“Don’t talk,” he called back over his shoulder.

  I kept plugging along. My legs felt as though they were weighted with metal. We were jogging slowly enough so I could manage my breathing, but I was tired, terribly tired.

  , It seemed as though we’d run miles before Louie swung around abruptly, looked me over with the eye of a professional trainer, said, “All right, walk awhile.”

  We started walking along briskly, sucking in great lungfuls of the cool, clean air. My legs were tired, but the change in muscular action was a relief.

  After several minutes, Louie started jogging again, and I fell in behind him. The cabin showed up a quarter of a mile ahead. It seemed to take hours to reach it.

  Louie wasn’t winded. I could see that he was breathing more deeply, but that was all.

  “Try opening up the bottom part of your lungs,” he said. “Suck the air way down into the lowest part of your lungs. Okay, we’ll go through a few moves now, just some of the preliminary stuff.”

  He brought out a set of sweat-stiffened boxing-gloves and put gloves on my hands. “Now then,” he said, “the most deceptive blow and the hardest to deliver is an absolutely straight punch. Now, let’s see a straight left.”

  I lashed out with a left.

  He shook his head. “That ain’t straight.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because your elbow came up with the punch. Way out from the side of your body. Keep your elbow right in close to your body as you bring your fist up. First the left, then the right.”

  I tried again. Louie looked pained but patient. “Now look,” he said. “Take off that right glove for a minute. I want to show you ‘something.”

  And he showed me. And he told me, and then he kept me shooting out the left until I could hardly raise my arm.

  “It ain’t good,” he said, “and it ain’t bad. You’ll improve. Now, let’s try a straight right. Now when you throw a straight right—”

  A voice from the window said in a sleepy drawl. “Wouldn’t it be easier to take a licking than go to all that trouble, Louie?”

  I looked up at the bedroom window. Helen Framley, her elbows perched on the sill, a kimono falling away from her throat, was watching us with an amused twinkle in her eyes.

  Louie said, in all deadly seriousness, “There’s times when a man can’t afford to take a licking, Miss Helen—maybe he’d be fighting for you.”

  “Save it,” she told him. “I like men with black eyes, and besides I have to clean my teeth.”

  She left the window. Louie turned to me with that grin pulling his lips back so that the missing teeth showed as black spaces. “There,” he announced, “is a girl for you. Buddy, what I mean that’s a girl!”

  I nodded.

  Louie was looking at me speculatively as though he wanted to say something else, perhaps wondering if he dared to try coaching me in something that wasn’t fighting. But it was hard for him to find words. At length, he said, “Listen, buddy, you know where I stand. I’m your pal, see?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m backing your play. No matter what it is, I’m backing it.”

  Again I nodded.

  He blurted awkwardly, “Well, don’t pull no punches on my account. Come on, get your mitts up and let’s go through that again. One—two—one—two—one—two—onetwo—”

  I was so tired I could hardly move when we finished. Perspiration was commencing to stand out on my skin. Louie looked me over. “No cold showers for you, buddy. That cold-shower stuff is all right for the guys that have a layer of fat under their skin. Even then it don’t do ‘em as much good as they think it does. You take a warm shower, not hot, now, just a little bit warmer than your skin. Get the temperature with your hands, then step in under it. It’ll feel like a cold shower at first, and you’ll want to turn on more warm water, but don’t do it. Just stay under there and put on lots of soap and scrub off good. Then make the water just a little cooler, not enough to give you a shock, but just start cooling it down until you feel you’d like to get out and then get out quick. Rub yourself good with a towel, then get in on your bed and—well, then’s when I take over.”

  I took the shower. The towels furnished by the man who owned the cabin were little thin things that became wringing wet by the time you were half through drying yourself.

  Louie was waiting in my room when I stretched my damp body out on the bed. He had a bottle, and, as he sloshed some of the contents of the bottle into his hand, I thought I smelled alcohol, witch hazel, and bay rum. Then Louie went to work. He kneaded, pounded, massaged, slapped, rubbed, and then did it all over again.

  I began to feel a delightful sense of relaxation. I wasn’t drowsy, but I could feel new, clean blood coursing through my muscles, could feel my skin tingle and glow.

  From the kitchen, I could hear the rattle of pans. Louie gave a little exclamation, strode across the room, jerked the door open, and said, “Hey, I’m the cook here.”

  I heard Helen Framley’s deep-pitched distinctive drawl saying, “You used to be. You’ve been promoted to trainer. I’m taking over the breakfast.”

  Louie came back to the bed. “A great girl,” he said, stiffening his fingers and jabbing them into the muscles on each side of my spine.

  It took Louie half an hour to get me massaged to suit him, then I got into my clothes, feeling slightly tired but not fatigued. Helen had the table set, with grapefruit, coffee, golden brown toast, thick ham steaks, and fried eggs. As we started eating, she got up to pour flapjacks into a big frying-pan.

  I felt hungry, not particularly ravenous, just hungry, but the food I ate didn’t seem to have any effect on my hunger.’ I ate and ate and my stomach refused to fill up.

  Louie watched me approvingly.

