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“Donald,” he said, with such an intensity of hatred his voice was actually so low as to be all but inaudible, “for a double cross like this I could break every bone in your body.”

I said, “You’ve got one way of checking this story. You’ve got about twenty minutes left in which to do it. That’s to get Horace B. Catlin in here and—”

Lieutenant Sheldon spun the dial on the phone. A couple of uniformed men were in the office before one would have thought it was possible to get a connection. He said, “Keep these guys where nobody can see them. I don’t
give a damn who it is. Don’t let
anybody
see them. Don’t let them talk with anyone in the department. Don’t let them talk with any lawyers. Don’t let them talk with anyone outside the department. Don’t let them get to a telephone. Sew them up. Keep them right here.”

Lieutenant Sheldon went out of the office like a jet plane taking off on a trial run.

Billings opened his eyes and looked at me. Slowly he reached out and shook hands with me.

He didn’t say a word.

I said, “
Don’t
tell them what it was Bishop had on your son, and—”

“Shut up,” one of the officers said. “The lieutenant said you weren’t to talk to anyone.”

“Well, that didn’t mean we couldn’t talk with each other.”

“That ain’t the way I understood it. Shut up.”

Billings started to say something. One of the cops moved over.

“You boys can get yourselves pretty badly hurt,” he said, “by sticking your necks out.”

We sat there in silence.

It was a long thirty minutes. I guessed I looked at my watch fifty times, but Billings just sat there motionless, wooden-faced.

Then Lieutenant Sheldon came in. His face looked like the face of a ten-year-old kid on Christmas morning. I looked at it and let out a long-drawn sigh of relief.

“Donald,” he said, “run over that line again so I can get the straight of it. The captain’s waiting and the chief is in his office. You two mugs get the hell out of here.”

The uniformed men withdrew.

I ran over it once more for Lieutenant Sheldon’s benefit.

“How did you spot Catlin?”

“I knew there must be some member of the yachting-
club who was completely in the power of the man who was managing The Green Door. Such a man must be a plunger who had got in so deep he had to follow instructions.

“I simply got the caretaker at the yacht club to keep a watch on The Green Door. When a member of the club went in, I figured he was my man.

“I followed him in. When I realized he wasn’t playing at any of the tables but was undoubtedly closeted with the manager, I felt certain I had the answer I wanted.”

“Have a cigar,” Lieutenant Sheldon said to me. “Have another one. Here, Billings, have a cigar. We’re awfully sorry we had to inconvenience you, sir, but you understand how it is. You fellows wait here. Don’t try to go out. There’ll be a guard in the corridor. Just sit here and don’t talk to anybody. Donald, you’re smart enough to keep your mouth shut. See that Billings keeps his shut.
Don’t see any reporters. Don’t try to use the phone.
We may be able to do something for you guys.”

Lieutenant Sheldon spun the dial on the telephone and when he had an answer said, “I’m coming right up, Captain. Sorry to keep you waiting. There was one other angle I had to check on. I’ll be right in.”

He dashed out of the office.

I turned to Billings. “What was it Bishop had on your son?” I asked.

He said, “Honestly, Lam, I didn’t know until a week ago. I prefer not to discuss it.”

“You’d better tell me.”

“I’ll be damned if I do.”

I said, “Your son is a tall, rangy lad.”

He nodded.

“Play any basketball in college?”

“Yes.”

“He was on the college team?”

“Yes.”

I said, “Bishop was a gambler who made book on college games.”

The banker’s face suddenly twisted. He began to cry. It was something to watch, the spectacle of a hard man whose tear ducts had all dried up twisting his face into a contortion of grief.

I got up and went to a window, turning my back. A few minutes later, when the sobbing had stopped, I went back and sat down.

For a long while neither one of us said anything.

After a while I said, “When you tell your story to Sheldon tell him your boy was mixed up in a scandal over a girl.”

“That wouldn’t be a powerful enough motive,” Billings said. “I’ve been thinking of that.”

“Tell him the girl died as the result of a criminal operation.”

