She said, "You're smart, aren't you?"

  "I'm just telling you I'm dumb."

  She said, "There are four actions that I know of.”

  “All under her own name?"

  "Of course. She's not crazy that way."

  "How did she really get the spinal injury?"

  "I don't know."

  "How long have you been checking on it?"

  "I ... Some little time."

  ·

  "Why?"

  She said, "You ask a lot of questions, don't you?"

  I said, "Are you going to ride with me in my car? Am I going to ride with you in your car? Or have I got to follow you to see where you're going and what you do next?"

  She thought that over for a moment, then said, "If you're going any place with me, you're going in my car."

  I was careful to walk round the front of the car so she couldn't start out without running over me, opened the door on the right-hand side, slid into the seat behind her, pulled thedoor shut, and said, "Okay, drive carefully because I'm always nervous with a strange driver."

  She hesitated for a matter of seconds, then accepted the situation. "Do you," she asked bitterly, "always get what you start after?"

  I smiled and said, "You'll feel better if I say yes, won't you?"

  "I don't give a damn what you say," she said angrily. "That simplifies it," I told her, and kept quiet.

  After a while she said, "Well, what do you want, and where are we going?"

  "You're driving the car," I told her. "And I want to know all the answers."

  "Such as what?"

  "What are your hours at the Rendezvous?"

  She jerked her face around in surprise. The car wobbled on the road. She snapped her attention back to the car, said, "Well, of all the questions."

  I didn't say anything.

  She said, "I go on at twelve-fifteen. I'm supposed to be dressed, or undressed, whichever you want to call it, and on the floor by twelve-thirty. I work until four o'clock, then I come back at eight-thirty and work until midnight."

  "You know Mrs. Ellery Crail?"

  "Of course."

  "Why the `of course'?"

  "She's there a great deal."

  "Do you know the man who was with her this afternoon?”

  “Yes."

  "Now then," I said, "we begin to get into the big-money questions. Why were you interested in checking up on Mrs. Crail's past?"

  "Just as a matter of curiosity."

  "Your own curiosity, or the curiosity of someone else?”

  “Mine."

  "Are you that curious about all people?"

  "No."

  "Why this particular curiosity about Mrs. Crail?"

  "I wondered about her—how she got her start."

  "We wouldn't by any chance, be going round in circles, would we?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "I asked you why you're checking up on her. It's curiosity.

  I asked you why the curiosity. You say it's because you wondered how she got her start. All of those words mean just about the same thing. Let's try some new meanings for a while."

  "I'm telling the truth."

  "Sure you are. What I'm interested in is the reason behind the curiosity."

  She drove along for a while apparently debating how much to tell me, then abruptly said, "What did you find out from Cullingdon?"

  I said, "He wasn't suspicious when I called on him. He was interested, and he was going to ring his insurance people and find out if it was all right to tell me the amount of the settlement. I suppose after you talked with him he thought things were coming pretty fast."

  "He did."

  "What did he tell you?"

  "He asked me questions about where I lived, and what my name was, and why I wanted to know."

  "And you lied to him?"

  "Oh, certainly. I told him I was a newspaper woman getting material for a feature story on certain types of automobile accidents."

  "And he asked you what paper?"

  Her face coloured. "Yes."

  "And then rang up the city desk?"

  "How bright you are ! "

  "Did he?"

  "Yes."

  "And that was when you walked out?"

  She nodded.

  I said, "Well, the fat's in the fire now. If you hadn't called there, it's a ten to one shot he'd have called me, and told me the amount of ..."

  "What were you after?" she asked.

  "The amount of the settlement."

  She made a little deprecatory gesture. "The amount of the settlement," she said, "was seventeen thousand, eight hundred and seventy-five dollars."

  It was my turn to look surprised. "What were you after?”

  “Copies of the X-rays of the injuries, of course."

  I thought for a minute, then said, "I beg your pardon.”

  “What do you mean?"

  "I mean that I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been so dumb. I had just learned about those other cases, and the full implications didn't dawn on me at once. I guess my mind's a little sluggish—a little out of practice."

  "What'll the insurance company do?" she asked.

  "They may start an independent check-up of their own."

  There was a savage triumph on her face. "That wouldn't make it so bad," she said, and then added, "if they did it soon enough."

