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“Oh, I see. Present participle. What do I do?”

I said, “You come with me while I register us in a motor court as husband and wife.”

“And then what?” she asked cautiously.

“Then,” I said, “we do detective work.”

“Will I need any baggage?”

“I’ll stop by my apartment and pick up a suitcase. That should be all we need.”

Elsie walked over to the coat closet, got her hat, and pulled the cover down on her typewriter.

As we left the office I said, “You might be looking this over,” and handed her the description of the two women which Bertha Cool had scrawled on the paper in her heavy-fisted writing.

Elsie studied the slip of paper on the way down in the elevator and said, “Evidently the man fell for Sylvia and hated Millie.”

“How did you know?”

“Good Lord, listen,” she said. “ž’Sylvia, attractive brunette with dark, lustrous eyes; sympathetic, intelligent, beautiful, five feet two, weight a hundred and twelve, swell figure, around twenty-three or twenty-four, fine dancer. Millie, redheaded, blue-eyed, snippy, smart, may be twenty-five or twenty-six, average height, fair figure.’ž”

I grinned. “Well, we’ll now try to find out how much information those women left behind in a motor court that’s been occupied three times since they were there.”

“Suppose the people who run it can tell us anything?”

“That’s why I want you along,” I said. “I want to find out whether it’s a careful motor court or whether it isn’t.”

“Thanks for the compliment.”

“Don’t mention it,” I told her.

I picked up the agency heap at the parking lot. We stopped at my apartment. Elsie sat in the car while I went up and threw a few things into a suitcase. As an afterthought I brought an overcoat along. There was a leather bag for cameras that could have been used by a woman, and I stuck that under my arm.

Elsie looked the collection over curiously. “Evidently,” she said, “we’re traveling light.”

I nodded.

We went out Sepulveda and I drove along slowly, studying the motor courts. At this hour they all had signs in front announcing vacancies.

“That’s the one we want,” I said to Elsie. “The one over there on the right.”

We turned in.

The doors were wide open on most of the units. A Negro maid was hauling out linen. A rather attractive girl wearing a cap and apron was also working around the place. It took five minutes to locate the manager.

She was a big woman about Bertha’s build, except that where Bertha was as hard as a roll of barbed wire, this
woman was soft, all except her eyes. They were Bertha’s eyes.

“How about accommodations?” I asked.

She looked past me to where Elsie was sitting in the car trying to look virtuous.

“For how long?”

“All day and all night.”

She showed surprise.

“My wife and I,” I explained, “have been driving all night. We want a rest and then we want to look around the city and pull out early tomorrow morning.”

“I have a nice single at five dollars.”

“How about Cabin Number Five over there in the corner?”

“That’s a double. You wouldn’t want that.”

“How much is it?”

“Eleven dollars.”

“I’ll take it.”

“No, you won’t.”

I raised my eyebrows.

She said, “I don’t think you’ll take anything.”

“Why not?”

She said, “Listen, I’m running a high-class place. If you know this girl well enough to go into a single cabin as man and wife and you have the money to pay for it, that’s okay by me. If you’re selling her on the idea that you’re getting a double cabin I know what
that
means.”

I said, “There won’t be any noise, there won’t be any rough stuff. You can have twenty bucks for Number Five. Is it a deal?”

She looked Elsie over. “Who is she?” she asked.

I said, “She’s my secretary. I’m not going to make any passes. If I did, I wouldn’t get rough. We’re traveling on a business trip and—”

“Okay,” she said. “Twenty bucks.”

I handed her the twenty, got the key to the cabin, and drove the car into the garage.

We unlocked the door and walked in. It was a goodlooking double cabin, with a little sitting-room and two bedrooms, each with a shower and toilet.

“You going to get any information out of her?” Elsie asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “If she knew anything she wouldn’t tell. She isn’t the type that gabs, and she doesn’t want to have attention focused on the motor court.”

“It’s a nice place,” Elsie said, walking around and looking it over. “Clean as a pin and the furniture’s nice.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Now let’s get busy and try and find something that will give us an idea as to the identity of two women who had this cabin three nights ago.”

