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I shrugged my shoulders. “You’ve got the money. What more do you want?”

Bertha said, “Wait a minute, lover. This may not be so good.”

I said, “What’s wrong about it?”

“If there’s anything phony about it, that bastard paid out eight hundred dollars just for the privilege of having us fronting for an alibi that could be phony as hell.”

“Well,” I told her, “you said you didn’t mind being played for a sucker at four hundred dollars a day. You’d better put two hundred dollars into a sinking fund.”

“What for?”

“To buy a bail bond with,” I said, and went out.

I turned my car into the driveway on the Sepulveda Motor Court.

The manager looked up as I entered the office. Her eyes became angry. “What kind of a shenanigan were you trying to work on me?”

“Nothing,” I said.

She said, “You rent a double cottage and are in there for about fifteen minutes. If it was going to be something like that, why didn’t you have the decency to at least tell me when you were pulling out so I could have rented the apartment last night?”

“I didn’t want you to rent it. I paid you enough for it, didn’t I?”

“That’s neither here nor there. If you weren’t going to use it—”

I said, “Let’s quit beating around the bush and suppose you tell me what you know about the people who were in there Tuesday night.”

“Suppose I don’t. I don’t discuss my guests.”

“It
might
save you some unpleasant publicity.”

She looked up at me and then said, thoughtfully, “So that’s what it is. It’s a wonder I didn’t realize it before.”

“That’s what it is.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to see the registration for Tuesday night, and I want to talk with you.”

“Is this the law?”

I shook my head.

She started drawing a red, lacquered fingernail across a sheet of letter paper on the desk, then carefully studying the indentation marks the nail had made. Apparently that was the most absorbing thing to do that she had found all day.

I stood there and waited.

Abruptly, she looked up. “Private?”

I nodded.

“What are you after?”

“I want to know who stayed there Tuesday.”

“Why?”

I smiled at her.

She said, “I don’t give out information like that. Running an auto court is a business in itself.”

“Sure it is.”

“I’d have to know why you wanted to know.”

I said, “My business is confidential, too.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

She went back to tracing patterns with the point of her
fingernail over the paper.

Abruptly she asked, “Could you keep me out of it?”

I said, “You live here. We live here. I wouldn’t come out to see you this way if I was going to give you a double cross. I’d get the information some other way.”

“How?”

“Having a friendly newspaper reporter or police officer come out.”

She said, “I wouldn’t like that.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

She opened a drawer in the desk, reached in, and after a moment’s search pulled out a card.

It was a registration card. It showed that the cabin had been rented Tuesday night to Ferguson L. Hoy and party, 551 Prince Street, Oakland, and the rental had been thirteen dollars.

I took a small copying camera from my briefcase, set it up on a tripod, turned on an electric light so there would be good illumination, and took a couple of pictures.

“That all?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Now I want to know something about Mr. Hoy.”

She said, “I can’t help you much there. He was just another man, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Young?”

“I wouldn’t remember. Come to think of it, it was one of the women with him who came in. She got a registration card and took it out to him. He was in the car. He signed it and sent back the thirteen dollars in exact change.”

“How many people in the party?”

“Four — two couples.”

“You didn’t see this man well enough to remember him if you saw him again?”

“That’s hard to say. I don’t think so.”

I said, “I was out here yesterday about eleven o’clock.”

She nodded.

I said, “Someone had been in that cabin shortly before I arrived there.”

She shook her head. “That cabin had all been cleaned up and—”

“Someone had been in there shortly before I arrived,” I interrupted.

“I don’t think so.”

“Someone who was smoking a cigarette,” I said.

She shook her head.

“Do the maids smoke?”

“No.”

I said, “There were cigarette ashes on the top of the dresser; just a few that had spilled there.”

“I don’t think — Well, I don’t know. The maids are supposed to wipe off the tops of the dressers when they clean up.”

“I think this had been wiped. The cabin was slick as a pin.”

I took my billfold from my pocket and held it so she could see it.