Billings thought that over for a moment, then nodded thoughtfully. “Donald,” he said, “if you can get the police to adopt your story as the official version of what happened, you’re going to be very handsomely rewarded,
very
handsomely rewarded.”

I’d been associating with Bertha long enough so I looked him straight in the eyes and said, “We would expect that, Mr. Billings. We don’t work for nothing, you know.”

“You don’t have to,” he said.

That covered all the conversation. There wasn’t anything more to be said.

We sat there and waited and waited.

After a couple of hours an officer came in with sandwiches and a pot of coffee. He said, “The lieutenant wanted me to tell you to make yourselves comfortable. He said not to do any talking.”

We had the coffee and sandwiches. About an hour later Lieutenant Sheldon came in, closed the door, pulled up
his chair, and sat clown close to Billings.

“Mr. Billings,” he said, “you’re an important man in San Francisco, and we want you to know that the police recognize your importance. We try to give the important citizens a break whenever we can.”

“Thank you,” Billings said.

“Now, then, Bishop had something on your son. Would you mind telling us what it was?”

“It was over a girl,” Billings said.

Lieutenant Sheldon merely grinned.

“The girl had an operation and died.”

The grin came off Sheldon’s face. He thought that over for some little time.

“All right, Mr. Billings,” he said, “I think we can keep the blackmail angle out of it if you’ll co-operate with us.”

“If you’ll keep that angle out of it,” Billings said, “I’ll — I’ll do anything, anything in the world.”

“All right,” Sheldon said. “There’s only one thing you need to do.”

“What’s that?”

“Protect us in our efforts to protect you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t do any talking. These newspaper men are pretty damned smart. They’ll cross-examine you if you ever give them the ghost of a chance. They’ll question you and then check up on the answers. They’ll get you cornered and—”

“You don’t want me to give them anything, is that it?” Billings interrupted.

“For your own good,” the lieutenant hastened to interpose. “Mind you, we’re trying to give you a break. There’s only one possible way we can keep this blackmail angle out of it.”

“I’ll keep quiet,” Billings said.

“You see,” Sheldon said, beaming, “if you co-operate
with the police, they’ll co-operate with you.”

I turned to Sheldon and said, “One thing you could do for me, Lieutenant.”

“Anything, Donald, anything you want. The whole damn city is yours. Just anything you want.”

I said, “In giving the story to the newspapers you could emphasize the fact that George Bishop had struck it rich in that mine.”

He looked at me and grinned. “Bless your soul, Donald,” he said. “The story is in print already. The rich gold mine is a smash hit. It’s dramatic. I’ve talked to so damn many reporters I’m hoarse. Now, Donald,
you’ll
That’s the way you want it, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

He came over and clapped his hand on my shoulder so that it all but knocked the breath out of me.

“Donald,” he said, “you’re a smart boy. You’re going places. Believe me, you haven’t done yourself a damn bit of harm on
this
case. Anything you want in San Francisco you can get, and that’s something that not many private agencies can say — particularly if they have headquarters in Los Angeles.”

He laughed at that one.

“How about me?” Billings asked. “And what about my boy? Are we free to—”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Sheldon said. “We’ve been so damned busy. We got your chauffeur up out of bed, Mr. Billings, and your limousine is waiting right out at the front door. Now, tere’ll be a lot of newspaper reporters taking flashlights when you get in the car. They’ll ask you a lot of questions. If you just say, ‘No comment,’ it will help
a lot. We don’t want to get at cross-purposes. If you want to keep that blackmail angle out of the papers it would be a lot better to let me do
all
the talking.”

“There isn’t anything I want to talk about,” Billings said.

“Well, that’s all there is to it,” Sheldon said, and grabbed Billings’s hand in an ecstasy of cordiality.

He escorted Billings to the door, held it open, and then let his thick arm bar my exit.

He said, “You’d better let Mr. Billings go out alone, Donald. His son will join him down there at the car and there’ll be a lot of photographers. It might be better if
you
didn’t have
your
picture taken in the group. You know how it is. You fellows can work a lot better if people don’t know anything at all about you.”

“That’s me,” I told him, “a passion for anonymity.”

