"Irma is the girl?"

  "Yes."

  "What happened?"

  "Mr. Grail bumped the back of her car—not particularlyhard so far as the actual damage to the automobile was concerned. Fifty dollars would have covered both cars.”

  “Personal injuries?" Bertha asked.

  "Some sort of a spinal injury. Ellery jumped out of his car and ran up to the car ahead. He started apologising as though it had been all his fault, just as soon as he saw the car was operated by a woman. And Irma Begley looked up at Ellery's big strong face, and into his sympathetic eyes and determined she was going to marry him—and she didn't lose any time."

  "The sympathy racket?" Bertha asked.

  "Apparently, a little bit of everything. Ellery's wife had died and he was lonely. He'd grown to depend on me a lot more than he realised, and then I'd gone away. Afterwards, I found in the files a wire he had sent, asking me if I could possibly cut my vacation short and return. For some reason the wire was never delivered. If it had been, it might have changed my whole life. As it was, he thought I simply hadn't answered."

  I looked at my watch.

  Miss Rushe hurried on. "Well, Irma Begley was very nice about it, but she thought that Mr. Crail would prefer to have the car repaired himself so that he'd be certain he wasn't being victimised, and Ellery thought that was very very fair and considerate, so naturally with true magnanimity he had the whole damn car overhauled. Everything a mechanic could find wrong with it was fixed. Then he returned it to Irma, and by that time Irma was beginning to have headaches so she went to see a doctor, and the doctor took X-rays, and then it appeared that her spine had been injured. And she was so brave and so sweet and so self-effacing about the whole business !

  "Well, of course, Irma let Ellery see that she wasn't in any position to support herself without work, and so Ellery insisted on footing the bills, and—of course no one knows just how it happened, but I returned from a month's vacation to find my boss on his honeymoon ! "

  "How long ago?"

  "Six months."

  "What happened then?"

  "Well, at first the boss seemed sort of dazed with the suddenness of it all. He was particularly embarrassed when he was with me. He felt that he owed me some sort of an explanation

  as to how it happened and yet he was too much of a gentleman to say even a word about it."

  "What did you do?" Bertha asked.

  "I was too angry and hurt to make things easy for him. I told him I was going to quit as soon as he could get someone else to take my place. Well, he couldn't get anyone to take my place, and then he asked me to please stay with him and—and, well, I did."

  "When did you determine you were going to be a home wrecker?"

  "To tell you the truth, Mrs. Cool, I don't know. At first I was completely crushed. I felt that the bottom had dropped out of everything. I didn't realise how much I was in love with Ellery until after—well, after things seemed irrevocably broken."

  "I know," Bertha said. "I'm trying to find out the facts."

  "Well, after all, Mrs. Cool, I don't know as it's important, because that doesn't enter into it except incidentally. I wanted to get that over with first because I didn't want you to find out about it afterwards and start getting up-stage on me."

  "But you've made up your mind you're going after Mr. Crail?"

  "I've made up my mind that I'm not going to put any obstacle in the way of his going after me."

  "And he's showing some indications?"

  "He's dazed and he's hurt. He's wandering around in a fog."

  "And beginning to gravitate towards you for guidance?"

  Georgia Rushe met Bertha Cool's eyes. "Let's be frank about it, Mrs. Cool. I think he's realised that he's made a terrific mistake—and I think he realised it very shortly after I came back."

  "But he's too loyal to do anything about it?"

  "Yes."

  "Yet you think he may do something?"

  "He may."

  "And if he does, you're going to make it easy for him?"

  Georgia Rushe said determinedly, "That little scheming trollop stole him from me. She deliberately played her cards so she had him all tied up before I got back. I'm going to steal him back."

  Bertha said, "All right, we have the background. Go ahead and tell us what's on your mind.""Do you know anything about the Stanberry Building?" Bertha shook her head, then said, "Wait a minute. It's out on Seventh Street, isn't it?"

  Georgia Rushe nodded. "A four-storey building—stores on the lower floor, offices on the second floor, the Rimley Rendezvous on the third floor and apartments for Mr. Rimley and some of his executives on the fourth floor."

  "What about the Stanberry Building?"

  "She wants Ellery to buy it for her."

  "Why the Stanberry Building?" I asked.

  "I don't know, but I think it has something to do with the night club."

  "What is there about the night club that makes the building such a marvellous investment?"

  "I don't know. Pittman Rimley has four or five places scattered around town. I think he's the only one who's been able to make a success out of combining a lunch trade, swinging into an afternoon pick-up business, and then operating as a night club. He rotates his floor shows and seems to do a very good business."

  "What do you mean a pick-up business?" Bertha asked.

  "Afternoons," she said. "Women gravitate into these Rendezvous joints for a cocktail and there's dance music and pick-ups."