  I said, "You still haven't accounted for your curiosity.”

  “All right," she said angrily, "in case you're so damn dumb,

  which I don't think you are, Mrs. Crail was about to purchase

  the Stanberry Building, buying out old Rufus Stanberry." I nodded.

  "Well," she said, "use your head."

  "You mean there's something in Rimley's lease about a purchase?"

  "I believe so."

  "In case of a bona fide sale the lease is terminated?”

  “Within ninety days."

  "And you're working for Rimley—getting a line on her so her hands will be tied?"

  "In a way, yes."

  "Just what's your connection with Rimley?"

  "Is that a crack?"

  "If you want to take it that way, yes."

  She said, "Pittman Rimley is nothing to me, except in a business way, in case it's any of your business, which it isn't. But I own the hat-checking concession outright as well as the cigar, cigarette, and candy concessions."

  "Do you have to work at them yourself?" I asked.

  "I don't have to for financial reasons, if that's what you mean, but when you've got a business it's a lot better if you keep on the job yourself."

  "You don't mind—the working conditions?"

  "You mean the costume? Don't be silly. I have a nice legs. If other people like to look at them, it's all right by me. I'm still the mistress of my own affections."

  "You mean that after she bought the building, Rimley would have to negotiate another lease and that would enable him to either terminate your concessions or raise the ante?"

  "Something of that sort."

  "So Rimley knew about Irma Crail's past and gave you the information and told you to look it up, is that right?"

  She hesitated a moment, then said, "Let's not talk about Rimley."

  I let it go at that. "You say that Irma Crail had pulled this stuff before?"

  "Several times."

  "Where?"

  "Once here, once in San Francisco, once in Nevada, and once in Nebraska."

  "Using her own name each time? You're sure of that?”

  “Yes."

  "And how did you get this information?"

  She shook her head.

  I said, "All right, it's a reasonable inference that Rimley gave it to you. Now, let's go on from there. What was the name of this man you just called on?"

  She frowned, "Covington."

  I shook my head. "Cullingdon."

  "Yes, that's right."

  "You didn't remember it very well, did you?"

  "I'm not so good at remembering names."

  "In other words, you hadn't been familiar with the name for a very long time."

  "What makes you think that?"

  "Otherwise you'd have remembered it."

  "I'm just not much good at names."

  "Speaking of names?" I said and waited.

  "You want my professional name or my real name?”

  “Your real name," I said.

  "I thought you would."

  "Do I get it?"

  "No."

  "What's your professional name?"

  "Billy Prue." She switched on the headlights.

  "Nice name," I said. "It doesn't mean anything.”

  “Do names have to?"

  "They should sound convincing."

  "What does that sound like?"

  "It sounds like a professional name—a stage name."

  "Well, that's what it is. Therefore, it should be convincing.”

  “I suppose we could keep on arguing about that until you'd had sufficient opportunity to think up what you wanted to say about something else."

  "Will you be quiet? I want to think.""I thought that's what you wanted to do."

  "All right, I do. I want to think something over.”

  “Cigarette?" I asked.

  "No. Not while I'm driving," she added after a moment. I settled down comfortably in the seat, cocked one elbow on the arm-rest and lit a cigarette.

  We drove along for eight or ten blocks at almost a snail's pace, then suddenly she stepped on it.

  "Well, that's something," I said.

  "What?"

  "That you've decided where we're going."

  "I knew that all along—where I am going."

  "Where's that?"

  "To my apartment and change my clothes."

  "And I take it the emphasis on the first person pronoun means that my ride terminates when we get to the apartment?"

  "What did you want me to do," she asked, "adopt you?" I grinned.

  "I don't have any etchings if that's what you mean." I didn't say anything.

  She turned towards me, started to say something, checked herself and remained silent.

  After four or five minutes, she eased the car into the kerb. "It's been nice knowing you."

  I said, "Don't bother, I'll wait."

  "You'll have to wait a long time."

  "That's all right."

  "What are you waiting for?"

  "Waiting to hear why you were so curious about Mrs. Crail."

  "Well," she blazed angrily. "Sit there and wait then ! "

  She flounced out of the car, walked round behind the machine, took keys from her purse, latch-keyed the door of an apartment house and went inside.

