I thought of Marian Dunton and wondered if she was getting along all right. I didn’t dare to call her — not with Bertha Cool in the room, and I knew Bertha Cool well enough to know I couldn’t make a sneak and put in a surreptitious telephone call. I thought of what a loyal friend Marian was, of how she’d realized I was playing a game and using her as a pawn, but, like the good scout she was, she’d drifted along — laughing brown eyes — the shape of her lips — the smile that seemed to come so easily — her white teeth—
The ringing of the telephone brought me up out of a sound sleep. I rolled off the bed and staggered as I tried to stand up. My eyes, drugged with slumber, refused to focus. A telephone was ringing — that telephone bell was the most important thing in my life— Why? — Who was calling? — Where was the telephone? — What time was it? — Where was I?—
I heard Bertha Cool’s calmly competent voice saying, “Yes. This is Mrs. Cool,” and then, after a moment, “All bets are off? We’ll be right over.”
She hung up the telephone and stood looking at me with her forehead puckered into a frown. “Frieda Tarbing,” she said. “She goes off duty in an hour. She wanted to remind me. She said that it looked as though all bets were off.”
Having something definite to work on steadied me. I went over to the wash stand and splashed cold water on my face and into my eyes. I said, “Ring Elsie Brand at the office and see if one of those operatives has made a report. There must have been a slip-up some place. She’s gone out.”
Bertha rang the agency office, said, “Hello, Elsie. Spill me the dope,” listened for a while, and then said, “You didn’t hear from those operatives?... All right. Thanks. I’ll call you back after a while.”
She hung up and said, “More cops looking for you, lover. Some looking for me. Nothing, from the operatives.”
I smoothed my hair back with my pocket comb, looked at my soiled and wilted shirt collar, and said, “My God, Bertha, I can’t be wrong! We exploded that bombshell under her. She must have communicated with Harbet. She had to—”
“She didn’t,” Bertha said.
I said, “Well, there’s only one thing to do. Go over and make another crack at it. We’re in so deep now we’ve got to start moving. We can’t do anything else. Here, I m going to put through a telephone call.”
I grabbed up the telephone and called the number of my rooming-house. A maid answered the phone and I said, “Let me speak to Mrs. Eldridge, please.”
After a while I heard Mrs. Eldridge’s voice, that peculiar, cynical voice which I’d know anywhere. I said, “This is Donald. I wonder if you’d mind asking my cousin to come to the telephone. I wouldn’t bother you, only it’s important.”
Mrs. Eldridge said acidly, “Your cousin, Donald turned out to be Marian Dunton, a witness who was wanted by the police in connection with a murder case. They took her away three hours ago. I think they’re looking for you now. If you’re going to use my rooming-house as—”
I slammed the receiver back into its cradle.
Bertha Cool looked at me and said, sweetly — too damn sweetly — “Your cousin, Donny boy?”
I said, “Just a friend. I passed her off as my cousin.”
“That number you called was the number of your rooming-house.”
“I know,” I said.
Bertha Cool stood staring at me. Her eyes narrowed until they were mere glittering slits. “Humph,” she said at length, and then, after a moment, added, “I’ll say they fall for you. Come on, lover. We’re going places. It may not be the wisest thing to do, but at least it’s something to do. We may be here all day without getting a call. There’s one thing you didn’t figure.”
“What?” I asked.
She said, “I’ve been thinking it out while I was sitting here. Suppose Harbet has a date to call at the Key West Apartments, this afternoon, pick up Flo Danzer, and take her up to Santa Carlotta?”
“Then the operatives would have reported that she’d gone out. I figured that possibility.”
“Yes,” Bertha said, “but she knew Harbet was coming, she’d wait for him instead of telephoning.”
I said, “Well, come on, let’s go. We can’t get in any deeper than we are now.”
Bertha Cool said, “God, how I wish you were right,” and unlocked the door.
We went out into the corridor. Bertha calmly and methodically locked the door. “How about a taxicab?” I asked.
“There’s a taxi stand in front of the hotel,” she said.
We went down through the lobby. The clerk said, “You’re baggage hasn’t shown up yet, Mrs. Cool. Do you want me to do anything about it? I can arrange with a transfer company—”
“Nothing, thank you,” Bertha said and swept on past him.
There was a taxi at the stand in front of the hotel. Bertha heaved herself into the seat. I said to the cab driver, “Key West Apartments and make it snappy.”
We rode along for a block or two in silence. Then Bertha Cool said, “Why in hell you didn’t fix it up so the police wouldn’t think she’d been kidnapped is more than I know. If she wanted to come down where she could live with you, why the hell didn’t you have her think up a good stall which would fool cops. The way it is now, you’re headed for the big house, and it doesn’t make a damn what happens to this murder case. You—”
“Shut up,” I said. “I’m thinking.”
She said, “Well, I’m paying you wages. Think about the case we’re working on. Think about your own troubles in your time off.”
I turned on her. “You give me a pain. I am thinking about business problems, and you try to get me started on my personal problems. Shut up.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Shut up.”
When we were within a few blocks of the Key West Apartments, I said, “We’re all nuts.”
“What is it now, Donald?” Bertha Cool asked.
“Those cigarette stubs in Evaline Harris’s apartment. One of them had lipstick on. One of them didn’t. Police jumped at the conclusion that that meant a man had been in the room. It doesn’t mean any such thing.”
“Why not?”
I said, “She’d been out late the night before. She was sleeping late. She was still asleep when someone gave her door a buzz.”
“What makes you think so?”
“The paper under the door.”
“I see. Go ahead.”
I said, “You don’t keep lipstick on when you go to bed, do you?”
“No.”
“Neither did Evaline Harris. She removed her makeup and got into bed. Her visitor came before she had a chance to put any make-up on. They sat on the bed and talked. Her visitor was a woman. It was the caller’s cigarette stub that had the lipstick on it.”
The cab driver pulled into the kerb in front of the Key West Apartments. “Want me to wait?” he asked.
I said, “No,” and handed him a dollar.
Bertha Cool was staring at me with steady, wide-eyed intentness.
I said, “You know what that means.”
Bertha Cool nodded.
“All right. Let’s go.”
She pulled herself out of the cab. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the detectives parked just behind the agency car keeping the place under surveillance. Bertha saw him too, but didn’t even bother to signal him.
As I held the door open for Bertha Cool, I said, “Keep the clerk busy for a minute.”
Bertha nodded and moved over to the desk. The clerk came forward to greet her. I walked past him to say in a low voice to Frieda Tarbing, “Didn’t she call?”