  "Crail has money?" I asked.

  She said evasively, "I think the Venetian blind business has been very profitable."

  "He has money?"

  "Yes—quite a bit."

  "And just what do you want us to do?"

  She said, "I want you to find out what's behind it all. She's rotten to the core, and I want you to find out what's going on."

  Bertha Cool said, "All that's going to cost you money.”

  “How much?"

  "Two hundred dollars for a starter."

  Georgia Rushe was coldly businesslike. "To just what does that two hundred dollars entitle me, Mrs. Cool?"

  Bertha hesitated.

  I said, "It entitles you to ten days' work."

  "Less expenses," Bertha snapped, hastily.

  "What can you find out in that time?" Georgia Rushe asked.

  Bertha said crisply, "We're detectives, not clairvoyants. How the hell should I know?"

  That seemed to be the right answer. Georgia Rushe opened her purse. "No one must know that I'm behind this," she said.

  Bertha Cool nodded. Her greedy little eyes fastened on the purse.

  Georgia Rushe took out a cheque-book.

  Bertha fairly shoved the fountain pen into her hand.

  Chapter Two

  BERTHA helped herself to a cigarette, said to me, "Well that's the way it goes."

  "It's okay."

  "Just a little piddling case for a woman who's eating her heart out, and has an exaggerated idea of what a detective agency can do."

  "It's okay, Bertha."

  "When you went away," Bertha said, "you'd got us into the big-time stuff. Damned if I know how you did it. You could take even the most insignificant little case, and before you got done it developed into big business and big money. Then after you left, I could take what seemed to be the biggest case and it would peter out into little business and little money. I did all right for a while. Two or three cases went just as though you'd been here. And then the bottom dropped out and it's been a whole procession of little stuff like this."

  "Don't bother about it. I'll take over on this."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Consult the Bureau of Vital Statistics, get whatever dope is available on the present Mrs. Crail, find out where she lived before she was married, make an investigation there, find out where she lived before that, try to find out why her sudden interest in the Stanberry Building."

  "That's a lot of leg work," Bertha said.

  "That's all marching is," I said, and walked out.

  Elsie Brand looked up from her typewriter. "Out for the day," I told her, "working on a case. I'll telephone in later on in the afternoon and see if there's anything new."

  Elsie hesitated a minute as though trying to say something,then, after a moment, her face turned red. Whatever it was she was going to say, she didn't get it out. She turned swiftly in her chair and hid her embarrassment over the rattling keyboard of her typewriter.

  I picked up the agency car from the parking station where we'd always kept it. The last eighteen months seemed like a dream. I was picking up the threads of life where I'd dropped them.

  The statistical information showed that Ellery Crail was thirty-eight, Irma Begley twenty-seven; that Crail had been married once before and was a widower; that Irma Begley had not been married. She had lived at 1891 Latonia Boulevard.

  I drove out to the address on Latonia. It was a modest, four-storey, brick apartment house with a stucco front and an ornate doorway. It bore the sign, Maplegrove Apartments, and a notice stating there was no vacancy. I rang the bell marked manager and had to wait for nearly five minutes.

  The manager turned out to be a fleshy woman somewhere around forty, with shrewd little black eyes, full thick lips and a perfect complexion. At the start, she was as belligerent, and looked as formidable, as a big tank. Then I smiled at her and, after a moment, she smiled back at me and became kittenish.

  "I'm so sorry. There isn't a vacancy in the place, and ..."

  "I wanted a little information about a woman who used to live here."

  "What about her?"

  "A Miss ... Miss ..." I made a great show of having forgotten the name and fished a notebook from my pocket, ran my finger down the page and said, "A Miss Latham ... No, wait a minute. That isn't the one." I ran my finger down a few more lines and said, "Begley, Irma Begley."

  "She used to live here. She got married."

  "Do you know whom she married?"

  "No, I don't. I think it was a pretty good match. She was rather uncommunicative."

  "You were manager at the time?"

  "That's right"

  "Know anything about her—who her folks were? Where she came from, or anything?"

  "No. She didn't even leave a forwarding address when she left. I found out afterwards she'd gone down to the post office and taken care of that herself."

  "Isn't that rather unusual?"

  "Yes. They usually leave a forwarding address in case anything happens to come here."

  I said, "Well, how about when she rented the apartment in the first place, she must have given some references?”

  “Oh, yes."

  "Suppose we could look them up?"

  "Just what was your name?" she asked.

  I smiled at her and said, "You won't believe me."

  "Why not?"

  "It's Smith."

  "I don't."

  "People seldom do."

  "Won't you come in, Mr. Smith?"

  "Thanks."

  The manager's apartment was on the ground floor and was over-furnished and smelled of sandalwood. A chinese incense burner on a table in the centre of the room was sending out wisps of white smoke. There were too many pictures on the wall, too many chairs, too many tables and too many nicknacks.