“Let’s get one of the maids,” I said.

The manager stepped to the door of the office. “They’re down there at the far end. I don’t want to go away where I can’t hear the telephone. If you want to go down to the far end you might ask one of them to step in here. I’d like to have you question her in front of me. We can take them one at a time.”

“Okay by me,” I told her.

I walked out. She started to move even before I was out of the door.

The colored maid was a good-looking, intelligent young woman who seemed to have a good deal of savvy.

“The manager wants to see you,” I told her.

She gave me a searching look and said, “What’s the matter? Is something missing?”

“She didn’t tell me. Just that she wanted to see you.”

“You aren’t accusing me of anything?”

I shook my head.

“You were here yesterday in Number Five?”

“That’s right, I was,” I told her. “And there’s no complaint, but the manager would like to talk to you for a minute.”

I turned and started to the manager’s office and after a moment the girl followed me.

“Florence,” the manager said, when she entered the room, “was anyone in the cabin before this man was in there yesterday? Number Five?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I sat over on a corner of the desk and let one hand move over as though searching for something I could hold on to as a brace. The telephone was there. I let my fingers close around the receiver. It was still warm. The manager had telephoned someone while I’d been down at the far end of the court.

I said to the maid, “Wait a minute. I don’t mean someone who stayed there. I mean someone who came in just for a minute, probably someone who said he’d forgotten something and—”

“Oh,” she said, “that was the gentleman who stayed there Wednesday night. He’d forgotten something. He wouldn’t tell me what it was. Just said to let him in and he’d get it. I told him I didn’t think there was anything in there, but he handed me five dollars and — Lord, I hope I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“That’s all right,” I told her. “Now, I want you to
describe him. Was he a tall drink of water, about twentyfive or twenty-six, wearing a sport coat and slacks? He—”

“Lord, no,” she interrupted. “This gentleman was wearin’ a leather coat and a cap with lots of gold braid.”

“Military?” I asked.

“Like the swells on yachts,” she said. “But he sure was tall and string-bean-like.”

“He gave you five dollars?”

“That’s right.”

I gave her five dollars and said, “There’s the mate to it. How long was he in there?”

“He wasn’t in there more’n long enough to just turn around and come back. I heard a couple of drawers opening and closing and then he was right out all covered with grins. I asked him if he’d found what he’d lost and he laughed and said after he got in there he remembered he’d put it in the pocket of his other suit and packed his suit in the suitcase. He said he was kind of absent-minded, and jumped in his car and drove off.”

“Do you know he stayed there in that cabin Wednesday night?”

“Of course not. I go off work at four-thirty in the afternoon. But he
said
he’d stayed there Wednesday.”

The manager looked at me. “Anything else?”

I turned to the maid. “You’d know this man if you saw him again?”

“I’ll tell the world I’d know him, just like I’d know you. Five-dollar tips don’t grow on bushes on this job.”

I went back to the agency heap, drove to the nearest pay station, telephoned Elsie Brand, and said, “Elsie, I won’t be around for the weekend. I’m going to be in San Francisco. Tell Bertha, in case she wants to know, that whatever we’re working on is going to be in San Francisco.”

“Why?” she asked.

I said, “Because a six-foot string bean with a yachtsman’s cap has been down here in our honeymoon cottage.”

“
Some
honeymoon,” she retorted. “Give Sylvia my love.”

Millicent Rhodes was engraved on a strip of cardboard which had been neatly cut from a visiting-card and inserted in the holder opposite the push button on Millie’s apartment out on Geary Street.

I pressed the bell button.

Nothing happened.

I pressed it again for a long ring, then three short rings.

The speaking-tube made noise. A girl’s voice said protestingly, “It’s Saturday morning. Go away.”

“I have to see you,” I said. “And it isn’t morning. It’s afternoon.”

“Who are you?”

“A friend of Sylvia’s — Donald Lam.”

She didn’t give assent specifically, but after a second or two the electric buzzer on the door signified that she had pushed the button which unlatched the door for me.

