The elevator boy dug up a hand truck, and we took the trunk up to Bertha Cool’s apartment. I couldn’t get the lock picked, but it only took a few minutes to cut off the heads of the rivets which held the trunk lock into position.
We found what we wanted before the trunk was more than half unpacked: a packet of papers and documents tied with a stout cord.
I untied the cord, and Bertha and I went over the papers together.
There was the Lintig marriage licence, some letters which Dr. Lintig had written during the courtship while he was still a student in college. There were newspaper clippings, and a photograph of Dr. Lintig and the bride in a wedding dress.
Dr. Lintig had changed somewhat in the twenty-odd years since that photograph had been taken. He was, of course, older, but the change hadn’t been as great as might be expected. He’d evidently been an earnest, studious youth who had looked ten years older than his real age.
I studied the face of the woman in the wedding dress. Bertha put my question into words. “Is that,” she asked, “the woman you saw at the hotel?”
I said, “No.”
“That settles it,” Bertha said. “Donald, we’ve got them licked.”
I said, “You keep forgetting the little matter of a murder.”
We dug deeper into the pile of documents. I came on some papers written in Spanish. Bertha said, “What are these?”
I said, “Let’s see if there isn’t a translation appended to them,” and turned over the pages. “It looks like a Mexican divorce.”
It was.
“Is it any good?” Bertha asked.
“Not much,” I said. “For a while some of the states in Mexico established a one-day residential qualification for getting a divorce and provided that the residence could be by proxy. A whole flock of attorneys did a land-office business getting Mexican divorces. The state supreme court punched holes in those divorces whenever the question came up for consideration, but a lot of California marriages had taken place after a Mexican divorce had been granted. Those marriages were so numerous that the authorities simply closed their eyes to their bigamous aspect and let it go at that. The general concensus of opinions is that they constitute a moral whitewash if not a legal justification.”
Bertha said, “Now why do you suppose she did that, lover?”
I said, “She wanted to re-marry, but she didn’t want Dr. Lintig to know of that marriage. She wanted to hold a club over his head. That was why she got the Mexican divorce. That’s a bet I’ve overlooked.”
“How did you overlook it?” she asked. “And what was the bet?”
I said, “I’ll show you.” I went to the telephone and called Western Union. I dictated a night message to the State Bureau of Vital Statistics at Sacramento, California, asking for information concerning the marriage of Amelia Sellar, and a search of death records for a burial under the married name if they were found.
I hung up the telephone to find Bertha Cool grinning at me. “It looks as though we’re getting somewhere, lover,” she said.
I said, “You must have a list of operatives who can be called at short notice.”
“I do,” Bertha said.
“All right. Get a couple of them. Describe John Harbet. Have them cover police headquarters. I want to know where Harbet goes when he leaves there.”
“Won’t he go back to Santa Carlotta?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Not now.”
Bertha Cool crossed over to a writing-desk and took out a leather-backed notebook. “It may take an hour or so to get them on the job,” she said.
“An hour’s too long,” I told her. “Get, people who can go to work immediately. Hire the operatives of another detective agency. Have them on the job within twenty minutes.” Bertha Cool started telephoning. I went back to the trunk.
I’d found the rest of it by the time Bertha returned from the telephone, some old stage costumes and some vaudeville publicity photographs of a woman in tights with autographs written on them, Lovingly, Flo.
I studied the pictures. “Add twenty years and forty pounds,” I said, “and that’s the woman I saw in Oakview, the one who was registered as Mrs. James C. Lintig.”
Bertha Cool didn’t say anything. She walked over to the kitchenette and brought out a bottle of brandy.
I looked at the date on the seal of the bottle. It said 1875.
Chapter Eleven
Bertha Cool had just finished pouring her third brandy at the end of an hour, when the telephone rang.
She looked at her wrist watch and said, “That’s prompt action. One of the operatives reporting on Harbet.”
She picked up the receiver and said, in that crisp, official voice of hers, “Yes, this is Bertha Cool talking. Go ahead.”
I couldn’t hear what was coming over the wire, but I could see the expression on Bertha Cool’s face. I saw the lips tighten, the eyelids lower. She said, “I don’t do any driving myself. That can be verified.”
There was another long period of silence while Bertha Cool sat listening at the telephone. Light scintillated from the diamonds on the hand that held the receiver. She avoided looking at me. After a while she said, “Now listen, I’ll have to check up on my records to find which operative was driving the car at the time you mention and where the car was in operation. Personally, I think there’s some mistake but... No, I’m not going to the office now. I’m in bed. It wouldn’t do me any good if I went there. I couldn’t find the records. My secretary has charge of those... No, I’m not going to have her disturbed at this hour, and that’s final. It isn’t that important. Nine times out of ten, witnesses who take licence numbers are mistaken... Yes, by ten o’clock in the morning... All right, nine-thirty then. That’s absolutely the earliest... I have several operatives. I have two or three out on a case now... No, I can’t tell you their names or the nature of the case. That’s confidential. I’ll look up my car records in the morning and advise you. I won’t do anything until then.”
She hung up the telephone. Her eyes swung around to rivet on me. They seemed as glittering as her diamonds. “Donald, they’re turning on the heat.”
“What?” I asked.
“Santa Carlotta has telephoned the police here asking for co-operation. They’ve found a witness to a hit-and-run case. The witness has given the licence number of the automobile. It’s the agency car. They looked it up on the registrations.”
I said, “I didn’t think he’d go that far.”
She said, “You’re in a spot, lover. They’ll railroad you sure as hell. Bertha will stick by you and give you what assistance she can, but the case will be tried in Santa Carlotta. It’s a felony. They’ll pack the jury.”
“When,” I asked, “did it happen?”
“Day before yesterday.”
“The agency car was stored in a garage,” I said. I have a signed receipt for the storage.
“The police came. They looked it up. The garage attendant says you came and took the car out after it had been in less than twelve hours, that you were gone with it for about two hours, and then brought it back, that you seemed excited. He doesn’t know you by name, but he’s given a description.”
I said, “The damn crook threatened to do that, but I didn’t think he would.”
“Well,” she said, “he has. He—”
The telephone rang again. Bertha Cool hesitated, then said, “What the hell, lover? I’ve got to answer it.”