“What did he say to you? What did you talk about?

  “I didn’t talk with him. I saw him, but he didn’t see me.”

  “Where?”

  “Down in front of my apartment.”

  “When?”

  “Just as I’m telling you, at twenty minutes past two.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “What happened?”

  She said, “I was very close to the apartment when he came past in a taxicab. He got out of the cab and ran up the three steps to the street door and rang the bell of my apartment.”

  “Are you certain it was your apartment?”

  “Well, reasonably certain. I could see the position of his finger. I couldn’t see the exact button he was touching, but it was—yes, it must have been my bell he was ringing.”

  “And what happened after he found you weren’t home?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why? Didn’t he turn back and see you coming along the sidewalk just a step or two behind him?”

  “No.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He went in.”

  “You mean he entered the apartment house?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did he get in?”

  “Somebody in my apartment pushed the buzzer for him.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “Up to that time I’d thought Paul Nostrander had taken my purse so that I wouldn’t have any money, and so he could go through it and-well, see if there was anything in there, a diary, or perhaps a letter from you. or something of that sort.”

  I nodded, keeping my eyes on her. “And after you heard the buzzer sound?”

  “Then I knew why he’d really taken it. He’d gone up to my apartment, let himself in with my key, and was waiting up there.”

  “A delicate approach,” I said.

  “It wasn’t entirely that,” she said. “Of course that was part of it. The other part was that he d been accusing me all evening of being intimate with someone You see, the way I’d disappeared had made him feel that way. He’d advertised for me in the paper. A personal ad that had run for almost two years.”

  “I know. I saw it.”

  “Well, naturally, he thought I’d gone away with some man. I knew it was only a question of time until I’d run into him on the street somewhere, but I felt that the longer it was put off the more chance he’d have to fall in love with someone else and forget me. But he has that peculiar complex some men have—he only wants someone he can’t get. You know how some men are?”

  I nodded.

  “There he was,” she went on bitterly, “in my apartment, with his gun, and probably about two-thirds drunk, sitting there on the bed, waiting for me, and determined that he was going to find out whether anyone was sufficiently intimate with me to come to my apartment. He’d insisted that I’d promised you that if you’d go out without making any trouble, you could come back later, and—well, you know.”

  “And so,” I said, “Archibald C. Smith pressed the doorbell at twenty minutes past two—and walked right into the middle of that situation.”

  “Yes—he must have gone on up.”

  “And you think Archibald Smith thought you would be in your apartment at that hour of the night, and would answer the bell?”

  “Well, he certainly must have thought I’d be there, and the bell would get me up. It was reasonable to suppose that I’d at least pick up the telephone and ask who was there.”

  “Did you hear any shot?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Would you if one had been fired?”

  “I don’t think so, not the way it was muffled by the pillow.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I crossed the street. I tried to look up to the window of my apartment. I couldn’t see anything. The shade was drawn.”

  “Then what?”

  “I started walking back toward town.”

  “At what time?”

  “It must have been just before two-thirty. When I had reached the corner, Marilyn Winton drove by. She was in a car with two other people—a man and a woman.”

  “You know her?”

  “Oh, I know who she is, and we speak when we meet in the hall. Her apartment is almost directly across from mine.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “Went to one of the little hotels in the Quarter which isn’t too particular. I used an assumed name, because I thought Paul might try calling all the hotels.”

  “And then what?”

  “Shortly before nine 1 walked all the way down to the apartment. I wanted to get my purse, some of my toilet articles, grab a taxi, and go to work. There were a bunch of cars around the place, and a man who was standing at the curb told me a murder had been committed, said some lawyer had been found dead in a woman’s apartment, and the woman was missing. The police were looking for her.”

  “And what did you do then?”

  “Like a ninny, instead of making a clean breast of the situation and explaining it while it could have been explained, I got in a panic and dashed back to the hotel. I sent Edna a wire telling her to send money quickly, waiving identification and making the draft payable to that assumed name I’d registered under.

  “You wired?”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t you try telephoning collect?”

  “Yes.”

  “Got her?”

  “No. She didn’t answer.”

  “She answered the wire?”

  “That afternoon. I got the hotel to cash it and took a late train to Shreveport.”

  The waiter came and cleared away the dishes, brought the ice cream and coffee.

  “Can you trust Edna?” I asked.

  “I used to think I could. Now I’m not so certain. She acted strangely.”

  I said, “It helps Edna’s case a lot having Nostrander out of the way.”

  “Yes. I can see that—now.”

  “It might make a motive for murder.”

  “You mean that she might have killed him?”

  “The police might think so.”

  “But she was in Shreveport.”

  “Not when you telephoned.”

  “Well—no, perhaps not.”

  “It was late the next afternoon before she sent you the money?”

  “Yes.”

  We finished our ice cream, sat smoking cigarettes and sipping coffee. Neither of us said much. We were both thinking.

  “What do I do next?” she asked.

