The phone rang half a dozen times before a woman’s voice, sounding dopey with sleep, said, “Hello.”
“Dr. Alftmont’s residence?”
“Yes.”
“I must speak with Dr. Alftmont at once on a matter of the greatest importance.”
“Have you tried his office?”
“His office?” I said in surprise.
“Yes. I think you’ll find him there. He was called to his office shortly before midnight and hasn’t returned.”
“Sorry I disturbed you,” I said. “I hardly expected he’d be at his office.”
The woman was shaking the sleep out of her voice. She said, “That’s quite all right. I understand. Would you care to leave a message in case you miss him at the office?”
“Tell him I’ll call him in fifteen minutes if I don’t catch him at the office,” I said, “and thank you very much.”
“It’s quite all right,” she said again.
I hung up and drove to Dr. Alftmont’s office. If I had been a patient the voice of that woman would have made me a lifelong customer.
There were lights on in the building. The elevator was on automatic. I pressed the button and went up to Dr. Alftmont’s floor. I couldn’t hear any voices as I walked quietly down the corridor, but the oblong of frosted glass in the door of the office was radiating light into the corridor.
I tried the door. It was locked. I knocked a couple of times, and then I heard a door open and close on the inside of the office. I heard steps coming across the floor, then the door opened and Dr. Alftmont stood staring at me. Surprise, consternation, and stark fear took turns registering on his face. The door of the inner office was tightly closed.
I said, “I’m sorry to bother you, Doctor, but a matter of the greatest importance has come up and makes it necessary.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the closed door to his private office and seemed puzzled.
I said, “Okay. We can talk right here.” I took a step towards him, lowered my voice, and said, “Do you know what happened this afternoon?”
He hesitated a moment, then turned and said, “You may as well come in.” He walked to the door of the private office, twisted the knob, and opened it.
I looked into the lighted interior of his testing laboratory. He said, “Go right on through to the private office.”
I walked across and opened the door.
Bertha Cool sat over in a big chair near the window. She looked up at me, and her face showed surprise.
I said, “You!”
Dr. Alftmont came in behind me and closed the door.
Bertha said, “Well, well, Donald. You do get around, don’t you?”
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“About an hour,” she said.
Dr. Alftmont crossed over to sit behind his desk. “This is terrible,” he said, “terrible!”
I kept my eyes on Bertha. “How much did you tell him?” I asked.
“I explained the situation to him.”
I said, “All right. Just a minute,” and walked around the office, looking in behind the pictures and bookcase, moving the framed pictures out from the wall.
Dr. Alftmont said, “What are you loo—”
I held up a warning finger to my lips, and motioned to the wall.
Bertha Cool got the idea and said, “For God’s sake, Donald!”
I didn’t say anything until I had completed a search of the office. I said, “I don’t see any. Which doesn’t mean there isn’t any. You have to be careful, particularly of that.” I pointed towards the telephone.
Dr. Alftmont started to get up, then sat down again. He seemed completely overwhelmed by the turn of events. I said to Bertha, “Have you concluded your business?”
“Yes,” she said, and then added, with a smile, “quite satisfactorily so far as we’re concerned, Donald.”
“Finished with everything you had to say?”
“Yes,” she said.
“All right,” I told her. “Let’s go.”
Dr. Alftmont said, “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.”
“I’ll be back in about ten minutes, Doctor,” I said. “Would you mind waiting?”
“Why — no, I guess not.”
I nodded to Bertha. She looked at me rather peculiarly, heaved to her feet, and gave Dr. Alftmont her hand. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’ll be all right.”
“I wish I could share your confidence.”
“It’s all right. You’re in our hands. We’ll take care of you.”
I said, “Wait fifteen minutes,” to Dr. Alftmont and walked down the corridor with Bertha Cool. Neither of us said anything in the corridor. In the elevator I said, “How did you come up?”
“I hired a car with a driver.”
I said, “We’ll talk in the agency car. It’s downstairs.”
We walked out across the strip of dark sidewalk, and Bertha Cool sagged the car over on its noisy springs as she eased herself into the pile of junk. I started the motor, drove down a couple of blocks, and parked in front of an all-night restaurant where we wouldn’t attract so much attention. “What did you tell him?” I asked.
“Enough to let him know that we control the situation.”
I said, “Where did you leave your car?”
“In the middle of the next block,” she said. “The driver’s waiting. I told him not to wait in front of the office.”
I started the motor on the office heap.
“Didn’t you want to talk, Donald?” she asked.
“There’s nothing to talk about now,” I said. “The beans are spilled.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was going to tell him that a witness had seen a man leaving the apartment. I wasn’t going to let on that we had any idea of who it could have been. His conscience would have done that.”
“If he knows, why shouldn’t we let him know that we know?”
“Just a legal difference,” I said. “If we were helping him without any idea that he was the one, we’d have been acting as detectives. He naturally wouldn’t have climbed out on a limb and told us anything. I suppose now you know it all.”
“Yes,” she said. “He went down to see her. He wanted to find out who sent her and what she’d discovered and see if he could make a deal with her.”
“She was dead when he found her?” I asked.
“That’s what he says.”
“All right,” I said to Bertha, “here’s your car. Better drive back. I have a breakfast date at seven-thirty in the morning. I don’t think I’ll keep it. She’s in my rooming-house, number thirty-two. Take her to breakfast with you. Stall her along. Get her to give up the room. You’d better get her an apartment somewhere. The D.A. will want to know where she’s staying. The way things are now, it had better be away from my joint.”
For a moment the self-sufficiency oozed out of Bertha Cool’s manner. She said, in something that was almost a panic, “Donald, you’ll have to come back with me. You must. I can’t control that girl. She’s fallen for you. She’ll do anything on earth you tell her, and I can’t— God, Donald, I didn’t know I was laying myself wide open that way.”
“You see the point, don’t you?”
“I see it now,” she said.
“I have work to do here.”
“What?”
I shook my head, and said, “There’s no use explaining to you. The more you know, the more you talk. The more you talk, the more you put us in a position of being accessories after the fact. I’d have done a damn sight better if I’d held out on you from the start. I tried to, but you insisted on horning in.”
She said, “He’s wealthy, Donald. I got a cheque for three thousand dollars.”
“I don’t care if you got a cheque for ten thousand,” I said. “You’re in a jam. If there was a dictograph in that office, you’re sunk. Bring your conversation with him up in front of a grand jury, and you can figure how long it’ll be before your licence gets revoked. After that, you’ll be in prison. You won’t take me with you — in case that’s any consolation to you.”