  I was very careful not to turn my head, but by watching from the corner of my eye I could see that she stopped after a few steps and remained standing there in the dimly lit lobby. She stood there for one minute—two minutes. Then she melted into the shadows and was gone.

  Three minutes later and the door opened. A figure that clutched a knee-length fur coat tightly about her came running down the stairs towards the car.

  I got out and started round politely to open the door.

  Cold fingers grabbed my wrists. "Come," she said in a hoarse whisper. "Please come—quick ! Oh, my God ! "

  I started to ask her a question, then took another look at her face, changed my mind, and plodded along behind without a word.

  The door had clicked shut, but she had the latch-key in her right hand. Her left hand was clutching the coat about her.

  She unlocked the door and walked through a lobby which was but little more than a wide place in a hallway, climbed three steps, walked down a carpeted corridor, entered an automatic elevator that wheezed and rattled up to the fourth floor.

  She led the way down the corridor, paused before a door on the left. Once more her latch-key clicked back a lock and she pushed the door open. The lights were all on.

  It was a three-room apartment, if you classified a little kitchenette as a room. It was on the street side and cost money.

  Her purse, gloves, and the jacket she had been wearing, lay on the table in the entrance room. There was an ash-tray on that table with a single cigarette about half smoked. Through an open doorway I glimpsed a bedroom, and on the bed saw the skirt and blouse she had been wearing.

  She followed the direction of my eyes, said in a hoarse whisper, "I was just changing my clothes—getting ready to take a bath. I flung on the first thing I could find to cover me up."

  I looked again at the fur coat.

  The left hand that was clutching it had puckered up a bit of the coat. Through it I could see the pink of satiny flesh. "What's the rest of it?" I asked.

  Wordlessly she crossed over to the door of the bathroom, then hung back.

  "Please," she said, "you do it."

  I opened the door and looked inside.

  The bathroom light was on.

  The body of the man who had escorted Mrs. Ellery Crail to the Rimley Rendezvous that afternoon was in the bathtub, the knees high up against the chest, the head back against the sloping end of the bathtub, the eyes about two-thirds closed, the lower jaw hanging limp leaving the mouth partially open.

  Telling the girl to keep back out of the way and reaching for the lifeless wrist was only a mere formality.

  Rufus Stanberry's heart was as still as a churchyard on a frosty morning.

  Even in death, however, he had that shrewdly calculating leer on his face. The man might have been making an audit of eternity.

  "He's ... dead?" she asked from the doorway.

  "He's dead," I said.

  Chapter Six

  WE went back to the bedroom. She was shaking with nervousness.

  I said, "Sit down. We have a little talking to do."

  "I don't know a thing about it," she said. "You know as well as I do that I wasn't up here long enough to ..."

  I said, "Let's let that go and start with facts. What happened?"

  "I've already told you. I came in here and started to undress. I headed for the bathroom, switched on the lights and .and.. ”

  "You switched on the bathroom light?" I asked.

  "Yes."

  "You're sure it wasn't on already?"

  "No. I switched it on, and then I saw him and—well, I just ran back and grabbed the first thing I could throw around me and ran down to get you."

  "Pretty much of a panic?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You were frightened?"

  "Of course."

  "You didn't know he was here?"

  "No I..."

  "Take another look."

  “I . . .”

  "Go ahead. Look."

  I pushed her over to the bathroom door. She grabbed at the side of the door. The coat fell open. She had on a bra, panties, and dark lustrous stockings. She gave a short, sharp exclamation and kept clinging to the side of the door, not bothering about the coat. "Take a good look," I said.

  She said, "What is there to see? Just a dead man in a bathroom."

  She twisted out of my grasp, darted back to the bedroom. I carefully closed the bathroom door. "Where's the telephone?"

  "Right there."

  "Oh, yes," I said. I sat down and took one of the packets of cigarettes she had sold me that afternoon from my pocket, shook a cigarette a third of the way out, extended it to her, "Smoke?"

  "No, I ..."

  I took the cigarette from the packet, tapped it on my thumbnail, put it in my mouth, lit it, and settled back in the chair.

  "The telephone," she said. "It's right there."

  I nodded.

  "Aren't you going to call the police?"

  "Not yet."

  "Why?"