  “Got any money?”

  “Some left from what Edna sent me. Tell me, Donald, what should I do? Should I go back to the police and tell my story?”

  “Not yet, and not now.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s too late now. You’ve missed the boat.”

  “Couldn’t I explain the—”

  “Not now, you couldn’t.”

  “Why?”

  I said, “You didn’t murder him, did you?”

  She looked as though I’d thrown something at her.

  I said, “All right, someone did. That someone wouldn’t like anything better than to have the police blame things on you.”

  “Well, can’t I do myself more good by being there to block that very thing?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why?”

  “If you’re out of circulation for a while the real murderer will then try to make you the goat by planting evidence, making false statements, and things of that sort. Then you’ll have the chance to find out who this is. Reel out lots of rope and see if we can’t hang somebody.”

  “Not me, I hope.”

  I met her eyes, raised my coffee cup.

  “I hope.”

  I paid the check, inquired if there was a telephone booth in the restaurant, found there was, closeted myself in it, and called the airport at New Orleans.

  “This is Detective Lam at Shreveport talking,” I said, and then so they wouldn’t start asking questions as to whether I was on the force at Shreveport or a private detective, I started talking fast. “On Wednesday noon you had a passenger for New York. That passenger turned right around at New York and came back to New Orleans. The name was Emory G. Hale.”

  The voice at the other end of the line said, “Just wait a minute and I’ll consult the records.”

  I waited for a minute or so during which I could hear papers rustling; then the voice said, “That’s right. Emory G. Hale. New York and back.”

  “You wouldn’t know what he looked like? I wouldn’t be able to get a description?”

  “No. I don’t remember him. Just a minute.”

  I heard him say, “Anyone remember selling a ticket to a man named Hale for New York on Wednesday? Shreveport police calling… . No, I’m sorry we don’t have anyone who remembers him.”

  “When you book a passenger, don’t you take his weight?”

  “Yes.”

  I said, “What did Hale weigh?”

  “Just a minute. I have that right here. He weighed— let’s see—yes, here we are. He weighed a hundred and forty-six.”

  I thanked him and hung up.

  Emory G. Hale would have tipped the beam at something over two hundred pounds.

  I came out of the telephone booth.

  “What is it?” Roberta asked. “Bad news?”

  “Want to go to California?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I said, “I think we can hire a car to take us to Fort Worth and a plane from Fort Worth will get us into Los Angeles tomorrow morning.”

  “Why California?”

  “Because this state is very, very hot so far as you’re concerned.”

  “Won’t we attract attention?”

  “Yes. The more the better.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I said, “People speculate about a couple whom they don’t know. The thing to do is make them know us. We get acquainted with everybody from the driver of the rented automobile to the passengers on the plane. We’re husband and wife. We left Los Angeles to come east on our honeymoon. We’ve just got a wire that your mother had a spell with her heart, and we’re rushing back to be with her. It’s an interrupted honeymoon. People will sympathize with us, remember us in that capacity. If the police teletype starts clicking out a description of you as being wanted for murder, no one will ever connect that description with the poor little bride who is so worried about her mother.”

  “When do we start?” she asked.

  I said, “As soon as I telephone for an automobile,” and went back into the telephone booth.

  Chapter Seventeen

  AT DAYLIGHT Sunday morning we were skimming over .. Gradually the desert had ceased to be a vague, gray sea beneath us and had acquired form, substance, and color. The higher buttes thrust their rim rocks up at the plane, catching the first vague suggestion of light. Down below, the deeper canyons and drïashes were filled with shadows. The stars pinpointed themselves into a bluish green oblivion. As we sped westward the roar of the twin motors echoed from the jagged rim rocks around the buttes below. The east assumed a rosy glow. The tops of the bilttes were bathed in champagne. We sped over the desert as though trying to flee from the sun. Then abruptly the sun shot over the horizon, and the bright rays pounced upon us. The fainter colors of dawn gave place to dazzling bits of brilliance where sun splashed against the eastern edges of the cliffs, accentuating the dark shadows. The sun climbed higher. We could see the shadow of the plane scudding along below us. Then we were over the Colorado River, and into California. The roar of the motors faded to the peculiar whining sound which precedes a landing, and we were down in a little desert stopping place where the airport lunch counter gave us steaming hot coffee and bacon and eggs while the plane was refueling.

  Once more we were off. Great snow-capped mountains appeared ahead, guarding the edge of the desert like gray-haired sentinels. The plane jumped and twisted like something alive in the narrow confines of a pass between two big mountains, and then, so abruptly that it seemed there was no appreciable period of transition, the desert fell behind, and we were skimming over a citrus country in which orange and lemon groves, laid out in checkerboard squares, marched by in an endless procession. The red roofs of white stucco houses showed in startling contrast to the vivid green of the citrus trees. Dozens of cities, constantly growing larger and crowding closer together as we neared Los Angeles, spoke of the prosperity of the country below.