  Helen Framley said, “You’ll have him so fat he’ll waddle.”

  “He won’t put on over three pounds,” Louie said. “He’s using up energy, and it takes food to supply that energy. He won’t carry an ounce of fat, but, boy, oh, boy, will he get solid.”

  Her eyes searched mine. “Why the sudden desire to become proficient in the manly art of self-defense?” she asked. I said, “I get tired of being a human punching-bag.”

  “And so you quit your job, hire a boxing instructor, and start right in with road work, massages, boxing, and regular fight training?”

  “That’s right.”

  “When you go after anything, you don’t use any halfway methods, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Some things, anyhow,” she said, and turned away. Louie said, “Now, buddy, after breakfast, you don’t do nothing. See? You just sit back for an hour and let your food digest. You read the paper, and try to keep from moving. Don’t do anything that will use up energy.”

  Nothing in my life ever felt quite so good as that hour of complete relaxation which followed. Then I announced that I had work to do. Louie wanted me to take some breathing exercises, and some “skull practice,” but I insisted I had to go to town.

  Helen said we needed some groceries, and handed me a list. Louie volunteered to go along and buy the groceries. Helen said she’d stay in the cabin and straighten things up.

  Louie talked about her all the way into Reno. “A wonderful girl,” he said. “She’s got what it takes. She’s championship stuff. Sock-her one on the button, and her knees might be buckling, but you’d never know it.”

  I eased the car into a parking-space and told Louie to be back in half an hour.

  “I’ll be here,” he promised. “You got that grocery list?”

  I handed him the grocery list and twenty dollars. “Expense money,” I said. “When it’s gone, tell me and I’ll give you some more.”

  His eyes held that same devotion you see in the eyes of a big dog looking up at his master. “Okay, buddy,” he said, and pushed the money down into his pocket.

  I went into one of the hotels, got a list of numbers, closeted myself in the telephone booth, and went to work. I called retail-grocer associations, credit bureaus, the dairies, and even the ice company. I was, I explained, from the Preferential Credit Bureau of San Francisco. I was trying to get some information on a Mrs. Elva Jannix. I knew they wouldn’t have any credit applications, but I’d like very much to have them check their deliveries during the next few days, and if they got any information to save it until I called again.

  That’s a peculiar thing. No matter what kind of an alibi you use, you can’t get information out of a business house unless you pose as a credit man, and then they’ll turn everything inside out. They almost never ask to see any credentials. Simply tell them you’re handling a credit matter, and the world is yours.

  I made the rounds of the banks, told /hem I was trying to locate a stolen check, asked them if they’d had any business dealings with a Mrs. Jannix, either Mrs. Sidney Jannix, or Mrs. Elva Jannix.

  Most of them fell for it. One of them didn’t. The manager wanted to know more about me. Somehow, the way he went at it, I had an idea Mrs. Jannix might be a client of that bank. A man can tell you he hasn’t the information you want without violating any ethics, but if he happens to have the information you’re after, he gets a little cagey about giving it out.

  I went back to the car. It had been an hour and ten minutes. There was no sign of Louie Hazen beyond a pasteboard carton filled with canned stuff, and two heavy brown-paper shopping-bags loaded with various staples.

  I sat and waited for fifteen minutes. The sun crawled over the roofs of the store buildings, and sent warm rays glancing down into the streets. I felt drowsy. My muscles and nerves were all relaxed. I didn’t give a damn for Bertha Cool or the detective agency or anything that concerned it. I closed my eyes to rest them against the glare of the sunlight—and woke up with a jerk from a sleep so sound that it took me a few seconds to realize where I was and how I had got there.

  I looked at my watch.

  It had been more than two hours since I’d left Louie.

  I put a note on the steering-wheel, “Back in ten minutes. Don’t leave,” and went back to make some more telephone calls, plugging up a few loopholes I might have missed.

  I came back and the note was still on the steering-wheel. There was no sign of Louie. I started the car and drove back out to the cabin. Helen had been sweeping. A handkerchief was tied around her hair for a dust cap. “Hello,” she said when I’d brought the groceries in. “What did you do with Louie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What happened?”

  “He went out to get the groceries. I told him to wait in the car when he came back, and to he sure and be there in half an hour. He wasn’t there. I waited over an hour longer, and then came out here.”

  She took off her dust cap, put her broom in the corner, went into the bathroom, washed her hands, and when she came out, was rubbing some fragrant lotion into the skin.

  She said, “This might be a good time to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Lots of things.”

  I sat down beside her on the little settee. She got up after a moment and moved over to a chair facing me. “I want to look at you,” she explained. “If you’re going to lie to me, I want to know it.”

  “That doesn’t sound very encouraging.”

  . She said, “I like you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I liked you from the first time I saw you.”

  “Leading up to something?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Go ahead then.”

  She said, “The orthodox technique for a nice young thing is to be very demure and, if you take an interest in her, lead you along very, very gently. I don’t do things that way. When I like someone, I go for them in a big way. When I don’t like ‘em, I just don’t like ‘em, and that’s all there is to it.”

  I nodded.

  “That first night out on the desert,” she said, “was about the happiest night I ever spent in my life. The second night was almost as good.”

