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“Sort of.”

“I suppose you know lots of people up here.”

I shook my head.

“It must be lonesome to come into a strange town.”

Again I nodded.

She suddenly put down her things and said, “My heavens, there’s one phone call I have to make. I almost forgot it.”

She dashed off to a phone booth; dialed a number, and talked for three or four minutes. Twice, she looked at me while she was talking, as though she were describing me over the phone.

Then she came back, sat down, and said, “Gosh, I hope you’ll pardon me.”

“Sure, it’s all right. I don’t have anything to do. Just so you’re not kept here too late.”

By that time the shop had closed up, the curtains had been pulled, and the barbers were getting ready to go home.

“Oh, that’s all right,” she told me. “I’m not in a hurry any longer. That phone call — My dinner date blew up.”

“Too bad,” I told her.

She worked in silence for a while longer, then said, “Darned if it wasn’t. I had my heart all set on going out to dinner and there isn’t a thing to eat in my apartment.”

“Why not go out with me?”

“Oh, I’d love to. I — Well, now, wait a minute. There’s a lot about you I don’t know.”

“The name,” I said, “is Donald. Donald Lam.”

“I’m Sylvia Tucker.”

“Hello, Sylvia.”

“Hello, Donald. Are you nice?”

“I try to be.”

“I’m not a gold digger, but I like thick and juicy steaks and I know where to get them. They come high.”

“That’s okay.”

“I wouldn’t want you to get any funny ideas.”

“I haven’t.”

“After all, you know, this is — Well, you must think it’s an easy pickup.”

“I hadn’t thought of it as being a pickup,” I said. “I have to eat somewhere, you have to eat somewhere. Why be lonely?”

“That’s a nice way of looking at it. I think you’re a square shooter.”

“I try to be.”

She said, “Ordinarily I don’t pick up. I just have a few friends, but — Well, I don’t know, you’re different, somehow. You don’t seem to be on the make the way most of them are.”

“Is
that
a compliment?”

“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way. You’re not — Oh, you know what I meant.” She laughed. “I bet you have a terrific line, but — Well, what I meant was that you weren’t like so many of them. You don’t take it for granted that a girl will date just because she happens to be working at a job of this kind.”

I didn’t say anything.

She worked in silence for a while, then said, “I certainly had one funny experience on the last pickup.”

“Yes?”

“Uh-huh,” she said brightly. “My girlfriend was with me and the fellow was certainly amorous. I had some sleeping-medicine the doctor had given me, and without my knowing anything about it she slipped one of the capsules in his drink. He went out like a light.”

“Why did your girlfriend do that? Didn’t she like the guy? Or did she feel that your virtue had to be protected at all hazards?”

“Not at
all
She’s a funny girl; a cute little redhead. And I don’t know, perhaps she was a little peeved this fellow wasn’t falling
for her. You never can tell about women. He was a nice boy, too.”

“Then what happened?”

“Oh, nothing. I just mentioned it.”

I said, “Uh-huh,” and kept quiet.

She finished with my hands, doing a lot of thinking.

“I’ll have to run up to my apartment,” she said.

“Okay. You want me to come along or shall I pick you up there later?”

“Why don’t you come on up?”

“Promise you won’t give me any sleeping-pills?”

“I’ll promise.” She laughed. “Millie won’t be there. She’s the one that did the dirty work.”

“Must have been quite a joke.”

“It was. I was half mad at the time because I liked this boy, but honestly, Donald, it certainly
was
funny!

“He was very much the man about town and the daddy of the party. He was just beginning to get really interested in me when this drink took effect. Then he started to make me a proposition in a sleepy sort of a way and went by-by right in the middle of it.

“Millie and I put him to bed on the couch and he was dead to the world until morning when we wakened him for breakfast. You should have
seen
the expression on his face when he woke up and realized the night and the opportunity had both completely passed.”

She threw back her head and laughed.

“I’ll bet it was funny,” I said. “Where did all this take place?”