  Then they shrouded the plane. I looked across at Roberta. “Won’t be long now,” I told her.

  She smiled somewhat wistfully. “I think it’s the best honeymoon trip I ever had,” she said.

  Then, almost without warning, the plane was swooping down out of the sky, gliding toward a long cement runway. The wheels dipped smoothly to the earth, and we were in Los Angeles.

  I said, “Okay. Here we are. We go to a hotel, and I’ll get in touch with my partner.”

  “The Bertha Cool you’ve been talking about?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think she’ll like me?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “She doesn’t like good-looking young women—particularly when she thinks I do.”

  “Why? Afraid she’s going to lose you?”

  “Just on principle,” I said. “She probably doesn’t have any reason.”

  “Do we—that is, register under our own names?”

  “No.”

  “But, Donald, you—I mean I—”

  “You register as Roberta Lam,” I said. “I register under my own name. From now on we’re brother and sister. Our mother is very low. We hurried to be at her side.”

  “And I’m Roberta Lam?”

  “Yes.”

  “Donald, aren’t you putting yourself in a dangerous position?”

  “Why?”

  “Giving me the protection of your name, when you know I’m wanted by the police.”

  “I didn’t know you were wanted by the police. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She smiled. “It’s a nice alibi, Donald, but it won’t work. They’ll ask you why it was you spirited me around, using an assumed name and an assumed relationship if you didn’t realize that police were looking. for me under my own name.”

  “The answer to that is very simple,” I said. “You’re a material witness. I think I can use you to solve a murder. I’m keeping you with me. In place of reporting to Bertha Cool by letter, I’m taking you with me so she can hear your entire story.”

  She was silent for several seconds, then said, “I feel quite certain Bertha Cool is going to hate me from the minute she sees me.”

  “She probably won’t shower any too much cordiality on you.”

  We went to a hotel, registered. The clerk listened to my story about our dying mother, as I told him that I must hurry to a telephone. He pointed out the phone booth to me.

  I called Bertha’s unlisted number. She didn’t answer.

  I went up to my room, called Bertha once more. This time a colored maid answered.

  “Mrs. Cool?” I asked.

  “She ain’t here now.”

  “When will she be in?”

  “1 can’t tell.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Fishing.”

  “When she comes in, tell her to call—no, tell her that Mr. Donald Lam called, and that he’ll call every hour until he gets her.”

  “Yes sir. I think the fishin’ was early this morning. I think the tide was goin’ to be just right at seven-thirty. I rather ‘spect her back pretty soon.”

  “I’ll call every hour. Tell her that I said that. Be sure she gets that message—that I’ll call every hour.”

  I climbed into the luxury of a hot bath, lay soaking for ten or fifteen minutes, then got up and turned on the cold shower. I rubbed myself into a glow, dressed, shaved, and stretched out for forty winks.

  I was awakened by Roberta gently opening and closing the door of the connecting room.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Time for you to call Mrs. Cool again.”

  I groaned, picked up the telephone, gave the number to the operator, and waited.

  This time Bertha was home—evidently, by the sound of things, just coming into the apartment as the telephone rang. I heard the maid call her, and could hear her hurried steps thudding across the floor, then the sound of her voice rasping at me through the receiver. “For God’s sake, why don’t you stay put? What do you think this agency’s made of? Money? When you want a conference, why don’t you use the telephone? I’ve tried to educate you to that a dozen different times.”

  “All through?” I asked.

  “Hell, no!” she said belligerently. “I haven’t even started.”

  “All right, I’ll call you back when you’re through. One doesn’t argue with a lady.”

  I dropped the phone gently back on the hook, abruptly cutting off Bertha’s rage-shrilled voice.

  Roberta’s eyes were big. I could see she was frightened.

  “Donald, are you going to fight over me?”

  “Probably.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “We have to fight over something.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Bertha. You have to massage her with a club in order to keep her from beating your brains out. She doesn’t mean anything by it. It’s just the way she’s made. She can’t help it. When you see she’s getting her fist cocked, you beat her to the punch. That’s all. I’m going to sleep again. Don’t bother to waken me. You go ahead and get some sleep.”

  “Aren’t you going to call her again?”

  “After a while.”

  Roberta smiled somewhat wistfully and said, “You’re a funny boy.”

  “Why?” I asked, settling myself back on the bed.

  “Nothing,” she said, and walked back to her room.

  It took me ten or fifteen minutes to get back to sleep. I must have slept for a couple of hours. When I wakened, I rang Bertha Cool again.

  “Hello, Bertha. This is Donald.”

  “You damn little whippersnapper! You dirty little upstart! What the hell do you mean by pulling a stunt like that. I’ll teach you to hang up on me! Why, dammit, I’ll—”

  “I’ll call you back in a couple of hours,” I said, and hung up.

  Roberta came in in about an hour. “I didn’t hear you get up.”