“Did I hear you say twenty dollars?” she asked.

“That’s right. She didn’t want to rent it at the regular price.”

“Bertha will certainly scream over that when she sees it on the expense account.”

I nodded, looking around the place.

“Isn’t this something of a wild-goose chase?” she asked.

“It’s all a wild-goose chase,” I told her. “Let’s start looking. We might even find the golden egg.”

We prowled the place and found nothing except a couple of bobby pins. Then when I pulled a bureau drawer all the way out I found a piece of paper that had slipped into a crack in the back of the drawer.

“What’s that?” Elsie asked.

I said, “That seems to be the gummed label that has slipped off a prescription box. It’s a San Francisco prescription made to Miss Sylvia Tucker. It says, ‘Take one capsule for sleeplessness. Do not repeat within four
hours,’ and it’s a prescription that can’t be refilled.”

“With the name of a San Francisco drugstore on it,” Elsie said.

“And,” I pointed out, “a prescription number and the name of a doctor.”

“And Sylvia from San Francisco is one of the women we want?”

“That’s right.”

“How fortunate,” Elsie said.

“How very, very, very fortunate,” I observed.

She looked at me.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that it’s very, very fortunate.”

“Well, what about it? The girl was here. She gave John Billings a little shot of sleepy-by medicine. When she did, the label came off the box with the prescription number on it.”

I said, “Sylvia was the girl he liked. It was the other one who gave him the by-by.”

“That’s what he thinks. John Carver Billings the Second may not be such a knockout as he thinks he is. Anyway, the other gal could have borrowed a capsule from Sylvia without her knowing it.”

I stood there, studying the label.

“What do we do now?” Elsie asked.

“Now,” I said, “we go back to the office. Then I take a plane to San Francisco.”

“This
was
a short honeymoon,” she told me. “Are you going to tell the manager she can have the apartment?”

“No. We’ll keep her guessing,” I said. “Come on, let’s go.”

I saw the puzzled eyes of the woman who managed the place looking at us as we drove out.

Back in the office I put through a phone call for a correspondent in San Francisco who checked with the drug-
store and had the information for me within an hour and twenty minutes.

Sylvia Tucker lived in the Truckee Apartments out on Post Street. The apartment number was 608, and the prescription had been for sodium amytal. She was employed as a manicurist in a barbershop on Post Street.

Elsie got me a plane reservation and I stopped in to tell Bertha I was headed for San Francisco.

“How are you doing, Donald, lover?” she asked with her best cooing manner.

“As well as was expected.”

“Well, what the hell does that mean? Are we going to get that five-hundred-dollar bonus?”

“Probably.”

“Well, don’t go running up a lot of expenses.”

“He’s paying them, isn’t he?”

“Sure. But if it’s going to be a long-drawn-out job, he’ll—”

“It isn’t going to be too long-drawn-out.”

“Don’t solve it
too
fast, Donald.”

“That’s why he offered the bonus. He didn’t want us stalling in order to get more per diems.”

“Who the hell said anything about stalling?”

“You didn’t.”

She glared at me.

“Did you look up John Carver Billings the First?”

“Now
that
was a swell idea of yours, Donald, dear,” she said. “I have to hand it to you for that one. It gives us background.”

“Who is he?”

“Some banking buzzard from San Francisco. President of half a dozen companies, fifty-two years old, a rich, eligible widower, commodore of a yachting club, lousy with dough. Does that mean anything to you?”

“It means a lot to me,” I told her. “It means the son came by it honestly.”

“The money?” she asked complacently.

“The sport coat,” I told her.

Bertha’s face darkened, then she laughed. “You have to have your smart crack, don’t you, Donald? But just remember, lover, that it takes money to make the wheels go round.”

“And while the wheels are going round and round,” I warned her, “be careful you don’t get a finger caught in the machinery.”

“Fry me for an oyster,” she blazed. “You’d think I was some simple, naïve amateur. You just keep your own nose clean, Donald Lam, and I’ll take care of mine. When Bertha reaches for anything she gets what she reaches for.
You’re
the one to be careful. You almost dropped a monkey wrench in those wheels that are now spinning around so nicely.”