Sheldon said to Billings, “And you’d better see this fellow gets a damn good fee, Mr. Billings. Believe me, he’s been a lot of help to us in this case and a lot of help to you.”

“Don’t worry,” Billings said. “I wasn’t born yesterday.”

The door closed.

“Isn’t there a back way out of here?” I asked Sheldon.

He clapped me on the back so hard that I had a job catching my breath.

“Donald, it’s a pleasure to co-operate with a private detective who
really
knows his way around.
Anything
we can do for you at
any
time we’re only too glad to do,
anything
at all. Come on out, right this way.”

Daylight was just breaking as he eased me out through the ambulance entrance in the back. A police car took me to my hotel.

I walked into the office.

The receptionist looked up, gave a start as though she’d seen a ghost, and put a finger over her lips, motioning for silence. She jerked her thumb toward Bertha Cool’s office.

I moved over to the desk. “What’s the matter? Bertha on the warpath?”

“Bertha wanted to be notified as soon as you came in.”

“Was that the way she expressed it?”

“Not exactly.”

“How did she express it?”

“Bertha said, ‘If that slimy little worm has nerve enough to stick his nose in the door, you call me and I’ll throw him out myself. The partnership’s dissolved.’ž”

“Nice of her,” I said. “Give her a ring. Tell her I just came in, and am in my private office.”

I moved over to my office door.

The gilt letters reading
Donald Lam
on the frosted glass had been crudely and violently scratched off. I figured Bertha had gone to work with the nearest safetyrazor blade, nicking it in the process.

Elsie Brand looked up at me with wide-eyed incredulity. “Donald,” she said, “don’t, don’t come here! Go see a lawyer and have him — My God, Donald, there’s going to be a scene.”

I took a cashier’s check from my pocket and said, “I wanted to repay the money you sent me, Elsie.”

“That’s all right, Donald, that’s all right. Don’t let Bertha know I sent it. Donald, what’s this? This is for thirteen — thirteen — Donald, this is for
thirteen thousand dollars!
”

“That’s right.”

“A cashier’s check,” she said.

“That’s right. Billings’s bank.”

“But what — But what—”

“I invested the money you sent in mining stock,” I said. “The Skyhook Mining and Development Syndicate, a nice company. It looked like a good buy, and after we had the stock bought, it went up like a skyrocket. I sold out to a syndicate that’s taking over the whole mine.”

“Donald, you mean my three hundred and fifty — Donald, I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to,” I said, “Just cash the check and—”

It felt as though an earthquake were rocking the office building on its foundations. Somewhere in the outer office a chair tipped over, a desk was shoved to one side and slammed against the partition as though it had been hurled by some giant hand, the door almost ripped off its hinges, and Bertha Cool stood there on the threshold, her eyes glittering, her voice raised so that it was audible all over the office, and well out into the corridor.

“You double-crossing, pint-sized barnacle of frustration! You’ve got a crust to come in here. Why, you’ve got no more right here than a moth in a clothes closet. You little two-bit, skinny-necked, flat-chested, dimplewaisted, beetle-browed, double-crossing bastard—

“What a master mind
you
turned out to be!

“After Bertha had five hundred dollars safely tucked away
you
went up to San Francisco and stuck your peanut brain into the thing!
You
pushed
your
nose into the business and what happened? They stopped payment on that check! You and your big mouth! You and your master mind!

“Then you get our clients arrested for murder. Now we’re listed as blackmailers in San Francisco. And the police want you. There’s a pickup order out for you. Think of that! A pickup for a Los Angeles private detective, a partner of mine. I picked you out of the gutter. I took you
in here and gave you a partnership. Why, you — Fry me for an oyster!”

She turned around and yelled over her shoulder to the girl at the telephone desk, “Get police headquarters on the line and tell them Donald Lam is waiting for his steel bracelets. Tell them the master mind of the whole damn detective profession is back here, waiting.”

She put her hands on her hips, her elbows thrust far out, her jaw pushed forward like a bulldog.

I said, “You’ll have to sign here, Bertha,” and scaled a card across the desk at her.

She didn’t even look down at the card. “Sign my fanny!” she said. “Before I sign anything for you it’ll take an order from the Supreme Court.