Kleinsmidt said to me, out of the corner of his mouth, “They’d break me if they knew I’d done any talking. You’re supposed to hit the chief’s office without knowing anything about what the score is.”
“Why?” I asked.
Kleinsmidt measured the distance to the waiting airplane, slowed his pace somewhat so he wouldn’t get there too soon. “What time did you leave Bertha Cool in the Sal Sagev Hotel?” he asked.
“Why, I don’t know. Yes, I do, too. It was shortly after eight.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Down to my room.”
“What’d you do there?”
“Packed up.”
“You didn’t check out?”
“No. I left that for Bertha to do. They’d have charged me for another twenty-four hours on the room, anyway, and Bertha’s the treasurer. She knew I was going.”
“You didn’t say anything to anyone in the hotel?”
“No. just took my bag and walked out. I put a note for Bertha on the desk.”
“This one bag all the baggage you have?”
“Yes. What’s the idea?”
He said in a low voice, “Somebody got killed. The chief thinks you may have had something to do with it. I don’t know what makes him think so, but somebody gave him a bum steer. He thinks it’s hot. Keep your head. Don’t talk after we get in the airplane.”
I said, “Thanks, Lieutenant.”
“It’s okay,” he mumbled. “Just keep turning this over in your mind, and try and get an alibi.”
“For what time?”
“From ten minutes to nine until the time the train pulled out.”
“I can’t do it. I got to the station about nine o’clock. The train pulled in at five minutes past nine, and I got aboard.”
“The porter doesn’t remember you.”
“No. He was talking with someone. My bag was light, and I just climbed up the car steps. I was tired, and I undressed at once. I—”
“Save it,” he said as the figure of the pilot loomed up in front of the plane.
“All ready?” Kleinsmidt asked.
“All right. Hop aboard.”
We climbed into the low-ceilinged cabin of a single-motored plane. The pilot looked at me curiously, said, “You ever flown before?”
“Yes.”
“Understand about your safety belt and all that?”
“Yes.”
The pilot jerked down a curtain behind him, gunned the motor into a roar, and we started moving. After a few minutes, the wheels gave a series of short, sharp jolts, and then we zoomed upward and out across the line of colored lights. Ahead, the circling finger of an airway beacon cut through the darkness. Kleinsmidt tapped me on the knee, held his finger to his lips for silence, slid my bag over so that his leg was holding it tightly against the side of the cabin, out of my reach. He closed his eyes and almost immediately began to breathe heavily.
I didn’t think he was asleep. Apparently, it was some sort of a trap to see if I’d try to get something out of my bag. I noticed he kept the edge of his foot pushing against the corner of the bag. He’d have felt it if I’d so much as touched the bag.
I thought back on it and remembered how he’d grabbed that bag as soon as he’d got aboard the train, and hadn’t let it out of his possession since. Then I remembered how he’d examined my shirt in the washroom. Evidently, the chief of police had been given a very hot tip indeed.
Chapter Eight
Chief Laster glared at me across his desk and said, “Sit down.”
I pulled up a chair and sat down. Kleinsmidt settled himself over on the far side of the room, and crossed his legs.
Daylight was just breaking outside the building. The streamers of eastern clouds were a vivid crimson-orange, giving a reddish tinge to the landscape and even causing a slight russet coloring on the chief’s face. There was just enough light outside to make electric lights seem sickly and pale, but not quite enough to dispense with artificial illumination.
Laster said, “Your name is Donald Lam, and you claim to be a private detective.”
“That’s right.”
“Working for the B. Cool Detective Agency.”
“Yes.”
“Now, you hit town yesterday afternoon on a plane, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Right away, you started stirring up a lot of trouble.”
“No.”
He raised his eyebrows. “No?” he asked sarcastically.
“No. A lot of trouble started stirring me up.”
He stared at me to see if I was cracking wise.
“Well, you involved Lieutenant Kleinsmidt in a fight, had an argument with the attendant in charge of the slot machines at the Cactus Patch, then had a street fight with a man by the name of Beegan, didn’t you?”
I said, “The attendant over at the Cactus Patch took a swing at me. He called for the police. Lieutenant Kleinsmidt answered. As far as the other is concerned, a man made an unprovoked assault upon both Kleinsmidt and me. Kleinsmidt really got going and this man beat it — fast.”
I glanced at the Lieutenant out of the corner of my eye. He was grinning. He liked that version of the fight.
Laster tried another approach. “You called on Helen Framley yesterday, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get her address?”
“A client of the agency gave it to me.”
He started to say something, changed his mind, consulted some notes on his desk, looked up suddenly, and said, “Harry Beegan was her boy friend, wasn’t he?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“He acted like it?”
“I’m afraid I’m not qualified to judge.”
“You were on that train for Los Angeles that leaves here at nine-twenty?”
“That’s right.”
“You got aboard by the skin of your eyeteeth, did you not?”
“I did not.”
“What time did you get aboard?”
“As soon as the train pulled in.”
“You mean you were waiting at the station and got aboard the train just as soon as it stopped?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Now, Lam, think that over carefully, because your answer may make quite a difference.”
“To whom?” I asked:
“To you, among other people.”
“I fail to see any reason for thinking over carefully what time I took a train.”
“You’re going to stick to that story?”
“That’s right.”
“You didn’t catch the train just before it was pulling out?”
“No.”
“You didn’t board it after the train had been standing in the depot for some time?”
“No.”
“You got aboard just as soon as the train came to a stop?”
“Oh, I waited for the other passengers to get off. That took a minute or two.”
“But you were standing there by the train, waiting for the other passengers to get off—”
“That’s right. What’s all this leading up to?”
“I want to find out a little more about that train first. You were in the depot at nine-o-five?”
“I was at the depot by nine o’clock.”
“Where in the depot?”
“I was standing out where it was cool.”
“Oh,” he said as though he’d trapped me into some damaging admission, “you weren’t in the depot?”
“Did I ever say that I was?”
He frowned. “You were waiting outside?”
“That’s right.”
“How long before the train came?”
“I don’t know. Five minutes, perhaps ten.”
“See anyone you knew out there?”
“No.”