I could see she was frightened. She said, “Donald, come on back with me. There’s nothing you can do here tonight. Leave the agency car. You can drive back with me. It’s a warm, comfortable closed car. You take Marian to breakfast in the morning and get her a nice, quiet apartment somewhere.”
I said, “No. Get her both an apartment somewhere and a room in a hotel. She goes to the hotel room once a day to pick up mail and messages. The rest of the time she stays in the apartment.”
“Why?” Bertha asked.
I said, “She can’t be too accessible. You can figure the play. They have organized vice and organized graft in this city. Alftmont can’t be bribed. He’s running for mayor. If he’s elected, he’ll start cleaning up the city. Lots of people don’t like that. Some of them are on the police force. They can dig up this scandal and play it either of two ways — to keep him from being elected or make him withdraw from the race, or they can let him be elected and hold it as a club over his head. They’ve been working quietly on it for a couple of months. Then he walks right into the middle of a murder. He couldn’t afford to notify the police because the newspapers would start asking questions about why he’d gone to the apartment of a night-spot commission girl. He’d figure her trip to Oakview would be dragged out. He knew the local police would try to frame the crime on him, and he had to make a sneak. It just happened he ran into Marian in the hall. That was his hard luck. Our business now is to keep the Homicide Squad from suspecting the case has a tie-in with Santa Carlotta, to keep Marian Dunton from ever seeing Dr. Alftmont.”
“That shouldn’t be hard,” she said.
I laughed. “Remember the man who beat me up and kicked me out of Oakview?” I asked.
“What about him?” she asked.
I said, “His name is John Harbet. He was Evaline Harris’s particular boy friend. He has a tie-in with the man who runs the Blue Cave. He’s the head of the Vice Squad in Santa Carlotta. Figure that out.”
While she was studying that bit of information, I opened the door of the agency car and said, “Okay, there’s your bus. Get started, and don’t forget to be on hand to take Marian out for breakfast. And just one other thing. I told that girl to act dumb. She’s doing it because she knows it’s the thing to do, but don’t kid yourself. She’s country, but she isn’t dumb. And she’s a darn nice kid.”
Bertha Cool put her left hand on my right arm. “Lister, lover, come back with me. Bertha needs you.”
I said, “Any minute now, a cop may come along the street and turn a flashlight on us just to see who we are. Would you like that?”
Bertha Cool said, “Hell, no!”
She scrambled out of the car as though it had been on fire. The driver of her car unwrapped himself from behind the steering-wheel and stood holding the door open for her. She gave me one last appealing look, then climbed into the closed car. She sank back against the cushions, and for the moment she didn’t look big and hard and competent. She looked like a fat woman in the fifties who was tired out.
I drove around the block, parked the agency car across the street from Dr. Alftmont’s office, and went up. He was waiting for me.
I said, “You know too much, and we know too much. Bertha talked too much. I want to talk with you, and. I don’t want to talk with you here. Let’s take a little ride in your car.”
Without a word he switched out the lights, locked up his office, and rode down in the elevator with me. His car was parked at the kerb in front of the building entrance. “Just where do we go?” he asked in that precise voice of his.
“Some place where we can talk, and where we won’t be seen,” I said.
He was nervous. “They have a police radio car that investigates parked automobiles.”
“Don’t park then.”
“I can’t talk when I’m driving.”
“How about your house?” I asked.
He said, “We could talk there.”
“Let’s go — if it won’t inconvenience your wife.”
“No, no. It’s all right. We can go there.” There was relief in his voice.
“Does your wife know anything about the jam you’re in?” I asked.
“She knows all about it.”
I said, “Don’t think I’m taking liberties with your personal affairs, but is your wife’s first name Vivian?”
He said, “Yes.”
No one said anything after that. He drove the car up the main street, turned to the left, climbed a hill, and entered a high-class residential section with modem houses of Spanish-type architecture — white stucco sides and red tile roofs showing to advantage against the dark green of shrubbery — a green which was almost black in the spaces between street lights.
We turned into the driveway and rolled into the garage of a pretentious stucco structure. Dr. Alftmont switched off the headlights and the ignition, and said, “Well, we’re here.”
I got out of the car. Dr. Alftmont led the way towards a door which opened on a flight of stairs, then opened another door, and we entered a hallway. The woman’s voice I’d heard over the telephone said, “Is that you, Charles?”
“Yes,” he said. “I have someone with me.”
She said, “A man telephoned and—”
“I know. He’s here with me,” Dr. Alftmont said. “Won’t you come in this way, Mr. Lam?”
He ushered me into a living-room. The furniture was expensive but quiet. The drapes, carpet, and decorations all harmonized in a quiet blend of colour.
The woman’s voice said, “Charles, let me talk with you a moment, please.”
Dr. Alftmont said to me, “Excuse me a moment,” and went back down the corridor towards the stairs. I heard low-voiced conversation. It kept up for four or five minutes. Then I heard her asking something of Dr. Alftmont. She kept pleading. He made short answers in a voice which sounded like courteous but firm negatives.
Steps coming down the corridor again; this time there were two people approaching. I got up out of my chair as the woman entered the room. Dr. Alftmont, a step behind her, said, “Dear, may I present Mr. Lam. Mr. Lam, this is Mrs. Alftmont.”
The accent on the “Mrs.” was belligerent.
She had kept her figure remarkably well. She was somewhere in the forties, but she moved with easy grace. The hazel eyes were steady and frank. I bowed and said, “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Alftmont.”
She came towards me and gave me her hand. She’d put on a dark blue dress which harmonized with her coloring and set off her figure. Something about my telephone call had made her get up and dress. I’d have gambled she was in bed when I’d called.
She said, “Won’t you sit down, Mr. Lam?”
I sat down. She and Doc Alftmont took chairs. Alftmont seemed nervous.
Mrs. Alftmont said, “I understand you’re a detective, Mr. Lam.”
“That’s right.”
Her voice was well modulated and seemed to come without effort. There was no evidence of strain anywhere about her. Doc Alftmont gave the impression of weighing words with meticulous care lest he betray himself in a moment of inadvertence. She radiated the quiet poise and the calmness of a woman who has never tried to kid herself.
She said to her husband, “Give me a cigarette, Charles,” and then to me, “You don’t need to mince words, Mr. Lam. I know all about it.”
I said, “All right. Let’s talk.”
Dr. Alftmont handed her a cigarette and held a match. “Want one, Lam?” he asked.