Millicent had apartment 342. The elevator was at the far end of the hall, but, since the oblong of light showed the cage was waiting at the ground floor, I walked back to it. It took the swaying, wheezy cage almost as long to get to the third floor as it would have taken me to walk up the stairs.

Millie Rhodes opened the door almost as soon as my finger touched the button.

“I hope this is important,” she said coldly.

“It is.”

“All right, come in. This is Saturday. I don’t have to work so I take it easy. It’s probably the one symbol of economic freedom I can afford.”

I looked at her in surprise.

She was a good-looking, well-formed redhead, despite the fact that there was no make-up on her face or lips. She had evidently tumbled out of bed in response to my ring and had simply thrown a silk wrap around her to answer the door. It was quite apparent she was easy on the eyes despite the attire.

“You’re different from the description I had of you,” I said.

She made a little grimace. “Give a girl a break. Let me get some make-up on and some clothes and—”

“I meant it the other way.”

“What other way?”

“You’re a lot more attractive than the description.”

“I guess I’ll have to speak to Sylvia,” she said grimly.

“Not Sylvia,” I told her. “Someone else. I gathered you were a demon chaperon.”

She looked at me with a puzzled frown for a moment, then said, “I don’t get it. Find yourself a chair and sit down. You’ve caught me pretty much unawares, but any friend of Sylvia’s is a friend of mine.”

“I waited as late as I could,” I said. “I was hoping you’d be up and I wouldn’t have to disturb you.”

“Skip it. It’s done now. Anyhow, I’m not working this week. The Saturday sleep is just a deeply entrenched habit.”

She looked as though she needed a cigarette. I offered her one, and she took it eagerly. She tapped the end of it gently on the edge of a little table, leaned forward for my light, settled back on the edge of the bed, then, after a moment, propped her back up with pillows, kicked her feet up, and said, “I suppose I
should
have kept you
waiting while I made the bed, put it up out of sight, and spread the chairs around, but I decided you could take me as I am. Now, what about Sylvia?”

I said, “Sylvia told me an interesting story.”

“Sometimes she does.”

“I wanted it verified.”

“If Sylvia told it to you, it’s verified.”

I said, “It involves a trip you took to Hollywood, a short vacation trip.”

She suddenly threw back her head and laughed. “
Now
You should have seen him trying to be passionate one minute and drowsy the next. I thought I’d laugh right in his face.”

“I understand he finally passed out.”

“Like a light. We parked him on the davenport, covered him up, tucked him in, and sought our virtuous couches.”

“I trust you made him comfortable.”

“Oh, sure.”

I said, “Sylvia said you took his shoes off. Sylvia made the davenport into a bed, and then you tucked him in.”

She hesitated a moment, then said, “That’s right.”

“You put his shoes under the bed, hung his coat over the back of a chair, and left him with his pants on.”

“That’s right.”

“A warm night?”

“Fairly warm. We covered him.”

“You don’t know his name?”

“Heavens, no. Not his last name. We called him John. You said your name was Donald?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, why talk so much about what happened down there in Los Angeles, Donald? What do you want?”

“To talk about what happened in Los Angeles.”

“Why?”

“I’m a detective.”

“A what?”

“A detective.”

“You don’t look it.”

“Private,” I said.

“Say, maybe I’m talking too much.”

“Not enough.”

“How long have you known Sylvia? I don’t remember hearing her speak of you.”

“I met her yesterday afternoon, and went to dinner with her.”

“That’s the first time you met her?”

“That’s right.”

“Say, what are you getting at, anyway? What are you after?”

“Information.”

“Well,” she said, “I guess you’ve got it, and your gain is my loss.”

“How do you mean?”

“My beauty sleep. For whom are you working?”

“The man who was with you.”

“Don’t be silly. He doesn’t know who we are. He couldn’t find us in a hundred years. We checked out of the motor court the next morning so he couldn’t. I was afraid he might get suspicious and resentful.”