And Bertha’s complacency puckered into a reproving frown.

“They’re spinning around like crazy,” I admitted. “Personally, I’d like to see what the machine is manufacturing.”

“You can roast me for a duck,” she snapped, “if you aren’t the most gift-horse-in-the-mouth-looking bastard I ever saw. I’ll tell you what the little wheels are manufacturing, Donald. It’s money!”

And Bertha once more gloated over the page of
Who’s Who in California
.

I eased out of the office and left her to her thoughts.

It was late afternoon when I disembarked at the San Francisco airport. I got into the barbershop on Post Street just before it was closing.

It didn’t take more than two seconds to pick out Sylvia. There were three manicurists in the place but Sylvia was the pick of the lot, and with the description I had of her it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

She was busy when I walked in, but when I asked her if she’d have time for one more before closing, she looked at the clock, nodded, and started making her fingers really fly over the nails of a big lug who glared at me resentfully.

I went over to the shoe-shining stand and let the boy work on my shoes while I was waiting.

The head barber came over to me. “You waiting for a manicure?”

“Right.”

“There’s a girl ready for you now.”

“I want Sylvia.”

“This other girl’s just as good — in fact a little better than Sylvia.”

“Thanks, I’ll wait.”

He went back to his chair.

“Sounds a little unfriendly to Sylvia,” I told the bootblack.

He grinned, glanced cautiously over his shoulder, said, “She’s sure in the doghouse.”

“What’s the matter?”

“They don’t pay me to gossip.”

“Perhaps they don’t, but I will.”

He thought that over, bent low over my shoes, said guardedly, “He’s jealous. He’s been making a big play for her. Tuesday she phoned she had a headache and couldn’t
work; then she never showed up again until this morning. He thinks she was out with a boyfriend. Don’t think she’s going to be here long.”

I slid two dollars down to him. “Thanks,” I said. “I was just curious, that’s all.”

The man Sylvia had been working on got up and put on his coat. Sylvia nodded to me. The boy finished my shoes, and I went over to Sylvia’s table.

The head barber kept his face averted.

With one hand in the bowl of warm, soapy water, I sat relaxing, letting Sylvia’s soft, competent fingers hold my other hand while she started filing my nails.

“Been here long?” I asked after a while.

“About a year.”

“Get any vacations on this job?”

“Oh, yes. I just got back from a short vacation.”

“Swell. Where’d you go?”

“Los Angeles.”

“Alone?”

“Fresh!”

“I was just asking.”

“I had a girlfriend with me. We had always wanted to take a look through Hollywood and see if we could see some of the movie stars in one of the night clubs.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“What stopped you?”

“We went, but we didn’t find the movie stars, that’s all.”

“There’s quite a few of them around and they have to eat, you know.”

“Not when we were eating, they didn’t.”

“How long were you there?”

“A couple of days. I just got back last night.”

“Go on the train?”

“No. My girlfriend has a car.”

I said, “This is Friday. Where were you Tuesday night?”

“That’s the night we got into Hollywood.”

“Suppose you tell me what happened Tuesday night.”

“And suppose I don’t?” she said, her eyes suddenly flashing.

I didn’t say anything more.

She worked over my hands. The silence became oppressive.

“I’m over twenty-one and my own boss,” she volunteered after a while. “I don’t have to account for the things I do.”

“Or the things you
don’t
do?” I asked.

She looked at me sharply. “Where are you from?”

“Los Angeles.”

“When did you get in?”

“Just now.”

“How did you come?”

“By plane.”

“What time did you arrive?”

“An hour ago.”

“You must have got off the plane and come directly here.”

“I did.”

“Why were you interested in what happened Tuesday night in Los Angeles?”

“Just making conversation.”

“Oh,” she said.

I didn’t say anything more.

She slowed down her pace and started marking time. Two or three times she looked at me curiously, started to say something, then caught herself and quit. After a while she said, “You up here on business?”