“Ernestine is going to be worrying about me,” I said.
“Ernestine is on Cloud Nine,” Hobart said. “She’s co-operating with the police now and the plain-clothes man who’s up there in the apartment with her, keeping an eye on things, is a fairly good-looking bachelor who has corner to the conclusion she’s a pretty sensible, level-headed sort of girl. In fact, they’re rather hitting it off. I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t beating your time, Lam. What’s more, he’s available and you’re not.”
“Where is this hotel?” I asked.
“The Ocean Beach,” he said. “Want to stay there or here?”
“There.”
“Okay. I’ll arrange it. It’ll take about half an hour.”
He went out, and at the end of half an hour a plain-clothes man opened the door, said, “Come on, Lam.”
I followed him out to a police car. The officer drove slowly and carefully to the Ocean Beach Hotel, which was way out on the waterfront far removed from the scene of the murder and miles from the Happy Daze Camera Company.
The officer escorted me up to the room. It was a nice, airy room.
“What are the restrictions,” I asked, “about going out?”
“You don’t go out.”
“What about a razor, toothbrush and—”
“Your bag is over there in the corner. You’ll get excellent reception on that television. There are the late papers on the table. There are only two ways out of here, the front door and the fire escape. We’ll be watching the front door. Nobody will be watching the fire escape.”
“How come?”
“Well,” he said, “it might be cold and disagreeable sitting out there and watching the fire escape and, frankly, I think the Inspector would rather like to have you go down the fire escape.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, grinning, “it would make the case look better.”
“What case?”
“The case against you.”
“I didn’t know there was any.”
“There isn’t any now, but all we need is just a little more evidence in order to have a peach of a case.”
“I see,” I said. “The Inspector would like to have me resort to flight. Is that it?”
“Well, if you resorted to flight,” the officer said, “we’d certainly have enough to hold you on a murder case. In this state, flight is an evidence of guilt — that is, it can be used in support of a prosecutor’s case.”
“Well,” I said, “it’s certainly nice of you to have told me.”
“Oh, that’s part of my instructions,” the officer said cheerfully. “We want to be sure that if you dust out of here there’s no question about it being flight. You see, I can testify now that I told you.”
“Thanks a lot,” I told him.
“The door won’t be locked,” he said. “You can bolt it from the inside if you’re nervous, but the fire escape is at the end of the hall.”
“I can’t go out the front door.”
“That’ll be guarded,” he said.
“Well, I’m glad to know all the rules,” I told him. “I at least have the dimensions of the trap.”
“The trap?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Inspector Hobart would give his eye-teeth to have me go down the fire escape and resort to flight. He’d love it.”
“He probably would at that,” the officer said, and went out.
I called room service, asked for a double manhattan cocktail, a filet mignon, rare, a baked potato, coffee and apple pie.
I was told that everything would be sent up except the cocktail. Orders were to send up no liquor.
I turned on the television and saw the last twenty minutes of a private-eye program. Then there was news and the weather forecast. After that, the meal came up. I finished the food, phoned for the waiter to take away the dishes and glanced through the newspapers.
There was a little stuff about the case of a man having been murdered in a downtown hotel, but just the usual follow-ups: The police were working on “hot leads” and expected to have a suspect in custody “within another forty-eight hours.”
It was all running according to the regular pattern — the reporters having to make a story, the police having to keep the taxpayers satisfied they were on the job.
It was well after dark when I heard surreptitious knuckles tapping on the door.
I crossed the room and opened the door. Hazel Downer stood on the threshold.
“Donald!” she exclaimed.
“Well, what do you know?” I said. “It’s a small world. Come on in and park the curves. How did you find me here?”
“I followed you.”
“How come?”
“We found that you were being held by the police. My attorney, Madison Ashby, called up from Los Angeles and said he was going to get a habeas corpus unless you were released. They promised him that they’d release you within an hour and take you to a hotel.”
“So then what?”
“I was up in San Francisco keeping in touch with him. He called me and told me, so I went down and parked in front of Headquarters. When the plain-clothes officer drove you out here I followed.”
“And then?”
“I didn’t want to be ostentatious about it, so I waited for a couple of hours, then went and parked my car, got a taxicab, loaded some baggage in the taxicab, came up here just as bold as you please and sailed past the plain-clothes man who’s on duty downstairs, registered, and got a room.”
“Use your right name to register under?”
“Of course not.”
“You were taking a chance on being recognized.”
“I don’t think so. They don’t know me up here.”
I said, “Well, well, what do you know! So you’re here in the hotel.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I’m sure glad to see you. I was afraid I was going to have a lonely evening.”
“What do we do now, Donald?”
“What would you like to do?” I asked.
“I’d like to find out what happened to the money Standley had — the money of mine.”
“What do you think happened to it?”
“I think that Evelyn Ellis got it, but I’m beginning to get all mixed up.”
