’re the one that needed the air! She gave it to you. I’ve told you a dozen times, Donald, that women go nuts over you, but you can’t keep turning them down the way you do. You get some jane all worked up and then wind up by being a perfect little gentleman. My God, I’ll bet she was sore at you. It’s a wonder she didn’t take a wrench out of the car and club you over the head. Why didn’t you take the car — or did she take it?”
I said, “It was all locked up. The last I saw of her, she had the keys. I have a very strong suspicion she may have telephoned the police, stating that the car was stolen and asking them to be on the lookout for it. I’m not at all certain but what I was roped in as a fall guy or something, and it bothers me.”
“Well,” Bertha said, “we’re trying to run a detective agency. God knows, it’s bad enough when I have to go around at night playing taxicab for you. I can’t lose sleep listening to all your wenching troubles, and I can’t go along to hold the script and read your lines for you. Next time take your own car, or carry a walkie-talkie so that when she makes you walk home, you can at least call a taxicab.”
I said, “I didn’t think I wanted a taxicab. I didn’t think it was advisable for me to be seen out there. Just as I was ready to leave the auto court, I heard a sound very much like the back-firing of a truck.”
“How’s that?” Bertha asked, suddenly rigid with attention. “Just like the sound of a truck back-firing,” I said, “only there wasn’t any truck.”
Bertha slowed the car and looked me over.
I said, “I think the place to start is back at that Tom Durham case. The person who contacted the agency on that case talked with you. Tell me about it.”
Bertha said, “She was a girl by the name of Bushnell, pretty easy on the eyes. I remember thinking at the time that it was a godsend I got her. If she’d gone to you, she’d have vamped you into taking the case without any retainer and you’d have turned the office upside down. As it was, I collected two hundred bucks in advance.”