  "Won't you sit down, Mr. Smith?"

  "Thanks." I offered her a cigarette. She took one and I held a match.

  "Just why did you want to know?"

  I looked blank.

  "I mean what's the object in getting the information?"

  I said, "Shucks, I don't know. They never tell me. Just hand me a list of names, tell me to find out certain things. It may be she's applied for an insurance policy, or it might be an old bill, or perhaps she's inherited money and they're trying to locate her to close up an estate."

  "She was a very nice girl," the manager said.

  I blew out cigarette smoke and said, "Uh huh."

  "Very quiet as I remember her, and kept very much to herself. No wild parties."

  "That's nice."

  "She wasn't the type that would have any unpaid bills.”

  “Then it can't be an unpaid bill," I said.

  "But you don't know what it is?"

  "That's right. Someone wants to know, that's all. That's my business, investigating. I get a dollar a name and furnish my own expenses."

  She said, "I have a few people I'd like to know about.”

  “Give me their names. I'd have to turn them in through the office. I don't know just how the office handles it. There's some charge for a retainer. You have to guarantee so much business in the course of a month or a year or whatever it is, and, of course, they charge you more than a dollar. A dollar is my cut."

  She said, "Well, when you put it that way, it's not worth much to me to find them, because you can't get blood out of a turnip. Let me see what I can find."

  She opened a drawer in a flat-topped desk, pulled out some cards and started riffling through a classification marked "Ba-Be."

  After a moment, she found the card she wanted, pulled it out, said, "That's right, Irma Begley. She lived at 392 South Fremington Street before she came here."

  "Give any references?" I asked.

  "Two. Benjamin C. Cosgate, and Frank L. Glimson.”

  “Any address?"

  The manager said, "It's a downtown business address—and that's all the information we have about her except that she paid her rent promptly, and was listed as a good tenant.”

  “All right, that's all I need," I said. "Thanks a lot."

  The manager said, "If you can get enough of them in a day, you should be able to make money at that."

  I said, "You have to keep jumping around."

  "Yes, I hadn't thought of that. Paying your own expenses makes a difference. How much information do you have to get?"

  "Oh, enough to let them know whatever it is they want to find out. Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes it's quite a job. Most of the time you can count on an average of forty-five minutes to a name. Well, I've got a couple of more names in the neighbourhood—try to group them all together."

  "I hope you find what you want, Mr. Smith," she said. "Thank you," I told her.

  A telephone book in a near-by drug-store showed me that Benjamin C. Cosgate was a lawyer, Frank Glimson was a lawyer, and there was a firm of Cosgate & Glimson.

  I started to call them, then thought better of it and postponed it until after I'd driven once more to the courthouse. This time I looked at the Register of Actions, Plaintiff, and read through so many names that I all but passed up the one

  I wanted, but there it was: Irma Begley versus Philip E. Cullingdon. I made a note of the number of the case, told the deputy clerk I was a lawyer looking up some of the old records and asked for files on the case.

  There was a neat little complaint, a demurrer, an amended complaint, a demurrer to an amended complaint, and a notice of dismissal. Attorneys for the plaintiff were Cosgate & Glimson.

  I skimmed through the complaint. It stated that on the fifth day of April, 1942, while the plaintiff had been driving and operating a motor vehicle in a careful and law-abiding manner, the defendant, without due or any regard for the safety of other vehicles or the occupants thereof, had so carelessly, negligently, and unlawfully driven and operated his automobile over, along, and upon a certain public highway known as Wilshire Boulevard, that he had caused his said automobile to collide with the automobile driven by the plaintiff; that as a result of said collision, plaintiff had sustained a permanent injury of the spine which had necessitated the payment of doctor's bills in the amount of two hundred and fifty dollars, nursing and medicine in the amount of eighty-five dollars and twenty cents, X-rays in an amount of seventy-five dollars and specialist fees in an amount of five hundred dollars; that plaintiff was permanently injured, and that the careless driving of the defendant's automobile as aforesaid was the sole and proximate cause of said injury. Wherefore. Plaintiff prayed judgment in an amount of fifty thousand dollars and for her costs of suit incurred herein.

  The suit had been filed on the thirty-first day of March, 1943.

  I made a few notes from the papers, getting the names and addresses of the defendant's lawyers, and looked in the telephone book for Philip E. Cullingdon. I found him listed as a contractor and made a note of his residence. Then I went down the hall to a telephone booth, called the office, and found Bertha Cool was out, told Elsie Brand I was going to drop around for' a cocktail at the Rimley Rendezvous; that if anything important turned up, Bertha could reach me there. Elsie asked me how I was doing on the case, and I told her I was making a little progress—nothing to write home about, but getting a few leads, and hung up.