I grabbed a pad of paper and wrote, “The room is bugged. Follow my lead.”
I shoved that in under her eyes and she laughed throatily and said, “Well, Donald, after all, you’ve been doing a lot of very difficult work for me and I thought it would be a good thing if we sort of brought each other up to date.”
“Well, let’s sit down,” I said, “and I’ll see if I can get a drink... oh, dammit! I can’t get a drink. They won’t serve me anything alcoholic.”
“Why? Do they think you’re a minor?”
I said, “I’m being more or less held in protective custody.”
“What happened, Donald?” she asked.
“Well, let me think,” I said. “I’ll have to kind of figure things out. Sit down over there. I’ve got to powder my nose. I’ll be right with you.”
She sat on the davenport. I put my finger to my lips and sat down beside her. I took the pad and wrote: “Follow my lead. Tell me all the wild-eyed stories you want, but don’t tell me anything you don’t want the police to know. They probably have about three separate bugs in this room. I’m going to tell you facts, but be careful what you say in reply. Don’t ask me specific questions because I may not be in a position to answer.”
After she had read the note I tore it up, tiptoed over to the bathroom door, flushed the note down the toilet, rattled the knob of the door, came back and said, “Well, it sure is nice to see you. I was looking forward to a lonely evening — that is, I anticipated a lonely evening. I wasn’t looking forward to it with any enthusiasm.”
“Can you tell me what happened, Donald?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m not going to tell you all of it because I have some things I want to keep in the background, but here’s generally what happened: I came up here looking around to try and find your lost love for you, and, of course, by the time I really got into the game he had been murdered and I was scrambling around trying to find out something about the murder.
“Now, I’m not particularly interested in the murder because I know you’re interested in the fifty thousand. Tell me, Hazel, were you fond of him?”
“Sure I was fond of him,” she said. And then added, “I’ve been fond of lots of people. When a person has fifty grand it is easier to be fond of him.”
“You’re sure he had it?”
“Oh, yes. He was loaded with money.”
“But you’re sure he had fifty grand?”
“Well, he had quite a slug of money, Donald. He promised me sixty thousand.”
“He promised you?”
“Yes, he was going to give it to me as sort of a nest egg.”
“And then what happened?”
“Well, you know what happened. He began to start talking about doing this and doing that and doing the other, and getting more and more vague about what he was going to do with me. Well, it wasn’t very long before I found out about that Evelyn Ellis. You know, a woman has ways of finding out those things. I guess there’s something intuitive in our makeup.”
“And then?” I asked.
“Well, Donald, if you want me to tell you the whole truth, I made a big mistake. I didn’t play my cards right. In place of just getting in and beating that other woman’s time, I made a fool of myself.”
“What did you do?”
“Oh, I accused him of cheating on me and made a scene and all the things that it comes easy for a woman to do under circumstances like that, but which actually are the last things in the world she should do.”
“Then what?”
“Well, then I knew he was getting ready to skip out. I thought he’d leave me fairly well provided for, but the beast just walked out without leaving me anything. That’s why I got you to try and find him. If you could have found him I’d have got money out of him.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. I told you he’d talked sixty grand to make it look big, but that’s only a figure. I probably would have got fifteen or twenty thousand. You see, I was using you and your partner in sort of a come-on. I’m afraid I’m not very honest, Donald.”
“How would you have gone about making him come through?”
“I know too much about him.”
I closed one eye in a wink and said, “Now listen, Hazel, I want to get this straight. Is there any chance that he was mixed up in that robbery of the armored truck?”
“I don’t think so, Donald. I don’t think there’s a whisper of a chance.”
“Tell me the truth. Did you know Baxley?”
“He called up once or twice. I don’t know how he got my number.”
“You had never had any dates with him?”
“Heavens, no.”
“You told me you said yes to Standley in front of an altar. Was that true?”
“No.”
“You never married him?”
“I said yes to him, but it was in an automobile, not in front of an altar.”
I wrote on the pad: “Keep talking. Never mind what you say. Keep talking.”
She looked at me speculatively and went on, “I suppose you think I’m something of a tramp and I guess perhaps I am. I don’t suppose you have any idea what it means to a girl to realize that she s forfeited her right to the one thing a woman really needs, and that’s security.
“Then Standley came along. He was good to me and the guy was loaded with money. I don’t know where he was making it, but I have a pretty good idea. He was in partnership with someone and they were running a betting service. He fell for me like a ton of bricks. He was going to do a lot for me — he said. He gave me quite a bit of money and I thought there was going to be lots more where that came from. He kept promising me complete financial security. He said he was going to make a settlement on me of sixty thousand dollars.”
“Fifty or sixty?” I asked.
“Sixty,” she said.
I said, “Keep talking.”
All the time she was talking I was writing. I wrote a message: