I started the car and drove away fast.
Billy Prue said, “Gosh, that was a squeak!”
“You thought that up quick,” I told her.
“I had to. My God, Donald! Does it always take you that long to get going?”
I started to say something and then the chill of the fog and the emotional build-up that had come when Billy Prue started necking hit me with the force of a sledge hammer. I was shivering all over. I tried to stop the car, but before I could get it stopped I was wobbling around the street.
“Say, what the hell’s the matter with you?” Billy asked.
I said, “The tropics turned my blood to water and... and you started it boiling.”
I brought the car to a stop.
Billy Prue pulled me out from behind the steering wheel. “Listen,” she said, “you’re going to bed. Where do you live?”
“Not my apartment,” I told her. “You can’t take me there.”
“Why not?”
“Frank Sellers will be having it watched.”
She didn’t say anything, just started the car.
“Where?” I asked.
“You heard what the cop told us.”
11
I had a confused impression of white lights over a portico, a row of neat little stucco bungalows. I heard Billy Prue say, “...my husband... sick... back from the tropics... thank you... Extra covers... yes, a double.”
I was dimly conscious of water running, then I was on a bed, and a steaming hot towel quieted jumpy nerves that were causing the muscles to cramp.
Billy Prue was bending over me.
“Go to sleep.”
“I’ve got to get my clothes off.”
“Don’t be silly. They’re off.”
I closed my eyes. Warmth enveloped me and sudden oblivion.
I wakened with sunlight streaming across the bed. The aroma of fresh coffee was in my nostrils.
I knuckled sleep out of my eyes.
The door gently opened. Billy Prue peeked into the room. Her face relaxed when she saw I was awake.
“Hello,” she said, “how you feeling?”
“I think I’m feeling fine. Gosh! Did I pass out last night!”
“There wasn’t anything wrong with you except you were weak and completely fagged.”
“Where did you get the coffee?”
“I’ve been shopping. There’s a store down the block.”
“What time is it?”
“How the hell would I know?” she said. “I don’t carry a watch. You remember you pointed that out to me yesterday night when you were trying to pin a murder on me?”
Almost instantly all of the various ramifications of the Stanberry murder came crowding back into my mind.
I said, “I’ve got to telephone the office.”
She said, “You’ll eat before you do a thing. The bathroom’s all yours. Don’t be too long about it because I’m cooking waffles.”
She went back in the kitchen. I went into the bathroom, had the luxury of a hot bath, dressed, combed my hair with a pocket comb, and went out to the kitchen. Billy had grub cooked, and I was really hungry.
She watched me with wide, thoughtful eyes. “You’re a good kid, Donald,” she said.
“What have I done now?”
She smiled. “It’s the way you didn’t do the things you didn’t do,” she said, “that makes you a gentleman.”
“How are we registered?” I asked.
She said nothing, simply smiled at me.
I ate quite a bit before my stomach suddenly went dead on me, right in the middle of taking a bite.
I pushed the plate back.
Billy said, “Go out there and sit in the sun. If the woman who runs the place comes over and talks with you don’t be embarrassed. We haven’t any baggage and she thinks we’re living in sin but she’s got a boy in the Navy.”
I went out and sat in the sun.
The auto camp was out of town on the rim of a valley that stretched away to where a tracery of white snowcapped mountains hung against the deep blue sky.
I settled back and relaxed.
The woman who ran the place came over and introduced herself. She had a son who was on a destroyer somewhere in the South Pacific. I told her I had been on a destroyer myself, that I might have seen her son, might have even talked with him without knowing his name. She sat down beside me in the orange blossom scented sunlight and we both kept quiet, each respecting the thoughts of the other. After a while Billy Prue came out and sat down beside us. Then Billy said we had to go and the woman who ran the place made some excuse to get away so she wouldn’t embarrass us by letting us know that she knew we didn’t have any baggage.
Billy slid in behind the wheel of the agency car and started back toward town.
“Cigarette?”
“Not while I’m driving, Donald.”
“Oh yes, I forgot.”
We were almost at the Rendezvous when she suddenly asked, “How much are you going to tell your friend Sergeant Sellers about what I’ve told you?”
“Nothing.”
She slid the car in to a place at the curb and stopped.
Soft gentle fingers that somehow had a lot of strength in them squeezed mine. “You’re a good egg, Donald,” she said, “even if...”
“Even if what?” I asked as she stopped.
She opened the car door. “Even if you do talk in your sleep. Good-by, Donald.”
12
I drove the car to the parking place across from the office and went up. It was half past twelve when I latchkeyed the door of the office. Elsie Brand was out to lunch.
I heard the sound of a creaking chair from Bertha’s private office, then heavy feet on the floor and the door was jerked open.
Bertha Cool stood in the doorway looking at me with icy exasperation.
“You!” she said.
“That’s right.”
“Why, goddamn you!” Bertha said. “Who the hell do you think you are, and what the hell do you mean by taking a powder? Here I thought you were all in. You looked like a ghost. I slave my fingers to the bone cooking eggs and bacon for you and you start philandering...”
“Do you want to quarrel in the outer office where clients can hear us?” I asked, dropping into a chair and picking up the morning paper.
“You irritating little impudent cold-blooded ingrate. Bertha used an eight dollar bottle of whisky to square things with that flatfoot from the police force, and you go...”
I jerked my head toward the transom. “People walking up and down the corridor can hear you, Bertha. Perhaps some possible client is standing outside...”
Bertha raised her voice. “I don’t give a damn how many clients are standing outside. I’m going to tell you this, and you’re going to listen to it. If you think you can come back here and...”
A black shadow formed on the door of the office. I pointed my finger at it.
Bertha checked herself with an effort.
Someone tried the knob of the door.
Bertha took a deep breath. “See who it is, lover.”
I put down the paper, crossed the room and opened the door.
A middle-aged man with a prominent bony nose, high forehead and big cheek bones looked past me with gray eyes that twinkled shrewdly over the rims of half glasses and said, “Mrs. Bertha Cool?”
Bertha Cool’s manner mellowed. “Yes. What can I do for you?”
The man reached in his pocket. “First, permit me to introduce myself. I am Frank L. Glimson, senior partner of the firm of Cosgate & Glimson, attorneys at law. And now, Mrs. Cool, I want you to do something for me.”
He extended a paper to Bertha.
Bertha took the paper mechanically and said, “We do a lot of work for lawyers, Mr. Glimson. We rather specialize in that field. Donald, put down that newspaper. This is my partner, Mr. Glimson, Donald Lam. He’s been in the Navy. Just back, and already hard at work. Now what was it you wanted? Something in these papers?”