“In an auto court. Millie is never one to overlook a golden opportunity. She asked this fellow about where the good auto courts were, so of course he volunteered to take us out and show us, and that meant he registered, and
that
meant he paid the money.”

“Well, at least he got a good night’s sleep for his invest-
ment,” I commented.

That made her laugh again. “Come on, Donald. I’ll take you up to my apartment and buy you a drink. Then we’ll go out.”

“Do we walk or take a cab?”

“It’s about six blocks,” she said.

“We take a cab,” I told her.

We walked out to the curb. “While we’re waiting for a cab,” I asked casually, “where was this court?”

“Out on Sepulveda.”

“When was all this?”

“Why, let’s see — Why, Donald, that was Tuesday night.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why, of course. Why, what difference would it make?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I was just wondering about your vacation.”

“Well, that’s the way it was.”

A taxi pulled in to the curb. Sylvia gave him the address and we settled back in the cushions. At that time of night running six blocks involved a lot of stopping and starting.

“The three of you in the one cabin?”

“Uh-huh. It was a nice double cabin.”

“You had one room, Millie had the other, and you parked this boy on the couch?”

“That’s right. Sort of a davenport.”

“Wouldn’t that make up into a bed also? That’s usually the way in those motor courts.”

“Oh, I guess so, but we didn’t bother. We just parked him, took his shoes off, and I donated a pillow from my bed.”

“Any blankets?”

“Don’t be silly! We put his overcoat over his feet and locked our doors. If he woke up and got cold he could call a taxi and go home.”

“Where,” I asked, “do
we
eat?”

She said, “I know a nice restaurant. It’s out a ways, but—”

“That’s all right,” I told her. “Only I have a reservation on the ten o’clock plane.”

“Tonight, Donald?” she asked, with keen disappointment in her voice.

I nodded.

She snuggled over close to me and slipped her hand into mine.

“Oh, well,” she said. “You’ll have plenty of time — to eat and catch your plane.”

Elsie Brand poked her head into my private office and said, “Bertha has the client in her office. He’s asking if there’s anything new.”

“Tell Bertha I’ll be right in.”

She looked at me curiously. “Do any good in San Francisco last night?”

“Quite a bit.”

“Nice trip?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Find Sylvia?”

“Yes.”

“How was she?”

“Up to specifications.”

“Oh.”

Elsie Brand retired to her office and pulled the door shut.

I waited for a few minutes, then went into Bertha Cool’s office.

John Carver Billings the Second seemed to be some-
what excited. He was sitting erect in the chair, smoking a cigarette.

Bertha’s eyes glittered as she looked at me. “Are you getting anywhere?”

I said, “The name of the girl who was in the motor court is Sylvia Tucker. She’s employed as a manicurist in a Post Street barbershop in San Francisco. She has an apartment about six blocks from where she works. She’s a cute babe. She remembers the occasion perfectly and is about half sore at her girlfriend for slipping the sodium amytal in Billings’s drink.”

“Do you mean you’ve found her? You’ve got all that information?” Billings exclaimed, jumping up out of the chair.

“Uh-huh.”

Bertha beamed at me. “Fry me for an oyster!” she said affectionately.

“Well, now
that’s
Billings said. “You’re sure this is the girl?”

I said, “She told me all about going to Los Angeles on a vacation. How she and her friend, Millie, went out to try and track down some famous movie stars at a night club, how they met you and Millie got you to ‘recommend’ a motor court, and then let you register so you’d be stuck with the bill.

“Sylvia had really fallen for you and was a little bit peeved when Millie put the sleeping-medicine in your drink, terminating the romantic possibilities and destroying your wolfish tendencies for the balance of the night.”

“She told you all that?”

“All of it.”

John Carver Billings the Second jumped up and grabbed my hand, pumping my arm up and down. He clapped me on the back, turned to Bertha, and said, “Now, that’s the kind of work I like! That’s
real
detective work!”

Bertha unscrewed the cap, and handed him her fountain pen.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “What? Oh.”

He laughed, sat down, and made out a check for five hundred dollars.

Bertha beamed as though she wanted to kiss both of us.

