“In accordance with instructions we immediately communicated information to client by long-distance telephone as soon as it was obtained.
“At this time Donald Lam was in subject’s apartment.
“Upon receipt of information as to the identity of the person in question, client instructed us immediately to discontinue all shadowing operations, to close the case, submit final bill and take no further action.
“In accordance with these instructions operative was recalled to city office and the case closed.
“ACE HIGH DETECTIVE AGENCY per J.C.L., Manager
“Los Angeles Branch”
I studied that report for a moment, then folded and shoved it in my coat pocket. I looked around but couldn’t find any jacket or brown paper envelope from which this paper had spilled.
I noticed a door half open which led to a lavatory. I went to that door, opened it wide and was about to enter the room when I heard steps in the outer office.
I ran to the window and looked out. There was a car parked just behind mine. I couldn’t see it too clearly but it was a big shiny car.
I pushed aside the curtains on the open window, eased myself over the sill and dropped to the ground. I started walking toward my car, then thought better of it and sprinted.
I jumped in the car, started the motor and eased into motion as noiselessly as possible.
Someone yelled.
I could see a man’s frame silhouetted against the light in the room, standing on the open window from which I had made my departure.
“Hey, you!” he yelled. “Come back here! Stop where you are!”
I stepped on the throttle.
I had a blurred glimpse of the man climbing through the window and running across the lawn toward his car. Then I skidded into a turn at the end of the driveway, hit the paved road and pushed down the foot throttle.
I had gone about half a mile before I picked up the headlights in my rearview mirror.
I gave the car everything it had.
A boulevard stop loomed ahead. I shot through it as fast as the car would go, negotiated a turn with screaming tires, hit a straightaway and my headlights picked up another boulevard stop ahead. This time it was a main thoroughfare. I could see headlights approaching as I came to the white line but I pressed my hand on the horn button and shot through.
There was a brief hundredth of a second when headlights were glaring into my eyes from the left-hand side at a distance of not over thirty feet. Then I squeezed on by and was out in the clear.
That gave me time enough to execute a U-turn, slow the car and come driving sedately back.
I was just at the thoroughfare intersection when the car that had been following me roared across the main thoroughfare, also ignoring the boulevard stop, and shot on past me.
The driver was too busy with what he was doing to notice cars that were coming toward him and he never even slowed down as he shot past. I don’t think he ever saw anything except my headlights.
I eased out into the main boulevard and joined the stream of traffic.
I headed on the main road to Los Angeles and as soon as I found a service station that had a telephone booth, called Bertha at her apartment.
Bertha’s voice was irascible. “What is it this time?” she asked, “and why the hell don’t you make reports and let me know what you’re doing? Our client has been wondering if you’ve discovered anything and I have to pull that old stuff about making progress and being too busy at the moment to make a written report.”
“All right,” I said, “it wasn’t stuff. I was making progress and I was too busy to make a report. Now I’ve got to talk with you.”
“What about?”
“About progress.”
“I’m in bed.”
“Well, get up,” I told her. “You shouldn’t go to bed this early anyway.”
“Dammit to hell, Donald Lam!” she screamed in the telephone. “You know I go to bed early and read myself to sleep. I—”
“Read yourself awake,” I told her. “I’ll be there in less than half an hour.”
Chapter Six
Bertha Cool opened the door of her apartment as soon as I rang. She had on pajamas and her hair was in curlers. She was mad.
“Now will you tell me what this is all about?” she demanded as I entered the apartment and took a chair. “Why in hell can’t you go to the office, tap this stuff out on a typewriter and have it so I can show it to the client in the morning?
“Or, the way that damned secretary of yours looks at you with those puppy-love eyes of hers, she’d probably welcome the opportunity to have you get her out of bed and start dictating. Or you might not have to get—”
I interrupted. “This thing is too hot for anything like that, Bertha.”
“What’s hot about it?”
“I’ve been made.”
“By whom?”
“The Ace High Detective Agency.”
“What the hell are they doing cutting in on our case?”
“They’re not cutting in on our case. They’ve got a case of their own. They were hired to keep Doris Ashley under surveillance and to check on everything she did.
“So when I showed up on the scene and started watching her car, the Ace High operative picked me up and reported to the client, whoever the client was, on long-distance telephone.”
“Somebody here?” Bertha Cool asked, her eyes narrowing.
“I said long distance, Bertha. This is a dial operation now from Colinda. Here, take a look at this.”
I handed Bertha the Ace High report.
“Fry me for an oyster!” Bertha said when she had finished reading. “Do you suppose, Donald, that Lamont Hawley had another agency working on the case and— How did you get this, Donald?”
I told her what had happened.
“Then Hawley must be double-crossing us.”
“How else would the Ace High have been on the job?” I asked.
Bertha Cool’s greedy little eyes started snapping. “That’s it, Donald,” she said. “That’s what happened. The s.o.b. got two detective agencies, the Ace High and ours, and played one against the other. The Ace High people had been on the job for several days and hadn’t got results, so someone told the Consolidated Interinsurance people about you and how you could handle women and that explains why they terminated the employment of the Ace High people as soon as they found out you had made a personal contact with Doris Ashley.”
“Whatever the reason,” I told her, “let’s have a showdown on this thing. I don’t like being played for a sucker. I don’t like to have a client give me only part of the facts.
“Let’s get Lamont Hawley in the office and hand it to him straight from the shoulder.”
Bertha said, “That’s the spirit, Donald!”
She suddenly started blinking her eyes. “Wait a minute, Donald. We don’t have anything to support our claim except this report of the Ace High people, and of course Hawley is going to want to know how we got hold of that and—”
“Don’t tell him how we found out,” I said. “Let him wonder.”
Bertha thought that over, then suddenly her face wreathed in smiles.
“I’d just like to see that s.o.b.’s face, Donald. Here he is trying to play one detective agency against the other. He’s had the Ace High people trying to make a contact. They get nowhere. We come in, make a contact first rattle out of the box and then the next thing he knows we find out all about the other detective agency and his instructions to them. That’s going to curl his hair!”
“All right,” I told Bertha. “Now the question arises, where did that report come from?”
“You told me you got it out of Holgate’s office.”