It might be so. But how could they be sure? It could be coincidence: The two things together — the price offered for the railroad and the similar handwriting — were not proof that Dr. Johnston was once Hamilton Stone.
“We must get a private eye,” Mrs. Treadle declared.
Olive protested. “Mom, you know we can’t afford it. They charge by the hour, they always do in the movies, much more than I make, and it would take hours and hours to go to Bradenton, Florida, even if he flew, and then there’d be the round-trip air fare.”
“We still have the train,” her mother reminded her. “We can offer the investigator the train.”
“But if it is Ham, the train belongs to him, not to us.”
“If Hamilton is Dr. Johnston, he must be rich. He was ready to buy the train, wasn’t he?”
“Anyway,” said Olive, “we don’t know any private eyes.”
“I’ll get the phone book,” said Mrs. Treadle, “look in the Yellow Pages.”
They found Eagle Eye Investigations, Inc., specialists in Divorce, Child Custody, Marital Affairs, Background Checks, and Missing Persons. An appointment was made for a Mr. Fred Eagle to come to the house the next morning.
That night, Mrs. Edna Treadle lay awake worrying about whether she and Olive were acting most advantageously to themselves. If Hamilton were to be exposed, what good would it do other than give them sweet revenge? How could they get any of the money belonging to a prosperous Dr. Frank Johnston? Indeed, how could Dr. Johnston have any money if he was not a real person? Suppose Ham had remarried? What money he had would certainly go to Mrs. Frank Johnston, not to Hamilton Stone’s wife Olive.
After several hours of insomnia, Mrs. Treadle got up, went over to Olive’s room, and waked her. It was difficult to distinguish between Olive sleeping and Olive awake, but after shaking and punching the huge bulk the mother thought she had her daughter’s attention.
“We don’t want him back here, do we?” she asked.
“No!” said Olive. “I can’t stand to have him around, him and his dumb train. Besides, he’d never get the job back at the hospital, we’d have to support him.”
“I have an idea,” Mrs. Treadle said. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and here’s what we’ll tell Mr. Eagle. Give Ham back his train — if it is him — and tell him that in exchange for a nice monthly income paid to us we won’t tell on him. He can go right on being Dr. Frank Johnston in Bradenton, Florida, and we’ll be comfortable being right here — you won’t have to work no more, we can hire a cleaning lady, we can even travel and see things. You always wanted to go to Miami Beach.”
“Suits me,” said Olive, turning her huge bulk over, “you make the arrangements.”
“What you are proposing is blackmail,” said Mr. Fred Eagle. “It is a crime.”
“And I suppose what he done is not?” said Mrs. Treadle sarcastically.
“No, ma’am, it’s not. There’s no victim. Now, it’s possible he’s suffering from amnesia and won’t remember anything about his previous life.”
Mr. Fred Eagle was in appearance nothing like Humphrey Bogart or Tom Selleck. He was quite ordinary, he would be able to fit in anywhere unnoticed, unremembered. He had listened to the story about the Missing Person as told by the Person’s shrewish mother-in-law and fat, whining wife, and immediately sympathized with the Missing Person, poor bastard. No wonder he had disappeared; too bad he hadn’t done so without leaving a trace.
“If he don’t remember about his previous life, how would he have recognized the train?” demanded Mrs. Treadle belligerently.
“We can’t be sure about that, ma’am. There are millions of model-railroad buffs in the U.S. of A. Supposing this Dr. Johnston is not your son-in-law, it will be very expensive for you. My charge is sixty dollars an hour, plus expenses.”
“You can have the train, whether it’s his or not. And if we get two thousand a month from him to keep quiet, we can pay you anything we owe you over the value of the train.”
“Such payment demanded from him would be extortion,” said Fred Eagle. “It is a crime, like blackmail. I can’t enter into any such arrangement. All I can do is positively determine that Dr. Johnston is or is not the Missing Person. First of all, I must get a handwriting expert to say the handwriting fits, and that will be the first of my expenses. I’ll need all the photographs you have of him, and all his vital statistics: age, height, weight, measurements — like sleeve length and trouser inseam. Collar and waist are useless, they change with age. Medical records. Dental X-rays. Everything you can get. And — I’m sure you understand, ma’am — I must ask that we three enter into a written agreement.”
“We’ll have to sell the train before we can pay you,” said Mrs. Treadle.
“Just don’t sell it to the fellow in Bradenton,” said Mr. Eagle in an attempt to be jocular. He rose to signal an end to the discussion, then added, “By the way, one more thing: Did Mr. Stone carry any life insurance? If he did, you might consider having him declared legally dead and try to collect it. The insurance people might pay my expenses in trying to find him, they don’t like paying off for a dead person if there’s no dead body, no death certificate.”
“He didn’t have no insurance,” Mrs. Treadle declared. “He wasn’t worth nothing alive or dead. His insurance was all in the train.”
Before leaving for Florida, Mr. Fred Eagle went to the hospital and asked to visit the pharmacy where the Missing Person had been employed. He identified himself as a private investigator who had been hired to find Hamilton Stone. There were two pharmacists on duty, one of whom, a James Scholl, had worked with Hamilton Stone and had known him well.
“Have you any idea where Mr. Stone might be?” asked Mr. Eagle. “Did he ever mention any woman friend? When a married man disappears it’s usually because of a woman.”
“No, he never said anything about any woman,” Mr. Scholl said, “not even his wife. We knew he was married, but we never met her. He was always quiet about his personal life. I wish he’d been as quiet about everything. He hummed incessantly while he was working, nearly drove me crazy. But Ham was a good pharmacist, good at his job, he didn’t realize he had this habit of humming when he was concentrating. I’m sorry I can’t be of help to you, I wish you luck, I hope you find him.”
On arriving at the Tampa airport next day, Fred Eagle picked up a rental car and drove the short distance to Bradenton, where he found all the hotels booked full at the height of the season. The only room he could find was a penthouse suite, and that for three nights only, while the regular lessee was away on a cruise. He checked into the luxurious accommodations and wasted no time going about his business. It was already three o’clock in the afternoon. He decided to call at 5020 Gulf Boulevard on some pretext (life insurance salesman, poll taker, job seeker) to see if Frank Johnston positively could not be Hamilton Stone: too tall, too short, too dark, blind, or deaf — that is, distinctive in any way that could not be disguised.
Gulf Boulevard proved to be in a neighborhood of large, expensive estates right on the waterfront. Number 5020 was one of the most imposing, with gateposts at a driveway that wound back between two rows of royal palms to a Mediterranean-style house.
Fred parked the car in the street and approached the house on foot. At a turn where the driveway led to the front door was a small drive going to a smaller house with a sign pointing to it:
No cars were parked at the pharmacy, nor in front of the big house. Fred walked around the grounds, which adjoined those of the house next door with no fence or hedge between. Behind this neighbors’ house was a large swimming pool beside which two persons, a man and a woman, were reclining on deck chairs, reading.