I handed Carver a neatly typed report. “This tells how we found Sylvia Tucker,” I said, “what her story is, where she works, and her home address. It also has the story she told me about what happened last Tuesday evening. You can get her to make an affidavit if it’s important.”

“You didn’t ask her about making an affidavit, did you?”

“No, I just got the information. I didn’t even let her know that I was trying to get that information. I just drew it out of her.”

“That’s swell. I’m glad you didn’t tell her it was important.”

“We figure our job is to get information, not to give it.”

“Capital!” he exclaimed. “Lam, you’re all right. That’s fine.”

He folded the report, put it in the pocket of his sport coat, shook hands once more all around, and walked out.

Bertha beamed at me. “You’re crazy as a loon,” she said. “And sometimes I could kill you, but you sure as hell do bring home the bacon.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That was fast work, Donald, lover. How did you do it?”

I said, “I followed the paper trail.”

“What do you mean, the paper trail?”

“I followed the clues that had very carefully been left for me to follow.”

Bertha started to say something, then suddenly blinked her hard little glittering eyes and said, “Say that again, Donald.”

I said, “I followed the clues that had been carefully left
for me to follow.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“Just what I said.”

“Who left the clues?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Are you trying to get temperamental with me now?”

“No, not at all,” I said, “but why not think it out for yourself?”

“How come?”

I said, “Well, take the story of John Carver Billings the Second. You’ll remember he told about picking up these two girls who had just arrived in Hollywood on their vacation.”

“Yes.”

I said, “That was Tuesday night. He came to see us yesterday. Today is Saturday.”

“Well?”

“I found a label off a prescription box in the drawer in the motor court. I went to San Francisco and called on the girl. She said she’d just got back the night before and had gone to work yesterday morning.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?”

I said, “According to her story they left San Francisco Monday evening at five o’clock. They drove as far as Salinas, stayed there that night, then drove down to Hollywood the next day. They went directly to a cocktail parlor. Billings picked them up. They went to the motor court. That was Tuesday night. They checked out Wednesday morning and went to another motor court. They were there Wednesday night. Then, early Thursday morning, they left to return to San Francisco. They got to San Francisco late Thursday night and the girls started working again yesterday.”

“So what?”

“Hell of a vacation, wasn’t it?”

Bertha said, “Lots of people have to take short vacations. They can’t get away for longer periods.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Well, what’s wrong with that?” Bertha demanded.

I said, “Suppose you had four days that you could take as a vacation, and you wanted to go to Los Angeles; what would you do?”

“I’d go to Los Angeles,” Bertha said. “Dammit, come to the point.”

I said, “You’d arrange your vacation so it started on Monday or so it ended on Saturday, or both. You’d leave on Saturday morning — or Saturday noon — if you had to work Saturday morning. You’d have all Saturday afternoon and Sunday added to your vacation. You wouldn’t work Monday, then leave Monday night and get back Thursday night so you could go to work Friday.”

Bertha thought that over. “Slice me for an onion,” she said, half to herself.

“Moreover,” I said, “as soon as this girl had me spotted as a detective who was trying to pump her about that particular trip, I quit talking about it and pretended I wasn’t going to do any more talking. For a minute she got in a panic, being afraid she wasn’t going to collect the bonus that had been guaranteed to her for handing me that story. She must have thought I was a hell of a detective. She damn near had to ask me to take her out to dinner. She almost dragged me up to her apartment. She fell all over herself seeing that I got the proper information.”

“Well, you got it,” Bertha said, “and we got the money. What is there for us to worry about?”

“I hate to be played for a sucker.”

“We got three hundred bucks out of that bird when he came in yesterday morning. We got five hundred bucks out of him this morning. That’s eight hundred dollars for a two-day case. And if they want to play Big Bertha for a
sucker to the tune of four hundred bucks a day they can move right in.”

Bertha banged her jeweled hand down on the desk by way of emphasis.

“Okay by me,” I told her, got up and started for the door.

“Say,” Bertha said, as I had my hand on the knob, “do you suppose that whole damned alibi is faked, Donald?”