“Now you put all that together and see what you’d think if you were a detective.”
Bertha said, “Damn you, Donald. He’s a client — and a friend.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “I’m reporting. I haven’t said anything to anyone else yet, have I?”
“That word ‘yet’ sounds like a threat,” Whitewell said.
I didn’t say anything.
“How much of all this about the amnesia attack is true?” Whitewell asked.
I said, “I somehow had an idea her disappearance might have had to do with a prior marriage.”
“What gave you that idea?”
“She left under her own power. She tried to save her face, and she tried to save Philip’s face. She wasn’t the sort of girl who would have let you buy her off. Looking at it from any angle, the most plausible explanation was that a prior marriage was mixed up in it.”
“So you went to Reno?”
“That’s right. Persons who are suffering from unfortunate marriages and suddenly disappear are quite apt to go to Reno.”
“And you made inquiries at the hospitals, I suppose,” Whitewell said sarcastically.
“Exactly. There were two practical solutions, and only two. One of them was a prior marriage, and the other was an attack of amnesia.”
“And if it had been a prior marriage, she’d have gone to Reno?”
“That’s right.”
“But why should she have gone to Reno if she had been suffering from amnesia?”
“It was a complication of both, causes,” I said, and grinned at him.
“And so you found her in this hospital! How nice!”
“Yes. When I made the evening round, I learned that a woman who answered Miss Burke’s description had been picked up suffering from amnesia. I checked. It was Corla Burke, all right. That put me in a spot. The hospital authorities were trying to find someone who knew her. Naturally, they wanted to pump me. I kept my mouth shut.”
Whitewell raised his left hand to the shining expanse of his high forehead, stroked what hair he had left with the palm of his hand. “If you’d uncovered Helen Framley,” he said, “found that letter, turned it in, and then quit, your services would have been worth a great deal more to me.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me that was what you wanted me to do? You told me you wanted me to find Corla Burke.”
He abruptly pushed his hands down in his trousers pockets. “I see by the paper,” he said, “that the man who was living with Helen Framley was Sidney Jannix.”
“He wasn’t living with her. It was a business partnership.”
Bertha Cool snorted.
Arthur Whitewell’s eyes were narrowed. “Now that you have blurted out that you’ve found Corla, Philip, of course, will have to go to see her. Jannix is dead — murdered, very fortunately for her. She has no recollection of what happened. The poor girl was suffering from a nervous strain. Wouldn’t it be just fine if the sight of Philip should restore her memory? She’d then have no recollection of what had happened from the time she walked out of the office and would be all ready to go on with the wedding.”
I met his eyes. “I think that would make your son very happy.”
He folded his arms. “Perhaps,” he said, “I am more concerned with my son’s happiness one year or ten years from now than in helping him gratify a brief infatuation.”
“Quite possibly that’s true.”
“I don’t suppose you’d have any ideas about that?”
“You hired me to find Corla Burke. I’ve found her.” Bertha Cool said, “He’s right on that, Arthur. You should have taken us into your confidence. I told you Donald was very competent and a fast worker. He—”
“Shut up,” Whitewell said without taking his eyes from me.
Bertha Cool came up out of that chair as though she’d been a rubber ball dropped from a twenty-story window. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” she demanded. “Don’t you tell me to shut up. You — such a polished gentleman that butter won’t melt in your mouth, filled with all your goddamn flatteries — and telling a lady to shut up! You hired us to do a job, and we’ve done it. Now get out your checkbook and settle up.”
Whitewell completely ignored her. He said to me, “I suppose you’d also resort to a little blackmail?”
“About what?”
“Threatening to tell Philip unless you get the sort of settlement you want.”
I said, “I’m reporting to Bertha Cool. She runs the agency any way she wants to. I don’t have anything to say about that. However, if you’re going to play ostrich and try sticking your head in the sand, you might remember that the police here in Las Vegas are going to be mildly interested.”
“What business is it of theirs?”
“You forget the murder.”
“You mean this mess is all going to come out in connection with the murder?”
“It might.”
He frowned at me, and said, “By the time I unscramble that enigmatic ‘remark, young man, I suppose I’ll find a hook in it. That has all the earmarks of being the opening gun in a campaign of shakedown.”
I lit a cigarette.
Bertha said, “You’d better come down to earth and realize you aren’t done with us yet. You’re going to need representation to keep this murder rap off your shoulders.”
“Off my shoulders!” Whitewell exclaimed.
Bertha’s eyes glittered at him, hard and greedy. “You’re damn tootin’,” she said. “Don’t forget that girl who saw you.”
Whitewell began to smile, a slow grin of amused triumph. “Well,” he said, “isn’t it going to be interesting to see what happens. Corla Burke has lost her memory. She doesn’t know anything that happened from the time she finished taking dictation on the day of her disappearance. The next thing she remembers is when Philip walks into the hospital and says, ‘Corla,’ and the emotional shock suddenly brings back her memory. Rather a nice little master of ceremonies, aren’t you, Lam?”
“Go ahead,” I said. “Spill the rest of it.”
“All right, I will. Corla Burke was an adventuress. She’d been married before, and she was concealing that marriage from my son. She’d trapped my son into a love affair. She was going to marry him. Then a few days before the ceremony, her husband makes a very inopportune appearance. Immediately Corla Burke disappears. Shortly thereafter, her husband is murdered. As soon as he has shuffled this mortal coil so that she becomes a widow and therefore perfectly eligible to make an immediate marriage, a private detective finds her in a hospital, suffering from amnesia. And I won’t insult your intelligence by intimating there’s any chance she won’t be promptly cured as soon as she sees my son, and I hope that you won’t insult my intelligence by trying to make me swallow it as a genuine performance. But the point is, she was the one who had a motive for murdering Sidney Jannix. She wanted him out of the way. She had every reason to know that he could be located through Helen Framley. That’s something for you to consider, Lam.”
“Why?”
“Because if she doesn’t know where she has been during the intervening time, she can’t deny that she was in Las Vegas. She can’t deny that she killed him.”