  “And now?” I asked.

  “Now, I don’t like it.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought you were strong for me.”

  “I am.”

  “Phooey!” she said, with a little grimace. Then her eyes came up to mine. “It isn’t because of what I was doing—that slot-machine racket—that you cooled off toward me?”

  “I didn’t cool off toward you. I like you.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  She was silent for a few seconds, then she said, “Anyhow, being with Pug and working that machine racket, and having batted around on my own has made me feel that I’m on one side of the fence and the cops are on the other. There’s no particular reason I should feel that way except I’ve had a lot of shakedowns in my time, and particularly on the slot-machine racket. Once or twice, Pug would get caught. The slot-machine man would pretend he was going to make a complaint and prosecute. We always knew it was a bluff, but the cops would hold us on their own and shake us down for everything they could get before they’d turn us loose. Well, I got to looking at cops as being—well, just cops.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  She averted her eyes once more, studied her shoe tip. “All right, Donald,” she blurted at length, “if you think I know something about Pug’s murder, and if you thought you could make a play for me because I was strong for you, pretend that you’d quit the detective business, and get me to tell you what I knew that way—well, Donald,” she said, looking at me suddenly with the steady stare of slate-gray eyes, “I think I really could kill you if you’re taking me for that kind of a ride.”

  I said, “I wouldn’t blame you.”

  She kept studying me. “Going to say anything more?” I smiled and shook my head.

  She got to her feet abruptly. “Damn you, I wish I knew what it was you do to me, but I’m just telling you—I still say you’re working on that case. Remember what I told you.”

  “I will. Where do you suppose Louie is?”

  “Darned if I know. Did you give him any money?”

  “Yes.”

  She said, “There’s something wrong with Louie.”

  “What?”

  “He’s slap-happy.” • /

  “I knew that a long time ago.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Something else wrong with him?”

  “I don’t know. It comes out of that condition of being slap-happy. They all get it sooner or later. I think Pug had some of it. It keeps them from seeing things the way you’d see them or the way I’d see them. Look, Donald, do you think that after a while, if you keep hanging around and I get nuts over you, I’ll spill everything I know?”

  “I just hadn’t thought much about it.”

  “Well, think about it now then.”

  “All right, I will.”

  “If you ever try to pump me about that, I’ll kill you. I—I’d not only hate you, but—but—but it would do something to me, Donald. It would jerk something out from under me. Please, Donald, give me a break on that. If that’s the play, let’s just call this little party off right now, and I can get over it—maybe. If I wait a few more days, I’ll never get over it.”

  “Got any friends here?” I asked her.

  “No.”

  “Where would you go and what would you do?”

  Her eyes grew hard. “Say, don’t you think you can frighten me with that line. Any time I need a man to live on, I’ll take an overdose of sleep medicine. I can walk out of here right now with nothing but my bare hands, and—well, I’ll get by, and I won’t sell myself, either.”

  “What would you do?”

  “I don’t know. I’d find something. How about it? Do I start?”

  “Not as far as I’m concerned.” She said, “I suppose you-won’t open up.”

  I said, “If you don’t want to tell me anything you know about what happened to Pug, I hope you never do!’ She came over to stand in front of me. “All right,” she said, “I’ll give it to you in words of one syllable. You can have anything you want out of me. You can ask me anything, and I’ll do it. And if you ask me what about Pug, and what do I know about the night he was bumped off, I—well, I’d probably rat, but the minute you asked me that question, I’d know why you’d been doing all this,” and she swept her hand in a gesture which included the auto camp. “And when I knew that you’d been doing it just to get me so, that I couldn’t say no to anything you’d ask—I’d be so sick inside, I could never feel clean or decent again, or think there was anything clean left in the world—ever. You got that straight?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right then. What do we do next?”

  I said, “I guess we go uptown and see if we can locate Louie in any of the bars.”

  She studied me a second or two, then burst out laughing, but there was a note of bitterness in her laughter.

  I walked over to stand close to her. “Don’t you see,” I told her, “I don’t want anything I’m not entitled to.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Go on from there.”

  “You’re right about one thing. I’m a detective. I’m working. It isn’t that I’m working for the B. Cool Agency. It’s that I’m working on a case. I’m trying to see that some other people get a fair deal. They’re depending on me, whether they know it or not. If I don’t-do the job, I don’t think anyone else will.”

  “And so you want me to tell you what I know about—”

  “I don’t want you to tell me a damn thing,” I said. “I’m strong for you. I think you’re one of the nicest girls I’ve ever met. But I’d never have asked you to leave Las Vegas and come out with me if it hadn’t been a matter of business. I’m enjoying it. I’m happy. I like to be near you. I like the way you do things. I like everything about you. But I’m working on a job, and the reason I’m here with you is because it’s along the line I’m following to make a success of that job.”

  “And when the job’s over?”

  I’d been dreading that question. I said, “I’ll probably have something else tossed into my lap.”

  “And you’re not going to ask me what I know about Pug?”

  “No.”

  “Never?”

  “No.”

  “And you didn’t plan this so I’d spill what I knew?”