“I was hunting for Beegan.”
“Didn’t find him, did you?”
“Go to hell,” Kleinsmidt said, and grinned.
Chapter Nine
Bertha Cool was dozing. She was fully dressed, and her door was unlocked. After I’d opened it, I stood on the threshold, watching her stretched out in a chair, her head tilted slightly to one side, her breath coming rhythmically in gentle snores.
I said, “Hello, Bertha. Been to bed and getting up, or just waiting—”
She jerked her eyes open, and sat up in the chair.
There was no period of transition while she was groggy with sleep. One second she had been snoring gently, her lips puffing slightly outward with every exhalation. Now, she was wide awake staring at me with those hard, glittering eyes. “My God, Donald, if this isn’t the damnedest town. Did they jerk you off the train?”
“Yes.”
“They told me they were going to. I said I’d sue ’em for damages if they did. What did you tell them?”
“Nothing.”
“You didn’t give them any satisfaction?”
“Not that I know of.”
“That lieutenant is all right,” she said. “The police chief is a pill. Come in. Sit down. Hand me that package of cigarettes over there and hold a match for me. Suppose we have some coffee sent up?”
I handed her the cigarettes, held a match, went over to the telephone, asked for room service, and told them to send up a couple of pots of coffee with plenty of cream and sugar.
“You drink yours black, don’t you, lover?” Bertha called.
“Yes.”
“Well,” she said, “never mind the cream and sugar for me.”
I looked at her in surprise.
“I’ve begun to think it spoils the flavor of the coffee.”
“Okay,” I said, “never mind the cream and sugar. Shoot up a couple of pots of black coffee and make it snappy.”
“Well,” I said to Bertha, “what’s the low-down?”
“I don’t know. The blowoff came about twelve-thirty. They’d found the body about midnight, I think. There was a great hullabaloo. They wanted to know all about our case, who our client was, and where they could find him.”
“Did you tell them?”
“Indeed I did not.”
“Was it hard to hold out?”
“Not so bad. I told them that was a professional confidence. I might have had some trouble if it hadn’t been that they discovered you’d gone to Los Angeles. That gave them all they needed to work on. They said they were going to catch the train by plane and bring you back.”
“How late did they keep you up?”
“Most of the whole blessed night.”
“Didn’t they ever tumble to Whitewell?”
“After a while.”
“How?”
“Snooping around.”
“When did Whitewell get back here?” I asked. “Last night after I left?”
“That’s the point, lover. He didn’t.”
“You mean you didn’t see him at all?”
“No.”
“When did you see him after that?”
“About four o’clock this morning.”
“Where?”
“He dropped in here after the police had got done questioning him. He was very apologetic because he’d got us mixed up in it. He’s an awfully nice man, Donald.”
“What did he want?”
“What do you mean?”
“When he called in here at four o’clock this morning.”
“Why, he just wanted to know how I’d stood the ordeal and wanted to apologize for getting me involved in a case which put me in such a position.”
“And after he’d done all that, what did he want?”
“Why, nothing.”
“He mentioned something more or less casually?”
“Oh, he wanted to know how much talking we’d do, and I told him he didn’t need to worry, that you wouldn’t divulge any information. He said he hoped particularly you wouldn’t tell them anything about what case you were working on or about any letters. I told him he could go to bed and go to sleep with a mind free from worry.”
“How about Philip? Was he with his dad?”
“No. That’s why the father didn’t come back here. He and Philip had some difference of opinion.”
“Over what?”
“I don’t know, lover, but I think it was over you.”
“Why?”
“Philip seems to be very enthusiastic about you. He wanted his father to give you a free hand to go ahead and do anything you wanted to find Corla. His father said that was going to be too expensive, that as soon as you uncovered evidence showing that Corla had left of her own free will, that was all he could afford to do. Then Philip suggested she might have left because she was being blackmailed or something, and his father said that if that was the case, she wasn’t the sort of girl they’d want in the family anyway; and I guess Philip’s nerves were ragged. They had an argument, and his father walked away and left Philip alone in the casino.”
I narrowed my eyes as I thought that over. “That would have been somewhere around eight o’clock, or a few minutes later?”
“I guess so.”
“You didn’t tell the law anything about that?”
“I told the law to mind its own business, and I’d mind mine,” Bertha snapped. “The impertinent ignoramuses! Even wanted to know what proof I could give that I’d been here in the hotel all that time. Here I was waiting for Mr. Whitewell to show up, and because of that fight with Philip, he didn’t come near me—”
“Where did he go?”
“He was very much upset. You know he’s really attached to that boy, really and truly, worships the ground he walks on, and Mr. Whitewell was terribly upset. He even forgot about calling me and telling me he wouldn’t be here. He didn’t—”
“But where did he go?”
“He didn’t go anywhere.”
“You mean he came back to his room here in the hotel?”
“Oh, I see what you mean. No. He was very nervous. He walked around for a while, and then came back and tried to go to sleep. He and Philip and Mr. Endicott had a suite. Philip didn’t show up until nearly eleven o’clock. The police found out Whitewell was my client and got him up for a grilling. Poor man. I guess he didn’t sleep much last night.”
“What do you know about the details of the killing?”
“Almost nothing. He was shot. That’s all I know.”
“What caliber gun?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did they find the gun in the apartment?”
“I don’t think so.”
“And no one heard the shot?”
“No. You know how that apartment house is. It’s off on a side street, and there are just those two apartments over the store building. The store closes at six o’clock. Someone must have been looking for something in the kitchen. The doors of the cupboard beneath the sink had been pulled open and a couple of pans were on the floor. I understand there were a few drops of blood near the door which leads to the kitchen. I picked up a little information from the questions the officers asked, but they aren’t giving out very much information.”
“Well,” I said, “it’s a good thing he was killed. He had it coming.”
“Donald, don’t talk like that.”
“Why not?”
“They’d hold it against you.”
“They’ve got plenty to hold against me now, but it’s not going to get them anywhere.”
“Didn’t the porter remember you, lover?”
“Apparently not.”
“How about your ticket?”
“They didn’t collect it.”
“Nor your Pullman reservation either?”
“No. I just got aboard, climbed in, and went to sleep.”
“It’s queer the conductor didn’t wake you up to take your ticket.”